Frederic M.
Photo provided by Frederic M.
If you’re reading this, give yourself some grace, trust and love yourself.
I will admit I am nervous sharing this letter, the stories in here are all real and I spent the majority of my life “masking” them up. I share my journey into medicine and open up about some of my toughest moments and challenges in life to demonstrate to you all that life can be challenging but you can get through it and break through the limitations or mental restrictions we all can place on ourselves. If I can impact one person’s life, like my mentors, friends and various literature did for me then this letter will be worth it. I never realized how much my life experiences affected my thought processes, confidence, self-worth, and emotional regulation. The reality is I needed to see a therapist years ago, yet at 26 I am finally unpacking my life experiences, and it is never too late. My journey of acceptance and healing is in its novel phase. My name is Frederic B. Montz III, I am a first generation college graduate, medical student, and most importantly an aspiring cycle breaker. I am on the journey of promoting healthy coping mechanisms and demonstrating to you all that you can achieve anything with a proper mindset, headspace, and emotional regulation. I present to you my “unmasking moment”. Here is my story.
Phase I: You spend an entire life building a personality, defense mechanisms, walls, masks, and other ways to cope and deflect things you’ve experienced.
I am an only child born into an Italian-American family in New Haven CT. Holidays were always at our house, we love to host, cook, be loud and drink red wine. We do the Seven fishes on Christmas eve, my grandmother’s Sunday sauce (take a slice of white bread, fold it in half and eat the fresh sauce.. amazing), and my mother’s Easter rice pie are some of my favorite seasonal dishes. I am a momma’s boy, my mother’s work ethic and warm energy are the reasons I am here today. She worked multiple jobs to put me through private school as a child wanting me to “live a better life than she did,” she deserves all the flowers in the world. My maternal grandfather took care of me and funded a lot of my undergraduate education. A union man with unbelievable character, my two biggest disappointments were not learning his homemade Sicilian pizza recipe and him passing away before I received my college degree.
My parents separated when I was three so I spent most of my time with my mother and maternal grandparents. My father is a man with a good heart however he came from dysfunction and never learned how to regulate his emotions. His parents divorced and his step-father was an abuser of alcohol who was physically and verbally abusive towards him and my paternal grandmother. Unfortunately the family dysfunction overwhelmed him so he numbed the pain with drugs and alcohol. Going down a crippling rabbit hole of crack-cocaine, oxycodone and 6 dollar well vodka, he intermittently appeared in and out of my life in childhood. On weekend visits he’d project his emotions on his life onto me and manipulate me to cry to my grandmother so we can get money, then threaten to never see me again if I told my mother. He’d leave me in his (the times he had one) car to buy drugs “if I don’t come back in 30 minutes call the police”, or we’d walk 10 miles from whatever motel he was staying at and he’d leave me on a busy street corner for 5 minutes.
How did this affect me? Well, I struggled to trust people as a kid and developed a savior complex toward my father. I wanted him to change and believed a lot of the hearsay he told me. Middle school I was a quirky, bright, and energized kid. I spent the 11 years of my life with the same 15-20 kids. I played recreational sports but put so much pressure on myself during games and events I performed poorly then I would beat myself up after. I was never taught how to regulate frustration and emotion. In fact emotion was the driving force to most of the interactions that surrounded me. Academically school was a calming place for me, I liked the structure, found school work enjoyable and did well in my classes.
A second man is introduced (and forever ingrained) into my life who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but uncontrolled on medication. A man who I’d describe as a hypermaniac, narcissist, ultra-manipulative, roller-coaster ride of chaotic yet successful business owner. My fondest early memory of him is when he told me to go fuck myself at a pizza parlor because I told the waitress he was not my dad was when I was 9 years old. Ever since then I hated that narcissist, manipulator and womanizer. Living with the man was a roller coaster ride of emotion. He went into cycles of what felt like a dopamine rollercoaster of mania, throwing money around as a trade for derogatory degrading comments that sunk our self-worth. Followed by a depressive drop into a pity party of manipulative whines. I am grateful to say I always had food on the table. Half of the days he’d sleep at his business or the extra apartment he had. Over the mask one would see a huge Connecticut home with an Audi and Jaguar XF in the garage and a closet full of polo Ralph Lauren, Sperry’s and Calvin Klein. We threw lavish Christmas parties, ate fancy steak dinners, and had new electronics. However behind the scenes, he put a mental headlock on our psyche. My mother took an early retirement at her job and it reduced her salary while his transport and repair company grossed a few million dollars annually. Once he had manipulative control he did not want to let it go. Once you live and stay in an environment where you feel and are told you are inferior you never realize how much it stays ingrained into your psyche and wellbeing. He’d intermittently shut off the electric, gas and utilities just for sake of mind control. Sometimes, I would pour diesel gasoline from the Mobile gas station into our furnace for us to take a hot shower at 32 degrees. We were puppets on a string to a manipulative master puppeteer. He was an adult in a traumatic childhood state, we were toys in his toy chest waiting to be played or abandoned at his leisure. Another man in my life who could not regulate his emotions and projected his trauma into people. Where was my father during all this? Hopping between homeless shelters, living underneath bridges, and for a moment he lived on the top floor of the man’s business. How did all of this affect me? Seeing my father at ages 16 and 17 with rags for clothes, unshaved gray-black beard, showing me cardboard signs saying “Jesus please save me” while living in an empty office space owned by the man who tarnished his ex-wife and only son gave me such an inferiority complex. I went to an affluent Catholic all boys high school and mentally felt weaker to my friends who had healthy families. I was insecure and looking for validation externally. I avoided partaking in many activities in high school and the ones I did I would make myself so anxious with the pressure I put on myself that I performed way worse than I could have. I struggled with self-confidence and overextended myself to feel accepted by others. I wanted to change but did not know how too. I graduated high school and was ready for a fresh-start. I left Connecticut and went to the University of Tampa ~1200 miles from home. On a journey to change my life and do whatever it took to escape the dysfunction. At that moment I wanted to “save myself”.
