Meet Steve, a man who endured an abusive marriage for thirty-five years with a wife who had borderline personality disorder. He is sharing his story to help raise awareness that men can also be abused – especially by spouses who have a cluster B personality disorder. Later on he will be sharing how he recovered by educating us on a new treatment called TMS. In Steve’s own words, “TMS saved my life.” What is TMS and also, how can men be abused? Let’s find out.
These are the written transcripts from my YouTube and podcast because I like to give survivor stories multiple platforms to be heard. So, if you would rather listen to our conversation, the link to my podcast is (here).
If you prefer watching our conversation, the link to that YouTube is (here).
The following terms mentioned in this interview are in Trauma Glossary 1:Â DARVO, Parental Alienation, and Scapegoat.
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Abusive marriage with drug abuse and financial swindling too
Jaena: Hello trauma warriors, I’m Jaena with Defeating Childhood Trauma and today we are going to meet a man named Steve who survived a coercive control relationship with a woman who had borderline personality disorder. So say hello, Steve.
Steve: Hi, how you doing?
Jaena: So how long were you in the relationship?
Steve: We were together 35 years. She was my prom date, my high school sweetheart. We courted for five years and then we got married and we were married 30 years. I finally had to end the relationship and the marriage because of her mental, emotional, and physical abuse and then she – over the course of 30 years – became a very, very hard addict, addicted to pain pills and Xanax, and God only knows what else, you know, because she played a lot of games. [She] couldn’t answer a basic yes or no question at all. If you just say, you know. Is that yours? Pointing to something on the table? She would just give me reasons why it was there and not just say, “yes, that’s mine” you know? So yeah, it was a long… long 30 years. A lot of lies, a lot of couldn’t keep money around.
I was a diesel mechanic and made six figures a year and we were always broke. She would swindle, she would go get her bills out of the mailbox and then go to the bank and draw that money out according to the amount of those bills and then tell me the next month, “Oh, these are past due. ” She didn’t pay them. And then that money was drugs and gambling, you know. I hope I’m not rambling here.
She kept her mask up for five years!
Jaena: How long was it before the mask slipped? Did she wait until the marriage Or was she showing signs before that?
Steve: It’s funny you say that, because we were like pretty close while we were courting, while we were boyfriend and girlfriend. But I started noticing a change in her behavior the night we got married. We didn’t get to go on a honeymoon because all of our money went for the wedding. I made our room into like a little honeymoon suite and all that. She was more interested in staying out in the front room and doing crossword puzzles. And I’m just going, you know, “Aren’t we going to consummate this marriage?” [And her response] “Well, we’ve done that,” you know, kind of wrote it off…and I’m like, “Well, this is kind of important to me.”
And then yeah, I mean… I was no saint. We partied when we were kids, you know. We would go to parties that were different types of things around, different drugs around and that. But as soon as the weekend was over, I was back to work. And then she just slowly started getting fired from her jobs and then would take forever to get another job . Then when she got pregnant with my daughter, I was like, “Alright, everything absolutely stops now. None of this on the weekends or anything, it all stops now. We’ve got a kid on the way.”
Back on drugs once the kids become toddlers
Steve: I don’t think she was using while she was pregnant with my daughter – a little suspicious that she did with my son. But yeah, as soon as my daughter was two – you know, coming out of the toddler stage – I told her, “Look, I can’t do this. Every time I turn around [I’m] finding drugs, we’ve got a baby in the house. You don’t go to bed at night. You sleep all day while I’m at work. I come home from work and the baby’s in her crib screaming because she’s hungry and then a wet diaper. No, I can’t do this. So, you know, we’re going to have to figure something out.”
That kind of blew over a little bit. She promised that she would change, you know. “I’ll change. I’ll get better.” And then bam, she gets pregnant with my son. And I’m like, “Why didn’t you tell me that you quit taking your birth control?” Then it was the same thing with him. She was a good mother while they were infants. But when they got into that toddler stage, it was right back to the bad habits. And I come home from work after working an 18 hour day, 15 to 18 hours – I owned my own business at the time – and the kids would be screaming, “We’re hungry, we’re hungry!” and she’d still be in bed. And then I get her up and she’d be up all night.
