Sexual compulsion, PTSD, and control issues

 This piece from PsyPost, in talking about differences in PTSD symptoms between combat veterans and sexual abuse survivors, lays it out simply. Sexual compulsions for child sexual assault survivors in particular may well be about sexual control.

Ain't that the truth.

PTSD support, but pulled back by Jesus

 My undergraduate Lutheran college has an alumni Facebook page. Someone from a class ahead of me posted recently about having been diagnosed with Complex PTSD four years ago. Said the reasons are vast. Well ... the most likely reason is repeated child sexual abuse. The second most likely is repeated spousal sexual and/or physical abuse.

Anyway, said person mentioned Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score." Highly touted here, and I've personally used some of its ideas, adapted to "solo Gestalt." Said EMDR also helped. All good so far. Said person also noted that talk therapy didn't help — was specific about CBT, which would be correct. (Don't dismiss something like non-CBT group therapy, though!)

But, then comes the takeaway.

"There is no healing outside of Christ."

Even in your small town, there's likely a Hindu or Sikh Indian-American convenience store owner. Maybe a few Muslims.

I don't know if I feel that it's despicable you feel that way, but it is sad.

And, this is why the conservative wing of Lutheranism is a fundamentalism — different fundamentals than "THE fundamentalist" portion of Calvinism. But, still a fundamentalism. I'd say "sorry, sis," but, one of my 2020 goals (not resolutions) has been to stop saying "sorry" for things that aren't my fault. This one is nobody's fault. It's my take on conservative Lutheranism and a take that you don't take, and yes, that you don't like.

It's also, of course, why, even if I ever did leave secularism, I'd never go back to where you, or this person, are at.

To use the magic phrases of interpersonal psychology, if said schoolmate said:

"I believe there is no healing outside of Christ," I'm down with that.

But, not as written.

Maybe everybody assumes that all alums of a fundamentalist Lutheran college still are fundy Lutherans today, I guess. It's like inside talk thinking the mike is off.

If there's a fringe thankfulness? It's that this is a good reminder of what I left behind. Sure, some of my bretheren from seminary days after that may be a bit more open-minded. But, others may not.

Twenty years ago today

Twenty years ago today, I quit drinking. And, at some point not too far later, actual sobriety set in, and stayed.

I got, if not drunk, half-drunk, for the first time when I was 10 years old. On liquor, not beer. And drunk straight, or as close to straight as a 10-year-old me could stand.

There’s a story behind that, which is part of the story with why I sought out alcohol more and more for nearly 25 years after that.

I’m a “survivor.”

A child abuse survivor.

A child sexual abuse survivor.

An incest survivor.

My primary sexual abuser led me to where that liquor was at. And encouraged me to get drunk.

In addition to being a survivor of child sexual abuse at home (and yes, there, not some grandparent or step-grandparent who lived elsewhere), I am also a survivor of a fair amount of emotional and verbal abuse, along with some other psychological abuse, and a modest amount of physical abuse.

I’m old enough to have been watching John Wayne movies before he died. I knew that “real men” like John Wayne drank straight whiskey, so I drank it as straight as I could on an empty stomach to show the neighborhood kids — acquaintances all of them more than friends, and sometimes bullies and even abusers themselves on an occasion or two — that I was a man.

And threw up 30 seconds after I met two of them.

Gradually, those memories faded more and more. Along with more and more alcohol, helped by me going to an “18-state” on beer for college. Repression may not be the right word, but something like that is real, and Elizabeth Loftus is wrong more than right on this. I know.

I drank more after graduating college and doing traveling church construction for a couple of years. That said, I had alcohol poisoning in college, along with bouts of depression, and didn’t learn.

I eventually tried to follow in my dad’s footsteps. But, before I was through graduate divinity school, knew I couldn’t be a pastor, even as part of the reason for trying it, other than to please my physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive dad was to be a Protestant Christian minister’s version of “married to the church” and escaping other things.

I got my degree, but not ordination. After a year of not getting full-time work, yet not grasping in my mind how manipulative my dad had been in the past, I accepted his offer to move back in.

He lined me up with the possibility of contract adjunct college teaching, which idea I liked, and even more when I got it. And with the job of working part time at a convenience store as well, which I dreaded and made me feel more a failure.

My third suicide attempt was the day before that interview. Yes, third. One at around the time of my first drunk, in childhood, when tormented by the second of my two sexual abusers at home one afternoon. Another in college, after rebuffs from a woman who in hindsight may have been like my third, covert sexual abuser. And then this.