Phase II: The Energy is just transferred.
Looking back at it, I really do not know why I pursued the pre-medical route. I had a C+ in high school chemistry and a B- in high school biology. I never took an AP class and only studied for exams the night before. I was placed in an Introduction to Chemistry class and found myself utilizing my same habits for the first two exams. I told myself I’d try my hardest on the third exam and if I didn’t do well I’d change majors. I did the same 10 practice problems hundreds of times over and over. I tried to maintain composure during the exam. I scored a “93” on that exam. I share this story because one exam score was enough to escape the mental headlock I had on myself. A small token showing that I could perform well with hard work. My Biology I professor became my mentor. She saw me in office hours reciting everything on the exam in an anxious, chaotic state. She comically laughed and gave me composure. A nurturing woman who could feel my anxious energy and see who I was attempting to become, she saw my potential before I saw it in myself. I wouldn’t be writing this letter without her guidance. Over the following years the University of Tampa became my home. My favorite courses in college were organic chemistry, immunology, and molecular biology. I joined a volunteer club called MEDLIFE where I served as the chapter co-president. I made some great pre-medical friends (who I consider family) with whom I studied, volunteered, and socialized with. My spring semester junior year, I had a “everything was coming together” moment- I pulled my first 4.0 semester, went to Ultra Music Festival in Miami, completed and presented a research project at my school's research symposium, and went on a service learning trip to Lima, Peru with MEDLIFE. I was starting a clinical research internship at Tampa General Hospital, had a good support system and had proven to myself I could achieve consistent success with hard work. I wish I could say this is where the story ends but frankly this may be where MY story actually begins. When one represses and ignores years of intense trauma, it just doesn’t “disappear”, it’s only a matter of time before it finally comes to surface.
Phase III : The hardest part is trying to stop it. The overthinking, the external validation, the savior complex, they are so integrated into your thought processes trying to unwire them takes constant diligence to your emotions and reactivity. I want to give in.
Spending most of my life in emotional chaos and dysregulation. Naturally, everything in my life was going well so I was waiting for something bad to happen. Since I was always around chaos and dysfunction, I started to ruminate and create my own. I put self-destructive thoughts in my head that I was going to die. I had dreams where I saw my own tombstone and my mother weeping over my grave. Never overcoming my feelings of inferiority I sought validation in taking on more work, I wanted to put more pressure on myself. My senior year I overfilled my schedule with four science courses on top of running a club and research roles. I put so much pressure on myself anytime I did not get an “A” on a test I was disappointed. I started consuming 400-500 mg of caffeine a day which led to an inconsistent sleep schedule. In the summer of 2019, I went to an urgent care for a cough, the staff ended up mistaking my EKG for an acute heart attack. I was rushed into the back of an ambulance which led to a comical emergency room visit where the attending dismissed me after immediately taking another EKG upon my arrival. In the back of my ruminating mind I thought maybe I had heart problems after all. Every time I had palpitations my mind wondered, “do I have heart problems?” Consequently, I ended up with worse palpitations and fasciculations throughout my body. I stopped enjoying school and the work, I was slowly turning numb. I was not used to success and as a result I started to unintentionally self-deprecate and self-sabotage. I went to the emergency room three separate times my senior year because of heart palpitations and stomach pain from stress. I was so “determined” and tense to overcome my surroundings I nearly destroyed myself in the process. What I did not realize, I just transferred the chaotic dysregulated energy into my work and craft. Although I graduated as a first-generation college student with magna cum laude distinction from the University of Tampa, I sacrificed academic success for an unhealthy relationship with myself. I was putting all my self-worth into school work and external gratification. The repressed emotions and memories were only sunken deeper, still lingering in my subconscious. I never went to therapy to address them or told any of my close friends about my life. One way or another they were about to come out.
