How One Woman Stopped Drinking, Stopped Dissociating, And Started Finding Her Way Back To Herself

You can find Valerie Milburn’s and Helen Sneed’s podcast “Mental Health: Hope and Recovery” at their website.

TRANSCRIPT

CONTENT WARNING: A head’s up we mention a sexual assault in this episode.

Valerie Disconnects

Despite the challenges she faced, Valerie Milburn remained fully engaged with her life. In the rare moments she was faced with trauma her brain’s way of self protection was to dissociate. In other words she disconnected from herself and the world around her. It started when she was very young growing up in a chaotic household. She was the fifth of six children. Her dad was gone working for long stretches, so her mom was the main caregiver, and always busy.

My mom worked always and she was always in school. She ended up with five college degrees. My psychiatrist says that she was narcissistic.

Valerie remembers her mom would be a few blocks away from the house and frequently she’d say, ‘I think I left the coffee pot on,’ and would go back to check.

The first time Valerie recalls dissociating she was only four years old and her mom left her in charge of her baby brother.

My mom had left me alone with him…And so the whole time she was gone, she was gone for ten minutes, maybe 15. And I remember thinking, the coffee pot’s on the house is going to burn down. And when she came home, I was terrified. And what she said to me was, ‘you're my brave little soldier,’ which she used to call me a lot. And so I know now what was happening in my body, the fear and the terror was denied. And I could not handle what was happening to my body not being recognized. And so I left my body… and I can see what's happening from above, witnessing the scene that I am actually living from above.

This is a story about how Valerie found a way back to herself. This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

Valerie’s Trauma

Growing up in New Orleans in the 1960s with her dad frequently away for work, Valerie often felt she had to be on top of things.

I was kind of a perfect child, overachiever. It was easier to not be a troublemaker. It was easier to perform.

When she was eight and her mom was busy taking classes, she recalls making her mother’s lunch and having it ready for her when she came home. Oftentimes her mom would ask her friends’ parents to take care of Valerie. 

And I had a couple of families who kind of adopted me and supported me. They seemed to know. My friend's mom said, ‘you're going to stay with us tonight.’

It was at one such sleepover, when Valerie was 11, something traumatic happened. 

I was sexually assaulted toward the end of sixth grade by a friend's father. And I didn't tell anyone. I remember sitting at the foot of my mom's bed the night it happened, and she was surrounded by text books and studying. And I went into her room with the intention of telling her. PAUSE But sitting there and knowing, looking at her, that things would only be worse if I did share what had happened. So I never told anyone. 

She buried any thoughts of the trauma and turned from an outgoing and popular kid to a withdrawn and quiet one.

It was a long, dark summer… And I became really withdrawn, lost a lot of weight and started to have a series of stomach problems. And my mom took me to the doctor over the stomach problems and the doctor ran a lot of tests and they all came back normal. But over the course of running them and waiting for the results of the tests, I continued to deteriorate. And the doctor told my mom that I was depressed. 

Valerie Learns A New Way To Cope

In the early 70s not much was done for kids with depression. So her parents decided a new middle school might help.

The summer before high school Valerie found her own way of coping. A new neighbor moved in across the street and she and Valerie became fast friends. 

She was a year older and she introduced me to marijuana, quaaludes and speed…And I immediately loved marijuana and speed… it just calmed me and opened me up at the same time. I mean, I remember walking through that neighborhood at night and wandering through the houses that were being built and just thinking it's all going to be okay. At that point, when I was stoned, I felt like everything was going to be okay.

Pretty soon Valerie was buying her own weed.

I mean, that would have been 1975 when I was 15 at that point in in my freshman year. And it was so easy to get. In fact, we smoked it on school property in the back of the field at lunchtime. 

At the same time she kept up her grades and after school activities.

I continued to excel. I played sports. I was freshman class, favorite favorite. But I also was extremely. Involved with boys and especially with older boys… We smoked a lot of pot. I skipped a lot of classes. Still made National Honor Society. 

So when she graduated from high school she moved to Austin with her sister to go to the University of Texas. She paid for school on her own waiting tables, all the while keeping up with her journalism classes …and her drug habit. She didn’t know it at the time but in addition to the trauma, she was dealing with an untreated bipolar disorder.

Smoking marijuana and doing a lot of methamphetamines, I think was a way of leveling myself out and doing a lot of methamphetamines will allow you to get a lot done. So I was very productive. I mean, I could work a full shift, you know, get home at 2 o’clock in the morning...And if I had a project due for an 8 a.m. class, I could just work through the night and finish it. So I was very productive. 

Valerie’s Tipping Point

Come senior year Valerie’s still waiting tables. One day the young man who would become her husband sat down with the manager and a group of regulars and waited for Valerie to take their order.

