I have thought for some time that the role of caregiver seems to itself turn up as a possible precursor to PD itself. My wife and I put in eight years caring for my grandparents and my PD was diagnosed just as that period came to a close.

The deep and chronic anguish that comes with longterm care for someone you love and for whom there is no hope can become a terrible thing. You are caught in an intensely painful trap from which there is no obvious escape. Your own health at some point begins to crumble.

If any psychology types (such as our benefactor Doc John) are looking on, it would be interesting to know their thoughts.

If you put a mouse in the situation of being subject to an electrical shock and being unable to escape, he enters a state of "learned helplessness" and simply gives up. He lays in the bottom of his cage as the shocks ravage his body. He has no hope.

What is our experience in the case of suffering the pain of extended suffering before which we are helpless? The cage from which we cannot escape? Or when the cage itself is so well repressed as to be invisible? When "Mommy" really was an angel but one that brought a price that would make Satan blush?

Remember that we have three core responses to threat - fight, flight, or freeze. It seems obvious to me that a number of us have chosen the latter because we could not bear to see Mommy's tears or Daddy's rage.

Does that explain PD? No, probably not. Is it irrelvent? Not for a minute....