Me and the Great Outdoors
By Nigel Kent-Barber
Is the outdoors a Good Thing for mental health? Oh, yes.
Is it a Good Thing for my mental health? Pencil in a doubtful yes to that question. I mean, well,
sure, yes! Or else – no!
So here I was in 1990, having a psychogenic generalized amnesia. It means that I had forgotten
who I was, totally blacked out. I knew, that summer day, where I was. But not who. Think about it.
I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, which you get by surviving atrocious childhood trauma;
for instance, watching your mother try to kill you (circular saw, pillows…). You find yourself
floating above the scene and watching it with detachment, which is how you opt out.
Nigel #1 had gone into deep therapy for this, and when he found out that his own sister had
incestuously raped him when he was 15, he went away into a deep, dark hole and went to sleep –
that’s a psychogenic, generalized amnesia: my own dark, cold, terrifying, painful amnesia.
Amnesia is definitely no fun, when you find yourself in the skin of somebody you don’t much
like (we are friends now, and meld into each other).
So, here I was, Nigel #2, holed up in a West End apartment with this beautiful wife whom I could
not recognize, and I had a problem: the three people looking after my head – doctor,
psychotherapist, nurse – wanted me to go out.
But outside there were those menacing, potentially hostile people called women. (I would like
to point out that I had been tortured, raped, mutilated, abused . . . by women; and that the ultimate
betrayal had been by the two women who “loved” me. ) So, there was the great outdoors –
Vancouver, beautiful in the sunshine – and all I had to do was to go out into it, full as it was of
unknown people
My psychotherapist had provided me with coping mechanisms. My wonderful wife, carefully
informed, held my hand and helped me to trust my feelings. That first walk was terrifying; I
actually crossed the street when I saw a woman coming towards me on the sidewalk. And it didn’t
really help when a “friend” denied my amnesia. (My doctor pointed out that I didn’t need “friends”
“ like that!)
But, none of these women aggressed me; some of them smiled at me – and, daringly, armed
with my therapist’s phone number, I started going out alone.
There was also the terror of losing my identity as Nigel #2. To this day I feel uneasy if I go out
without ID, and I have promised my caregivers that I never will.
Gradually I became friends with the outdoors; we do live in a beautiful world, a beautiful city.
I learned to love walking, letting my feet guide me; I noticed that I sleep better when I have
walked; that flowers and the sea heal me.
My religion was always a religion of a close connection between the Goddesses, the Gods and
the ancient Greek world:
Aphrodite, Goddess of love, laughter and flowers, came from the sea;
Apollo, God of artists and of health, gives us the sunshine;
The teasing, delightful God of journalists (and of liars – sorry!), Hermes, flies on winged
sandals from the sky to the sea and back to our beautiful earth.
We need the harmony of our archetypes, we need to be in synch with the heavens and the
earth; how else can we be in harmony with our minds?
How else can we find inner peace, except in that harmony?
So, I take it back. Yes, the outdoors is the friend of those of us with psychiatric diagnoses. Yes, we
all need to take a deep breath and go out, into the great outdoors. It is great.
I found out.