What’s new on my recovery bookshelf?

1. “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life,” by Dr. Daniel G. Amen. Amen, a neuropsychologist with single photon emission computer tomography brain scans, breaks the brain down into major subsystems like prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, etc. He then explains how problems in each area can cause emotional/psychological problems.

After a brief self-diagnosis checklist in each area, he then goes on to provide a whole list of “prescriptions.” They start with specific types of self-talk, then go to various nutritional ideas, then go to OTC supplements, and conclude with prescription psychiatric medications.

2. “I Can’t Get Over It,” by Aphrodite Matsakis. Matsakis runs a PTSD center for Vietnam vets; the book is subtitled “A Handbook for Trauma Survivors.”

This can be a pretty in-depth, “digging” book at times, sometimes best handled in bite-sized pieces. I say that even as someone who has already done a certain amount of “digging.”

Self medicating (no, not that way)

I finally decided that GABA plus an occasional 5-HTP wasn’t enough.

Over the weekend, I bought some enteric-coated 5-HTP that won’t get digested and broken down in the stomach as much. And, I ordered some tryptophan online.

AND, I bought some St. John’s Wort.

If that still isn’t enough, then, when I get to a counselor again (the one I’m wanting to see said they’d call me back mid-June to let me know if I can get in), I’ll get a scrip. I think Wellbutrin, or the old tricyclic inimpramine, will be my first choices, from what I’ve read.

A survivor, looking to be a thriver

I am a survivor,
And I will survive,
Because I know how to do that.
But, right now,
I’m not much of a thriver,
Because I don’t know so much about that.
I have had glimpses of it,
And occasional touches of if,
But, as a regular state,
It’s not always been there.
I don’t know fully
What “thriver” feels like,
And right now, can’t fully leap
To what that feeling is.
I am getting closer, though,
By believing in myself more,
And believing more in what I deserve.
I may just start believing even more
In what I can do,
What I have the power to do,
And then, looking around, and seeing
What I could do.
I’ll know I’m thriving
When I’m growing like I want,
And it’s coming naturally —
Well, more naturally, at least.

The overblown male erection?

Salon’s review of a new book, Angus McLaren’s “Impotence: A Cultural History.”

McLaren points out how the definition of “impotence” has changed over centuries and millennia, as well as differing between cultures. He says that Viagra, by increasing anxiety and becoming the male equivalent of a boob job, may just make things worse. And, he says that sexuality for men hasn’t always been so narrowly defined by an erect male penis.

Virginia Satir: “I am Me” (and I’m OK)

Not sure I’ve read this before; certainly, if I have, it’s been a decade?

“I Am Me,” by Virginia Satir

In all the world, there is no one exactly like me.
There are persons who have some parts like me,
but no one adds up exactly like me.

Therefore everything that comes out of me is
authentically mine because I alone choose it.

I own everything about me…
my body, including everything it does;
my mind, including all its thoughts and ideas;
my eyes, including the images of all they behold;
my feelings, whatever they may be...
anger,
joy,
frustration,
love,
disappointment,
excitement;
my mouth, and all the words that come out of it
polite,
sweet or rough,
correct or incorrect;
my voice, loud or soft;
and all my actions, whether they be to others
or to myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own all my triumphs and successes,
all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me
I can become intimately acquainted with me.

By doing so I can love me and be friendly with me in all parts.
I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best
interests.

I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me,
and other aspects that I do not know.
But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to
the puzzles and for ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound,
whatever I say and do,
and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me.

This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.
When I review later how I looked and sounded,
what I said and did,
and how I thought and felt,
some parts may turn out to be unfitting.
I can discard that which is unfitting,
and keep that which proved fitting,
and invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do.

I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to
be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world
of people and things outside of me.

I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and

I am okay.

Sleep and muscle relaxation

I got the best night's sleep in several days, if not weeks, last night.

I took a few minutes to go through some progressive muscle relaxation exercises before trying to nod off. I had done a set in the afternoon, also.

Slept almost seven hours straight.

Re-starting valerian after getting off everything but the melatonin I started last week may have helped, too.

Missing that loving feeling

I “accept” that a love relationship isn’t magic. I accept that it, and she, can’t heal everything I need healed.