Enter the physical part of the abusive marriage
Steve: I used to catch her sneaking in and sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night going to get drugs. Anytime it got to the point where when the kids were older, I would never fight with her or argue with her in front of the kids. I didn’t want them to see that. I had to deal with that with my own parents. So, it would get pretty heated because I was trying to get her to stop doing something that she didn’t want to stop doing. She would turn physical. She would pull my hair, step up on me and slap me, telling me, “Hit me. You want to hit me? Go ahead, hit me.”
And of course, if I would have back in the 90s, I would have gone to jail, even though she was hitting and beating on me. She used to bite me, pull my hair, scratch me. If I turn to walk away, she’d run up behind me and then like rotary slap my back and grab handfuls of meat on my back, pinching my back, you know. That just got worse and worse.
Bound to the abusive marriage under the threat of parental alienation
Steve: I guess my son was probably three or four. My daughter was going on like five or six – they’re two years apart. I told her, “I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t, you know, so we’ll work it out with the kids and that.” Then I got hit with Oh, you want to throw me and your kids out in the streets? And I was like, “No, I just want a divorce. I can’t live with you like this anymore.”
And then it was, “Well, you’ll never see your kids again. I’ll make sure you never see your kids again.” And it scared me. You know, I love my kids. They’re my life. And so that scared the hell out of me.
Comparing Notes on Abusive Marriage
Jaena: Hey, can I give you a timeout for just a second? I’m really getting a lot of value out of your story. I’m also getting some massive light bulbs on my end because you know, that’s something we have in common, raised by a borderline mother and what you’re describing with your wife. I thought this was strange when you said you didn’t see anything [red flags] until the wedding night. I’m telling you right now, my father’s side of the family, they all were convinced that my mother was an angel. Until they got married. And that was the light bulb.
Steve: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Jaena: Oh my goodness. I remember my mother physically attacking my father and how – the helpless situation you were describing – seeing that helpless look in his eyes while she’s throwing punches and even kicking at him.
Steve: Yeah, I’m sure.
Jaena: And I mean, it was heartbreaking to see those eyes – looking like that, trying to dodge her because he knew If he put up his hands to defend himself, he’d be going to jail for domestic violence.
Steve: Yeah, they’ve changed those laws now. But yeah, back then it was always the man’s fault.
Then and Now with Abusive Marriage Laws
Steve: And then back then in the state of Oregon it was impossible for a father to get full custody of the kids and to not have to pay child support. They revamped all those laws now.
Jaena: I remember my parents, no one ever left. It was always talk of divorce but my mother would do that. “You’ll never see the kids again.” And of course, when I got older, she knew she couldn’t weaponize me because I didn’t want to live with her. She knew it. So, she weaponized my little brother who actually would want to live with us because I was my brother’s favorite person in that house. But I do remember lots of threats when I was growing up that whole time, “You’ll never see the kids”. That’s parental alienation – or at least the threat of it.
Steve: Right. And my wife had an influence from a friend of hers too that had three daughters from three different husbands or, well, three different men rather. She collected child support on all three of those girls. And so, this gal put it in my wife’s – or ex-wife now – head that, “Well, look, let him divorce you. He’ll be paying spousal support and child support and you know he won’t own nothing and you can make sure he doesn’t see the kids.” And so, she ran with that.
And it scared me. I was like, oh, my God, I couldn’t imagine living; I know I worked my ass off every day for my kids to raise my family. I wanted to be the husband and father that mine wasn’t. And so, yeah, and it scared me. I thought, I can’t live my life without my kids being around. So I put up with it.
Hiding Her Drug Abuse from the Kids
Steve: I can sit here and think of five times that she overdosed. They didn’t have Narcan back then. And the only thing I could think of to do is to dig in her throat and pull the vomit out of her throat and drag her into a cold shower to snap her out of it.
