Finding Sarah

by Sarah Ferguson

  Now it was time to dig deeper into my problems, so I steeled myself to face Dr. Phil. A plain-spoken Texan who at six foot four still looks like the college football player he once was, he welcomed me in—“I’m Phil,” he said simply, but it was more than that. There was a quality of sincerity and care in his presence that made me feel that he genuinely wanted to help me. Working with him, I knew, would be frightening and liberating in equal measure.

  Sometimes I talked a blue streak about the virulent self-loathing that wouldn’t leave me alone, not for a day, rarely even for an hour, and my futile efforts to stave it off with harder work and endless instructions to be nicer to myself. Not much gave me pleasure anymore; worse, I’d be in the midst of an ordinary conversation when my internal guard dogs would begin to howl and yap so frantically that I’d lose all sense of what to say next.

  During one of our sessions, a shameful story tumbled out: how, as a child, I survived a traumatic and turbulent childhood growing up in Britain.

  I told him how my mother used to spank me because I wouldn’t sit on my portable potty or wouldn’t eat. A little vein would pop up on my forehead—my mother called it “the sign of the devil.”

  “I’m going to beat the devil out of you,” she’d say.

  One time, when I was two, Mother had a luncheon of ladies all dressed very smartly. She tied me to the potty and a table leg to keep me on the potty. I pulled and dragged myself, potty and table still attached, through the French doors and into the dining room where the ladies were lunching.

  “Mum! Can you get me off my potty now!” I screamed. The ladies gasped in disgust.

  Dr. Phil furrowed his brows. “You realize that’s not okay, to lash a kid to a table and potty chair, right?”

  “Well, no wonder I’m so flawed.”

  Dr. Phil sat in silence for a moment, allowing me to digest the assumption buried in his simple question.

  “Here’s the deal,” he began. “I believe that every one of us has a personal truth: the thing we believe about ourselves when no one else is looking. And we live our lives based on that truth: We generate the results that we believe we deserve. If you feel flawed, I guarantee you it’s because that’s what you believe you deserve. What is your personal truth?”

  “I believe I caused my mother to leave.”

  He asked me to tell him about it, and out tumbled the story of how my mother left when I was only thirteen.

  Dr. Phil shook his head. “Who does that? I mean, seriously, who does that? Who dumps their child to go off to Argentina with some polo player? Who does that? Your mother.”

  His comment got a rise out of me. Later I would write in my diary that I was glad my mum did leave, because it made me aware of how fabulous my own girls are and that I could never leave them or not be there for them.

  I explained to Dr. Phil that my relationship with my father disintegrated soon after. Living at Dummer Down took its toll: My self-esteem sunk lower. My dear father was quite lost, and in his own despair, he’d lapse into saying things he didn’t really mean, like telling me I was a “sheep’s ass,” that I looked like a clown, that I should grow up and stop acting silly. He thought he was being funny, a typical English sense of humor. I was disgusted with my life. So, I just shut up and never said a word, though I cried every night because I was inconsolable.

  Dr. Phil reflected a moment, then added: “No wonder you beat up on yourself all the time.”

  He went on to explain that parents, good or bad, are pivotal people in their children’s lives. When they yell, criticize, or embarrass their children, they leave a permanent mark on them.

  “When parents fail to point out what makes them proud or why a child is special, they write on the slate of that child. As children, we internalize what’s written on that slate. So, on some level you’re thinking, ‘I’m not good enough; I’m not worthy.’”

  I couldn’t look at him. I just stared into my lap, my breath coming faster and faster. “Yes,” I finally said in a wobbly whisper, “that’s what I’ve always said to myself.”

  In truth, so much strife had always been brewing on the home front that I felt like I had to fix everything because it was my fault. Here’s the truth: I am the pathological fixer. I’m the one who glues the broken teacup back together. I’m the one who rescues stray animals. And I’m the one who thought she had to fix our broken home.

  But when your fixing doesn’t work, you start believing that if you’d just done this or that, you could have prevented the problems. There’s a lot of guilt. Growing up, I was the one in the family who strived to create harmony. This pattern continued in my life.

  “So, you were born with a job?” Dr. Phil asked.

  “Yes, the Fixer. Be happy … be jolly … always be in good form. I twirled around my parents as gracefully as I could, charming them, soothing them, anything to prevent them from getting mad at me. But the horrible, damning thing was that I couldn’t. I know what it feels like to think, if only I’d made my bed, if only I’d behaved, maybe they would have gotten along.”

  I still feel like the Fixer today. I might be allowed time off, but I can’t seem to quit this job.

  “Tell me how you lost your mother.”

  Another story spilled out. It was in 1998 on a Sunday night, I told him. I rang her up to see how she was doing. The conversation went a bit like this:

  “Mum, tell me you love me.” My mother was not an affectionate woman with my sister Jane and me.

  “Don’t be so stupid. You don’t need to hear that. Of course I love you.”

  “No, no, no … just tell me you love me.”

  “Oh, love you.”

  She begged to get off the phone because she had to drive to the supermarket to buy a steak.

