Interview between Dr Swim, Emma Mackintosh and a parent about family therapy.
Dr. Swim: When we first started doing this in 2007 we started working with teenagers that did not want any type of services. They had been in foster care and they were so tired of therapists because maybe they had had seven therapists in seven years.
They distrusted parents, they distrusted therapists, they distrusted foster parents and the last thing in the world that they wanted to do was have therapy sessions.
I really felt that it was divine intervention that helped me to decide to bring the horses and we started to do this for free for a year or more with these children and families that I still talk to today.
They found their passions, they’ve graduated from college, they’ve found relationships, they’ve had children, one right now is about to have their baby. They are all so wonderful and doing so wonderful.
So maybe, I want you to talk about whatever you want to talk about but one of the things that we were talking about with other people is that when people come to the Institute it’s so different from having “therapy.”
I remember talking to your daughter about this a year or two ago and her saying that they were trying to get her to have these coping skills and essential oils and lavender… but she hadn’t decided whether she wanted to live, right?
Mother: Yep.
Dr. Swim: And so they were doing these things that are nice things to do but it didn’t at all address the seriousness and urgency of what was happening at that point in time.
Mother: Yep.
Dr. Swim: And I think unfortunately what happens and what we’re starting to teach about is that therapists learn in schools to do certain things.
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: And they don’t know what to do when that person doesn’t fit into…
Mother: that box.
Dr. Swim: The box.
In fact I remember that your daughter was told that she did not want to get well.
Mother: Yes.
Dr. Swim: And how old was she when she was told that?
Mother: I don’t even know [thoughtful pause] as young as fourteen or thirteen.
Dr. Swim: Yes, I think before she was going into eighth grade.
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: Or she had just finished eighth grade.
And I remember her telling me that and I remember thinking to myself, how could someone even say that?
Mother: They did say that.
Dr. Swim: It’s like saying “I don’t want to breathe today,” you know?
Mother: Yeah.
Dr. Swim: It was just so foreign to me hearing something like that.
So maybe you could talk just a little bit about that because what we are doing is that we are trying to talk to these new initiatives. They have a senator involved and they have some other people involved of how we can provide treatment that works.
Not just treatment, but where people have options to treatment that works with these populations of children and teenagers.
Mother: Okay, okay.
Mother: Perfect, perfect.
Well just ask me the questions and then that would be easier for me.
Dr. Swim: So in just remembering when your daughter first came, how is this different than the type of services she was receiving? And I know that she was receiving services even when she was seeing us.
Mother: Yes, well they were different because a lot of the places they just wanted to put her in hospitals and give her medication to keep her sedated. And I just felt that the medications sometimes made it worse and she was dependant on them.
There’s times that I’ve to go home because she forgot her medicine and she was getting panicky and saying “I need to have this” and “I need to have that.”
It was making her more codependent.
Not only that but they wanted her to be isolated and hospitalized.
I don’t think they ever treated the actual cause.
She wouldn’t open up, she never told anybody.
Dr. Swim: Right.
Mother: We just figured the problem out with the police officers, the social workers all that stuff that was involved.
Dr. Swim: Right, right.
Mother: They were prescribing her pills or saying “let me put you in college hospitals, any type of hospital.”
But they didn’t know the cause of why she was cutting herself, what was going on and she didn’t tell them either.
Dr. Swim: Right.
Mother: Just her drawings and her behavior was the only thing that you would know, right?
Dr. Swim: Right, right.
Mother: And I think that’s what happened is that the treatment was not the right treatment.
I changed HMOs (Health Management Organizations) I don’t even know how many times.
I even took her and I borrowed money from my mom, to try to take her to what was considered the best treatment center and even then that turned out to be horrible.
And apparently she had the background… you think of the best, private treatment center, I couldn’t afford it on my salary. But yet I borrowed money to try to figure out how to help her.
Dr. Swim: Right, right.
Mother: I changed HMOs four or five times.
I went to {insurance company} which was expensive for us and they said “we will help you” but it turned out to be the same thing.
If it wasn’t for our last straw that we went to—my husband was helping me—we found Now I See A Person.
[Tearful, voice trembling with emotion] Everybody gave up on our daughter and you didn’t.
I’m sorry I’m getting teary eyed because [deep breath and pause]
I remember that time, I remember that you saved my daughter.
My daughter is going to be twenty-one next month in February and you saved her.
You saved her.
Dr. Swim: [Nodding, softened expression] Mhmm, yeah.
Mother: The other doctors, the other hospitals, everything.
Many times we live in a two-storey house she could have pushed herself out of the window.
Dr. Swim: Right.
Mother: My husband pulled her from the windows so many times Dr. Swim.
Dr. Swim: Yes.
Mother: And I’m getting emotional because [deep breath] I can’t believe she is going to be twenty-one and that’s not the person anymore.
You helped her, you helped her.
You and that treatment.
The horses.
That was the best for my little girl at that time.