A year later, I was the victim of an armed robbery at gunpoint at the convenience store. And my drinking took off from there. Drinking on the job there, I got fired.

Fortunately, my dad was going to move, and I had nothing keeping me in Flint, Michigan. So, I went with him to Texas. Got my first newspaper job. Then got one in another town. Not great pay, but enough to live on my own.

And the drinking got worse. The last year or so, the only thing I rationally thought about was whether my stomach could handle a straight shot when I got up, or if I needed to start the day on beer.

For non-drinking reasons that weren’t all my fault, I was fired there. At the risk of boss-employee issues, I had asked my office manager out, for coffee, the week before. That removed that problem.

I had it “easy” on drinking. Both a Walgreen’s and a grocery within three-block walking distance and another grocery less than a mile away. After we’d been dating a few weeks, my former office manager saw me walking back to my apartment with a case of beer one afternoon. When she was over that evening, she told me how it made her feel.

Something in my listened. That was a couple of days before July 28, but … after I finished off the booze I had at home … I didn’t buy any more.

And soon, memories started coming back. And more. I talked some with her. Later, I talked more, as yet more memories came back, with the only other person I could talk to at the time.

I soon got a new newspaper job, in a new city. While driving there from Hobbs, New Mexico, I got gas in Amarillo, Texas. A voice inside me said “open the phone book when you go inside.” One AA group was the “Hobbs Plaza” group. I was a secularist of some sort then, and even more, now. But. That caught my eye. I went to a meeting in 15 minutes and an emotional dam started to break.

Then? The move, the stress, the sobriety? The memories came on more — with more emotional content. I would have to stop driving because I was crying.

Eventually, in the next town over, I found out that the pastor at the Methodist church had experience with counseling children. She’d never counseled an adult survivor before, but she helped, with EMDR, and some other techniques.

Eventually, after losing that job for various reasons, I got to Dallas. I found some secular sobriety meetings there, and got involved with Lifering online.

I also, crucially, found a organization called The Family Place which had a lot of women at risk services and then, with a grant, started its first group therapy for male survivors.

The Methodist pastor had diagnosed me with PTSD. I had first figured that was mainly a diagnosis to give an insurance company something as an entry for billing purposes. But, I found out it was real. Very real. And still is today. I even learned that something like this is considered "complex PTSD."

Along with those emotional returns came about two early sobriety years of semi-regular flashbacks and silent scream nightmares. Occasional “body memories” and actions. That’s pretty much faded away, but I had a silent scream nightmare earlier this year. Had a flashback from another trauma last year, over the car accident that badly displaced my left hand two years ago. I may have some genetic susceptibility to this, for traumas beside the sexual and other abuse, as well as that abuse priming me for other PTSD reactions.

I’ve had a hard life. I don’t mean this as a “poor me, pour me” moment per the old AA chestnut. And my life isn’t as hard as someone born into poverty. Nor have I suffered the worst sexual abuse. Trust me, from The Family Place, I know that in person. But, it’s been hard enough.

After a couple of years at The Family Place, I started facing parts of my past. Even before that, I had mildly confronted my dad over the physical and other abuse. He denied it, then minimized it while outsourcing blame.

I then confronted my primary sexual abuser. After initial non-comment, he admitted it, but said the fact he was in the ministry now was a sign he was beyond it. In turn, that only adds to the idea that in some cases, religious abuse can be a real issue.

I’ve never confronted my second abuser, but … while having less interest in confronting him before, I have less interest in accepting his apologizes for not defending me from the older abuser of the two of them as an apology, or even an unconscious admission, of his own actions. The other family member, who said I have false memory syndrome once long ago, I’ve ignored since then on family dynamics issues.

Had I confronted my mom with what I earlier called covert abuse, she would have been clueless, even with a detailed explanation, but then might have had a fatal heart attack years earlier than reality. I don’t want to go into more details; I still feel bits of shame about the weirdness, along with everything else in my family. And, again, with all of this being full blood — no "steps" or "halfs."

With the two people I have confronted, just as described in some books of survivor narratives, I’ve learned that there’s not much healing there.

Do I still have bitterness today, inside the mild-mannered self that many know in person and some Lifering friends have probably sensed just through online contact? Yes.

Bitterness over a stolen adulthood as well as a stolen childhood, not so much from alcohol, but all the family abuse and dysfunction that led to the psychological battering that led me to start getting drunk in the first place. Bitterness over knowing that, in things like a family life for myself today, or not one, a career path that isn’t my original idea or my ideal — not my ideal creatively and “spiritually” even more than not my idea or ideal financially — gets harder to change as I get older, especially in a country like ours.