  That very night, she was killed instantly when the car she was driving collided with a van, driven by the farmer next door, on a rural road. My mother was decapitated. The driver of the other car suffered a broken ankle.

  When the accident happened, Beatrice and Eugenie were with me on summer holiday in Tuscany. At four in the morning, my assistant at the time, Hilly Bett, called me with the tragic news. Mum is gone? I could not get my head around the idea. I stood silently at my window until the first light when reality sank in. Mum and I had so many good years to come, I thought.

  I was the first to arrive at the ranch where my mother had made her home with Hector. To my dismay I found that after Hector’s long and painful death from cancer in 1990, Mum had been living on the verge of bankruptcy, too proud to ask for help. The electricity, gas, and telephone had been cut off at the farm and there was no hot water. On the kitchen table was a stack of unpaid bills.

  My mum had promised Hector before he died that she would keep their beloved ranch going at all costs. But Argentina’s rocky economy pushed up interest rates on loans, crops failed at her farms, and a pony-breeding business was hit by competition. Each month I had sent several thousand pounds to my mother, but I was unaware of the full extent of her financial struggle.

  Alone, in the shadows, next to my mother’s coffin, I waited many hours for Jane to arrive with her son Seamus.

  Once Jane and Seamus joined me, the three of us talked over whether we should view the body. It was Seamus who made the right call. He was only seventeen but he said, “Remember how beautiful she was and not how she might look now.” I’m so glad we followed his advice.

  In my therapy session, a certain rhythm was developing, and I could have continued, but Dr. Phil interrupted. “You just told me about a horrifying, tragic end to your mother’s life, and you told me about it as though you were ordering lunch.”

  I paused, not knowing how to respond. I suppose time had detached me from the emotions I did have when she was killed.

  Dr. Phil pronounced me “emotionally bankrupt.”

  I wasn’t following him. “What does it mean to be emotionally bankrupt?”

  “You are depressed. You are anxious. You have self-hatred. You have a disconne
ct. You put up a wall. You unplug from people and you have an internal, emotional meltdown.”

  I didn’t disagree with him. The very way I was handling things—upbraiding myself for every interaction, doubting every overture, withdrawing from the friends I did have—only ensured that I would keep loathing myself.

  Dr. Phil continued. “You have had a lot of rejection in your life. You have had it from your mom; you have had it from your dad. The decisions you’ve made in your life that were really destructive were set in motion many, many years ago, just sleeping inside you for a place to wield their destruction.

  “Your internal dialogue needs to change—that little voice inside you, that sometimes nagging voice that just won’t shut up. You need to realize: ‘I don’t have to think this way anymore. It’s not anyone else’s fault that I am the way I am. I choose what I think, feel, and do, and that’s a tremendous power. I have the power to choose who I am going to be and how I am going to live my life.’”

  During this conversation, I confessed to him that when I look in the mirror, I tell myself that I’m so disgusting that it’s no wonder no one loves me.

  “Now, what would you think if one of your daughters looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re disgusting’?”

  I would feel deep pain if my daughters did that. But fortunately, they don’t. At ages twenty and twenty-two, Beatrice and Eugenie are everything I hoped they would be as young women—beautiful, well-adjusted, kind, and giving—and they always make me immensely proud.

  Dr. Phil said that once I changed my internal dialogue, I would heal my personal truth. We zeroed in on my negative thoughts about myself. He slowly convinced me that they were distortions. The relief was indescribable. I began to understand how my distorted thoughts were really the cause of my bad feelings, and ultimately, my destructive behavior.

  If you’re really going to change counterproductive patterns of behavior, you’re probably going to need to change the way you speak to yourself. After all, what you say to yourself is usually an extension of your beliefs. We all talk to ourselves on a regular basis throughout the day, and this commentary typically revolves around the obstacles and opportunities we face. Yet people often don’t realize that their inner voice is speaking; they simply accept what it has to say as the gospel truth. This is what Dr. Phil means by internal dialogue. What you tell yourself can have a profound effect, for better or worse, on how you feel, what you do, and how you see the world. Depending on the content of these internal messages, they can help or hinder your life—and your ability to reach your goals.

  If you haven’t liked yourself for a long time, you’re used to saying negative things to yourself. Now you must shift and listen to a positive voice that can be found through self-exploration.

  I don’t have all the answers on how to do this, but I will tell you what I do. I turn to nature for peace of mind. I find a quiet place in nature and I sit still, slow down, and wait. When I slow down long enough, my thoughts seem to turn off on their own. I just look, listen, and the wonder always comes. Whether it’s the sight of a hawk soaring above or birds picking at the bread crumbs I’ve put out for them, eventually something will touch that spot deep inside me that feels wonder and awe.

  Become aware of your mind chatter, but don’t try to chase it away. Instead, do what I call “sitting at the end of the bed.” Perch at the end of the bed and pretend you’re talking to Harvey, the white rabbit, from the play and movie of the same name.

  Its central character, you may recall, is one Elwood P. Dowd, a congenial tippler whose best pal is the six-foot white rabbit, Harvey. No one else can see Harvey, and that’s the rub. Elwood insists on introducing him to his sister’s society friends, to fellow drinkers at the corner bar, to anyone, in fact, who crosses his meandering path. Harvey, he reasons, is such a delightful companion that others deserve to know him, too.

