Life-Changing Challengers

The Intersection of Architecture, Art, and Mental Health with Ruth Poniarkski

• Brad A Minus

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Ever wondered how an idyllic childhood can segue into a tumultuous journey of self-discovery and resilience? In this episode, we welcome Ruth Poniarski, an accomplished artist and writer, who invites us into her world. Ruth paints a vivid picture of growing up in Glen Cove, Long Island, where her eccentric mother instilled in her a love for art. Despite being gifted in both art and sciences, she pursued architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a decision that led to unexpected and challenging turns. A single episode involving marijuana during her studies left her grappling with low self-esteem and lethargy, a pivotal moment that set the stage for her compelling memoir, "Journey to Self."

Ruth courageously shares her ongoing battle with mental health, marked by recurrent nervous breakdowns, insomnia, and the societal stigma surrounding mental illness. She recounts superficial friendships, her extensive travels across Europe, and a particularly harrowing trip to Greece that profoundly impacted her mental state. Ruth’s raw reflections offer a candid look at the overwhelming pressures of academic life and societal expectations, all while navigating mental health struggles. Her story highlights the importance of seeking help, whether through therapy, supportive relationships, or medication, in overcoming life's daunting challenges.

Join us as Ruth discusses the therapeutic approaches and career transitions that have shaped her journey towards stability. From a chaotic mental health crisis during a Club Med trip to finding solace in therapy, Ruth's narrative is a testament to resilience. She emphasizes the critical need for stress management, the value of creative outlets, and recognizing harmful life patterns. Her experiences underscore the importance of professional help and supportive relationships in managing mental health. Tune in to be inspired by Ruth’s journey and the invaluable lessons she has learned along the way.

Ruth's Book - Journey to Self: Memoir of an Artist
Contact Ruth
Instagram: @ruthponiarski
LinkedIn: Ruth Poniarski
RuthPoniarski.com

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Brad:

Hey and welcome back to another episode of Life Changing Calendars. I'm your host, brad Minus, but with me today. I'm so honored to have Ruth Poniarski. She is an artist and with you know the painting stuff. She's also a writer. She has a book out called Journey to Self and I am very happy to have her on and very honored Ruth, how are you today?

Ruth:

I'm great.

Brad:

Thank you for having me. Definitely so. As I ask every single one of my guests, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? What was the complement of your family? What the environment was like?

Ruth:

Okay, I grew up in Glen Cove, long Island, new York, a little city amongst an island, and I had a pretty good childhood. It was a post-war, post-world War II. A lot of children in the neighborhood, my parents. We had a split-level home amongst other homes. They had a community beach. I went to the public schools and my brother and I spent a lot of time outside playing all the time. It was a different time than today and we went on little ski trips and we rode through routes through New York up to Vermont when the interstate highways weren't there as yet. It was a real adventure. Life was an adventure. Interstate highways weren't there as yet. It was a real adventure. Life was an adventure.

Ruth:

And as far as art, I was introduced to art by my mother, who was a little bit eccentric. She took me to a life drawing class when I was about six and a half years old. There was a nude model, a nude woman model, and she said to me I want you to draw. You know everybody in the class were going to be drawing and depicting this nude model and she told me not to laugh. Well, I didn't laugh. I took her very seriously and I drew this Picasso-like drawing of this nude model and I got the torso correct. It was like very much ahead of its time, precocious. I was precocious in art. She always said to me Ruthie, I don't want you to become an artist, it's too lonely, it's hard to make a living, you'll be isolated and whatnot.

Ruth:

So I took a direction. I went to public school and I excelled in math and I excelled in physics and art. So I put all those things together and I decided to pursue architecture. So I enrolled in a very difficult technical school up north I won't say any names Rensselaer Polytech. It was second to MIT, very difficult program and I really had a very difficult term and my story the book Journey of the Self, starts in 1977, when I was in my third or fourth year of a five year architecture program, and it continues to 1987, which was the heart of my episodes that I have been suffering. But I have to bring you back to the beginning in 1977. Sure, tell us all about it, okay. So my troubles really started in 1976.

Ruth:

In my sophomore year I was in like an Archie clit I call them Archies, they're architect students, my peers Archies, and we were a group of about eight of us in the collective and we would do projects together and spend all nighters doing design projects. Very tedious program, asked a lot of you and a lot of your creativity. It was straining but it was rewarding creativity it was straining but it was rewarding. Anyway, we indulged in smoking marijuana at these little parties and cooking delicious meals. One time I smoked so much I blacked out. I was like comatose, blacked out for about four hours, woke up to myself. Boy, I'm lucky. I woke up and I said after that moment I did not smoke marijuana anymore, hardly drank any alcohol that was an addition, but I never, never. I went clean. It's too much. But it left me lethargic, passive in my studies, goalless. I had a difficult time setting small goals. It left me a little paranoid and depressed and a low self-esteem. These are all shady but lingering with me throughout my years.