All I can do ultimately is stay sober and “trudge,” as Yenta the Matchmaker says near the end of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

And, with that said, a couple of closing thoughts, for people with me now, or working to be with me now, on this journey.

One is how huge luck is in our lives. A middle class minister’s family shows blood is not thicker than water. A girlfriend’s comment at the right time “sticks.”

Related to that? Per the old medieval Church’s rhetorical question, “Cur alii, non alii,” I don’t know why sobriety, and sobriety support, “sticks” for some and not for others. I’ve tried to become more careful in insights I offer, or claim to offer, over the years, because of that.

Speaking of, I offer a few “call-outs” to those who have passed.

I mentioned Robert “Itchy” Bradley recently in another post here.

Kat Wyke, aka Kishimojun, was little known even to “oldtimer” Liferingers outside the online meeting and chat room. She stayed sober through the pain and intestinal surgeries of Crohn’s disease for more than a decade herself, until a recurrence of feminine cancer was too much.

I think of Thailand Chani (never learned her real name) and Kenya Johnson, who stayed sober through years of bipolar disorder and other mental health challenges.

Sadly, I think also of those who “succeeded” on one action where I “failed,” because they were frustrated by not staying sober. Or, those who may have thought marijuana was OK, even if marijuana smoke may not have agreed with other health issues.

Cur alii, non alii? As Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem, plays here in the background.

All I can do is stay sober, while being honest and true to myself. That's part of what non-steps sobriety offers, including on dealing with issues behind sobriety, and recognizing that they, not "sobriety itself" in a sense, may need to be the primary focus at times.

==

On a related issue, I also don't know why on "cur alii, non alii" on child sexual abuse and recovery. That's both as to why some children are affected worse by it and why, some recover better than others.

I'm going to offer a few bits of speculation, though.

First is that, if it's just a one time, or even more than once, a very occasional abuse, that may lessen its effect.

Second is that, per the ACES evaluation, stability or instability of a child's family life in general is a factor.

Third is if a child is able to, or not able to, find some sort of surrogate parents.

The real world versus aching desires

Well, it's back to Sulphur Springs after the Marlin newspaper job turned out to be a shit sandwich carefully wrapped to appeal to my emotional heartstrings.

I have no idea if Jim Moser asked other people besides me before offering me this job. I do believe, based on stuff that i couldn't have known about before I got to Marlin, that the offer was borderline unethical at a minimum. And, the "borderline" part is being polite.

So, despite my yearnings to move, despite me liking people in Marlin, despite me liking being near Waco, and despite me trying to use the I Ching and an old baseball cap to convince myself any lingering misgivings pre-move weren't real, it's back to Sulphur Springs. Fortunately, my old job was available and there's no company rules against rehires, even in those particular cases.

That's the real world. I'm back to a place I wanted to get out of rather than keeping myself in a dry heaves situation over a job whose future worried me. More in weeks and months ahead.

The good side is that I'm not eating much money, and that I now have a new cushion from Geico.

That then said, when I do hit 62 or beyond, even if I don't need to have financial worries, will I still actually have them?

Looks like it's moving time

And, back to an old position, at an old paper, but under new ownership.

Back to the town where I found this hat on the road.

The working out of the kinks on this has led me to some free association type thinking about previous cities I've lived in or at least visited regularly.

One-word/phrase word associations with various cities:

Flint — GM. Specifically, the town GM built and GM let die.

Bonham — Transitioning. Did it ever finish that? What’s the town like today? Why couldn’t things have been different when I was there? Before CNHI bought?

Honey Grove — silently dying. Like we all are. Sad.

Hobbs — Why? Why didn’t I see Mary Bearden’s manipulations better? Hah! Remembered her name. Why do other people advance and I don’t?

Jacksboro — Sorry. Sorry I screwed up with Roy. Sorry I didn’t look at good side. Sorry I didn’t do more with sports. Sorry it wasn’t 5 years later in terms of Internet. Sorry for all sorts of stuff. Town sorry too. Struggling. Oil not helping it. Only further east in county, with workers in Wise County.

Mineral Wells — Hypergritty. What will turn it around?

Lancaster — Bypassed. Bypassed by most white and much of the better black migration out of city of Dallas. Kicked? Failed city-state, with Chamber implosion?

Navasota — Depressing. Literally, for me, and thank doorknobs I got past that. Ugh. Sweaty. Missing its chances?

Cedar Hill — Boomtown-bust. The desert mall. Hypocrisy alert on Franke et al.

Odessa — Trying. Oil. Climate change looming as it gets hoist by its oil petard. Denialism.