And…well, it was probably about six years before I finally left her. My daughter moved home after divorcing her first husband And my ex-wife was at the top of the stairs crying and calling for me. I come around the corner and she’s covered with vomit. It’s in her hair and all down the front of her – because somehow she didn’t lay there and die, because I rarely went up to her bedroom – and was wobbling and trying to keep from falling down the stairs. And I got up there and got her into the shower.
Then after that, I got the bed cleaned up. I went down [stairs] and my daughter asked me, “Dad, how long has mom been like this?” And I’m just sitting there looking at her trying to find the words. And I’m like, Well, pretty much your whole life, you know, since you were probably three years old. She’s like, “How come we didn’t know about this?” And I was like, because I hid it from you. I wouldn’t let you guys around her when she was super high, sitting there nodding off and falling over. I swept her dirt under the rug and I kept it from her mother too.
Kids convince dad to end the abusive marriage
Steve: Shortly after that when they finally started seeing how borderline she was and how she was constantly turning the tables on me. Anytime somebody would come over to the house or we would be out in public somewhere, all she did was run me in the dirt and talk about how abusive I was to her. And so both my kids were like, “You’ve got to leave her dad. You’re going to be dead in 10 years from the stress. You’re already battling depression and anxiety and she makes it worse. You know, you’ve got to leave her.”
And then it was probably six months after that I said, You guys might want to go somewhere for the weekend because I’m dropping the bomb. (We tried to put the house in my son-in-law’s name to keep it because I had a business there, but none of that worked out.) And yeah, I dropped the bomb on her and I expected like, “Oh, no, no, don’t do this,” like all the other times. But it was just like, she took her wedding ring off, set it up on the mantel and walked out the door. Wouldn’t talk to me for about a week.
My daughter told her, “Well, you need to talk to him. You know, you guys have got some work to do here with this.”
DARVO is commonly used in an abusive marriage
Steve: So, for four hours, we sat there and every reason I gave her why I didn’t want to be with her, it was thrown back at me that her behavior was my fault. [DARVO] She would do that because no man tells her no – or, you know – she’s a grown woman, she does what she wants. And I’m like, “But we’re supposed to be partners here. You know, you’re supposed to be my wife and these kid’s mother and you’re anything but that.” But it was all my fault – everything – and she was really good at that.
I’d be upset that the house was a mess and the kids were hungry, and I’m like, “I just worked 12 hours. You couldn’t clean up the house?” And she’d be like, “Oh, you come home in a bad mood and take it out on me?” And I’m like, I’m not in a bad mood. I’m tired and I’m hungry and our kids are hungry, you know, and you’re playing this as I’m in a bad mood.
Then I would sit there and go, “Oh, maybe I am in a bad mood” and then I would apologize. And then I started learning in therapy that No, I wasn’t in a bad mood. I was just hitting her with the truth, and she didn’t like the truth.
Validating Steve
Jaena: There’s a lot to unpack once again from what you said. First of all, wow, you were in the trenches with her. And I just want to say what you did as far as hiding so much of what their mother was doing from them, that’s beautiful.
Steve: Well, thanks.
Jaena: You beautiful dad. And no wonder your kids said, “Dad, she’s been this way our whole lives and you’ve been hiding it from us? And now that we see it dad, you’ve got to get away.” See, it shows the kind of dad you were to them.
Steve: Thank you. I appreciate that. My psychiatrist at Cedar Hills told me that it’s a good thing that I’ve turned my trauma and my pain into love and light because if I’d went the other way with it, she goes, “With your IQ, if you’d went to the dark side with this, you’d be diabolical. You’d be a horrible person. You’d hurt people so bad.” And I was like, oh, thank God, you know? So I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to love people and I want to be loved. That’s all. And she’s like, “Yeah, thank God because you’d be like a super villain,” you know. So I thank God for that.
