Why Can't I Clear Out The Fog?

Why is it that we can clearly see problems and solutions for others and yet when our own difficulties come into play we often remain in a fog?

We have the ability to practice a form of mental self defense where we either deny a challenge exists all together, or we rationalize away its severity. We may intellectualize our issues, not allowing ourselves to feel our emotions fully. We may do this to minimize pain and loss, or in an attempt to keep ourselves from recognizing the truth of our situation.

We may have begun learning this defense mechanism when we were children. If we lived in a family of origin where there was a great deal of chaos we may have needed this defense in order to survive. As we grow into adults we may find that our old defense mechanisms have begun to hinder our ability to fully participate in our own lives. We may be incapable of recognizing when we are being treated poorly. We may be unable to experience joy. We may be marching through life in a state of suspended emotional animation, existing, but not living.

When we begin our walk on the path of recovery we may initially find our emotions overwhelming and feel incapable of handling the waves of feelings that surge through our minds and bodies. As time progresses we become more comfortable within ourselves and feel capable of handling our strong emotions. We may recall that as children we may have had no one to guide us through the maze of our own feelings. They may have been strong and frightening, so we locked them away. Now that we are adults we can unlock those stored childhood feelings, process them in our adult minds and allow them to become a part of us.

In healthy families adults model appropriate reactions to strong emotions by regulating their responses. In dysfunctional families there may be no responsible adult present to serve as role model. The only model we see may be an emotionally frightened or enraged caretaker who is incapable of managing their own feelings and is acting out. If we grow up in an environment such as this, it is no wonder why we, as adults, may feel overwhelmed by strong emotions.

Learning to properly respond to feelings and challenges is a skill that is developed over years of observing role models and experimenting with our own abilities. If we have not developed these skills in childhood we may be emotionally immature.

We can learn the skills necessary to function in a healthy manner in all our interactions. It may take practice, learning new skills and a great deal of failure before we finally become adept at handling our strong feelings appropriately, but we can master the necessary skills with time and practice.

Lying, Insecurity and Alcoholism

When faced with a situation where our partner feels insecure or unsure they lie. We have discovered that their parent(s) were alcoholics. What happens to us when we are raised in an environment where one or both of our caretakers are alcoholics? Is this an underlying reason for their habit of lying?

There is a group called ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) that is a 12 Step Program based on the principles of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) that has a great deal of information about behavior patterns in adult children. This is the place to begin our journey for answers.

Lying is often related to self esteem issues. That doesn't mean that there can't be more serious problems, but generally when alcoholism is involved, so is self esteem. Very often adult children grow up in constant chaos as their alcoholic parent(s) drinks themselves into oblivion in front of them. Our partner may never have felt safe or secure in their early lives. They may have lived in a home that was always in a shambles either physically, emotionally or both.

The effect of having a parent who is an alcoholic cannot be underestimated. Very often children in alcoholic homes never learn to self soothe. They don't have parents who set appropriate limits and boundaries so they never learn what acceptable behavior looks like. They may be aware that they don't have appropriate social skills but have no clue where to find out how to behave.

There is great hope in counseling for ACOA. Many have been able to recover from the trauma of their childhoods due to alcoholic family members. It may take time and a great deal of patience by both our counselor and our partner. This type of recovery program may involve us learning to set boundaries and limits with our partner as well as our partner learning to face their fears and allow themselves to be seen for who they are without the masks. Our partner has lived without consequences for lying for most of their adult life. That will have to change.

The fact that our partner doesn't react with emotion may mean that they have learned how to stop feeling. As a result of the pain of trauma during childhood, our partner has chosen to freeze all feelings rather than face them. This is common in trauma survivors. As children they needed this defense mechanism to survive. Now as adults, it no longer serves a purpose and is actually the cause of difficulties occurring in our relationship. As they defrost and begin to feel again they can become very depressed and/or angry for a while as they process all the pain and loss they have been supressing.