This is from Dripping Springs, near
Marble Falls, where it eventually
was the perfect time to move.

Marble Falls — Gaslighting. That’s the way I felt with Schock. Really? That’s the way I felt with Roy’s wife. As Chuck said: “Marble Falls is not Fredericksburg, it never has been Fredericksburg and it never will be Fredricksburg.”

Marlin — Gritty. And, I guess, about to become home again.

Center — Clusterfuck. Brandi bought the Light and Champion out of nostalgia. Didn’t do due diligence with the presence and strength of the other folks and didn’t have a real plan. Clusterfucks on publishers, there and Mount Pleasant alike.

Sulphur Springs — Pretentious. In several different ways. More details later. Kind of like a bigger Marble Falls but with less reason.

==

I"m going to write more about these cities.

I lived in Flint two summers home from college in the mid-80s, half a year, again with dad while working in the late 80s, a couple of summers home during seminary time, then 18 months moved in after that.

"GM"? If you've seen Roger and Me, you get it. I saw a fair chunk. AC-Delco started there. Half its manufacturing now gone. Fisher Body of old GM cars, closed. GM Truck and Bus plant, closed. Other GM plants closed or cut back. That was before Rick Snyder's lead-laden pile-on. It's a shell of what it was 30 years ago, and pretty much a shell of 20 years ago, though changes were starting already then.

Bonham? My first newspaper job. I think my dad was right — I moved down with him, nothing keeping me in Michigan, to the nearby town of Honey Grove. To some degree, the town was living off old largess of Sam Rayburn, though Mr. Sam really wasn't that big a pork-barreler. It's gotten new life since I left, primarily being an exurb commuter town for the northeastern sprawl of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Neighboring Honey Grove, aka "the sweetest town in Texas"? Dying town, as I could tell in person recently. The 2010 Census declined almost one-third from 2000. Members of dad's church dying; saw one's grave at an old country cemetery.

These sentiments are still true, even though in my return, I found out the previous publisher, and still publisher of the next paper down the road, had been committing seemingly unethical and possibly illegal predatory sales actions on advertising customers, along with other issues. So, I'm back to pretentious Sulphur Springs, and still wanting the fuck out of a dying newspaper industry

The Body Knows the Score

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel A. van der Kolk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The latest in trauma treatment

Van Der Kolk, a leading researcher, and treater, of PTSD and other mental traumas, summarizes the latest findings on what works to help treat trauma, whether from the clinical lab with examination of the brain, treatment protocols with groups of patients, or actual individual and group therapy sessions.

If you're still struggling, you may have some new ideas here to either bring to a counselor or to try on your self at home if you're in the right conditions. (I see some things that could be adapted for journaling, more conscious self-talk, etc.)


View all my reviews

One idea he talks about is Internal Family Systems Therapy, something I'd never heard of before. Here's a website that's the home for IFS counseling training.

IFS, like Family Systems Therapy, talks about family structures, but in terms of we trauma victims having a "family" inside. This family is made up of one or more of:
Exiles — the hurt ones;
Managers — the ones that present smiley faces not just to the public but to the Exiles to quietly keep them in place; and
Firefighters — the ones that do ANYTHING to shut down an Exile when it's threatening to blow up.

Dysthymia

Unlike "regular" depression, or bipolar disorder, dysthymia is probably both tougher to diagnosis, and more debatable about just how severe it is.

That said, I'm thinking more and more that I've probably had it, more than just off and on "daily blues," for about six years.

That was when my newspaper company in Dallas closed. I've had a rocky professional life since then, and since I've lived in places that weren't always my personal cup of tea.

How much this is actually dysthymia, and how much is likely related blunted affect on positive emotions, which for me I don't really doubt is PTSD related, I don't know.

I do know that I've had cumulative traumas. Old paper shutting down in the middle of the Great Recession. Added worries, compared to many people, on job hunting with newspaper journalism already struggling.

Then, after landing a new job, having that paper look me up online and finding a blog post I wrote about the whys of the closer of my previous paper. Getting reamed out, and worried I was going to lose that job.

Then, finding out that that paper's parent company entered Chapter 11 on the day I got there. Add in an abrasive (and not just to me, though) assistant supervisor.

Then, I got out to near Austin, just as the oil boom was hitting West Texas again. Looked like it would be a bit more money, and certainly a better area. Until I could not realize how screwy the paper was run. I think I almost went into shell-shock. That, in turn, affected my relationship with my immediate boss.

From there, to my current position. Making yet more money, but having two worry about the financial side of two newspapers in a rural county with declining population.

Why wouldn't I have chronic, semi-regular low grade depression?