But, I’m ready. Maybe not 100 percent ready, but who is?

And, without sounding needy, certainly not to the point of desperate, I’m … desirous.
Without a deity I am praying to, I’m asking, asking, asking, this world and the people in it … casting my bread upon the waters.

Me, the emotional dumping ground

I feel like I’ve been an emotional dumping ground all my life. This came more to mind while walking in the forest yesterday.

My sexually abusing brothers dumped emotions of their own abuse as part of sexually abusing me. Dad dumped his anger at other people and events as part of his anger at me, and the rest of us children. Mom dumped her own emotional emptiness as part of her neglect of us, then dumped her own neediness as part of her other sexual issues, including her degree of exhibitionism.

I feel that most of the women I’ve been with, as friends, friends-to-relationships of some sort, etc., have dumped emotions on me to a fair degree, too. But, to the degree this has happened since I got sober and got my memories back, I have to look at my part in those relationships, or quasi-relationships.

I'm just now realizing the degree of this, combined with my childhood emotional self-stuffing, both from what was done to me, and my own family "role" as the "lost child."

An insight from William Glasser about two elemental needs

From “Reality Therapy”:

We want to love and be loved, and we want to feel worthwhile to ourselves and others. Sounds like good psychology in a nutshell.

An insight from Patrick Carnes about sexual addiction

From “Out of the Shadows”:

It’s about being SAFE: Secret, Abusive to others or myself (myself in my case); Feelings of shame or Feelings avoidance; and Empty.

A 10-point roadmap for breaking improvement down into small steps

After a job downsizing/job hunt/forced move to new job in January, combined with me getting back into more journaling, I knew I needed back into more counseling, too.

Well, even though he is “just” a grad school intern, my counselor has had some insights.

One of the best is the use of a 10-point scale to rank myself on big issues, such as male-female communication.

Rather than just a “where do I think I’m at right now” ranking (which would be a guesstimate, since I’m not in any intimate relationship) he has me, this week, applying it to specific woman friends and relationships. Specifically, we’re looking at my “timing literacy,” that is, how comfortable am I talking about sexual and other intimate issues, bringing them up myself, having a sense of timing for this, and so forth.

We talked a bit about this in session last week, before he gave me an assignment. I wanted to split the difference between, say, a 2 and a 3 on one particular past issue, and he said, that’s good. It is fine-tuning the system more.

That which doesn’t destroy you will make you stronger?

Frankly, I’ve always thought this was one of the stupidest — and most egotistical — recovery slogans I’ve ever heard. Certainly the worse that’s not AA-conference-approved.

Why stupid? Well, how can I know the difference between what “develops” me and what destroys me until after I’m destroyed?

Why egotistical? It sounds like some Type A male machismo, along the line of one George W. Bush’s “bring them on.”

For less than perfect parenting

From an online recovery group:

A poem by English poet, Philip Larkin, about parents:

They fuck you up your mum and dad
They fuck you up, they really do
They give you all the shit they had
And a little extra ... just for you

Brain injury a recovery issue?

A sobriety friend of mine mentioned that brain injuries can play a part in using and addiction.

Now, I never had any that bad, but, I got to wondering if they could play a role in personality development, and so factor a bit into intensifying some of my PTSD and related issues.

I had one concussion when I was, I believe, 8 years old. School playground bullies were chasing me. I tripped, or was tripped, rather, and hit my head on hard-packed desert dirt at the foot of the playground slide. I never went to the nurse’s office; I sat through the final two-thirds of the school day that way.

I had another when I was 12. My middle school had just intramural football, divided into over-100 and under-100 pound divisions. Well, covering a kickoff, I tackled the returner, a kid who I have no idea how he qualified to be in the under-100 class. Next thing I know, I’m being pulled off the ground and congratulated for causing a fumble. This concussion was lighter than the first, but, it was a concussion, not just a “bell ringing.”

Then, I had an accidentally caused skull fracture when I was 14. Surprisingly, I didn’t have a concussion of any sort, that I can say. But, given the location of the contact, right on the frontal lobe, it may have caused a bit of mental “ding” also.