Brad:

So you had done marijuana prior to this.

Ruth:

Prior to the 1977 incident.

Brad:

Yeah, no, no, but I mean prior to the incident where you'd smoked so much that you were passed out for a few hours. You had done it prior to that.

Ruth:

This was in 1976. Right right, 1977. Okay, then it hit. I went off the edge and I'll tell you how I went off the edge. But I went off the edge and I'll tell you how I went off the edge In 1977, the fall of 1977, my fourth year, my boyfriend did not return.

Ruth:

We were very close, we were going out since our junior year and he transferred to another college in another continent. So I never saw him again and it kind of left me again. It left me isolated and alone because he was really my buddy. And also why I felt also isolated, I had dropped the core design course in the architecture program. In my junior year I found it, I couldn't do it. Instead I took an art course, but that course really unified my classmates. We were together in the design. The design was the core of the whole program. I had dropped it. So in my senior year, when my boyfriend didn't return, I felt really alone because he became my buddy. So that's the backdrop of all this.

Ruth:

Meanwhile the lingering effects from the marijuana were still lingering and there I befriended an older gentleman. He was about 28 years old, he was a graduate of the architecture program. I kind of looked up to him. I liked him in a platonic kind of a way, very friendly kind of a way, support kind of a way. He was mysterious, very quiet, nice, a little bit off, anyway. Serious, very quiet, nice, a little bit off. Anyway, he and his roommate had a little party at their apartment.

Ruth:

I had just returned from a weekend with my parents for Thanksgiving. It was a Sunday evening and I had gone to the party and his roommate was a PhD physics student and his roommate was a PhD physics student and he had fellow PhD physics students come to the party. I said this is terrific, I love to talk. I talked the whole party Didn't eat anything, didn't drink anything, the whole party. I talked with all these majors. Came time to the end of the party, everybody left and I stayed behind because I was close. We'll call him Joseph. I call him Joseph in the book. I was close with Joseph and his roommate, which his name was Hans, and I was sitting there and Joseph offers me a brownie, delicious brownie cake. Well, I ate it, beautiful cake, because I was hungry and I didn't know. I just took it. It was laced with PCP, very like angel dust, which is a additive for large animals like. Well are large animals like horses and elephants okay, so PCP is actually a hallucinogen in it.

Ruth:

That's what it is. It's a medication for large animals. So it's PPP. That's what it is. I hallucinated. I saw a bed of white candles in a cavernous space. I wanted to jump out of the window. Joseph held a bath to be shelving out the window. I went off the edge For about an hour. I had to sit down and calm myself down. Then I left his apartment. I got into my car. I started driving aimlessly. All of a sudden, a paranoid ideation came over me that there was a revolution going on between the capitalists and the socialists and I was going to be abandoned and my people were leaving in spaceships. This is going through my head and I'm driving.

Ruth:

I drive to Route 90, and I drove west to New York State Thruway, a highway, a state highway, that goes to Buffalo all the way down to New York City. I get on it going south towards New York City. I abandoned my car on the shoulder of the highway. I parked it on the shoulder, I got out of my car, I started walking, looking for the base launch pads for the spaceship in my head. I walked on the shoulder of the highway south and I walked probably from midnight till dawn till the sun came up about 12 miles, I finally hitched a ride back to my college town, troy, where my apartment was located. The guy left me off. He didn't come back with me because he was afraid of what people would think of him, but anyway he let me off at the beginning of town.

Ruth:

I walked several blocks to my apartment. In my apartment was Joseph and his roommate, my two female roommates, and my father was. Joseph and his roommate, my two female roommates and my father, who came from Glen Cove. How did he get there? It was unbelievable. The state police looked in my car and found a registration to my father's business. So they called the business and told him that they found his daughter's car my car and he came immediately up to my apartment. That's why he was there, anyway.

Ruth:

So I was still in a paranoid state and I was in my own bubble of fantasy and my father took me home to Long Island. I had to abort the architecture program. That was it. He took me to a psychiatrist when we got to Long Island and the psychiatrist told him that I had a nervous breakdown. And then the psychiatrist said I can heal at home. So my father took me home. I was very quiet, I didn't say a word. This was like the first time in a doctor's office, a psychiatrist's office, anyway. So he took me home, and my mother wasn't exactly the nurturing, loving type, and she had a hard time dealing with the reality of what I just the scope of what I just went through. Anyway, though, what she did was she had me do art projects every day for the next two or three weeks. We would do collages, cutouts. I did a painting of apples, I did other little projects. I would have a structured day, three meals a day. Everything was structured, everything was stress-free.

Brad:

Actually everything that they talk about now.

Ruth:

Oh yes, she was ahead of her time.

Brad:

Yeah. So I just want to step back just real quick. When you talk to the therapist and probably what some of the that you lived through and also probably in the research that you've done was in that time period, was that a kind of a default diagnosis that you had a nervous breakdown?

