Going Within

By Vanessa Albright

This is the memoir of how I went from being an emotionally unhappy, fearful, candle-in-the-wind person to becoming a happy, calm, stable and well-balanced person. This is about the journey I took to get there which was a long, difficult ride but I finally arrived a much happier person. I took a hard look at what was going on inside of me and found out what triggered my pain and suffering. Looking back I realize the journey was so worth it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663243034

Vanessa Albright

Vanessa Albright was born in Southern California where she spent the first five years of her life in braces due to a birth defect.. Then her family moved to Northern California and she entered school. After high school she went to college for her Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts. After attaining her degree she flailed around in the career world going from one dead end position to another.

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GOING

WITHIN

Vanessa Albright

GOINGWITHIN

Copyright © 2022 Vanessa Albright.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by

any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4304-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4303-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913707

iUniverse rev. date: 10/11/2022

I dedicate this book to my beloved parents, family, and friends, all of whom have taught me so much, helping me along my spiritual journey.

Contents

Chapter 1     Early Life

Chapter 2     Early Life

Chapter 3     My Father

Chapter 4     My Father

Chapter 5     My Mother

Chapter 6     Adult Years

Chapter 7     Losing My Parents

Chapter 8     Spiritual

Chapter 9     Sleep

Chapter 10   Health

Chapter 11   Anger

Chapter 12   Therapy

Chapter 13   The War Within

Chapter 14   The Bubble Effect

Chapter 15   The Healing Begins: Turning Point

Chapter 16   Beginning To Heal The War Within

Chapter 17   Building Confidence

Chapter 18   Learning To Love

Chapter 19   Past Life

Chapter 20   Neurofeedback And Helplessness

Chapter 21   Conclusion

Notes

Chapter 1

EARLY LIFE

Nervously, I sat in the reception room of the huge hospital with my mother, waiting to be called for my surgery. We already had taken care of the tedious medical insurance paperwork, and now we were waiting for the staff to take me away. The waiting room was a beautiful, comfortable area with high ceilings, natural light flowing through, and lovely plants. We waited and waited, until my doctor finally appeared to tell us they were running behind in surgeries, but I was to be taken in soon. I was shaking with fear, and not being allowed to eat all day did not help things. I was frightened, as I had no idea how this major operation would go. My imagination was running wild, though I knew the bottom line: I was going to be sliced open, stitched up, put in some weird contraptions, drugged, and helpless for some time.

It was 1993, and I was forty-one years old, facing the first of what turned out to be three total hip replacements, two on the right side and one on the left.

When I woke up in my hospital room after the surgery, I had plastic air pumps on both sides of my legs, pumping air up and down in timed intervals all day and night. It was annoying, and I found it nearly impossible to sleep. I never felt any pain, though, as they let me regulate my morphine intake with a little handheld pump conveniently set by my bedside.

Within a day, I was feeling hot and itchy, perspiring constantly, imagining things, breaking down in tears when I was awake, and having nightmares when I did manage to sleep. Later, I explained what I was going through in the hospital to my brother, and he said it sounded as if I were seriously overmedicated on morphine. I realized I had no business regulating my medication, especially in that confused state. Fortunately, I was never given that awful freedom again, as patients’ controlling their medication apparently was stopped, at least with that type of procedure.

My fear of doctors and medical institutions goes way back to my first memory in life, some forty years prior to that surgery. The memory is of my being confused and frightened and screaming at the top of my lungs. I was an eighteen-month-old baby alone on a physician’s examination table, with two big strangers on both sides. They were doing something I was sure was horrible to me, and it involved a loud noise. We were in a light blue room with bright lights shining directly at me. The big person in charge to my right, who I later found out was an orthopedic physician, was sawing off a cast he had put on me months earlier, while the person to my left must have been his assistant. Confused, I did not know what these people were doing, but they were scary and determined. They came at me with a noisy thing, and I was sure they were going to hurt me. I screamed and screamed. Why wasn’t anyone helping me? I screamed so loudly that my parents, who were down the hall in the waiting area, heard me, and I suppose everyone else in the office did as well.

My name is Vanessa Albright, although my family refer to me by the nickname Van. I was born in California in 1952 to Mary and Joseph Albright. We lived in various places in the Los Angeles area, where my mom largely had been raised. My dad was just out of the navy, having served in the Pacific during World War II. He’d just finished attending a university when they met and married. For the first five years of my life, we lived in Southern California before we made the big move to Northern California, where my parents raised my two siblings and me and remained for the rest of their lives.