The three head injuries together, then, may be a few more of the “soul death of a thousand cuts” of my development.

Changing counselors and reflecting at three months

I am getting counseling at the regional rape crisis center. After I moved here, and realized I needed some help, I figured it would be a sure bet to have somebody with some background to deal with me.

Well, it uses a couple of interns from the university. Now, my counseler has certainly done a reasonable job for an intern, or for a counselor who has had a couple of years of experience, say, on his own, even.

But, it is a one-year internship, based on school year calendars. So, I have two more Thursdays.

Now, they do have a new intern starting in June. BUT, he or she does Tuesdays; that’s what fits that person’s academic schedule.

Well, that’s my press day, so that’s a no-go.

However, my counselor said there is another counseling center, that also has some affiliation with the university, that has other days open, and might also have evening sessions.

In any case, I think that by the end of the summer, I’ll be ready to go to every other week, rather than every week. I’ll continue with some sort of journaling, and stay in online sobriety chats.

Anxiety, anger and body memories

I continue to see how a fair amount of my “emotional body memories” in my calves (and now moving further up my legs and more into my arms) are anger, or a mix of anger and anxiety, not just anxiety and fear.

That’s good. I’m becoming more conscious of myself. It’s also not so good to the degree it affects my body, metabolism, etc.! But, I think I’ll move through it.

Getting better?

I bought some OTC generic Tagamet to use as a last-ditch backup for anxiety-driven stomach acid. Short of that, I bought both liquid and chewtab generic Pepto. And, I bought melatonin to help with sleep issues, or at least to see if it will help.

I will also increase my vitamin uptake and do more to get out of the house on weekends, while “accepting” that there’s nothing wrong with lounging, either.

I’ve been here four months now; I think by the six-month mark, I’ll have cycled through a fair amount of my stress and anxiety. I’ll probably have some left, as well as some anger. THAT is a different story.

I don’t have to like everybody and vice versa

For the first time in my life, that’s becoming an actual revelation. And, not just in the “outside” world, but for the first time since my early AA days, and at a higher level of consciousness, I’m recognizing it’s also true inside my support circles. I don’t have to even be close to liking everybody, in fact, and life is indeed too short to worry too much about that, if I’m being an honest and authentic me.

Appearances of control, lack of control

“Control” is a huge issue in recovery, above all for sexual abuse survivors. I’ve seen many survivors, once they start to recognize their histories, talk about how much they attempted to be in “control.”

For me, I believe dissociation was “control” by other means. I simply shrank my world enough to have a slice I thought I could control.

But, both I and they were deceiving ourselves.

With full-blown “control” efforts, the energy one needs to invest, in ever-increasing quantities, becomes prohibitive, short of a nervous breakdown.

And, short of dissociative identity disorder (formerly called “multiple personality disorder”), the same is true for dissociation efforts, I believe.

Loneliness vs. aloneness, “black holes” and “beasts” of drinking life, etc.

I never really felt any of this a lot when I was in my drinking life. Oh, sure, a couple of times in college, for example, walking through the small town it was in, I’d look at people’s lit front windows at night, and wonder just what they were feeling inside their boxes. But, I never attributed that to loneliness, let alone any “black hole” of the existential self.

At the same time, and not meaning to boast, quitting drinking seemed relatively easy. I found a new job after having been fired the month before I quit (for other reasons). My office manager who had shamelessly flirted with me was now my former office manager.

In short, I had what AA calls a pink cloud. I didn’t have a “beast,” either.

But, especially with the PTSD-type shock of being downsized out of a job, moving from metro Dallas to highly conservative BFE, and more, plus deliberately journaling to delve deeper into feelings of the past, I have felt all of this in spades.

The “black hole” already goes back to the age of 8, if not earlier, for a variety of childhood abuses, followed by my first drunk.

The loneliness? Well, when you get drunk at 10… or when you try to kill yourself at 10, your mom helps stop it, and nothing is done after that, is pretty effing obvious and incredibly deep. It wasn’t until the PTSD eggshell-shattering that I have REALLY felt it. Before, it was always just “aloneness.”