Ruth:

At that point he couldn't pinpoint if I was a paranoid schizophrenic, he couldn't pinpoint any of that. He didn't know me, I wasn't a bipolar or any of those things, bipolar or any of those things. He just said that I the nervous breakdown, I guess, is a lay term, a layman's term, but that's what he, that's what he said, and there was no real, there was no what's the word? Because he didn't really know me. He just saw me for a half an hour, you know, and he and my father told him what happened. I wasn't talking at all, I was just, I'm still, I was thinking still that the revolution was going on in my head, oh you know. But he said that I didn't have to go to the hospital.

Brad:

Okay, all right, well, that makes sense.

Ruth:

He took a risk in saying that, but I did get back. He gave me also this medication called Thorazine, which is like a staple of that time.

Ruth:

And eventually I was able to sleep. I couldn't sleep. I was so overtired and over manic that I couldn't sleep. But around the second or third day I was able to sleep and the sleeping was healing. You need sleep. Insomnia is a very big problem. A lot of people have insomnia. So I got better and then I went to work part-time for my father. He was in the construction roofing business and eventually I transferred to another architecture program in Brooklyn architecture program in Brooklyn. So I commuted from Glen Cove to Brooklyn every day. In this architecture program I was able to transfer credits, whatnot. Now that nervous breakdown was the first of many. Every six months to about a year I would break down. Now this psychiatrist I would say he was an invasive. I call him Dr Samuels. He was an invasive psychiatrist. I say that because my symptoms kept getting worse with each breakdown and he didn't alert me to the signs of an oncoming breakdown. He wasn't able me to the signs of an oncoming breakdown.

Brad:

He wasn't able to identify the trigger.

Ruth:

Yeah Well, not only what triggered me, but with the symptoms. My symptoms were not eating, not sleeping, paranoid, insecure, and also what happened was my self-esteem compounded. I had a very low self-esteem and I was in a lingering depression and that all, as I said, started from the marijuana that I smoked. It never went away. It would surface. So things compounded, it, compounded, compounded, it compounded. And what triggered me? Like going to the architecture program again. It was a difficult program. You were always forced to be creative and creating buildings and whatnot, and social stimulus would really get me off the line and I didn't share with anybody what I was going through every six months to a year. So I had friends but they were sort of superficial. I couldn't really be truthful or lean on them or anything like that. I didn't tell them what was happening. I was ashamed of it. Mental illness back then it wasn't talked about, it wasn't tell them what was happening. I was ashamed of it. Mental illness back then. It wasn't talked about, it wasn't out in the open, it wasn't anything like that. So that compounded also. That really added to my low self-esteem and I thought that everybody around me was superior and they were going on with their lives and they were getting things done and they were graduating and all kinds of stuff that ran through my head. Anyway, I had a lot of superficial acquaintances. I traveled to Finland with a seminar group from the school for about two or three weeks. We studied the works of Alvar Alter Beautiful, beautiful architecture, wooden, beautiful wood architecture in Finland. We were there for two and a half three weeks. It took me about till 1981, 82 to graduate from this program.

Ruth:

But all during these breakdowns that I would have, I led a life. I had superficial friends. I had boyfriends. I traveled alone to Europe. I traveled alone to Paris. I was okay because I lived in an apartment with an elderly Lebanese woman and her son. I was okay.

Ruth:

I made a trip to Greece. That was a disaster. That happened in 1980. What happened was with my symptoms. My insomnia kept getting worse and worse.

Ruth:

This trip I went to tour the ancient ruins of Greece. It was a seven-day, very stressful bus tour. I was one of the only Americans on the tour and nobody was my age group. They were all a little bit older than me or older than me. So I kind of below I befriended an elderly gentleman but I was really alone and they weren't exactly friendly to me, the Europeans. They spoke other languages. The tour guide spoke English. She was very good, very knowledgeable of all the rulings in Greece. Very knowledgeable, very tedious. Anyway, I went without sleep. Each night I went without sleep, I didn't eat, I didn't change my clothes. I went seven days without sleep. Whoa yeah, seven days. It just compounded itself and my feelings inside, plus the stress of the trip, just compounded itself, didn't get that sleep.

Ruth:

I went back to Athens, we landed back and we started in Athens and then the tour ended in Athens. I was in a hotel. This was the sixth night and what I couldn't sleep. I was just. It was just tense and paranoid and then just my body. I was disengaged and I was with reality and I was just tense and about. I couldn't sleep.

Ruth:

So at about 1130 or 12 o'clock I walked out of the hotel. This was in Athens. So this is midnight and I'm walking around Athens. Luckily a Greek soldier was around. He asked me if I had a light for his cigarette and I said no, I don't have a light for your cigarette. I'm sorry he goes let. He said, let me escort you around Athens. So he and I I locked out because there were dangerous citizens of Athens. He walked, we walked all over Athens and then about 6 am or 7 am in the morning, when the sun rose, we parted and I went and packed my things, got my bag ready and I took a taxi to the airport.