I came into the world with bilateral hip dysplasia, which means that both of my hip joints had not formed correctly and were dislocated. This was discovered when the pictures taken at my first birthday party were developed, showing me standing awkwardly behind a tray table that had my cake on it. After discovering this, my parents took me to see my first orthopedic doctor, who put me in a cast. I was unable to move, and the cast stayed on me for about six months, until the awful ordeal of the cast removal.

This was 1954, when there were few orthopedic physicians specializing in treating children. My doctor was just out of the army. My mother said he was a nice man who did not mean me any harm and felt bad after my screaming incident. He must have been frustrated and unsure how to treat a baby instead of his usual adult patients.

Fortunately, after the cast-removal debacle, the doctor referred us to an orthopedic physician specializing in children. My new doctor’s name was Dr. Fred Ilfeld, and he practiced in Beverly Hills. I found out years later not only that this type of doctor was rare in those days but also that Dr. Ilfeld was a top-rated physician in the field of orthopedics. After we started seeing him, I was put into an Ilfeld brace. As with the cast, standing or moving around on my own was impossible with the brace, except when I was put into my Taylor Tot stroller, which my dad had modified to enable me to get around somewhat. For the most part, throughout my toddler years, I was stationed in one place.

My mom drove me across Los Angeles every three weeks to see Dr. Ilfeld and get new x-rays to monitor my progress. She drove us in a dark gray 1954 Pontiac I referred to as the Pank. My mother described it as a luxurious, deluxe model for its time, large and heavy. I particularly remember the huge, rolled, tufted seats because they were so soft and plush. She would set me down in the Pank, and before long, I would flop over, falling asleep. I can still feel the softness of the seats on my cheeks. Later on, when I was older, my mom often referred to those trips as having to lug you across town every three weeks for years to get new x-rays. It made me feel like an inconvenience and an obligation. She told me, You were a financial drain on us then. Maybe she expected me to crawl to the doctor’s office or thumb a ride and pay for the appointment too. When I became an adult, she mentioned several times how much she disliked caretaking. There was no doubt in my mind she meant it. Having to hear about how she had to lug me across town to see my hip doctor every three weeks for x-rays time after time, I believed her, although I was never quite sure why she was telling me that. I felt shame and guilt. I was a burden to the two people I loved and relied on the most.

My parents both said Dr. Ilfeld was a loving, kind man who adored children. Over the years, many times, my dad told me that if the doctor had wanted to adopt me, he would have gladly agreed. Sometimes Dr. Ilfeld took me in front of medical committees to discuss my current situation, progress made, and the best course of action to follow. Back then, my parents had no medical insurance and were just starting out, so they could not afford a doctor, let alone a Beverly Hills specialist. Knowing their situation, Dr. Ilfeld would sometimes waive the charges for his services. His brace remained on me until I was five years old and started school.

Even though we had moved on to a new, more specialized doctor, the disturbing event of having my cast taken off by my first orthopedic doctor stayed with me for years. Afraid of loud noises, according to my mom, I would burst into tears when she turned on the vacuum cleaner. She had to wait until I was gone to use it. I do not remember the outbursts over the vacuum cleaner, but I do remember clearly as a child and even a teenager being afraid of motorcycles, lawn mowers, and fireworks. When I was sixteen, I attended a Fourth of July fireworks celebration with my friends. Except for on television, I had not seen a fireworks presentation before, so I was excited to be there in person, as was everyone else. However, when the show started, right off, I was bothered by the sudden, loud, erratic noises. A short time into the fireworks display, I covered my ears and looked down, trying to block it all out, hoping no one would notice me doing so. I was embarrassed by my own weird behavior. I thought, What is wrong with me? This is supposed to be fun. As the fireworks continued, I grew more upset and uncomfortable, and I was relieved when the show was finally over.

To this day, I am irritated by loud noises, especially if they are sudden, but I did eventually outgrow this problem. Incidentally, the procedure for removing a cast now is done with the child sedated.

Not only was the doctor’s sawing the cast off me loud, but it took me most of my life to understand just how sensitive I am. My sensitivity made the procedure particularly hard on me. I am sensitive to my surroundings, including to noises, smells, and sights. For instance, say a person drives by and honks his or her car horn. Most surrounding drivers will turn, noticing it, and be surprised and possibly irritated by the noise. However, my reaction is to grip the ceiling with my heart pounding, and it takes me a while to come back down to normality. Often, I am very sensitive to people, knowing their overall demeanor, not just their current mood and facial expression. Therefore, I crave and need harmony, quiet, and a peaceful environment.