That can be a very difficult time for both our partner and ourselves. Recall that our partner has some very positive qualities that we value... loyalty, humbleness, deference, good heartedness, excellent business person, handsome looking. Our partner is also intelligent and capable. These are some very positive statements. We must recall that we love our partner very much. There is a question we ask partners in couples counseling...

Are we happy with our relationship at least 50% of the time?

Remember, this isn't just about the flaws our partner has... we all have some real whoppers... our partner needs to learn judgement and appropriate behavior in a safe environment.

There is much benefit for us to be found in doing some reading on ACOA. There are some excellent materials available in bookstores, online through Amazon and at ACOA meetings. Here is the link to ACOA http://www.adultchildren.org/ . Click on "the problem" in the first paragraph to learn about the disease and what it feels like for the adult child. Here is a link for some recovery books. http://www.cyberus.ca/~rocksoft/teddysrule/readings/re_bibli.html

Am I Growing?

How do we know when we are growing? How can we tell if we have changed? We see ourselves everyday, what can we use as a yardstick?

When we enter into the process of recovery we place ourselves on a path of growth that is often three steps forward and two steps back. As we grow and change it may not be apparent to us that we have made strides in our efforts to become healthier. This may cause us concern or allow us to feel as though we are not accomplishing our goals.

We can take steps to avert this type of second guessing. We can use our tools to create a snapshot of ourselves at various points along our journey.

One of our most successful tools is journaling. We take bit of time on a regular basis and write out our thoughts and feelings. We may want to include small bits of current events to remind ourselves of the drama and chaos that surrounded us when we entered into the path of recovery. As time progresses we will be able to read our prior posts and realize how far we have come along our chosen path.

Another tool we can use to help us see our own growth is a gratitude journal. We write down five reasons we are grateful each night before we drift off to sleep. They can be anything, from our kids to our pet. We can be grateful for the simplest things, like food on our table, or the most complex, such as being able to understand physics. Initially the exercise may feel awkward and we may be unable to think of five new things to write down each day. But over time we will see how our world has enlarged as we grow and change.

Sometimes we complete our exercises and use our tools grudgingly, just going through the motions. But over time as we see the growth in ourselves and the changes we engender in those we love we will become more enthusiastic in our efforts and understand that we can only change the world one person at a time... that person starts with us.

Using Your Struggle Muscle!!

Has life gotten too easy? Is our routine causing us to become bored? Are we creating drama in our lives to fill up the empty space? What can we do to overcome our addiction to drama?

Many of us grew up in families of origin that were filled with the drama of chaos in every day life. We may have had caretakers who could barely manage their own lives... siblings who created intense drama around themselves... a family member who was disabled... neighbors who created chaos and drama within their home and out into the street involving others. Not to mention an addict or alcoholic in the family. Some of us have been caught in the inter-generational caretaking trap... caring for both children and parents simultaneously. This can leave us exhausted, drained and without time to live lives of our own.

Any or all of these situations creates an imbalance in our internal rheostat. We become drama addicts. Over time our bodies become accustomed to the shots of adrenaline we receive from our flight/fright/freeze response which reacts instinctively when we are stimulated in chaos. As we grow up in a constant state of arousal, due to the chaos in our families of origin, we become adrenaline addicts. When nothing is happening we feel sluggish, down, somewhat depressed, tired, bored, and generally disinterested until... BAM ...we get a shot of adrenaline when our friend calls and tells us that she and her husband are having a fight again. Drama!! We are wide awake, alert, up, focused, energized and ready to interact. It's so much better than coffee!!

What happens when we walk the path to recovery and our challenges begin to dissipate? Some of us suddenly find that our lives have become boring, empty, without meaning, tiresome. We miss our daily doses of adrenaline. We feel useless. Our bodies literally feel different. The chemical addiction lessens over time, but our mental addiction must be addressed as well.