  Like Elwood, we all have this ability to invent characters, so why not invent ones that can help with our thoughts and feelings and our desire to improve our lives? No, really. It can work. Our own inner talk is so full of demands, self-judgment, and play-by-play criticism. Try something new. Conjure up an imaginary friend (it doesn’t have to be Harvey) who can talk to you in positive, nurturing, empowering ways. You’ll notice that you will be able to replace your negative self-talk with conversations from your beloved imaginary entity. Just don’t introduce him to your friends!

  Finally, begin to view your obstacles as just chairs in your way. You can maneuver around them, put them in a different place, or even replace them. Obstacles are movable.

  Dr. Phil has now become a pivotal person in my life—one of the finest, strongest, kindest gentle giants I have ever met. I owe such a debt of gratitude to him; he never left me alone while I was trying to find my way. My work with him reminds me of a story I recently saw on a video.

  A blind beggar was sitting on the pavement. He held up a sign that said: I AM BLIND, PLEASE HELP. There were only a few coins in his begging bowl.

  A lady walked by. She took a few coins from her purse and dropped them into the bowl. She then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. She put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

  Many more people started giving money to the blind man, and soon the bowl began to fill up.

  That afternoon the lady who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The beggar recognized her footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?”

  The lady said, “I wrote only the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”

  What she had written was: TODAY IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND I CANNOT SEE IT.

  Of course both signs told passersby the man was blind. But the first sign simply stated this fact. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.

  It is all in our words, and what we tell ourselves, whether we can see the things we like about ourselves and all the good in our lives, or not.

  Dr Phil taught me how to see.

  NUGGETS:

  • We all feel the way we think. So change how you think if you want to change the way you feel.

  • Turn to nature. If we want to keep ourselves at peace, we have to have a lovely, peaceful moment every day in nature. You will always catch yourself saying I haven’t got time, and I say to you the only thing that will give you time is by making time.

  • Become aware of your mind chatter. Sit at the end of the bed and talk to your imaginary friend. Rent the movie Harvey.

  • See the obstacles in your life as chairs. You can move them around, or out of the way, at will. Or if they are in your way, climb over them. See yourself doing that in your mind; it will make you chuckle. A sense of humor always quiets the negativity in the mind.

  • Accept that you cannot control every situation, past or present, and absolve yourself of unwarranted blame. If you do blame yourself—and you will—just remember that you’re human. I always tell myself, “Duchess or no Duchess, I am always here to learn from my experiences.”

  DIARY ENTRY

  July 16, 2010

  When you begin to wake up and realize that the life you thought you lived in is not real at all, and that you can really choose the energy of goodness and calmness, it is there for you. Why did it take me 50 years to discover this truth? And now I see it, finally. I long for everyone else to see it for themselves. Then they, especially in the UK, would stop such endless harsh judgment.

  From: Beatrice

  To: Mummy

  Hi Mummy,

  I’m going to sleep right now. I wanted to say I love you so much and that I think of you every moment of every day. I carry you in my heart in everything I do. I am so proud of you and your amazing journey you are taking and thank you every moment that you are the role model you are and for being true to yourself. I love you so so much.

  Beatrice

  DIARY ENTRY

  July 30, 2010


  I am feeling like a lion cub that has just been sent out into the African bush to grow into a big lion. To fend for itself. It feels really extraordinary. I just want to stop on the side of a road, or a hillside, or in a garden, and just stop. I want to just make time to stand and stare. I have big eyes at the world, at what it all is and how fast it all goes.

  I am very determined and committed to heal and be a force of light. I will do anything to heal.

  From: Jeannemarie

  To: Sarah

  Dearest Sarah,

  Second-guessing takes up too much time and leads to mental mutilation. God loves you. There is only one of you. I value you as God does. Not everyone has to love us, and it’s their choice and we have to be happy with that.

  With all my love this evening,

  Jeanne

  11 The People-Pleaser

  I’ve finally accepted that it’s fine if 50 percent of people don’t like me. Hopefully, the other 50 percent do!

  ANOTHER BREAKTHROUGH CAME after Dr. Phil and I moved away from my troubled childhood and broached the treacherous territory of the scandal.

  “Here is an important question,” Dr. Phil began. “Why did you have such a need for approval that you had to come up with money for your friend, up to the point that you would put yourself in jeopardy and deny your own gut-level instinct?”

  I responded that I felt my need for approval would fill up some hole in me, deliver some vital gift that I couldn’t give myself. I have done this my entire life, trying out fresh strategies, hoping that people, anybody, would find me worthy. You’d think that by now, at age fifty-one, I’d be less worried about what people think, but I’m not.

  Dr. Phil’s eyes focused on mine, and he held on to the stare while he said without hesitation, “You behave like an addict. Approval for you is like alcohol to an alcoholic or a drug to a drug addict. Approval is your fix. You’re addicted to approval and acceptance and you will do anything to get it.”