In her book The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine N. Aron writes highly sensitive people (HSPs) do take in a lot—all of the subtleties others miss. But what seems ordinary to others, like loud music or crowds, can be highly stimulating and thus stressful for HSPs. Most people ignore sirens, glaring lights, strange odors, clutter and chaos. HSPs are disturbed by them.¹ According to her data, 15 to 20 percent of the population are highly sensitive, with half being male and half female. Also, everyone becomes more sensitive with age. Her book helped me immensely in understanding myself better and put my life in better perspective.

Chapter 2

EARLY LIFE

My brother, Samuel, was born the year after I was, in 1953. Repeatedly, I was told I was an easy baby, but my parents complained often that when Samuel was a baby, he was always crying or screaming. Half joking, my dad said more than once they were so frustrated by his outbursts that they finally put him out on the back porch until he was done yelling.

Always a quick, energetic, intelligent kid, all through childhood, Samuel became thoroughly absorbed in any subject he was interested in, such as chess, wrestling, and music. Even as a kid, he had superb concentration skills and was constantly learning something new. While growing up, he taught himself how to play the piano. I remember it well because I had to endure the discordant and repetitive noises of his practicing, often when I was trying to sleep in on the weekends. Not only did he learn how to play piano well, but he went on to write some music too.

As a kid, he loved to debate about anything. Typically, he would argue something fiercely, not letting up one inch, for what seemed like eternity to me, while the rest of our family seemed to have clicked off the subject long beforehand. Our family used to joke that Samuel would have argued with a telephone pole. Suddenly, after his long, argumentative dissertation, he would proclaim, Well, whatever, and that was the end of his lecture on why he was adamantly right about whatever subject he was currently lecturing us on. Apparently, he was finally through with the subject too at that point. Time after time, he did this. Bewildered, we would all look at one another and smirk. It happened so often that we turned it into a family joke. Later on, when we were not sure what to make of a situation, one of us would say something like Ah, I heard a very wise man once say, ‘Well, whatever,’ and we would laugh. Taking it well, Samuel would usually laugh or at least grin too.

Samuel went on to become a successful physicist. He married a woman from China, and he learned to speak Chinese fluently. Briefly, he flew a small private plane too.

My younger sister, Diane, was born three years after my brother. Although my mother loved my sister very much, she admitted she had not wanted a third child and had gone into a deep depression when she found out she was pregnant again. She told me she and Dad had tried several times to get birth control, but back in the 1950s, they only had negative results. My young parents must have had a rough time of it with a disabled toddler, an upset baby, and a third one on the way. That was probably not what they’d had in mind when they envisioned being married. Saddled with three kids, my mom told me many times that she and Dad had lots of plans for once we were all grown. In disbelief at first, I found it hard to imagine that they could have any plans without us kids and that their whole world did not revolve around us. That hurt my sensitive feelings. Eventually, as I matured, what she was saying sank in, and I understood. I also understood that was why our opinions and desires were not really important at all.

My sister, Diane, is sensitive, kind, well read, and bright. Although she seems to become as intensely absorbed in a subject as Samuel, she is much more reserved about it. Unlike Samuel, she never explained everything to us in great detail over and over. My sister and I are both introverts, while my brother is more of an extrovert. She went on to become an engineer with two professional licenses. She speaks French and spent two summers in Paris, studying at Le Cordon Bleu. She is knowledgeable on numerous subjects that she finds interesting. Many times, when I have a challenging situation or need another opinion, I ask her. Oftentimes, she sees something that has not occurred to me.

Diane’s personality is the most like Dad’s, with a lightning-quick brain, temper, and wit. On the other hand, Samuel is a mix of both parents. He has plenty of anger passed on from Dad, as well as wonderful technical and scientific abilities. He has a strong love of music and carries a tune in his head always, just as Mom and I do. Of all of us, he seems to be able to think using both sides of his brain. In terms of personality traits, I am mostly like my mother in that I am most comfortable thinking with the right side of my brain.

Right after my braces were permanently removed from my hips, my family moved from Los Angeles to a small Northern California town situated outside Sacramento called Orangevale. There, at five years old, I entered kindergarten with many other baby boomers.

Throughout much of my early education, I was lost and confused. I had few social skills and felt like a clueless goof much of the time. I was a misfit, not knowing how to behave or dress and also having a poor understanding of personal hygiene. Paying attention was another problem of mine. Because of my disability, mentally and physically, I was behind other children my age. Often, it seemed others understood when I did not. I felt as if I were missing something. Early childhood is a time of developing not only physically but also mentally through learning to think, problem-solve, reason, and memorize. In the early years of life, cognitive development comes from physical development, so I was very much behind others my age because of my inability to participate in regular life due to my being in either a cast or a brace and often being unable to move at all. Years later, in therapy, I found out this was because of my not going through the necessary, normal developmental stages that toddlers go through to develop their motor skills. I ended up working two to three times harder than the other students for my average grades. Fortunately, I did learn quickly, and being particularly sensitive helped me to pick up things others were doing.