We may react by creating drama in our daily lives to fill the empty space. We don't have to go down that road. We can, instead, pursue hobbies and interests that we previously didn't have time to learn. We can paint, draw, attend theater, musical concerts, visit museums, learn a new language, try our hand at crafts, run a garage sale, refinish a special piece of furniture, read, exercise, volunteer or join a club.

When our time is absorbed caretaking others we may neglect our own lives for extended periods of time. This may leave us with a big empty space where caretaking and drama used to live. As we walk the path of recovery it is imperative that we take up new challenges to fill the void left by the old habits we no longer wish to pursue. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not fill the space by choice we run the risk of our hold habits returning and taking hold once again.

We practice our tools in our daily lives giving ourselves much needed self care. We make efforts not to isolate, to socialize with others both in and out of recovery. As we continue to remain vigilant in our pursuit of recovery we increase our self esteem. In this way we rebuild our life.

Am I Self Medicating?

What does it mean to self medicate? Why do we do it? How does it effect us?

We all like to feel pleasure and avoid pain. That is the natural order of being. Some forms of pain are emotional rather than physical. We may feel pain when a relationship ends or when we are hurt by a caustic remark. If our family of origin was a place of frequent pain and chaos we may have learned to ease our pain by self medicating. We may have seen our caretakers self medicate in various ways: having a couple of drinks daily after work, smoking marijuana to relax, eating too much sweets after an argument, running to OTB to place that last bet.

There are any number of ways in which we can self medicate including: abuse of alcohol, drugs, tobacco, food, gambling, pornography and sex, to name a few. Some of us engage in high risk activities as a way of self medicating. All of these methods involve releasing chemicals in the brain that effect our pleasure center.

For those of us who have self medicated with alcohol, tobacco or drugs, these chemicals increase certain neuro-transmitters giving us that high feeling. Food too can be abused. Sugar activates the same receptors as heroine, the casein in cheese activates the same receptors as opium and caffeine reacts in the body as a neuro-stimulant. Gambling, pornography, sex and high risk activities all create a rush of adrenaline which creates a high similar to and as addictive as cocaine.

When we opt to self medicate we are using our medication of choice to block out pain and increase pleasure. This may feel good in the short run, however, over time some forms of self medication take on a life of their own. When we don't choose to deal with our issues we run the risk of burying them under a landslide of denial. It may be harder to face our difficulties, but in the end we will be far better off for the work.

Avoiding the trap of feel good self medication takes a great deal of self discipline. We use our tools to practice self care in our daily lives. As we resist the urge to self medicate we increase our self esteem. In this way we give ourselves the gift of sobriety.

Tools, Glorious Tools - Part I

During the recovery process we learn about and use tools. What do we mean by tools? How do they help us practice self care? Why do we need them in our daily lives?

Many of us have been damaged by relationship trauma. This damage may have occurred over an extended period of time beginning with our family of origin during our early years. We may have been too young to be capable of appropriately processing the events that surrounded our lives. In order to survive the drama and chaos, we adopted defense mechanisms. Without our defenses we might not have been able to continue to live in our family of origin without experiencing enormous psychological pain.

Some of us experienced much more subtle forms of damage. The dysfunctional patterns of some families of origin may appear healthy to those within the family. Manipulation and passive aggressive types of behavior by caretakers can be too subtle for the mind of a child to process. Family members may have no ruler against which to measure the behavior of their caretakers. Without an example of what healthy behavior looks like, members will internalize family behavior patterns as their own. This too creates defense mechanisms since children accept adult behavior as the standard against which all is measured.

Now that we are adults we find we have outgrown these defense mechanisms. They no longer serve us as they did when we were children, as a protection from psychological harm. Our defenses have become a hindrance to our enjoyment of life. They are much like a favorite pair of childhood shoes that no longer fit. We try to put them on but they squash our self esteem and don’t permit us to interact appropriately with our world. As we continue to use them as adults, we create shackles that keep us from freedom. We are literally hobbled by our defenses.