The “beast”? Well, AA, counselors, and wise people in secular recovery are right that sometimes other “issues” of behavior or whatever can arise after we quit drinking. (In fact, when I hear some people in sobriety recovery say, “We got drunk because we drank,” I first of all feel like they’re attacking or putting down my experiences. I then start to wonder [and yes, this sounds AA-ish] if they’re not in denial about something.)

So, that’s why I’ve become more active in sobriety chats again. I am not the happiest camper in the world.

And, I hope that I can show more empathy to others because of this. That’s part of the growth I want.

Anger — felt, accepted, vented, appreciated, seen as a sign of growth

I felt ANGRY at myself, my situation, and a whole bunch of shit when I noticed a few spelling errors, including one on page 1, in this week’s paper, looking at my copy for the web. Angry enough to “journal” two pages of scrawl-like writing about how “I hate myself,” etc., gradually calming down after a page and a half, including some non-dominant hand writing. I mean, I can’t hardly read it.

And, you know, it felt good. Not just the venting, but the actual act of feeling more anger.

The “emotional body memories,” which I first saw as just being trapped anxiety or fear, that I got in my calves after I quit drinking and started getting emotional memories of the sexual and other abuse, I am recognizing more and more to be — at least in part and at times — repressed anger. Anyway, I felt them all the way up into my upper hamstrings after finishing that journaling and going for an abbreviated power walk.

Now, can I get more in tune with my inner power from that anger? Can I put that anger to work for me more?

And, this does give me something to talk about in counseling Thursday. So, too, does thinking about how dad’s more serious physical abuse of my one brother traumatized me, just as did his and my brothers’ and my mother’s abuse and other actions.

But, I can become “unshellshocked,” to take a PTSD look at things, or at least “less shellshocked.”

Sufficient unto the day is the anger thereof

A crappy press day at the weekly newspaper where I am presently, and I BEG quite temporarily, ensconced. I missed several spelling mistakes, which I didn’t notice until copying stories to upload for our website.

I feel that maybe I’m not such a “plodder” after all. Not in the mind-numbing way this job feels like.

And, I’ve realized a LOT of my “anxiety” about this place is really previously mislabeled anger. I so fucking do not want to be here, and I don’t always deal with it in the best of ways. Maybe I’ll get better at it as I “accept” my anger more. I want to, really want to, figure out how to put it to work.

Dissociation and self-dissociation

I just realized, as part of some sentence-completion journaling earlier today, that dissociation is the flip side of consciousness or awareness. If the lack of awareness is deep enough, especially if at some unconscious level, this is being deliberately driven, I think — no, I feel — this is true.

And, if my lack of self-awareness is that deep, and is deliberate in some way? Then “I” must be self-dissociating in some way.

And, the more the bigger shocks, and the smaller nicks and cuts and water dribbles hit me, the more I realize that this is what I have been doing all these years.

I also realize that I have been, indeed, confusing or fusing anger with anxiety as part of this.

Relapses

Two online sobriety friends of mine relapsed in the past week. One was even a meeting host. Damn, it’s tough to see this happen.

Cutting

I never really “cut” myself, except for one fairly minimal suicide attempt.

However, I often did equivalent actions to myself.

They included:

• Picking at partially-healed scabs until they bled, or even pulling them all the way off. (One brother, both abuser and abused, did the same.)
• Biting and picking at my fingernails until I peeled them back below the “quick” line, which is pretty painful, as well as producing a certain amount of blood.
• Pinching skin almost hard enough to produce blood blisters.

My story, part 1

First, without getting into too many details, I’m a sexual abuse survivor.

There’s a word for it — it’s called incest. At least 2 years that I can remember, perhaps more, from at least when I was 8 to 10 years old. Maybe even longer than that. About anything you can think of, without being more specific. (I don’t just blurt this information out, anyway, for obvious reasons.)

I still can’t remember a lot today. And, I have post-traumatic stress disorder (more on that later).

The lack of memory probably says something. I’ve done the “self-counseling” work of looking at old childhood pictures, and I started looking like a pretty unhappy camper already in 4- and 5-year-old pics.

Whether that was some degree of sexual abuse that I can’t remember, physical or emotional abuse from dad, or emotional neglect going to indifference from mom, I was an unhappy camper, to put it mildly.