Validation from his pastor
Steve: Then I even felt like, I took vows for better or worse, like I said earlier. And so I went to the pastor at my church and had a meeting with him and sat there in tears just going, you know, I, promised this to God in front of our peers that I would take care of this woman. And he’s just like, “No, back in the day, if you’d went to Moses with all of this, he’d have wrote your decree out right there. He’d have probably carved it into a stone tablet for you. You’re not doing anything wrong by divorcing her and getting her out of your life. And your kids are right. You’ll be dead in 10 years.” So yeah, that’s why made the decision. I told my kids, you guys better leave because I’m letting this fly. And yeah, I dropped the bomb.
Jaena: I know you were shocked. It was so anti-dramatic. It was like “Oh, okay. Here’s my ring. Bye.”
Steve: Yeah, because, you know, I expected, “Oh, you’re going to…”
Jaena: She didn’t have the kids to control you with anymore.
Learning about her infidelity
Steve: There was tons of adultery too that I found out about after we’d been separated for three months and this is going to knock your socks off because every therapist I’ve ever told this to just sits there and looks at me with a blank look. About three months after we were divorced I was told that the guy she’s married to now – which is my brother’s ex-wife’s brother – that there had been an ongoing affair with this guy because he was a drug dealer.
And then my best friend, since we were eight years old, who is dead now. His widow called me and was like, “I just want to let you know that one night in a drunken stupor that Kenneth told me while you were working out of town that him and your wife had slept together several times.” I was just like, okay, this is two adulterous situations I’ve been told about in two days.
Then a couple of days later, my sister shows up with my mom’s diary and she’s like, you need to read this. So, yeah, for the course of 30 years, a lot of things started falling into place too from what I thought was odd. But my dad and my ex-wife had an ongoing affair for 30 years behind my back.
Jaena: Okay, whoa, you’re dad and your ex-wife?!
Painful pieces of the puzzle fall into place
Steve: Yeah. And I was living at some friend’s house at the time in my RV managing their their boarding barn forum And so, I remember throwing the diary across my RV and I knew it was true. My daughter didn’t want to admit it at first. She’s like, “No, it’s just hearsay.” And I’m like, no, no, no. There’s too much that made sense. My parents were swingers. They did a lot of wife swapping and they were members of CB clubs, which were nothing more than wife swapping clubs And they thought, you know, well, he’s only eight. He’s not going to know what’s going on, but I’m not stupid. I knew what was going on because I had my grandparents in my life too. And that’s part of the reason of who I am.
But I went out back behind the barn and picked up an old fence post and start beating the hell out of this apple tree with it, screaming and yelling and just in a rage. Everything else, the abuse and the drugs and the lying and the stealing and the cheating was enough. And now she’s been having sex with my dad for 30 years. At the time my back was really bad and I don’t know if my feet came out from under me or if my back let go, my feet came out, but I woke up laying there.
My friend Judy was looking over the top at me going, “What’s going on? I thought you were fighting with somebody back here.” And I was like, I was. So that built a lot of resentment and hatred.
Steve’s Mental Health Crisis
Steve: That was a lot to process through. And that’s when the mental illness really started kicking in and I was severely depressed, severely anxious, severely angry, having nightmares of things that happened to me in the past, not sleeping, you know. And so, yeah, that was a hard pill to swallow, but I did work through it and I don’t have resentment anymore. I don’t like her, but she’s my kid’s mother and I will give her that respect.
Jaena: You know what I’m hearing? See, while you were living in this coercive control marriage, norepinephrine starts working overtime and it’s numbing the emotions so that you can endure everything that’s going on. So once you rid yourself of this…let’s call it a situation-ship instead of a relationship. Once you rid yourself of the situation-ship, that’s when your body gets the message very quickly, “My God, I can finally let it out. I can finally release. I can finally feel all of these emotions that I’ve been repressing.” And I know it was it was hard but from what I’ve learned on the science of trauma, it’s really quite normal because it’s not going to respond while we’re in it because it’s trying to help us survive.
So, as soon as we’re safe from being forced to survive something bad, things are just going to come up all of a sudden. And there’s that pain period but I love how you’re working through the healing process.
