“But I want to be the baddie!”
”You can’t be the baddie, you have to wear black.”
“NO I DON’T. I don’t have to wear black.”
“Yes, all baddies wear black. Don’t be stupid.”
“I’M A BADDIE AND I AM A BLUE BADDIE!”
This is an everyday conversation between Carl and Lisa. It’s the type of interaction to which any of us are accustomed, if we have small children in our lives. But the difference with Carl and Lisa is that they’re in their forties, and, up until recently, they were part of the C-Suite at Fortune 500 companies, managing thousands of employees, flying around the world in private jets, working 25-hour days. Carl was the CEO of a large American finance company; Lisa was the CFO at a global health organisation. Over the past two years, give or take, their minds have “switched off” from the stress, and, it seems, they have given up all responsibilities. Unless, of course, you argue that debating the defining characteristics of baddies is a new and strange responsibility.
Dr Becky Hoddle, from the Houston Institute of Adult Traumas (HIAT), in Houston, Texas, has been seeing new and complex forms of trauma develop in high-powered corporate leaders in the past twenty years.
“To begin with, there was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It has an enormous range of symptoms, and can present as radically different from one individual to another. Since the introduction of the Internet into mainstream society, however — in the 1990s — we have been seeing some new variations on the theme; variations that present as so dissimilar from the range of PTSD symptoms to which we’re accustomed, that we have only been vaguely acknowledging it as such. It is, however, strongly tied to stress and trauma, so here at the Institute, we are attempting to learn more about these new variations, to see how we might address them.”
Dr Hoddle’s team has been working for the past six years on a privately-funded study into the new types of trauma symptoms that they’re seeing, which they have dubbed “Trauma 2.0". As much as the nickname is unfortunate, it is also apposite: like “Web 2.0,” these symptoms are not yet clearly defined, and the general diagnosis is both widely discussed and protested.
This small, dedicated team has been gathering data, performing behavioural analysis, and overseeing holistic therapy programs for over eighty adults in the HIAT. All patients have been admitted on their families’ request, as their devastated partners and siblings have exhausted all other options for medical, psychological or psychiatric treatment. Carl, for example, was behaving more and more erratically — at work and home — until one day he stopped going anywhere at all, and when his wife returned from work, she found him in a cushion fort in the living room, watching`` “Thomas the Tank Engine” on his iPad. When she hesitantly asked what he would like for dinner, he shouted, “Pies and chips!” and promptly returned to his TV show. After an hour, his wife knew that something was drastically wrong: this 46 year-old man — this CEO — was speaking like a toddler and seemed incapable of behaving in any other way. She called for an ambulance, believing that he had a stroke, and it wasn’t until weeks later that she was contacted by Dr Hoddle, who had heard about the case.
We sat down with Carl after breakfast one morning, to see if we could ask him some questions. Dr Hoddle introduced us.
“Hi, Carl,” said Dr Hoddle.
“Hi,” said Carl.
“Carl, these men are from the newspaper.”
“Huh.”
“You know the newspaper Carl? These men work for the newspaper. They write about things. You know, they are reporters.”
“Huh,” said Carl.
Here was a 40-something man — with a 40-something face, with wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, and an uneven skin tone due to sun damage, and scruffy, greying hair (including facial growth), and a slightly overweight body shape — behaving like a child. He was swinging his legs violently, and banging them against the chair legs. He was uninterested in us, and wanted to go over to the other patients, who were playing with a great selection of toys and games.
“Hi Carl,” I said. “My name’s Allen.”
“Hi,” said Carl.
“Carl, can I ask, how old are you?”
“Why are you a reporter,” said Carl.
“Well, because I want to go around the world and find out interesting things,” I said, “and then I want to write about them so that other people can find out the interesting things too.”
Carl had completely lost interest mid-sentence, and was picking his nose.
“Carl,” said Dr Hoddle. “Don’t do that, it’s not nice.”
Carl stopped picking his nose.
“Why,” he said.
Dr Hoddle put her fingers to her temples.
“Carl, did you hear what the nice man said? He asked how old you are.”
Carl had tensed up, watching the other kids play, and Dr Hoddle noticed that one of the other men was playing with one of his favourite toys: a plastic figurine of a man in a business suit. She motioned for another staff member to intervene, and we saw him carefully distract the patient with an iPad, then they hurriedly mixed up some of the toys, swiftly removing Carl’s favourite in the process, hiding it behind their back. Carl saw his toy was safe, and relaxed in his chair. Dr Hoddle sat up straight.
“Carl. The nice man asked, how old are you?”
Carl screwed up his face, stared at something on a faraway wall, then relaxed his face, sniffed, and tried to go cross-eyed. He seemed entirely bored by the attempted interview. Dr Hoddle leaned back in her chair.
“This is what he’s like,” she said. “This is what they’re like.”
We all might have wished, at some stage, that we could leave our lives; particularly, when the going gets tough, that we could stop paying bills, stop waking up at 6:00am, and stop having to deal with those extremely stressful crises at work; but what would really happen, if we did?
“For many of these patients, life will be fine,” said Dr Hoddle. “They have investment funds that will last them twenty lifetimes. Some, however, have mismanaged their funds, or their businesses haven’t done so well. We have been able to study them, based on private funding, however that won’t last forever. When the funding goes away, the patients who don’t have funds will go back into the system, which likely means long-term institutionalisation without specific or specifically trained care. Because they have a mental age of — around a three year-old — we fear that other adults may take advantage of them; there may be abuse. We don’t know what will happen.”
On our way leaving the HIAT, we saw Carl playing on an iPad, sitting slightly away from other patients. We had been covering this story as it was unfolding throughout the developed nations, with little to show for our research, interviews and in-person observations. I walked over and had one last go at an interaction.
“I know you’re faking it,” I said.
Carl looked at me, made his eyes go wide, and stuck out his tongue.