I know that the phrase “dysfunctional home” gets used a lot, but, I was there. Behind the Ozzie and Harriett of a conservative Lutheran minister and his wife and his five kids, there were seven individual balls of shit as the years went on.

To put it rhetorically, which may keep a little more distance for me:

When you’re 8 and two of your brothers come into your bedroom at night, and family life goes “blissfully” on the next day, you’re not in a normal family.

When you’re 9, and after you’ve chased your 1-year-younger sister with your Christmas present hunting knife (not recognizing she was reaching out from some degree of abuse herself, etc.), and your dad threatens to use the knife on you if you ever do that again, and life goes “blissfully” on the next day, you’re not in a normal house. (Dad was not the most horrible physical abuser in the world, but did go far enough to hit me and each of us kids in the mouth at least once, go beyond spankings to beatings more than once, etc.)

When you’re 9 and your dad catches you reading in bed at 2 a.m. and spanks you to the point of beating, rather than praising your intelligence for reading non-fiction books late at night, let alone not asking why else you would be up that late, you’re not in a normal house. (Why was I up that late? Best I can figure now, I realized my brothers wouldn’t come into my bedroom, even late at night, if I still had a light on. And, I was surely afraid to go to sleep. How afraid, I may still not recognize.)

When you’re 10, and the younger of the two older brothers is physically abusing you, and something finally snaps, and you attempt to strangulate yourself with a belt, you’re not in a normal house.

When, five minutes later, that same brother and your mom intervene to stop the suicide attempt, and nothing more is ever said about it, let alone done about it, as the family life goes “blissfully” on, you’re not in a normal household.

When, also at 10, the oldest brother primary sexual abuser shows you where dad’s liquor is at on the top shelf of the pantry, encourages you to try various things, etc. you’re not in a normal family.

(And when you don’t recognize until almost 30 years later how abnormal this all was, you’ve definitely been affected by living in a dysfunctional family.)

That said, I sampled all the clear liquors. Then, I saw the Jim Beam, or Jack Daniels.

The amber color fascinated me. Besides, I knew that real men like John Wayne drank whiskey — straight whiskey.

So, I did, or nearly so. I may have cut it 10-15 percent with water, but nothing else. This 98-pound kid drank 4 ounces or maybe a little more. He was macho. Wait until the neighborhood bullies heard about this.

Little did that gentle, soft-spoken boy realize he had just turned off, or finish turning off, an emotional and psychological light switch.

He wasn’t macho; he was hurting, and getting drunk for the first time.

(To be continued.)

PTSD in haiku

A symptoms catchall
Acronym PTSD
Lists various wounds.

It’s full name, unspun,
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Yes, a disorder.

Disordered childhood,
And sensitive child selfhood
Means adult chaos

When I feel unsure
Lost, lonely, abandoned
Trapped, scared, afraid.

Childhood battle scars
Are real, not just acronyms.
I am allowed that.

Not the best day

Spent time, mucho time, surfing the Net, and not for news stories. This was AFTER talking in a recovery chat room about this being a problem.

Talk about a dichotomous life.

It frustrates the hell out of me.

An acting out feedback loop

Sexually acting out “gratifies” several old behaviors and old tapes, especially when done alone, with pornography.

I get to ramp up anxiety to “feel something”;
I can confuse anxiety with anticipation, and set myself up for problems becoming sexual in a real relationship, thus causing further feedback about my competency;
I can use this as an excuse for not meeting real women;
I can use this to actually feel sexual pleasure without becoming fixated on performance or gratifying a woman’s needs and pleasures in a real relationship;
I can use this to try to bury anxiety, boredom and other emotions, like alcohol used to do;
I can justify what is still left of my dad’s old tapes about sexuality in my head;
I can beat myself up emotionally.

I never had big issues with the “addictive voice” or anything like that when I quit drinking. And, though I had occasionally tried illicit drugs above marijuana, and done more than try with various over-the-counter stuff my last years of drinking, I didn’t have problems there, either.

BUT, I got all that with acting out. And I can justify it won’t kill me like alcohol.