Ruth:

Now I was supposed to go to Club Med on an island for another week, but I didn't do that. I knew enough to return to New York. In the airport I'm lugging my luggage and I get this attendant and I tell the attendant I've got to go back to New York, I'm sick, I'm not well. She got me on the next flight to New York Doesn't stop there. I get on the flight. It's a big two-story 747.

Ruth:

I'm sitting by the window seat and there was a young woman next to me. I didn't say a word, she didn't say anything. I was no word at all. I'm sitting there and there are these two young guys in back of me, seated in back of me. I thought that they were talking about me. I looked terrible, I looked disheveled, a little dirty. I hadn't eaten, I hadn't bathed, I hadn't done anything today, anyway. So the two men. I thought they were making fun of me, so I stood up, I looked at them and I slapped one of the men in the face, across the face, like that, and everybody stood silent. They thought there was going to be a brawl or something. I turned around, I crossed over the young woman.

Ruth:

I went down the aisle in the plane. I went up the stairs the first class was upstairs and I went and I took a seat the first class people. They were just going about their business. They didn't even know it was upstairs. And I went and I took a seat the first class people. They were just going about their business. They didn't even know what was happening. And I sat there for the duration of the flight. The flight attendant gave me a piece of cake. They thought I was tripping. They all thought I was tripping on LSD or something which I wasn't. I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown and I sat there. It must have been a good three or four or five hours or whatever the time was, until we got back to New York.

Ruth:

When we got back to New York, everybody emptied the plane. I was sitting there, the attendant was next to me and he made sure that I was seated and not moved. The transportation police came up. They handcuffed me and they took me to the transportation police and they said you're lucky that the gentleman is not pressing charges. So I had them call my father. My father came, he picked me up and we went to my evasive psychiatrist. The evasive psychiatrist said you can go home with your father. I had a little apartment at that point and he said I didn't have to be hospitalized. So again I went back. It it took me again. I had Thorazine. It took me a long while before I can actually go to sleep. I didn't sleep the first night, I think. From then I went to my parents' house and I convalesced for a couple of weeks, whatever it took, and I got better. So each time I would go through these things. It took me three to four to five weeks and then I would come out of it and then I would resume my life, whether it was school, I eventually got a job in the field. So that happened. That was one of my breakdowns Now with this evasive doctor.

Ruth:

He never said don't travel to Europe alone, face of doctor. You never said don't travel to Europe alone. You never said keep your stimulus low. No-transcript, take one day at a time. He never advised me to take one day at a time. Another factor of my insomnia I always dreamt or imagined that I was going to be abandoned to an apocalyptic world, like the first breakdown I had. I imagined my people were going to be leaving and abandoning me and I was going to be left to be persecuted. This went on in my head each time. This pattern of thought, this pattern of paranoia, would recur every time an episode came on and the doctor never checked, he never went checked. All these symptoms were not checked. In the end they never went guarded or checked. They never went guarded or checked. So again, the insomnia became worse, my paranoia ideation became worse, and so forth. It culminated, culminated Now, after 1981, I worked in the field of architecture.

Ruth:

I had jobs. I never really the passion wasn't there because of my illness. I was very talented in designing and whatever, but I wasn't disciplined in drafting. At that time you had to draft. They didn't have computer-aided design. You had to draw and draft and be very disciplined and come out with beautiful drawings. That wasn't me. I was good in design but not in depicting the design by drawings. So that weighed on me and in the firms I was given rudimentary tasks. I never really climbed the ladder in the architecture field or construction field. I changed jobs a lot. I was going in circles.

Ruth:

Anyway, in 1984, I had a friend who was participating in a psychological workshop. I was led to believe it would give you lectures and talks on how to lead a more assertive life, to get to the direction that you wanted to go to. Well, I was completely wrong. My impression of the psychological workshop was not accurate. Logical workshop was not accurate. Oh yes.

Ruth:

So by then, about a month before, I got a job in an engineering firm that designed highways and I was given some pretty good tasks. I didn't talk that much with anybody, which in my previous jobs I would talk too much. I became too personal. I became paranoid about that. That would set me off. This time I didn't talk that much to many people, I concentrated more on my job. The boss liked me. I asked him if I could take three days off to participate in his psychological workshop and he said sure, you can take the time.

Ruth:

So this was the end of the first month of this job. I took the three days off. It was a Wednesday, thursday and Friday, and then it went into Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday I went to the workshop. It was in Manhattan, it was in the Y in Manhattan and I was living in an apartment in a suburb. So I had to take the train the first day.

Ruth:

There were confrontational workshops. You had to choose a partner. My partner was a very combative kind of guy really weird and the exercises were confrontational, you know, like who could survive in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean, and you had to get up and talk and talk over the people, things like that. It stimulated the wrong part of me and I became very psychologically distraught and it was stressful and these exercises were one thing after another and they ordered you to take notes and they ordered you to do this and it just didn't bode well with me at all. So I came back. I took the train back to my apartment in the suburbs.

