The little boxes of life

Thinking about moving, going to a new job, but within the same career path, my post on David Brooks’ new column about America’s “advantages” over other Western countries having its price, and, lo and behold, an e-mail from a friend sums this up well. From that e-mail …

Not my poem, but the song that used to intro the HBO series “Weeds.” Malvina Reynolds wrote it in 1962:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

YouTube link here.

The paradox of emotional awareness

THE PARADOX OF EMOTIONAL AWARENESS

I became the emotional sponge of sorts
As mom and dad drifted, even careened, toward divorce,
Whether or not they were at all conscious
Of their emotional dumping
Through surrogate spousehoods, pedestal-placing, or other tricks.
And yet, though an emotional sponge,
I was often poor at reading people’s faces, actions and moods.
Why?
I think I had nearly fully despaired, by that time,
Of any control over other people’s emotions.
I had learned to “freeze” quickly, already, for Dad’s anger,
So I had no need to react any quicker to advance signs of it.
Parental dismissal, of various sorts, if only on the minor or modest levels
(Though it was sometimes major, sometimes huge),
Had become the norm, and so, didn’t need to be “read.”
And love and hope?
The reality of them, beyond any words, was so unlikely,
Especially on a deep or ongoing basis,
That I couldn’t have “read” them anyway; they were too unfamiliar.
And, if attention can be called an emotion, it was rarer yet;
The flip side of dismissal, it rarely came up heads.
Those emotions were shut books, and so I was illiterate.
Beyond that, though, the dismissal, the passive dismissal,
The simple non-interest, was the worst.
How could they not know the even darker secrets of our household,
Beyond even some sexual issues they themselves projected?
How could they not ask why I was afraid to sleep,
And still be awake at 2 a.m., beyond a thirst for late-night reading?
How could they not know, I used to wonder.
Today, as I stumble toward more emotional, and psychological,
Awareness of both past and present,
I wonder no longer.
They knew. Maybe not everything, but something.
And did nothing.
NOTHING!
Did they even care nothing?
My mom saw my first suicide attempt, as a child;
My dad heard me tell of my second, at the end of college.
Does an emotional sponge even suck up nothingness?
Well, I ate, had clothes, and a roof over my head.
So, on a surface, and material, level, they did.
Beyond that?
I, as an adult, don’t have to read Sartre to know existential nothingness;
I just look inside, for the face and voice of a numbed-out child.

Poetry: THE COMPUTER TURNS THE MAN INTO A BOY

THE COMPUTER TURNS THE MAN INTO A BOY

The Firefox window freezes again
Or, it’s my e-mail doing that.
And, even without my fear and anger at unemployment piling on,
Suddenly, I am 8 years old again.
“Stop it,” I half-yell through gritted teeth.
It’s not Flash, it’s not Java, it’s not connection speed.
It’s me. The 8-year-old me,
Frustrated at a childhood world
That will not listen to me,
Will not respond to me the way I want,
And generally has no special regard for me.
It’s me, at age 5, or 7 or 8,
But trapped in an adult body,
With adult responsibilities,
Forced to act like an adult,
Or pretend being one.
And the little old ladies,
Who bought the 5-year-old me
Sherbet at the ice cream parlor,
Before we moved,
And the world turned far worse,
Are all dead and gone, dried up and blown away.
Sometimes, I hurt.

— July 18, 2009

Complex PTSD – and alcoholism and addiction

As some psychological research estimates as many as 15 percent of alcoholics and 30 percent of addicts may have PTSD, and it’s often undiagnosed, more light is needed, especially on the little-understood complex PRSD.

Here’s a longer definition from Wiki and here
That “explanation” she holds on to is a shorter one.

Some good resources are here.

Anxiety and panic relief without the addiction

German researchers believe they have discovered an anxiolytic drug without addictive qualities of benzodiazepines such as Valium.

Now, anti-depressants can help a chronic tendency toward anxiety, but, for a person with new, and acute, anxiety symptoms, their four-six week latency period rules them out. XBD173, though worked within one hour of administration, in tests

Not so fast on ‘alcohol is good for you’

Most those highly hyped studies that claim that? They don’t meat the scientific smell test, and, shades of Big Tobacco, they’re financed by the alcohol industry. That’s complete with paid-off scientists denying the research subsidies had any effect.

George Vaillant 42 years later

George Vaillant, a psychology professor at Harvard, inherited what was then the Grant Project. Under Vaillant’s hands, it became the largest- and longest-ever longitudinal study of human psychology.

Atlantic Monthly has an update on Vaillant’s work after 42 years.

Although not planned as such, the survey has many invaluable spinoffs, including seeing how manic-depressive or bipolar illness was eventually distinguished from schizophrenia, the state of development in psychology in general, information on human happiness and its whys, and more.

The more includes it becoming an invaluable longitudinal source on drug and alcohol addiction and recovery.

Apropos of that and other things, the Atlantic story has a couple of good rhetorical questions:

Can the good life be accounted for with a set of rules? Can we even say who has a “good life” in any broad way?

Probably not, unless, riffing on Thomas Szasz, we rely on groupthink societal definitions of what the “good life” is. Or, what “happiness” is, for that matter.

That said, Vaillant himself developed some intriguing findings about “positive” emotions:

In fact, Vaillant went on, positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.

To illustrate his point, he told a story about one of his “prize” Grant Study men, a doctor and well-loved husband. “On his 70th birthday,” Vaillant said, “when he retired from the faculty of medicine, his wife got hold of his patient list and secretly wrote to many of his longest-running patients, ‘Would you write a letter of appreciation?’ And back came 100 single-spaced, desperately loving letters—often with pictures attached. And she put them in a lovely presentation box covered with Thai silk, and gave it to him.” Eight years later, Vaillant interviewed the man, who proudly pulled the box down from his shelf. “George, I don’t know what you’re going to make of this,” the man said, as he began to cry, “but I’ve never read it.” “It’s very hard,” Vaillant said, “for most of us to tolerate being loved.”

I will vouch for that indeed.

Of course, so could Vaillant.

He got married three times, and after six years with Wife No. 3, went back to Wife No.

The frustrations

I think the biggest recovery frustration is knowing that I lost a certain amount of both “self” and opportunities for career, relationship and other development in the real world, but …

Not knowing how much.

As I sit single (has some advantages), with a job paying less than $30K (Texas is a low cost-of-living state, but still), and in a career I drifted into after trying to walk in my dad’s footsteps all the way to graduate divinity school.

And, as Eliot said in Sweeney Agonisties, I do measure my life in coffee-spoons, often.

Take child sexual abuse and child PTSD seriously

Let’s stop blaming priests, or dirty old men on park benches, and instead look inside the four walls of home, or relatives’ homes, a lot more. And, let’s recognize that this causes “PTSD on the home front” (now that, due to the Iraq War, we’re sadly aware of PTSD). That, and more, is in my annual April column.

I thought secular recovery groups were more scientific

It’s all right and good for a group like Lifering Secular Recovery to bash Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous for their reliance on a higher power, confession of sins, etc.

But, for Lifering to have the founder of an acupuncture-based addiction clinic as a principal speaker at its annual convention is, at least least, a bit uninformed and at the most, a bit hypocritical.

For the real poop on acupuncture and acupressure, read the Skeptic’s Dictionary.