And I tried everything Dr. Swim.
I borrowed so much money.
And nobody helped me.
You were the only one.
I was seeking out so many doctors and nobody, nobody helped me.
Everybody said “put her in a treatment, put her in a home, put her this, put her there.”
That’s all they wanted for my little girl and if I wouldn’t have put her with you we would be talking about something else Dr. Swim.
But because you helped me, those horses.
That type of treatment not only for my daughter, for me also.
For my family and my extended family.
You guys were there.
You opened your ranch to us and there were times that I was there all day.
Dr. Swim: [smiling and nodding] Yeah, yeah.
Mother: I was there all day, all day.
Dr. Swim: [smiling and nodding] Yeah, yeah.
Mother: I had to quit my job, I couldn’t. I was getting phone calls saying “she’s here, she’s there” from the schools, from everywhere.
Yes so if it wasn’t for this intervention—this horse type intervention—honestly I don’t think that my daughter would have survived.
Dr. Swim: You know I remember it like it was yesterday.
And I remember the first day you guys coming in and it was your husband that brought her in.
Mother: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Swim: One of the things that we’ve been so incredibly fortunate with is that because the horses are so loving and welcoming they make us look okay as therapists, you know?
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: They make us look different.
I think when teenagers see us they think well maybe I’ll give them a try because they own these horses, and they treat them nicely, they must not be bad people to talk to.
Mother: Yeah.
Dr. Swim: I think that gives us a leg up where the teenagers can start to trust us to be able to talk and to be able to talk about things that I think are very important and they decide that they want to live.
That was one of the things that I saw with your daughter is that she was so lovely and so wonderful and so brilliant and talented and beautiful.
And because of the events that had happened I do not think that she had decided that she wanted to live and because she didn’t love herself she could not really love anybody around her.
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: And that’s why she wasn’t safe because if she didn’t love herself she couldn’t keep herself safe for anybody.
Mother: Yeah.
Dr. Swim: And during that period of time, what we did…
Because at the Institute it’s not like we have a plan.
The client comes in and the client teaches us what plan to have.
And so it became obvious that she became worse at night after she took the medication because the medication would make her less inhibited and then she might be more in tune to try to harm herself than if she didn’t take the medicine.
And her mom started sleeping with her to make sure that she was safe throughout the night. And it was lovely.
Mother: Yeah.
Dr. Swim: You know how many times I’ve said that it’s either a mother or a parent’s act of love that saves the children and she allowed you to come in and be there with her.
And she wanted you there right?
Mother: Yeah, she did.
It was hard because I had my younger daughter was a toddler and I had to do that just to keep her safe because I didn’t know what she was going to do.
There was many times that I rushed to the hospital because of something or I had to call the paramedics because she wasn’t taking her medicine.
She took all of them at once and I had to hide everything, lock up everything.
Even the knives, we had to put them away in storage.
Dr. Swim: Right.
Mother: We didn’t have knives in our house because we knew she would do stuff.
Dr. Swim: Do you remember the day that she came in, and this was when I could tell she was starting to trust us? Or maybe I could tell she was starting to trust me.
She had had all of those unfortunate relationships with those children that only preyed upon her and she had cut on herself something like “no one loves me.”
And then she had cut on her front and back as well.
But she was so open to showing those.
Not because that she was proud that she had cut, not because she was manipulative or all of those words that you were told that didn’t really represent who she was.
She wanted help.
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: She wanted help.
And I think that day for me was a turning point because she was so transparent in wanting things to be different.
And she just had a series of good luck.
You guys finding that school for her…
Mother: Yes [softer, lighter voice]
Dr. Swim: was a miracle.
Sometimes it just takes a lot of good fortune, miracles whatever…
Mother: Yes.
Dr. Swim: divine intervention.
She found a school that I remember the first day that she came back from that school and she said “I found my people.”
Mother: Yes.
Dr. Swim: [smiling] and I was just like, “things are going to be okay.”
She’s not going to be alone, she’s not going to be lonely.
She’s going to get over this.
Mother: Yeah, and she did because the friends and art saved her.
The fact that she had caring teachers that were thinking outside of the box and that’s why, even myself as a parent and a teacher,I have to think outside of the box. How can I help? What can I do that’s different?
I’ve never been one to say “okay this is it and I’m going to take it.”
I was like, “no let me look at something else. Let me see what else I can do.”
And this is what Now I See A Person did for us because it gave us something out of the box that would help her.
She’s in college now and she wants to do art therapy which I never thought she could even do. She’s got scholarships and going to a university in Europe for a semester.
I always knew she was really smart and talented but no one really tapped into that.
Now she wants to help other kids too, teenagers.
Dr. Swim: And she will.
Mother: Yes.
Dr. Swim: She will make such a huge difference in this world, she will.
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: See one of the things that I don’t think that ordinary people understand is that these children are not mentally ill in any sense of the word.