Ruth:

I was living on the third floor of an apartment building and I didn't get any sleep and I didn't eat. And the apartment next door they were renovating the apartment so there was drilling sounds going on all the time Couldn't sleep. My paranoia was through the roof. I was imagining that they were going to persecute me. I was alone. My people went away from me. I couldn't sleep because I was afraid I would wake up to a world that was a barren world with my people gone and I was going to be left to be persecuted and I was a pariah. All these things going through my head, my mind was racing. I couldn't really sleep. You know how people their minds race and you cannot go to sleep. My mind raced. So the next day I went back.

Ruth:

That was Thursday, and I struggled through the whole day. I labored through it. I managed to get through it, came back, no sleep. My symptoms were there. They were getting worse. So Friday morning I called my psychiatrist, who was about 20, 25 minutes away from where I was living. He said don't go back to the workshop. I didn't go back. My buddy came to my apartment. He found my apartment and he was outside my door, knocking on my door, saying you've got to return to the workshop. That made me nuts. Luckily, saying you've got to return to the workshop, that made me nuts. Luckily I did not answer the door. I didn't make a sound, but that was like very scary that he would come and knock on my door yeah so he finally left, me gave up, he left yeah

Ruth:

meanwhile I was still, you know, my mind was racing and and I was going through my whole life and how I was failing in my work. My work wasn't going right, I didn't have close friendships that I can depend on and I felt really alone and isolated. So Saturday went by and Sunday went by. My parents were away. They came back from a little vacation they took and Sunday night they called me in my apartment. They called me and I said everything was fine, because I always had that fear that they were going to lock me up. They were going to send me to an institution and lock me up. I always had that fear, which was irrational, but that was my fear. I didn't get any sleep that night.

Ruth:

Monday came along Again, I was pacing back and forth in my apartment. I would sit, I had an art book that I held on to like the Bible, and I kind of looked at the art book, but that was about all I did, not eating. And that Tuesday I barged into my psychiatrist's office. Tuesday morning I said to him I couldn't communicate and I wasn't sleeping and he never asked me please come back at your designated time. And my designated time was Thursday evening. This was Tuesday morning my designated time was Thursday.

Ruth:

At about five or six o'clock Wednesday came along. No sleep, because the sleep also, it compounded itself. The more you don't sleep, the more you can't sleep, the more manic you become. So I had a combination of depression and mania. And so Wednesday happened to be Halloween.

Ruth:

That was the 31st of October 1984. The whole day I couldn't go out the front of my apartment. I was afraid to go out of my apartment, to get out of there because I thought my neighbors were going to kill me. This was going through my head, but they were going to persecute me. So what I did was night came. I think it was about maybe 11 o'clock at night, I decided that I was going to go out the window.

Ruth:

11 o'clock at night, I decided that I was going to go out the window. I tied my bed sheets together, forming a rope. I tied one end of this composed rope and tied it around the steel post of my kitchen table. I took the rope and I went to the window. I took the screen off the window. I climbed out the window with the rope, thinking that I could rappel down the wall. The force of the gravity was nothing like you've ever felt. It was dead weight irons pulling you down.

Ruth:

I couldn't get to the position to rappel For about five seconds or whatever it was. I planned my fall. I fell feet first. I rolled to my side so I didn't hit my head. I blacked out, colitosed. The neighbor called the police. They came. I woke up in the emergency room of a local hospital on a stretcher. Still in my head going through through it was the revolution going on. Whatever was going through my head, people were going to persecute me, they were going to kill me and I sat up like an idiot. I had broken my back and both my ankles.

Brad:

Oh jeez.

Ruth:

After 12 hours surgery, a month in the critical care and a month in rehab in New York City, five months in a wheelchair, in April I got up and I walked, which was a miracle. During that period the doctors thought I was ever going to walk again, but I did. I did. I have metal in my I was ever going to walk again? But I did, I did. I have metal in my body and I have a Harrington rod in my back. And after that my life got better, believe it or not, but anyway, this whole thing happened in October of 1984.

Ruth:

January of 1985, I found the right doctor. We'll call him George. George was a Quaker and a veteran of World War II. He, of course Quakers didn't believe in any alcohol consumption, any drug consumption, nothing like that Quaker, really. You know, he had a lot of common sense, a lot of common sense. He instructed me. He put a lot of common sense, a lot of common sense. He instructed me keep my life a little simpler, less stimulus. No, traveling to Europe alone. No, living on the third floor. You know, take a day at a time, don't put bunions in your head like imagining that I was going to be left abandoned. And put bunions in my head. He said don't put bunions in your head. Day said don't put bunions in your head.

Ruth:

Stay at a time and he said take the load lightly. Those words were very heavy to me.