On Forgiveness
Steve: I went into a five-year remission after I learned to forgive. I had to forgive my parents who were dead. I’ll never get an apology from them for the abuse and then of course the adultery. And then I had to forgive my best friend who is dead, and I have to forgive my ex-wife. I’ll never get an apology from her. She would never sit there and say, “Oh, I was so wrong for what I did.” Even now, I don’t even know if she even even remembers.
You know, when I saw her last Friday, I was like, holy cow, she lives on the streets under a tarp! And she has no teeth. She just turned 60 years old and – no exaggeration, my daughter even said the same thing – she looks like she’s 90. So yeah, so I’ll never get an apology from her. So I had to forgive her too because that resentment was eating me alive, literally.
Releasing instead of forgiving
Jaena: I’m going to offer something. I personally don’t forgive my abusers but I’ve released them.
Steve: Yeah, I guess that’s a good way to put it, yes.
Jaena: Because forgiveness is, in my opinion, a beautiful word. It’s forgiving honest people who make honest mistakes. I forgive those that I still want in my life because they’re an honest person who made an honest mistake. We’re all human. When somebody tells me I’ve got to forgive my abusers, they take the term forgiveness and turn it into the F-word. That’s what it feels like.
Steve: That makes sense.
Jaena: So I’m like, no, I’m releasing that. I’m not going to let them have emotional control over me, but I’m not going to say I forgive – no way. But I mean, it’s up to the individual.
Steve: Thank you for that.
Jaena: If forgiveness gets you to release, then it’s all good.
Steve: Right. Yeah, thank you. That is a lot better way of putting it. That is easier to say than forgiving because even when I say, Yeah, I forgive them for it, I can still feel that little twinge in the back of my mind, like, No. But I do it for myself, you know, so it doesn’t eat me alive but yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. That was awesome.
Recommending the most important book on CPTSD
Jaena: I felt spirit led to tell you about this book. (I show him my copy.) You can tell it’s very well worn. Complex-PTSD from Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. This is the holy bible for complex-PTSD. This man has blown minds and helped people. He gives you clarity on what happened to you, things that we can do about it. He’s mind blowing.
Steve: I will look that up.
Jaena: Yes, if you get no other book on trauma I would love to recommend this to you and anyone else in our complex-PTSD community. It’s definitely a must-have.
Steve: Yeah, the nightmares from PTSD or CPTSD are horrific. I’ve had for a long time when I get really overstimulated and chronically depressed and chronically anxious and can’t sleep. But when I finally do get sleep, then the nightmares are just horrific. I’ve found myself trying to get outside and I’m not even awake yet. I’m just running from whatever it is in my dream. And then I have times where I found myself outside in my underwear and then all the air will wake me up and be like, I’m like, Oh God!
Out of the abusive marriage is gratitude
Steve: But I have to say out of all that, that 30 years of hell with her, I do have two beautiful children. And then I have who I call my bonus daughter, which is my daughter’s best friend. Because she was raised in a similar environment. We are kindred spirits. And so I took her under my wing and then I’ve got two beautiful grandchildren from her and then I’ve got beautiful grandchildren from my son and daughter. So, there is some good that has come out of that hell. It played hell on me but on the bright side, I’ve got them as my family.
Jaena: That is truly beautiful. It’s the light that has come out of the darkness.
Steve: Yes, definitely. And Sunday, when I was talking to my daughter – because she hadn’t seen her mother in forever and her sister took her to my daughter’s salon – we were talking and my daughter gave me just the most amazing compliment without even realizing she did. In our conversation, she told me, “God, dad, I thank God that I am so much like you. I am so glad that I have your work ethic and the way you love.” She goes, “I love Rose,” her daughter, “so much, the way you loved us. I thank God every day that I am like you.” When I hung up the phone with her, I had to sit down and I wasn’t bawling, but yeah, I was leaking tears running down. I’m just like, that was an amazing compliment.
With affirmations
Jaena: You need to hold that affirmation in your heart and repeat it to yourself every day. That is so beautiful. Because see, one of the problems we have with complex-PTSD is all of the parental blaming and scapegoating got stuck in her head and so that’s why we have low confidence and low self-esteem and we’re not seeing ourselves clearly enough.
