It wasn’t sure whether a meeting would work out at all – just as it’s never certain how a conversation with Tobias P. (name changed) will go. Is it still the same at the end as it was at the beginning? Doctors call it dissociative identification disorder. The supervisor therefore remains at his side. Those who don’t know him, she explains, may not notice the change at all, any more than he does himself. So she keeps an eye on him, raises her hand if she has the feeling that he’s getting too close , which torments and could trigger him.
Tobias P., a man in his mid-50s, neatly dressed, stretches out his hand in greeting, he can do that now, he can allow that much touching. He is likeable, and after just a few sentences it is clear: highly intelligent, very eloquent. But also very broken. This is how P. describes himself. Sometimes he talks about himself with a little laugh, but maybe only so that the tears that he keeps wiping from the corners of his eyes don’t really flow.
“You only know people like me from the news”
Tobias P. has been at home in an assisted living facility in the district for twelve years. It’s good for him, years later he was even able to allow his supervisor to enter the apartment. A matter of trust, like so many things that are normal for most people but not for people like him. “Anyone could be someone to hurt me.” And the apartment, “that was the scene of the crime,” he says. “You only know people like me from the news.” Those like him are the abused, those who have had their childhood stolen from them. And who eventually learned to live with it.
Or can’t. In the early 1990s, Tobias P. made his first attempt at suicide. Discussions with a therapist followed, and not much later a second attempt. “I didn’t want my life to end at all,” he says, “I just wanted an end to suffering.” Other therapists come who don’t specialize in his problems, other conversations, the Nussbaum Clinic, before that Haar, all those houses where the mentally ill are supposed to get help. Until Tobias P. himself asks the decisive question: “Who am I?” To this day he is still searching for a valid answer.
A psychologist has repeatedly compared him to a glass of water, an attempt to use an image to conjure up the idea of unity, of a functioning person. “But I could never see myself like that,” he says. “I am a glass with ice cubes. Each cube represents a different person in me.” For the different people who are inside him at the same time and wrestle with each other. A little boy is also among them.
As if his brain had refused to acknowledge that part of his experience
Extremely traumatic experiences during early childhood can trigger a disorder like Tobias P. has. Experiences he had known nothing about for a long time. It’s as if his brain refused to acknowledge that part of his experience. “As if I shouldn’t have known that. I was trained to always say yes, to function. Everything should look normal.”
When his childhood is long gone, he realizes that he doesn’t function at all, an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk leads to a serious breakdown, he can hardly work. He now lives on a small disability pension and top-up benefits.
Panic attacks and social fears torment him again and again, and he is becoming increasingly neglected. Many conversations and a good doctor put him on the right track. But it is not a coherent story that he can tell. “It’s strange when you realize at 38 that you’re missing a third of your life.” Amnesia still blocks the complete view of his childhood, no Christmas, no birthday, there are only flashbacks, fragments of memories. The image of a psychopathic, violent mother, 150 kilograms, who stands by his bed at night with a knife and wants to murder him, always hungry, the mother between empty bottles in a dark room, stench, such things creep into his mind.
And then this other thing, which he had forgotten because it was almost unbearable, which didn’t just happen once, but “organized”, as Tobias P. says. He talks about being sold, being humiliated, about the feeling that he is just something “for the dustbin”. Even if the memories are not all present, the fear is. And the conviction of being just dirt.
“I had to learn to recognize the beauty of the world”
Tobias P. started painting a few years ago because people who meant well by him realized that he was good at it. He has already made it into the selection for an art award three times. A lot of what he paints is bad, there are always pictures that he has to destroy because he can’t stand them himself, but others have found their way into the public eye, like that of a man and a boy in a spoon position, or a man with dark cloak just closing over child clinging to man’s leg. He now also paints pictures that are simply beautiful, flowers, vases. “It might not be that valuable artistically,” he says, but it’s so good to create something beautiful for once. “I first had to learn to recognize the beauty of the world – that’s where I found a really big anchor.”
Tobias P. has now started special trauma therapy in Munich. He can hardly afford the cost of a good 40 euros a month for the trip, not to mention the money for his paints. A donation could help him find his way back to life. “The goal is for me to remember.” Tobias P. agreed to the interview because he wants to encourage others who have been through similar experiences to seek help.
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