By Bernard Keogh

Over the last few weeks, at least five of my Facebook friends have admitted to entertaining the dread mongrel. He can eat your life if you let him.

My dad suffered terribly from this and I’ve been bitten myself.  I even traveled to Ireland to find out why, and I have spoken to several professionals about both his depression and my own. It was the chemical aspects that I didn’t understand. The pain was obvious.

Our bodies, since the days of the cave man… produce fight and flight chemicals, (ironically, the ‘alone’ chemicals, adrenaline, cortisol, nandrolone and others). These chemicals are burned off when we fight or take flight.  They are also toxic, cumulative and can affect the nervous system in a very bad way. But today, with all the stresses of modern life, the thing we DON’T do is take flight, or fight.  So these chemicals remain in our systems and slowly burn out the nerve endings and damage our entire nervous system. The early effects are skin problems, dry skin, dull spots, nervous tics and later things like shingles can develop as well. And shingles can be very dangerous, especially to the optic nerve. (So stop it, you could go blind!)

A big factor in recovery from depression is to eliminate those chemicals. We dont eat well when depressed and tend to sit around staring into space, watching that fag burn to a 2 inch ash coz you haven’t moved.. and you’re on your 15th cup of coffee for the day. And you don’t do the stuff you used to like… the music dies, literally, we don’t engage with others, we don’t talk about it coz it seems so bloody pathetic. The mongrel wins and eats well. And he doesn’t need sleep, he just needs you in his grip. Your GP gives you pills, but they turned me into a zombie, even at sub-clinical doses. Your Gp doesn’t know depression from a common cold.

One really good way to beat him is to get really physical. For me, I grabbed a shovel and shifted 30 tons of earth by hand and wheelbarrow. Worked till I was so tired I had to sleep well. Burned off those bloody chemicals. Lost weight, gained muscles. Found my way to the horses. Long story that bit, but the getting physical part was the start.  Eventually the music came back, and I started giving cheek to all and sundry again. Found new friends and eliminated the toxic characters in my life, ex included!
And I talked about it… to a professional.

She told me that depression was not an illness of the dull.  If you have any sensitivity and intelligence about you, it’s likely that you’ll get depression at some stage of your life. So take heart in that. You feel because you’re alive and intelligent. Depression is about our inability to handle things that hurt, beyond our control. The modern equivalent of the sabre toothed tiger is stress.  And in today’s world, the stresses easily get beyond our control. Give up the coffee, take up the shovel.

I’ll never hang up my shovel. Depression aftermath requires constant vigilance, and I do slip back from time to time. But those simple things have saved my life.

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Republished story from Dads Online Facebook page written by Bernard Keogh.

There is no accident that I am using a “Danger sign with skull and cross bones” as it visualises exactly the harm of poisonous words.

I remember being bad mouthed by my children’s mother.   Whether it was directly at them or on the phone in earshot of the children, it’s all the same, it is “Poison”.  I don’t know if she was intentionally trying to drive them away from me but it creates damage and can last forever.  If you handle the situation poorly, you could lose your children’s respect and their affection, in extreme cases, contact with them.  Luckily I didn’t lose contact with them but I lost their affection and I think respect.

Poison comes from justifying hatred and anger.  Regardless of who’s to blame, each person has fault and each person thinks they are right.  Nothing can justify poisoning.

I didn’t know what to do at the time, I had advice from a psychologist to do nothing but be passive about it.  Today I am not sure that was the right advice!  The psychologist said to maintain your calm approach and when they get older they will see that you have not been this “terrible” person their mother makes you out to be or “overheard to be”.  Instead they will see you as their knight in shining armour!  I don’t know that in my situation this was the right approach.

By doing nothing, I believed I was saving my child from further poisoning as I didn’t escalate the issues by arguing with their mother.  It only made me hate her more and I felt helpless.  It was happening to them at such a young age, by the time they were older the damage was done.

My passive approach allowed the relationship to be damaged as I could not balance the poison with kindness, caring or even affection.  I do remember speaking to their mother about how I was not happy that she was poisoning me in front of the children when on the phone or her abrupt response when I picked up or dropped off complimented with doors slamming shut.  In hindsight I should have not discussed how it was upsetting me, as clearly she didn’t care.  Maybe she might have given more of a damn  if she knew it was affecting her children and would have long term implications?

It did wreak havoc at times, our reconnect was slower as there were invisible hurdles we needed to overcome first before we could enjoy our weekend.  The poisoning never really got discussed between me and kids other than I think I mentioned once to not take too much of what your mother says about me as truth however,  they were young and not capable of rationalising things.  I said – It is about how I treat you and you should only take me on how I treat you when we are together and that I have nothing but love for you.  They were very uncomfortable during this chat so it was difficult to continue.

I still maintain today that we should NEVER bad mouth (poison) the children’s mother in front of the kids, regardless of what’s going on.  Today I would have done it differently as I have become more educated in these matters, but it is difficult as you do not want to bring more confusion into their world.

Today I would:

• Document the occasions for possible future litigations
• Confront her privately and ask her to stop the poisonous remarks in front of the kids
• Tell her that her behaviour will not be tolerated ( It probably won’t change much but she will be put on notice)
• Focus on helping the children to understand that their  mum may be feeling angry and upset and although it is not an excuse to say mean things about you,  you will not take it personally
• Tell them it’s ok to love both mum and dad and they don’t need to take sides
• If they are old enough,   suggest that they speak to their mum and tell  her that they do not want to hear these comments and to stop them
• Seek professional advice i.e counselor for next steps if the poison was to continue

An article on this topic was posted on CBS News Website called Divorce Poison and is worth a read.

There are many books written on this subject and below are a few links and I suggest you research the best way forward as we all have slightly different circumstances.

 http://www.complexfamily.com/_blog/C…n_against_you/
http://www.webheights.net/dividedheart/warshak/dp.htm
http://www.brainwashingchildren.com/…/brainwashing/
http://www.warshak.com/divorce-poison/index.html

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