Steve: Right.
Jaena: We’re seeing ourselves more towards villainous than anything else and so moments like that, hearing such a beautiful pour in from her is you’re getting a chance to see who you really are through other people’s eyes and start working on digesting that as the new information.
Steve: Yes, indeed.
Jaena: That’s why I think you need to hold that affirmation in your heart and just say it every day to yourself.
Mental illness relapse
Steve: Yeah, when I went into this mental illness relapse, I used to have to sit on the edge of my bed every day when I’d wake up and name all the reasons not to take my own life. And it was always my kids. I don’t want to disappoint my kids. And they have stuck with me through 18 years of mental illness. I know it was bear. It was hard; I would go into manic states and you know and it wasn’t anything I wanted. I didn’t want this any more than anybody would want cancer or Crohn’s disease or anything like that. I don’t want to have mental illness at all. And that’s why I fight so hard with being treated and doing the TMS. That’s an uncomfortable experience but I’m a hundred times better for it.
I was so depressed, you know, because of another situation that pulled me out of a five-year relapse.
Jaena: And that was how we met. You were talking about TMS and I wanted you to educate me. So first, I want you to tell [us] what they said about the left side of your brain and how it was impacted by trauma. And then get into TMS, please.
Steve’s brain on trauma
Steve: Okay. I learned the first time I seen a psychiatrist it was like 10, 12 years ago, I was severely depressed from divorcing her, losing my house, my body, my spine collapsed, my feet were bad. I couldn’t work, I was trying to get on disability. So, I was severely depressed and I had four attempts on my own life. So, I seen a psychiatrist because my kids pushed me into it. He sent me down for brain scans and MRIs. And my understanding is what happens when somebody has suffered through abuse the way I have from my childhood up through my 30 year marriage, that as a defense mechanism, the left side of our brain, which is our analytical side, it shuts down. It just goes dormant.
And then what causes the suicidal ideology is – I can’t remember all the names, but there’s a certain name part for the brain, – the part of the brain that gives us our will to live, that makes us afraid of dying. That goes dormant too. So that causes suicide. And then I also found out that the left side of my brain – the way the psychiatrist explained it to me – you know how when you’re baking a cake and your mom says, don’t jump, the cake will fall? And so and you’ve seen the cake fall in? Well, the left side of my brain kind of fell in on itself like that because of a lifetime of my brain, my body, and my nervous system being flooded with cortisol, the stress hormone.
Steve’s journey with this before discovering TMS
Steve: So when that your left side of your brain shuts down like that, that causes the depression. And then the other part that shuts down, that causes the suicidal thoughts and ideology. And then the way it collapsed in on itself is what’s causing the CPTSD nightmares and the self-doubt and all that.
So, I was on medication because the TMS wasn’t a thing yet. I was on medication and intensive therapy – just talk therapy is all it was And then I had a situation with another lady I met, but she put me into a serious relapse And again, the left side of my brain completely shut down. And so, my therapist that I was seeing suggested that I be admitted to Cedar Hills Psychiatric Hospital in Portland because I didn’t want to live. I told her I’m not going to take my own life because I don’t want to disappoint my children, but I just can’t feel like this. I do not want to live, you know, the depression was so bad.
And one night having a really bad night and a manic episode, I Googled, “is there a cure for mental illness?” And I found what’s called Greenbrook Neurological Clinic and they have two treatments for depression. One treatment is called Spravato, which is ketamine that they spray into your nose. And then the other treatment, which is less invasive, is called TMS, which is transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Enduring the red tape fiasco with insurance
Steve: They did some brain imaging again on me and the psychiatrist there at Greenbrook was just like, “Oh, Steve, you are a sick man. No wonder you feel the way you do; no wonder you can’t stop crying. No wonder you don’t want to live. The left side of your brain is completely black. It’s not even working.”