My apologies, to both myself, and my one follower, whomever you may be, for not having been on here in a while.

I am probably going to write something next week or so, related to some personal feelings and increased family of origin isolation, over some of the big political and social news of the past few weeks.

Frustrations and being "trapped"

Just had to have my car towed back to Hooterville from the nearby mini-metro area. I roughly know the cause, and if the tow truck driver is right on the exact cause, it shouldn't be too pricey. That said, it will cost money, and here in Hooterville, might not be done quickly.

That leads to issue No. 2.

A publishers' meeting in my newspaper company, which starts Friday. I'll have to rent a car, maybe. And, I hate the idea of a corporate meeting with Sunday sessions. And, this all reminds me that I'm the editor and publisher of two struggling papers in small towns that probably should be combined into one single paper.

I'm in my 50s, I can be grumpy too.

Having the worst case of sciatica I've had in at least 5 years, I think, after throwing my back out 2 weeks ago doesn't help. But, I'm not dead, and have less in the way of physical problems than Laura, Ang and others.

It's really that it reiterates the frustrations of still being stuck in Hooterville and that, for the last five-plus years, while I've stayed employed, my job moves have generally been escaping problems at the previous job, whether company closure in Dallas, skyrocketing housing prices in the Permian Basin, bad management at last position before this one, or a struggling economy in a struggling city and county here.

And, having been the victim (I believe) of age discrimination on one employment interview doesn't help.

Basically, things like this bring up the fear of being "trapped" that goes all the way back to my childhood issues, PTSD over the abuse.

Obviously things like this, or a drinking history that developed out of them, aren't things to be discussed with one's boss, even though she knows I've been looking for other work. Especially not when she is a "positivity" type who might think such things are easily transcended. 

The shells of PTSD

I don’t trust me well.

Let alone you. Or others.

I’ve learned that well.

That’s one of the biggest takeaways about this move, and about some of my personality in general. I don’t believe in my own skill set, let alone the rest of the haiku. Due to a variety of things, trust, including ideas of confidence, just isn't much of a part of my mental vocabulary. And so, more than being a “highly sensitive person,” I am “thin skinned,” but not in a “fly off the handle” way. Rather, it’s that I simply don’t seem to have a lot of emotional and psychological “insulation.”

When criticism arises,

I enter my PTSD shell,

A set of nestled Russian puzzle boxes.

Dissociating even deeper.

It doesn’t even have to be actual criticism, or conflict. It can be fear of possible or anticipated criticism or conflict that sets me off. Add in some physiological things like consecutive male births (the more consecutive boys a mother bears, the more likely the latest boy is to be gay, and there may be other effects from this “battle of the sexes,” too, for all we know, which is what I am getting at) and a family anxiety heritage, it’s probably not a wonder I feel like I had thinner “emotional insulation” to deal with the events of childhood as they hit me. I don't mean this to be sounding like a pity party. It's simply to say this is part of my heritage as a "survivor." In light of the Penn State and Syracuse scandals, or the Catholic priest scandals, some "survivors" adaptations are even more "primitive" than mine.

Anyway, therefore, I adapted as I knew or learned how. When I say dissociation, it’s literal, though not as severe as it once was, and it’s more conscious, at times, than in years past. I know that nobody likes criticism, and few people claim to deal with it well, though many probably deal with it “OK.” People talk about letting criticism be like water off a duck’s back. Well, to me, this is criticism like a rain storm, not just water, but being blocked out by enough layers of shells (I hope).

It’s easier not to trust just one

Rather than another, too. So I live alone.

Occasionally infused from within with childlike wonder,

While desiring a thicker skin that no wizard has to offer.

Life is short; and fear?

LIFE IS SHORT 2

Ars longa, vita brevis.
So goes the ancient Latin saying —
“Art is long but life is short.”
I would like to amend that:
Ars longa, timor longior.
“Art is long, but fear is even longer.”
Choices we want to make, we fear making —
Fearing rejection, failure or other results.
And, it’s not just fear.
Let me include frustration,
Disappointment, and more,
Under the rubric of timor.
Missed chances, rejected chances and rejected choices
Have left me often alone,
Even when my desire was clearly otherwise.
I don’t fully understand myself,
But I wish I had a daily mirror to reflect me,
And let me reflect her,
To see what love can be,
While yet retaining some of my skepticism
About what it is not.
But I am afraid my skepticism,
Part natural, part protective, part timorous,
Will remain an albatross,
Even when I am ready for a mirror,
And ready to swim against the tides of chance
To be with one.

— March 18, 2010

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.