Phase IV: The worst part is you never realize you are in a loop to begin with, but after a while of repeating the same patterns and noticing the same results in different situations you realize you have a problem.
When emotions and life situations are repressed long enough they are bound to burst. That emotional geyser for me came out in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021. I was working as a medical assistant at the time and was struggling to get into a routine from my post-undergrad burnout. I lost the edge and did not know how to rejuvenate myself for the MCAT and medical school applications. Back home, the man in my mother’s and I's life succumbed into a crack cocaine addiction. Instead of addressing his problems in life he decided he did not want to live anymore. A metastatic cancer in terms of dysfunction he started robbing and stealing from his company, attempting to tank a seven figure business with a $100,000 drug addiction; he attempted to take down anyone in his company and those who were near him. While I was in Tampa, Florida, my mother called me one day at work, crying that she could not take dysfunction anymore. I immediately called my boss and told her I had a family emergency. The next day at 5:15am I drove 20 hours straight from Tampa, Florida to New Haven CT, three cold brews and a ruminating mind rotted on the situation. While moving my mother out of that situation, I had a revelation of how bad the situation was and how much his actions, emotions and words affected my family and I. The next few moments were probably the most unstable my mental health ever was. I contemplated burning the house down to destroy all the pain and memory that tarnished there. I wanted to strangle the life out of him, I knew if I saw him I would’ve gone into a blackout rage and came out of it with his blood all over me. I wanted him to feel the pain and fear that we felt when he “played” with our emotions and livelihood. I felt weak, a coward, brittle, helpless and mostly empty. The days were long and I was angry at the world. In reality I was just projecting my own anger on myself for never sticking up for my mother to that coward of a human being . I noticed in my own relationships and friendships I prioritize others emotions and gratification over my own and I did not know how to change my thought processes and actions.
The night before I started medical school I received a phone call from my mother. “He’s dead, they found him unconscious.” The night before I started chasing my dream and the biggest chapter of my life, the most chaotic dysfunctional chapter closed. I felt cold and apathetic to the situation. My mother was involved with his business so called me about the services, I was bottling up the emotion until I yelled “ I don’t want to hear it, he was a terrible person.” I hung up the phone and facetimed my former girlfriend at the time, then the next few moments I don’t remember much. I was just screaming “it’s not fair he gets a service these were human beings he treated them so terribly”, I just kept repeating “we’re just human beings you don’t do that to people” and suddenly I just dropped to the fIoor and start weeping uncontrollably. It all finally came out, years of repressing and pushing the emotion away. I was done holding it in, saying I was okay when in fact was not. I sat in silence on the floor for 30 minutes staring into my fridge looking as empty as I felt on the inside no words no thoughts. The only thing that brought me back to reality was seeing my ditsy dog try to grab a tomato from the fridge that he could not reach. This was my first stage of healing, I just began my journey.
Phase V: I must stay strong and resist. It is hard but it’s better than the alternative. I’ve seen drug, mental, and physical abuse from others in my life who did not choose to take this route of challenge and growth.
The next and most emotionally challenging chapter of my life is about teaching myself how to put “me” first. The next few paragraphs entail the actions I took and am still currently taking to do that. The realization that like my father, I too grew up without a father figure and in a physically and mentally abusive environment led me to realize that I have to work on myself and develop healthy habits and changes.
Books and podcasts have brought so much insight into my life. The concept of growing and embracing challenges in Mindset by Dr. Carol Dyrek changed my perception on life. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius offers excellent insight on how to balance your thoughts and live a fulfilled life in our short time here on earth. The powerful dialogue about interpersonal relationships in The Courage to be Disliked made me realize I displaced a lot of my own triggers and traumas into my own interpersonal relationships. The Huberman Lab podcast gave me insights on how to regulate the nervous system through breath work such as the psychological sigh. Dr. Huberman’s guest episodes with Dr. Anne Lembke and Dr. Karl Deisseroth on addiction and healing of the mind were great insights regarding the exposure I had to addiction and navigating my own emotions in life.
I am grateful to have such great friends in all facets of my life. My friends from Connecticut dropping everything and coming over after work to help my mother move in 2021, my college friends who studied and volunteered with me for hours– seeing you all achieve your goals was just as valuable as accomplishing my own. My medical school family. My EDM, yoga, fitness, communities. The important takeaway is you can meet people anywhere. My close friends are family and you all kept and continue to keep me going.