Tools allow us to gradually free ourselves from defense mechanisms that no longer function for our benefit. We slowly unlock the iron grip of shackles opening one link at a time. Each tool in our tool bag gives us more ability to open the links and escape our home made prisons. As we do the work of unlocking ourselves from our defenses we gradually increase our self esteem. Each step in the process raises our belief and trust in ourselves, allowing us to begin to trust our discernment once again.

Tools are instruments of self care that are learned during the recovery process. Like the tools used in carpentry, they need to be handled regularly and practiced often so we may become adept at using them in our daily lives. It takes time to unlearn habits that we may have had for twenty or more years and one of our first tools learned is patience and managing expectations. We need to be patient with ourselves. Recovery is a process that takes time and effort. We may often feel as if we take three steps forward and two steps back. That’s okay. We can allow ourselves the gift of patience. Managing our expectations is crucial. We can undo much of our progress if our expectations are unreasonable. We need to expect setbacks. This too is part of the recovery process.

I Just Can't Find the Words

We are on our way out for the day with our partner. We laugh and hold hands as we leave the house. One of the kids has again left their bike out on the lawn. They have been asked to put it in the garage countless times. Our partner gets upset, picks up the bike and puts it in the garage, making a few angry comments in the process. We say nothing and continue on to the car to wait for our partner to join us.

As we drive away we notice our partner is silent. We ask if they are all right and receive a short clipped, yes. Obviously everything is not all right. We feel that they are asking to be drawn out and once again ask gently if all is well. The explosion that follows lasts only seconds, but rocks us to our core. We are stunned by the intensity of the emotional outburst. We sit in hurt silence for a few moments then ask for an explanation. We are told nothing.

Does this seem all too familiar? In cave man times looking into the face of a predator didn't require thought, just reflexive action to keep us alive. That age old survival response system still takes over when we feel threatened. We may no longer be looking into the face of a predator, but our threat response is just as strong. Intense emotions cause our thinking brain, the cerebral cortex, to shut off. The last thing we need when staring into the face of a lion are random thoughts to distract us from surviving. Today's lion may be something as inconsequential as the kids bike or the credit card bill.

Our ability to rebound, after a perceived threat causes our survival response to kick in, is an indication of our emotional health. For some, the thinking and processing of strong emotions is so painful that it can take many hours. This can leave the other party wondering what has gone wrong. Here is where effective communication becomes paramount. In the example above, the overwhelmed party can let their partner know that they are unable to process their feelings as of yet, but will get back to the issue as soon as they can. This gives the overwhelmed partner time to process their emotions and associated feelings, and lets the other party know that these hurtful actions will be talked about at some point.

Children who have lived in a home with much chaos and drama may have no one to teach them how to regain their emotional center when they feel threatened. They may be left to cope on their own with virtually no skills. Many children find numbing themselves the safest way to overcome the extreme pain that being emotionally abandoned brings. As adults, the lack of coping skills that would normally be developed during childhood, makes dealing with strong emotions unbearable. To avoid processing the intense feelings that are associated with survival emotions, these adults still use their childhood defense mechanisms. They shut down and feel nothing. This leaves their partners and family feeling unimportant, ignored and unloved. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Being numb, even for a time, protected them as children from the trauma of emotional abandonment. These adults can learn to feel strong emotions a little at a time.

With our tools and ability to apply consistent self care in our daily lives, we can cope effectively with a partner who may find strong emotions overwhelming. As our partner learns to practice self care and use their tools, they can begin to process strong emotions more effectively. In this way we practice commitment in our relationship and detachment from our partner as we both grow in our ability to communicate and compromise.

Life is just... Life

Life is so hard! It's not fair! Why is this happening to me? I didn't do anything! I can't take it anymore! Who says so! How could this be possible? I wasn't there! When will all the drama end? If I have to say this one more time...! Why do I let this go on? Sound familiar???