So I went in, I had to fight and fight and fight for my insurance, Medicare to pay for it. And then finally, the gal there – the insurance coordinator – got a hold of my caseworker and called her all day long. One day after weeks of sending over these approvals and being denied and that, [she] called her and told her my caseworker, “This man is very sick and if he takes his own life, I’m going to kick your ass for it.” And then my case work- (Steve responds to my laughter.) Oh yeah, I sent her flowers. She’s great.
And my caseworker was like, oh, okay. They kind of went back and forth a little bit. And this gal, Danielle – I have a very good rapport with this woman – said, “This man is sick. This man calls me every day crying, wanting his treatment and you’re going to approve these treatments.” And she approved them while she was on the phone with her.
And then I went in and for my first, because I did an evaluation there too with this psychiatrist and she’s just like, Oh lord you know we got to get you some imaging and all that.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
Steve: They put this beanie on your head that’s got a bunch of different lines and stuff on it. And then the thing they use is on a boom that moves hydraulically with remotes. It’s a huge magnet but it doesn’t look like a magnet. It’s all encased in plastic and it says Nero Star on it and that’s the company that makes it. I had to put my hand on this fulcrum – my right hand – and they would move this magnet on my head with the controls and they would fire a pulse into my head. What they were looking for is my fingers to jump on my right hand because our left brain controls the right side of our body, right brain controls the left side. So, they finally got it to where my fingers were jumping. Then they set the machine up.
It pulses for 10 seconds every 15 seconds. And it pulses 400 megahertz of electromagnetic electricity into the brain through the skull into the brain. At first it was so painful, I didn’t think I was going to be able to do it. And that is one of the side effects. Some people can’t. That’s why they go to the ketamine therapy. But I managed to just gut my way through it. It’s five days a week and it’s 40 minutes long. And yeah, it’s just, it’s painful.
Side effects but with amazing payoff
Steve: And then like after my first treatment I had a massive headache, wasn’t feeling good. I came home and I was in the house talking to my daughter and I was like, can we turn the lights down? She’s like, “Turn the lights down?” I go, yeah, everything’s really bright. It’s giving me a headache. And she’s like, “Dad, these are the same lights that we’ve had in here for years.” And then the next day I had to take aspirin to try to sleep that night. The next day, walked outside. It was just like, Oh! I had to have to wear my sunglasses, even though it was cloudy outside because it was so bright. And that’s one of the effects
But yeah, I got through 30 treatments and I just progressively got better and better and better. The depression went away, the dreams were going away. The anxiety was going away. My mood was better. Everybody around me, my friends at church and everything, they’re like, “You look good, amazing. You look better,” you know, because when you’re severely depressed, you can see it in your face. Your face is all long. They [Steve’s community] were all like, “You talk more, you’re involved in conversations more, and you’re doing so much better.” And so, yeah, I mean, it saved my life, literally, and Danielle and Dr. Huso there, they saved my life.
Steve’s well-documented proof of his progress on TikTok
Steve: We were all a little concerned at first because some people, you have to make sure that you are very hydrated and the brain is full of water, because you can have seizures and some people have and then some people get migraines. And then for me, just the initial pulsing was hurting. It was painful. But when I went yesterday, it had been three weeks since I’ve had my 30th treatment and went yesterday. Didn’t even hurt.
Jaena: That was going to be my question. I was like, does the pain level go down with each session?
Steve: It does, and for everybody, it’s different. And so that’s why I started documenting or actually, it was my daughter’s idea. She’s like, “Dad, when you start this, you should document this on TikTok.” So now when I look all the way back to like my first TikTok the day before I went in for my first treatment and I look at my face, I look like stone. There’s no emotion. There’s no light in my eyes. I was overly medicated because they were so afraid I was going to commit suicide, they overly medicated me and yeah, it was just stone and stone. Look at the current up-to-date TikToks and I’m talking like I am now. There’s emotion, there’s fire in my eyes, I’m ready to get back to work.