I had eye surgery and I went to work with a patch on my eye and I went over to the table where he was sitting and he and his buddies had all put cocktail napkins over their eye. And apparently I said something really clever and funny, and he thought, ‘oh,’ you know, and so we just got to know each other. And we had a whirlwind romance.

After graduation they got married and had two kids, one right after the other. She got a stress free job at a non profit writing their newsletter. During those early years of their marriage Valerie was content. Then she took a more stressful job at the Chamber of Commerce.

And stress is often the precursor to a tipping point… I was working 70 hour weeks under a lot of stress and I would be at work late and want to be at home when I would be at home and need to be at work. My sister would call me at the office at night and say, ‘the kids are fine. I just went by there. They're showered and they're there in their pajamas. They're sitting on the kitchen counter making chocolate chip cookies with their dad.’ 

Valerie missed a lot of her kids’ recitals and baseball games. 

I missed a birthday party because I was too depressed to get out of bed, to walk into the other room and attend the birthday party. 

But when her son was seven, she recalls making it to a Mother’s Day event held at his elementary school.

The kids had been asked to draw pictures of their mom's doing her favorite thing. And there were drawings of kids, moms playing tennis and gardening or cooking. My son drew a picture of me napping.  It was it was a shock to me and should have been a red flag to everybody. But it was tough, very, very tough to see that. And it still breaks my heart that they went through that there were many events I missed. 

Valerie felt torn and she was dealing with undiagnosed mental illness. Thinking a change in job was the answer, she took a new job as an account exec at a fast growing advertising agency. But that also turned out to be intense.

I think it was that there were so many assignments all at once and there was so much to juggle. And the level of expectation was so high and the drug and alcohol abuse was so intense and the desire to be somewhere else. When I was at work and the need to be somewhere else when I was at home just was more than I could handle. And I was missing so much at home. And I was dug in at work that I think I just couldn't take it anymore.

Valerie’s Breaking Point

It got so bad that on one especially stressful day a coworker found Valerie on the floor of the bathroom curled up in a ball.

…and they called my husband, and my husband took me to the E.R. and they admitted me and the neurologist ran the test and the neurologist came in and told me that I had had a dissociative episode. I didn't even know what that meant… And that was the first thing that got my attention that I was really in trouble. 

That’s when Valerie started seeing a psychiatrist but it took a while to figure out what was going on. Looking back she can list off all of the red flags.

Walking out of work in the middle of the day. Just leaving. And I would be in my car drinking hot tequila out of my glove box knowing. This is. This is bad. Things are bad… I remember sobbing for no reason. I was seeing a psychiatrist at this time, but I wasn't being honest with him. He at one point said, you've got to go get sober or there's no point in us continuing to see each other. And I did go to outpatient treatment. And I told my story. We had to tell our story…And I did. I wrote it out. It was like eighteen pages long. And I told it to the group. And when I finished, the therapist said, ‘are you willing to hear feedback from the group?’ And I said, ‘sure.’ And I looked around and people's mouths were hanging open. And this one guy said, ‘you know, for somebody who looks like you and talks like you and walks like you, that is astonishing.’ And then the therapist said, ‘you know what? If you walk like a duck and you talk like a duck, you're probably a duck.’ And that was the first moment I actually thought I might be an alcoholic addict. 

In January of 1995, a few months after her crisis at work Valerie was fired. From there she continued to spiral. In one year and a half period she was hospitalized seven times for a total of four months.

I attempted suicide. I was engaging in extensive self-harm. And it was just a horrible time. My son told his dad at some point, and I think I could have spent my whole life without having been told this story. But at one point, when I was away for five weeks at the trauma hospital, he said to his dad, ‘a little boy needs his mommy.’ It was tough on the kids. It was really tough. 

Valerie Starts To Fight

On her seventh stay at the psychiatric hospital, her husband came to see her.

My husband told me I could not come home. He was not abandoning me. He was. He was protecting himself and our kids. He said, ‘you know, it's been like a revolving door and you just can't do it again. You can't come home and leave. You can't come home and leave.’ He said, ‘you got to go get sober and stable with your mental health.’ And I, I couldn't breathe. You know, when he told me this. It was very difficult to find a place to go. But I found a sober house, and I lived in the sober house. And I remember the night I moved in thinking in my room, in this tiny little room at the sober house thinking I have lost my career. My family is slipping away. My heart and mind are broken…And you know what? I finally started to fight for my recovery.

That year Valerie’s daughter turned 11, a significant year in her own life.

My daughter was 11 when I remembered that my abuse happened. My sexual assault happened at the same age. And that's not uncommon, I have found out, to remember a trauma at the same age your child is. 