• The ultimate problem, being the acting out:
• Fear of sexuality;
• Perhaps some degree of disgust with sexuality I still haven’t tapped, whether from the overt sexual abuse by two male family members or the covert sexual abuse by the “woman of the house” getting ready for work in various states of undress in the bathroom, and more.
• Excuse making, to justify a “fuckit switch” or otherwise giving up;
• Not living in the moment;
• Not wanting to be patient;
• Not wanting to “face” me or “work on” me;
• Not being me.

Patrick Carnes says this all links to "trauma bonds."

It’s the weekend, it’s anxiety time

Ever since losing my last job, scrambling for a halfway acceptable new one, and having to move to a small town I classify at times as Bum Fuck, Egypt, PTSD-related anxiety levels have been a problem.

And, they become more a problem on weekends.

Why?

• I’m anxious about being bored even before facing the actual possibility of being bored.
• I’m anxious about wasting time from the weekend even before I start experiencing any of it.
• Because I’m anxious about being bored, I’m anxious about sexually acting out to avoid being bored, or more, to try to bury the feeling of being bored.
• I’m anxious about feeling any loneliness, not just aloneness, I may have.
• I’m anxious about what I could, or could not do, in the College Station area, or the Houston area, and whether I’m trying to “rationalize” things.

Post-alcohol, the struggles only began

Even after I quit drinking, my problems weren’t over.

Due to a variety of abuses from childhood, including family sexual abuse by older males at home, family covert sexual abuse by a female member of the family, early exposure to sexual magazines and more, while being a sensitive child and a late grower to boot, I have had a boatload of problems with sexuality.

They include sexual fears and anxieties, confusion of sex with intimacy, intimacy fears and acting out problems. Because of all the fears and anxieties, my acting out has tended to be “impersonal.” My various forms of acting out behavior have usually been Internet pornography or DVD based. (See the PTSD and me blog for someone with a very similar background, even after getting married.)\

I still struggle. Sometimes I don’t struggle, I say “fuck it” and give in. Occasionally, I am in the groove of not struggling. I usually inflame some addictive subself to get to the point of struggling, before I do eventually give in, in many cases.

It’s a way of beating myself up, while ratcheting up PTSD-based anxiety at the same time. Some fun, eh? Maybe, as many people do with alcohol, I’ll grow out of it. But, to the degree that happens that way, it’s still going to take active work on my part, as sexuality, even as much as I misplace it and fear it, does reflect a human longing and desire on my part.

Knowing vs believing vs doing

I don’t mean to imply these are opposed to one another. Rather, it’s a progression of recovery statuses and states.

When trying to quit drinking, or drugging if that’s your primary deal, or gambling, or sexual acting out, knowing why you do it — especially if it’s a psychological addiction like gambling, or even a psychophysiological one like sexually acting out — that has replaced a chemical addiction, knowledge can be important to helping us, or me, stay clean.

But, knowledge alone about why I do this won’t force me to believe I can do better. It can help, but ultimately I must take an emotional step and believe I can step beyond my addictive or compulsive behavior.

And, belief is not sufficient either, of course. Ultimately, I must act in a new way — I must do new behavior.

And that brings up one other point. I can’t just “not do old behavior.” I need to do something new instead.

Old behaviors have to be replaced by new ones, or else there’s a void.

That’s true of more normal people, but doubly true for myself, with an addictive history, and pains I have tried to cover, fears I have tried to hide, and an outside world I have tried to block out.

If I don’t replace old behaviors with new ones, I am in trouble. The addictive subself was probably “fed” long enough that it will never be 100 percent dead. Even after I quit drinking, I have fed it still with various forms of acting out behavior, usually Internet pornography or DVD based.

It’s OK to say you’re not OK

Even in the comfort level of a recovery chat, we may still say “I’m OK” when we’re not.

It’s OK not to say that. It can even be better not to say that, especially if you’re honest with yourself in so doing.

Hello

I decided to start a blog just about recovery issues, to keep it separate from my other blogs, on political, professional or philosophical issues.

I'll discuss recovery from alcoholic-level drinking, recovery from overt and covert sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect/abandonment, and post-traumatic stress disorder.