Charity work that helps bring meaning in his life
Steve: In October, I started an outreach here called Reach Out Molalla and then since October, I have helped three families who lost houses in a fire. I got them clothes and food just by putting out on all the different Facebook pages and all the communities around here. It’s amazing in these small towns how people will rush in and want to help. And so doing that kept me alive too. You know, it gave me purpose.
A 16 year-old girl was the first actual outreach that I did when I started this. She contacted me. She’s like, “I’m staying at my grandparents with my three brothers and we don’t have school clothes. My grandparents can barely afford to have us here and we don’t have school clothes. Can you help us?” And so for two weeks, I chased donations of clothes and shoes and some people bought new clothes and took up to these kids. And so for two weeks, I chased donations of clothes and shoes and some people bought new clothes and took up to these kids. It made them happy, it made me happy. It filled my heart, you know.
Helping out the homeless community
Steve: And then I started making friends with the homeless community around here. And then I live by myself basically in my RV. I mean, I live right next to my daughter, but I keep to myself as she’s a busy gal with her kids and, you know, I help her and we talk a lot but I just, take care of myself. So, cooking was just kind of, “Gosh, you know, I hate to make all this food. I can only eat leftovers for a day.” So what I do now is I make a big pot of spaghetti and I’ll make some for myself.
Then I fill plates and wrap them in foil and take down to the park here in Malala where the homeless people camp and just hand them out food. And I rounded up donations of sleeping bags and clothes, warm clothes for them and when I get my monthly benefit, I run down to the Dollar Tree and buy a bunch of hand warmers and give to them, you know, and they’re actually my friends now. They appreciate me. And what really blows me away is they’re honest. If they don’t need anything, they’ll tell me they don’t need anything. They won’t take something from me just because it’s there.
One of them has schizophrenia
Steve: They’re actually great people that have slipped through the cracks with mental illness and they medicate themselves. One gal’s got schizophrenia so bad And it’s too bad because she’s so smart. Her poetry just brings a tear to your eye and she makes miniatures. She makes little books out of rose petals that you can actually turn the pages on. And I mean, they’re tiny. You can barely hold on to it. And she makes little tiny miniature roses and paints them with acrylic paints. Makes like teapots out of hazelnut shells, makes water pumps out of wheat stalks. You know, she’s an amazing lady but when she’s manic, she’ll start fighting with people that aren’t there.
And there’s a couple of times I’ve come up on her and we’ll sit her down and teach her the butterfly tapping that I learned in an ISO to stimulate that vagus nerve to get it to slow down and get her to breathe and get her out of that manic state.
And so, yeah, the outreach was great. Then this same girl that I got the clothes for told me they weren’t going to have a Christmas. And for two weeks, I chased donations of new toys and presents and clothes and she’s going on 16. So, I mean, I had ladies that have their own skincare and hair care companies donate me stuff for her. I literally took two carloads of wrapped Christmas presents to their house for Christmas. So there is light at the end of the tunnel for me with all this. And it’s giving me an idea of uh like I’m looking into the nonprofit sector for jobs and I’d like to be a resource coordinator or something like that for somebody.
An invitation to see Steve’s progress through TMS for yourself
Jaena: I’m wondering now, could I possibly link your TikTok account in the description?
Steve: Sure. Yeah.
Jaena: Others might be curious to see your progress with the TMS treatments that you mentioned. I will make sure I do that. Link to Steve’s TikTok is (here). And I thank you so much for sharing. It’s deeply personal to me because I just grew up watching my father being abused and being destroyed, completely destroyed – irrevocably by everything. That was because, as you know, back in the day, men didn’t have anywhere to turn to for help and so you’re helping to raise awareness and bring hope and healing to others out there.
Steve: Yes, I am a huge advocate for suicide prevention and mental illness. I don’t even say I have mental illness anymore. I say I have mental wellness.
Jaena: That’s perfect!
Steve: Yeah, I’m not mentally ill anymore. I’m mentally well.
Jaena: Good for you. So thank you so much for being here today and I know it’s going to help people out there.
Steve: You’re welcome. I hope it does. Yeah, thanks for having me.