Negative Thinking

We know a spell of negative thoughts can occur in any person’s life, but a tendency towards negative thinking is actually part of the symptom menu that gets triggered with Parkinson’s disease. Looking back, I can identify negative thought patterns in Andy that presented a year or two before he started to tremor- before Parkinson’s was a possibility that we knew about.

We had temporarily moved to Chicago from our home in Taos, New Mexico in order to support our daughter in her pre professional ballet training, during her high school years. We lived there 4.5 years and when we arrived both Andy and I had to find work. We threw ourselves wholeheartedly into that process.

I had immediate success finding regular massage clients and also teaching yoga each week. I had a great benefit in already knowing enough people in Chicago who wanted to hire me. My massage work over 12 years with Chicago residents visiting Taos Ski Valley and my parents and grandmother being from the area were enough to create a wonderful clientele through word of mouth.

This immediate work success for me took some pressure off of Andy. He had been painting houses with a family friend for some cash but with me having secure work, he was able to move forward and apply for the high school teaching positions we hoped he’d qualify for after his successful year teaching in Hawaii. He started out with a ton of enthusiasm but after a year of rejections, he was discouraged.

Andy and I had faced discouragement many times before- with rejections from art show applications, when we weren’t able to earn enough to avoid bankruptcy and when we took jobs we didn’t like to get by financially. No one who is a lifetime entrepreneur-as we were- gets to avoid rejection and discouragement completely. Our attitude was always to try again, reinvent, and creatively find ways to succeed.

This time wasn’t that way for Andy. I believe his dopamine levels were already being depleted as he slid towards an as yet undiagnosed life with Parkinson’s.

Andy did eventually get a job, although it wasn’t teaching. He tapped into his creativity and designed large scale functional metal art, such as gates and railings. The outfit he worked with was small and he did not approve morally with the owners strategy of lying to customers about timing and delivery.

Andy became a down and depressed man during those couple of years and I see clearly, in retrospect, that his state of being was severe because of the early Parkinson’s negative thinking symptom.

I wish I’d known then.

With an understanding of the whole picture I would have done things differently. A person struggling with a sickness is treated better than someone who is perceived as a grumpy old wet blanket.

Negative thinking can be an early symptom of Parkinson’s and it can continue and become a chronic way of life. A lack of dopamine is a physical challenge and our minds are part of that. Knowing what one is dealing with is helpful and can be life saving.

Andy still, after 18 years, has a tendency to drift into negative thinking. We have countered that tendency with extreme doses of kindness, understanding, straight forward communication and a refusal to allow negativity to be personal.

It helps a lot.