She started to work through her trauma, went on antidepressants again, and began to heal. This time the medication worked because she’d gotten the alcohol and recreational drugs out of her system. When she was discharged, she entered a sober house and got a very low stress, part-time job at a specialty grocery store. Valerie was allowed to go home one night a week. It took her six months before she came home permanently. 

You know, to come back and with the suitcases and the things, it was a big deal. My kids and I rebuilt first I think the trust by little bitty things. I remember how I used to get really upset about just the most ridiculous things. The kids would empty the end of a soda in the sink and not rinse it. So there would be brown spots, you know, on the bottom of the sink. And I would see it, you know, yell into the next room, ‘who didn't rinse the sink?’ And I remember walking by the sink after I was, you know, getting stable and seeing that and just rinsing the sink, which sounds like nothing. It's huge, you know?

And she started to show up for her life and she started to slowly rebuild her relationship with her kids.

And this is kind of sad that they could trust me to show up for dinner. You know, I was there. I was sitting at the table again and. And that I would show up for for a baseball game and I would be there for choir performances. And it was that little, little stuff. You know, their mom was back. And that's what it took, that little, consistent just being there and being calm and being present. And that's what it took. 

At 36 Valerie finally got the correct diagnosis.

And at that point, when I was told I had bipolar disorder I didn't accept it. I remember saying to my psychiatrist, you know, bipolar disorder? Are you sure? And he said, well, you know, you have a journalism degree. You know how to do research, go do some research.

So she did. She went to the self help section of her bookstore.

I remember very clearly those moments of flipping through those books and finding answers. I mean, I've always been a really good student. And so I was doing my homework. And I remember going in and talking to my doctor and I remember a sense of peace coming over me, understanding. And I learned that I have a medical illness, that mental illness is a medical illness. And I did move into acceptance. And it actually was very comforting to know that I have a disease, that I have an illness. I'm not a bad person trying to get good. I was a sick person trying to get well. And so in many ways, my diagnosis was very comforting because it was an explanation. 

She said understanding the bipolar disorder as well as the post traumatic stress disorder and getting the right treatment was key to her healing. She credits Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing or EMDR therapy with helping her the most.

And it took a long time to talk about my trauma with my doctor. It took a long time for me to find the roots of that trauma. It was so deeply buried and so interwoven in how I responded to life for so long. And it took me years to figure out how that trauma has impacted my life choices and my life path.

Clean and Sober

Still it took a few more years before Valerie got sober. It all started with the first step in a 12 Step Program.

Denial is a powerful thing. It took me a very long time. To be able to tell myself I'm truly an alcoholic addict and that I have bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder and substance use disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. It took me years to accept that. I started seeing a psychiatrist in 1993 and went on antidepressants in 1993. But. None of that worked until I got sober in 1999. It was absolutely the trauma therapy and the intense work and the trauma that began the healing. But it was getting sober that actually let me get well. 

It took a while to figure out the right treatment plan but finally after three years of sobriety her psychiatrist helped her get her mania under control.

The one that stopped the manic episodes was the big turning point. We found a mood stabilizer that just stopped the mania cold, and we had been looking for that for about two years and we hit on the right one

Today Valerie has a huge daily wellness plan that includes prayer, meditation, and mindfulness.

I have to sleep eight hours a night. My psychiatrist says sleep and sobriety are the cornerstones of recovery from bipolar disorder. Being of service, whether it's doing the dishes or being of emotional or practical support to my family or taking another alcoholic to treatment at 11:00 at night or whatever it takes to be of service to God. And my fellow man is probably the most important thing I do to stay in recovery. And it's to to make sure I'm not the center of my world, because that is how I live for a long time, and that'll take me out immediately.

At the beginning of the pandemic she and a friend – who we’ll hear from in another 2 Lives episode – started a podcast, Mental Health: Hope and Recovery.

EXCERPT FROM THE PODCAST 

HELEN SNEED:  What Valerie has meant to me…when I heard her story of recovery I was amazed she was strong enough and dogged enough to come back from what looked like an impossible situation.

VALERIE: I have made it to the other side and learned how to live the best life possible with my diagnoses. And if I can do anything to help somebody else with their best life possible, with whatever their diagnosis is, then I want to offer thaI still have bad days and if I can help somebody else know that they can get over the other side, still have bad days and still stay on the other side, then I want to do that. It's so gratifying to know that everything I went through can be used for good. 

Today she and her husband have been married for 40 years. She talks almost everyday with her daughter and every week with her son. And she’s proud to be a grandmother to their kids.

I have four grandkids, two five year olds, a four year old and a three year old. And they are just the light of my life. It's been incredible to be a nana. I am nana. And I just you know, I mean, my kids let me take care of their kids. And if I wasn't sober or stable with my mental health, there's no way.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.