Ruth:

It really meant a lot to me. He participated in my therapy, whereas Dr Samuels, he was more of a Freudian psychiatrist where you would have to talk free, associate, talk about your dreams. He never really offered any common sense. He never really participated verbally that much in the session, so I had nothing really to. I needed somebody to instill common sense in me Because up to that point I was doing everything and anything and all over the map.

Ruth:

Too many jobs, too many friends, anything and all over the map. Too many jobs, too many friends too. Even boyfriends I had too many and just too much too much. Anyway, george wrote essays on grief management, vitamin management, eating management, relationship management, money management and so on. I don't remember all of them, but he wrote these essays and he would give them to me. You know, common sense essays. That was part of his thing.

Ruth:

He included my parents in therapy once a month, whereas the Freudian Dr Samuels did not include my parents. His philosophy was that I had to be more independent and not dependent on my parents, so therefore we isolated my parents. George, on the other hand, included my parents. I developed a close friend. I had another close boyfriend and he came to therapy with me. So George was very inclusive common sense and very inclusive Low stimuli. He said watch your caffeine intake. Don't take it past. Don't have coffee past, let's say 3 or 5 o'clock. Stay away from any alcohol. Stay away from alcohol. Alcohol does not help you sleep. You can drink alcohol and get up and then you'd wake up at like four or three in the morning and could not go back to sleep again. That's what alcohol would do to you.

Brad:

Yeah, no, actually, that's actually what it does to me. It lets me get to sleep, but doesn't want me to stay asleep.

Ruth:

No, not at all, Anyway. So time went on. I had a few good projects to do in the architecture. I renovated my father's office, 3,000 square foot. They got a new building in Greenpoint and I renovated the whole interior office. I renovated an interior design. Unfortunately, the boss of the firm only hired me for that, because nobody can do it, and then he fired me. So that was the end of that.

Ruth:

That was the end of that. I worked part-time for my father, learning from the ground up the roofing business, but I didn't stay with that. But I was moderately successful even though I had been through all of this. I was moderately successful even though I had been through all of this. I was moderately successful in these little projects I did In 1987, I found Mr Right, my husband. I found him.

Brad:

Where did you find him?

Ruth:

Through a dating service. Oh, but I found him. I was very discouraged with the dating service because the gentlemen were. They just were not interested in being serious and I gave up. And then I got a phone call about three months later and Mr Wright was on the phone and we clicked and he was going to be doing a residency in psychiatry. And at that point I said you know, I want to be a social worker. Because I've been through so much, I think I can help. I've been on the other side of the coin there, I can help people. But then I said to myself it would take too much education, it would take another four or five years. Social work is a long process. Even psychologists forget it's a long process. So I said I'm not going to do that. And then within four months we got married.

Brad:

Wow.

Ruth:

And we've been together now for 37 years.

Brad:

That's fantastic.

Ruth:

June 21st will for 37 years. That's fantastic. June 21st will be 37 years and we have two children. I had children after my accident, but it was in 1988, through the suggestion of George. He says you know what? Why don't you take up painting, take up fine art? And that's what I did take up fine art, and that's what I did. I switched professions and I got into painting and the discipline that I acquired from architecture I applied to my painting and I was able to work on each painting and develop each painting very sophisticated painting, very sophisticated surreal allegories, narratives with people and animals and context, and very engaged in these paintings. And I've been doing that ever since. And gradually my episodes became more spaced apart. I had one in 1987 and then four or five, six years later I had another one and then another four or five years later I had another episode. I had about four episodes with my husband. My husband lived through them, which makes my husband an excellent psychiatrist because he's lived through it. Many psychiatrists have not lived through episodes.

Brad:

They don't know what it is to live through it, so he's become a very, very astute doctor, watching caffeine, taking care of yourself a little bit more, getting into a profession that really kind of was low stimuli but specific enough for you to concentrate. Did the subsequent episodes? Did they still end up like lasting five weeks for you to get back?

Ruth:

Oh yeah, oh yeah, because you know, I still had that pattern of psychosis in my head that developed ever since the PCP, even though I managed to hold my own for like three or four or five years. But with the pressures of the kids and the pressures in the school, the public schools, it was immense for me, it was a lot. And also the pressure of getting out there with my art. You know, I just I felt again. I felt there with my art Again, I felt isolated with my art, but those pressures got to me and I had four major leak right there. But in about 1999, when I was in the hospital, I was hospitalized. The doctor there gave me this medication, this antipsychotic medication, which proved to be moderately effective.

Brad:

Yeah.

Ruth:

So in 1999, I had this medication. I was probably on the wrong dosage because I still had another breakdown. I had a breakdown, I think, in 19,. I had ripples of breakdowns which I was not hospitalized, but there were little ripples along the way.