No one said life would be easy. Life is just... life. And yes, life often isn't very fair. Kind, decent people die in terrible ways in wars. Stuff just... happens, and sometimes it doesn't make any sense at all. Life can be random and chaotic. Yet, through all the disappointment, loss and pain, there is the other side of life... the joyful, loving, balanced part where ordinary people live out a good portion of their lives with a significant degree of happiness. Yes, the painful times come to us all. How we cope with them is more of an indicator of our mental stability than how we enjoy the happier times.

These are the reasons we use our tools, practice self care, make our daily lives as positive as possible and try to see the glass as half full. We have many assets available for use in our lives. The most valuable of these is time. That is the one that we cannot recoup, cannot rewind, cannot say, "Do over!!" when it has past. We try to live each day to its fullest. We allow ourselves to be as present in each moment as humanly possible.

It is the realization that we have a limited amount of time in our lives that brings many of us to that point where we want to live a more meaningful existence. We question how we have used our time thus far and begin to make informed decisions about what we intend to do with the remainder of our lives. We can think about our choices with the following in mind: When we are lying on our death beds, what will we wish we had done more of? That is the place to begin spending our time.

Life is just... life. Make it the best trip!!

Trust

During our daily lives we encounter many situations that require us to choose one path or another. We assess our surroundings. We sift through our past experiences in order to glean information that may assist us in making our choice. We ask others for their input. We then take all the information we have accumulated and make our decision. We place our trust in four key areas. First, ourselves and our ability to accurately view our situation. Next, the accuracy of our memories. Thirdly, our advisers capability to lead us. Lastly, our capacity to combine all the information we have collected into a clear view of our circumstances so as to formulate a decision.

What happens when this healthy pattern of decision making breaks down and we no longer trust our instincts? When we are young, we are incapable of processing the world around us as we do when we are adults. We rely on our caretakers to alert us to unsafe situations by both verbal and non-verbal cues. We trust that they will keep us safe. When we live in chaos and dysfunction as children, we misinterpret the unhealthy reactions of our caretakers. We don't know that they cannot properly interpret their world and are therefore giving us misinformation. We assume that what they say and do is correct. We feel that there is a problem, but we are two feet tall and they are giants. In order to survive, we choose to believe that their assessment is correct and stop trusting our instincts.

As we proceed through life we may feel gut reactions when faced with difficult decisions. Our instincts try to lead us, but we ignore them as a result of the interactions we had with our misinformed caretakers when we were small. We fight ourselves in a stressful battle where we are unlikely to win.

How do we regain that trust in our instincts that we have lost? We must begin a step at a time. We take a small risk and trust our ability to be guided by our instincts. When we have succeeded, we take a somewhat larger risk, and so on. As we experience success, our trust level increases and we raise our self esteem. We listen to our instincts more and let ourselves be guided by our inner voice, our higher power. We use our tools to make self care a part of our daily lives. In this way we give ourselves the gift of trust.

Drama Addiction

When things are going well, we "wait for the other shoe to drop". We don't have time to sit back and relax... there's so much chaos going on right now that we have to manage, or there will be a disaster. Every time the phone rings someone at the other end of the line is having a major problem and we need to attend to it now. Sound familiar?

This is the sound of drama addiction. We have no time to live our own lives because we are so busy attending to everyone else. Why do we adopt this mode of constantly making work for ourselves? What would we be doing if we disconnected from other peoples issues and problems and instead focused on our own lives? Some of us have been living through others for so long that we have lost our own lives along the way. We have neglected our self for such a long time that we no longer know who we are. Without the drama, who would we be? Wouldn't it be fun to find out?

We have a choice. We can elect to let others solve their own problems and attend to the business of living our own lives. Although we will get plenty of change back messages, if we keep minding our own business and letting others do the same, eventually they will begin to pick up the slack. This will give us the freedom to explore what self care feels like on a daily basis. We can begin to fill our own lives with the fun hobbies and activities that we enjoy. We can begin to live our lives again, to feel joy and wonder at the world and to engage the present.