They have no business ever being on medication or being put in a hospital or being in residential care.
It is very easy to work with these children if you see them as a person.
If you listen to them.
If you care.
If you have the time to spend with them because they give you their trust and they share with you their pain.
Mother: Yes.
Dr. Swim: It’s so simple.
But too many times you get people that are too busy and they think that they should follow a treatment plan, right?
That they should do it this way.
Mother: Right.
And you can’t do that with human beings.
Mother: No, no.
Especially with children because the medication maybe they might help adults but it’s not the same when you give it to a child.
Dr. Swim: Right.
Mother: It was far worse Dr. Swim, I have to tell you far worse.
Dr. Swim: I always knew that but she really was the one that taught me that because we spent many a night together on the phone.
And she would tell me that what would happen is I think you would give her the medication at eight or nine that was prescribed and she would stay up past it.
And then she would get a little loopy from the medication which is uninhibited and then she would remember all the bad things that happened at a certain time.
And then that inhibition would kick in and she would want to harm herself.
Mother: [completing Dr. Swim’s sentence] harm herself.
Yep, yep.
But I was told that I had to give it to her and I even told the doctors that she gets worse and they said “no it’s fine.”
Many times my husband because he worked the graveyard shift would find her, if I wasn’t sleeping in her room, ready to jump out of the window. The second story window that we had.
Dr. Swim: Yeah, yeah.
It’s almost like they disregard that the parents have any knowledge of their own children and that they are the experts in these children’s lives. And they see them for what, fifteen or twenty minutes?
Mother: Yeah.
Dr. Swim: And they’re the experts in these children’s lives because they read a book on the symptoms that these children have?
It’s ludicrous, it doesn’t make sense.
And that’s why we have so many children throughout the world that unfortunately do not survive.
Mother: Yes, yes.
Dr. Swim: And what our big mission is at this point in time is to let people know there’s alternatives.
Mother: Yes.
Dr. Swim: It doesn’t mean everybody needs to come see us or some of our colleagues.
People are free to go see whoever they want but they have to know that there are alternatives that work.
Mother: Yes, yes, yes.
Yes and I have always been a strong advocate.
People ask me “what happened?”
And I told them she went to the horse ranch and it was Dr. Swim.
Anytime that I see something like that I try to give them your number and I just wish that the HMOs would make it more available. That we could still do that, you know?
Dr. Swim: Mhmm.
Mother: But everything is so costly and you have to conform to whatever they want you to conform to.
If it’s the medicine, I feel like they were drug dealers with a license.
Dr. Swim: Yes.
Mother: Because they were cocktailing, they were like “give her this in the morning, give her that, give her that.”
And the behaviors and the outbursts were just so much worse.
Dr. Swim: Yes, yes, yes.
And once she was titrated off of the medication it was like night and day.
Mother: Yeah, it was night and day.
And it was the help with everybody in our family, I needed a village.
I needed all my family to help me.
My cousin that was a pharmacist was like “give her a placebo.”
We had to do things like that because she was so dependant and people were telling her that it was prescribed from the doctors. And then they would get mad at me because they would ask “why aren’t you giving it to her?” and “why are you doing this?”
My sister in law… everybody was helping me to get her off all of these cocktail medications that she was on.
Dr. Swim: And what I see today is that mothers do not have enough support. That they want to do things like this but don’t have support or information. Some people don’t have a village. I think it’s just very, very, very difficult.
Mother: I mean I don’t even know how much money I spent on all these people just to try to help her.
And nothing worked.
You were the only one.
Dr. Swim: So if you were to describe in a nutshell how everything kind of worked together for you and both of your daughters.
Mother: You saw the whole family.
Dr. Swim: your parents…
Mother: my sister…
Dr. Swim: your sister who I had to talk out of the pamphlet that was marketing residential treatment.
Mother: Yeah, they were ready for me to send her saying “you have to send her there.” It’s was so expensive and I was wondering how I am I going to afford this? My sister didn’t even care she was like “we are going to help you pay and we will figure it out.”
And honestly I was just so sad.
I just wanted to cry.
I couldn’t believe they were giving me this stuff after all the times that she’s been in and out of those hospitals.
She even broke out of one Dr. Swim, do you remember?
Dr. Swim: Yes.
Mother: She broke out of one of those, her and another girl.
Dr. Swim: Yes.
Mother: There were three of them, I don’t even know how many, but they broke out and it was just like wow.
Dr. Swim: Yes, yes, yes.
She has so much gumption.
She will go so far in this life.
So what we’re trying to do is we are trying to help people understand.
Mother: Mhmm.
Dr. Swim: And what this person said before you, who had been hospitalized multiple times before she came in to see us.
She said what happens is that things happen organically.
So there’s no plan.
It just happens…
Mother: Yeah.
Dr. Swim: from people being with people because we care and we want to see something happen.
And we want people to always leave with hope and some direction of where to go until the next time that we see them.