I utilize various types of exercise to release energy. I started seriously weight training as a 19 year old ego-lifting to look good in Florida. I unintentionally found a passion for the mental release that comes with the challenge of lifting “heavy weight”. I’ll throw on some heavy rock and just release the emotions in a healthy manner. It’s even better when others are involved and doing the same thing. I was forced to go hot yoga by a former roommate who told me “I was stiff as a board and too anxious to not try it.” I fell in love with the challenge of controlled breathwork, mental holds and release. I regularly practice yoga to calm down my hyperactive nervous system. Recently I’ve incorporated a yoga practice that involves “surrendering” the tension of fighting your body with poses. I find that this practice applies well to the mental burdens and pressures I put on myself. I started training for a marathon this summer, I had never ran more than 4-5 miles but wanted to get out of my comfort zone. I found that long-distance running is the first exercise that has brought the darkness of my repressed memories right to my conscious surface. On a long-distance run I found myself running faster and faster thinking about screaming to the man “you could not break me,” “you could not break me.” On the same run 30 minutes later I pooped my pants trying to beat a mile time. For those of you fearing embarrassment, do not worry about others’ opinions. I openly share with you a story of me as a grown man pooping my pants in public and it is one of the funniest experiences of my life. I find that running is a healthy way to release the anger and frustration that I bottled up for so many years.
The electronic dance community gave me a space to truly express my true self. The bass and house community is very diverse, warm, and welcoming. I’ve met some of the most genuine people at shows and the community will always have a special place in my heart for showing that I can be, accept, and love my weird self. Lastly and most importantly, I am actively and routinely seeing a therapist who understands, listens, and works through my emotional triggers that keep me in a “trapped headspace”. I never noticed the “savior complex” I developed and how much it affected my interpersonal relationships. It was only hindering my own life and causing additional stress on top of my busy workload. I am learning my triggers and discovering I have so many tendencies that just felt second nature. My journey toward optimizing my mental health is in its novel stage. I have so much to learn, work on, and grow. So for now, at age 26, I am finally hitting the “pause” button on my life. I am slowing down. I am exactly where I should be, working on, healing and forgiving myself. There is no rush in this phase of my life.
For those of you still reading this, life can be challenging and cruel. We cannot control the cards that are shuffled to us. In some cases it’s nearly impossible to overcome the adversity around us. I am grateful, lucky, and privileged to be in the situation I am today. The world is a beautiful place filled with good caring people if you look at it through the right lens. Find love and fulfillment through yourself, your craft, and your hobbies then inject that energy into others to do the same. It is very hard to be vulnerable, I cannot tell you the amount of times I did not want to jump out of my comfort zone, but every time I did it only made me a stronger person. Do not fear embarrassment and rejection, in most cases you have nothing to lose in life only to gain. Talk to strangers, put yourself out of your comfort zone, and try your hardest at everything you do. You can do anything you set your mind to and you are not restricted by anyone’s limitations. We need to rely on community to overcome adversity and hardship.
Most importantly and the hardest thing I am grasping, make time for yourself, forgive yourself and give yourself grace. Sometimes we try so hard we forget to just live, we become afraid to fail, to make mistakes, to “embarrass” ourselves however we cannot grow and evolve without these moments of challenge and adversity. While it is important to care it is also just as important to live in the ebbs and flows of life. You have a story, a personality that makes you unique, you matter and the world is a better place because you are in it. You are trying your best, set-backs, mistakes, and hardship are only a part of the journey of true growth. Comparison is the thief of joy, it is always you against you. The journey to self-actualization never ends. Our lifespan on this earth is short, make the most of it and most importantly take care of yourself. I am taking this journey because I want to be the best possible provider for my patients, future partner, and be the father to my prospective children that I never had. Trust your intuition, rely on integrity and live your complete human experience.
Conclude:
You spend an entire life building a personality, defense mechanisms, walls, masks, and other ways to cope and deflect things you’ve experienced. The worst part is you never realize you are in a loop to begin with, but after a while of repeating the same patterns and noticing the same results in different situations you realize you have a problem. The hardest part is trying to stop it. The overthinking, the external validation, the savior complex, they are so integrated into your thought processes that trying to unwire them takes constant diligence to your emotions and reactivity. I want to give in but I must stay strong and resist. It is hard but it’s better than the alternative. I’ve seen drug, mental and physical abuse from others in my life who did not choose to take this route of challenge and growth. True healing comes from experiencing those emotions and feelings, sitting in them and telling yourself it will be okay.
“The Pause” – A diary journal entry I wrote one night.
Peace, Love, and Prosperity
Frederic M., Second Year Medical Student
Several studies have revealed that medical students, physicians, and healthcare professionals experience mental health symptoms at rates significantly higher than the general population. Stethos[Cope] is a chapter of IfYoureReadingThis designed to help medical students and professionals cope with the unique stressors of medical training and change the narrative of mental health in medicine.
To read more letters and interviews from students, and to learn more about mental health in the medical community, visit the Stethos[Cope] home page.