Ruth:

And then I think I had one before 2010,. But in 2010, I had another breakdown and in the hospital I was talking to the head psychiatrist and I was going I can't eat the food, I think it's poisoned. I think they're going after me. I was relating my psychosis to her and she says I'm putting you on 20 milligrams of this medication olanzapine, zyprexa no ands, ifs or buts. You're going on 20 milligrams. I used to take five milligrams. You're taking 20 milligrams. Well, since 2010, I've been break free. Wow, 2010? 2010. Yeah, and now, in 2010, I started writing. Well, actually, in 1995, I started writing poems to my paintings, so each of my paintings have poems.

Ruth:

2010, I started writing. I started writing my memoir, and that really helped me too, because I was able to look at all the patterns that I fell into the pattern, the history of the pattern, the pattern that had to be broken, the pattern of insomnia, because the insomnia was like unbearable, unbearable, but I managed. With the medication and writing about all of this. I managed to put myself in a bubble, look at myself from afar and see the pattern that I was in. And George, like George, didn't survive until 2010,.

Ruth:

But back, when I was seeing him, he would say pay attention to your symptoms, know when the symptoms are coming on. That's what I learned Knowing symptoms, when they would come on, I would increase my medication and I would make sure that I would verbalize and communicate to my husband, to a friend, to somebody I felt close to. I would communicate my paranoia To my father especially. I would talk it through and I would get over that ripple and then, eventually, the pattern just went away. I overcame the pattern, that pattern. I overcame it, I recognized it and today my memoir was published in 2020.

Brad:

And that was the.

Ruth:

Journey of the Self Memoir of an Artist, and that memoir covers 1977 to 1987.

Brad:

What happened after that? Wow, that's an amazing story. One thing I noticed that you were telling me about that you would go days and days and days without sleep and that that was part of your pattern. And it's so funny now because you know what they would tell you to do. Today, if you're going through all that and you're going through like days of not sleeping.

Ruth:

What would they do? I don't know what they would do they would tell you to take some marijuana.

Brad:

And look, not everybody reacts to marijuana the way I did I know, I know, but I'm just saying that that's what they would have said. I thought about that. I was like oh my god, you know this poor lady, but you got through it you know what I mean.

Ruth:

I, I got through it. It took 33 years till 2010,. 77 to 2010. Took that much time.

Brad:

Wow, and really you know it's a case study because, like a lot of people and I was one of them for a while until I had talked to some people that actually gone through it was you know this whole the. We have this, the trend, stress management and you know you're, if you're stressed, you need to do these and that and everything else. And I was for a long time I was like, come on, just get over it. I was brought up on the. You know, if it's no pain, no gain. You know what I mean. That you want to change something, just change it, just get it done. You know, find your way through, get it done, change and go and move on with your life. You know, this whole stress thing for me growing up was a, it was a cop out, it was you only were stressed if you were a wimp.

Ruth:

The understanding of what an individual goes through.

Brad:

Exactly, and you brought in the case study for how stress can actually cause harm to somebody.

Ruth:

And if it goes unchecked, that's the whole thing. It went unchecked. If I had found George in the beginning I think I would have been a lot better. He saw the pattern that developed since that PCP.

Brad:

Yeah, that's a good thing to think about. Are those patterns?

Ruth:

It's a pattern you drop into. You know we're creatures of habit. Yes, and sleep is also a habit. If you fall out of sleep, you could be without sleep or you could wake up at the same time, like three o'clock every morning, and not go back to sleep again.

Brad:

Right.

Ruth:

How do you do that? How do you do that? How do you do that? How do you break that pattern?

Brad:

Well, I think you're right about it.

Ruth:

First you have to notice it. Admit to yourself, that's the other thing he said. Learn your limitations. I was going way beyond my limitation With school and friends and boyfriends Going to Europe. It was way beyond my limitation. I should have taken it a little slower, much slower, and with him. Had I found him immediately, I think my life would have been a little bit different.

Brad:

You know so, to somebody that might be I don't want to let's not even go as far as having a nervous breakdown but to somebody that finds themselves stressed and that they tend to think outside of the box, you know, like maybe it wouldn't be as far as an apocalyptic world that you went through, but maybe something like just betrayal.

Ruth:

A feeling, a horrible feeling.

Brad:

Right. So when people start to realize that that's happening more and more, what would be the first step you would think? To tell them.

Ruth:

I would say, first of all, talk to somebody, Whether it's a therapist, a social worker, a religious person or somebody, and say, look, I feel this way. Then they would say well, do you feel this way all the time or does it happen at certain times? I would say to talk to somebody.

Brad:

Okay.

Ruth:

Because that's also. You could feel betrayed and you're not betrayed. But that could be the pattern in your head, that could be the habit in your head. If the person says the wrong thing and then you exaggerate it to a point where it's not true, they're not really portraying you, but you're in your insecurity. You feel that you are portrayed because maybe you have a low self-esteem. There might be a cause to that portrayal, feeling that portrayal.

Brad:

There's a cause there inside of you, talking to someone, you might be able to identify that yourself Absolutely and say something professional, yeah, and you're also a case study, for you know, for medication, you know a lot of people think the same thing you got to take. If you got to take medicine, you're, you know, you're weak, you know medicine.