When we were really young and going to elementary school, Samuel, Diane, and I walked to school and home. A couple of times, I forgot to check if I had to go to the bathroom before walking home from school, and I ended up running home and through the front door of our house to go to the bathroom. Because my mother placed throw rugs over the wooden floors, they were slippery, and because I was running so fast, I ended up falling against the wall, cracking my head, and denting the wall. Once, I sat on the toilet with my mother holding a washcloth on my head to prevent the gushing blood. Later, after a visit to the doctor, I was cleaned up with stitches glaring from my head. My brother said they were disgusting looking. I was proud. I twice hit the wall, leaving dents and bleeding, so eventually, I learned to check to see if I had to use the restroom before traipsing home.

During my first years in school, I was put in a public school so overcrowded that we had half-day sessions, so I managed to hide, keeping a low profile and blending in pretty well, or so I thought. At one point, in the first grade, I was sitting in the back of the classroom, feeling confused by the reading lesson going on, and thought, I can get away with not learning this. No big deal. No one will notice. Additionally, now that I had my newfound physical freedom, I had a hard time sitting in one place for long, and I wanted to be outside playing, not learning that hard, weird stuff. Fortunately, the teacher apparently noticed and notified my parents, because they worked with me for a short time after dinner at night, having me read aloud to them. Getting a good education was always a high priority to my parents. We would sit out on the patio in the evenings as I stumbled through reading to them for about a half hour. We ended up having only a handful of those sessions, but I did get the message that I was going to learn to read.

Because the public school I was attending was so overcrowded in the first grade and I was not learning adequately, my parents took me out of public school and put me into a parochial school, while my brother remained in the public school. Although I was in the parochial school only for about a year, I vividly remember the experience. Compared to my first school, the parochial school was a repressive environment with no talking or giggling and lots of work. It was a no-nonsense, scary place. Suddenly, there was a big infusion of religion into my life too. I had never heard of Satan before. The teachers talked often of the conflict between Satan and Christ. I wondered why those two could not get along and why they did not just sit down to work out their differences. What was their problem? My new school had many rules that had to be obeyed, or I would end up in some horrible, hot place called hell, which was also something new to me. During my time at that school, I informed my mom that she should not wear nail polish or makeup. To my parents, apparently that was enough, because shortly after that conversation, I was put back into public school.

The effects of my disability were subtle and pervasive. Because it affected the development of my brain, I was lost in school, both with my studies and socially. I felt as if I’d missed the first five years of my life, with minimal physical abilities and social interaction. In school, it was as if I’d skipped grades one through four and suddenly been plopped down in the fifth grade to figure things out for myself. Things have changed so much since the 1950s; in today’s environment, both occupational and physical therapy would be done for a child with my disability. However, in the ’50s and ’60s, I had a difficult time figuring things out in my developing mind.

Disassociating became my pain reliever as a child. Disassociation involves burying an incident in the subconscious because one is unable to cope with the situation. Anytime a situation was painful or potentially so, I would mentally escape somewhere else. I actually did this into my fifties, in part because I was unaware, until going into therapy, that I was disassociating and also because it was a deeply ingrained habit for me. When things got rough, disassociation was an effective and helpful tool for my early survival, but it made for problems later on in my life. I wanted to be close to others and have trust and free-flowing exchanges and relationships like any normal, healthy person. People begin to establish boundaries with others early in life, but I had not learned that, so that part of my life was confusing and unestablished. Additionally, the physical pain of it all must have been confusing and debilitating, although I probably disassociated from much of that too.

My disassociating made for problems at school. In the eighth grade, my teacher was lecturing the class on New English, claiming it would take the world by storm. One time, she decided to call on me for an answer I did not know. She would not stop asking me. The entire class was staring at me, my heart was pounding, my face was beet red, and I tried hard to hold back the tears, but inevitably, I was unable to come up with an answer. Finally, after I had been crying for a few minutes, she said, You just want me to stop, don’t you? I wonder how she figured that out! Finally, she stopped.

Afterward, naturally, I felt anger at this cruel teacher but also at myself for not sticking up for myself. Whenever these attacks happened to me, I was in shock and unable to think and respond