Ruth:

I know somebody who has that issue because the spouse doesn't believe in it.

Brad:

Right.

Ruth:

Medication. If it doesn't work for the first three months, try another one or try a different dosage.

Brad:

Right.

Ruth:

And with a therapist. If the therapist is not effective for you over the three to five months, find another therapist. Don't wait seven years, find another therapist. Don't wait seven years, find another therapist. It's not written in stone that you go with this particular therapist or this particular medication. You have to experiment with yourself therapist personally, it's the methodology.

Brad:

Like you said, your first therapist was more of a Freudian methodology and it sounds like your second I mean George was more in the Carl Jung type of way, where it was more about feelings and what you were going through and simplifying things.

Ruth:

Absolutely. And also we analyzed dreams and he wrote down all my dreams. He kept a real record of my dreams and everything. He even took pictures of my parents and me and he took pictures of my kids. He had a whole history in his document.

Brad:

So I'm not sure if that's like a normal thing, but I would just be thinking that it's a methodology. You were with your first therapist for a long time before you finally moved over to somebody else, and I think it's more like that. It's that methodology Freudian, you know, freudian psychology still exists today. People still use it and it does work for some people. It did not work for you.

Ruth:

No, it didn't work for me. I needed common sense. I needed somebody to analyze the situation and say, hey look, do it a different way.

Brad:

Yeah.

Ruth:

Simpler. You know, build in architecture Don't just go from job to job. I didn't have a mentor in the architecture field which would have helped, because at the time I was in it it was very male-dominated and there were very few women in the field, which would have helped also. So I needed somebody to really instill common sense.

Brad:

So you also mentioned that when you started to recognize the symptoms and then you would tell somebody and that would help you kind of get through it, you know somebody would at least know that you're going to end up going through it, through it. You know somebody would at least know that you're going to end up going through it. Did you find, besides talking about it, did you find an activity for you that might have helped quell it at a certain point, that is, your painting or your writing or anything like that?

Ruth:

I came up, I couldn't even paint. When I went through my episode and paint, I think talking about it, I would often call my father. My father was really there and I would just talk about what I was paranoid about. It didn't make sense, but I would talk it through, so to speak, and see the painting didn't do that for me. The painting I was able to concentrate on my painting and it brought me through most of the periods.

Brad:

Okay.

Ruth:

And since 2010, the painting has really been my focus and my focus point. If I'm going through something, I would write a lot. I would write all of what's making me nervous about my son or about my daughter. I would write the whole thing down. That's actually a lot of help. Not my book, not writing my book, but just keeping a diary and what I can do to help my kid.

Brad:

And that was going to be my next question Did you find anything with your kid? Did your kids have any kind of symptoms or anything that might have?

Ruth:

They had their own, my son had his issues, my daughter had her issues. So okay, but nothing, nothing compared, nothing like me.

Brad:

Right. So not as you know, it might not come as fruition, and I'm thinking, maybe, you know, maybe it wasn't the PCP itself, it was, that was the, that was what kind of like let the kind of what opened up the barn, darts.

Ruth:

It was also with the combination of the marijuana. Yeah, I may have had a predisposition a little bit, but that just brought it all out and now you're published, you've got several paintings, and the paintings is kind of like surrealism.

Brad:

Yeah, um is what I would call them. Yeah, you can see what the objects are, but they're shaped in in. The colors are vibrant, I'd almost, it almost looks like van gogh to me, especially your backgrounds. So, for all you out lovers out there, you definitely need to take a look. And speaking of that taking a look, let's to either get ahold of Ruth, check out her book, look at some of her paintings. You just have to go to Ruth Ponierski and I will have that in the show notes along with a straight link her book Journey to Self Memories of a Memoir of an Artist. So we'll have that linked for you and then you know, if you want you could you talk to Ruth. Ruth, are you active on social media at all?

Ruth:

You can message me from my website. You can message me.

Brad:

Okay.

Ruth:

Yeah.

Brad:

Great Perfect. She's also got another website that is really kind of cool and there's a link in her original website that does that. So but you'll see it. It's right there at the top. It says see my other site, and they're both very well done. You get a chance to kind of read her poems and you get to see where the book is. You get to look at some of her paintings and it's really cool. So definitely check that out. And if you'd like to have a chat with her, then you can get to her website as well. So, ruth, and you can get to her website as well. So, ruth, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. This, I think, is very important that we get this out for the people that might be dealing with this and don't even realize it that hey, talk to someone first. You find a repeating pattern. You definitely need to go see a professional at that point and that's where you're going to take your step towards getting through it and getting to the next big step in your life.

Ruth:

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Brad:

Yeah, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining Life Changing Challengers. Check out this episode, all our other episodes, if you want to go ahead and leave a review and, you know, like and subscribe and all that cool stuff. I appreciate it and until next time, we'll see you in the next one.

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