The Appeal of Addictions and Hangups

You know how sometimes you are just doing a tedious activity--laundry, mowing grass, running, cooking, etc.  You know one that forces time upon you--time to think, time to ponder.   One day, a few months ago, I was in the middle of such a task and had a profound realization.  I was thinking upon the demons that I have faced in my life as well as observing those in family and friends.  A simple question occurred to me: Why do people get stuck in self-destructive patterns, even when they know better?  These are usually referred to addictions or hangups.

Addictions or hangups are often an escape hatch.  Some things we are escaping from:

•  Facing pain of loss
• Death of a loved one
• Breakup 
• Personal security - resulting from physical, sexual, mental abuse, etc.
• Of a job or career.
•  The drudgery of everyday life--the boredom and grind of being.

How do these hangups manifest themselves in a person with such a personality?  More often than not by 'acting out'.  That could be going to the casino and gambling your paycheck away, going to the bar and drinking ceaselessly, using illicit drugs, seeking meaningless casual relationships to help you forget your troubles or some other destructive pattern.  

These episode are often triggered by something.  Sometimes it can be thinking about your troubles listed above.  Sometimes it can be remembering the 'good times' or high we had running away from them.  In 12 step programs they view common triggers to be HALT--Hunger, Anger, Lonely, Tired.

So, say for example, our hangup is alcohol.   What happens?  Something puts us over the edge and we hit the bottle.  For a time we just feel so much better.  The buzz wears off and often we feel worse with a hangover.  Over time this will destroy our body and liver.  We are drinking 'water', but the water is making us more thirsty and is actually destructive to us.  Same thing with gambling.  For a little bit, the high of winning or at least the 'promise' of winning fills our thirsty soul, but at the end of the day, when we are out of money and cannot pay the mortgage or rent, we have destroyed our security.

 

So why do we keep hitting these things, even in the face destruction that they cause us?  In our sober moments, we may see just how much damage our hangups or addictions have cost us, yet they still persist.

So, it occurred to me.  Once a trigger has reeled us in and the addictive behavior has taken hold, it is like water to a thirsty soul.  Our soul is hurting and it demands water to quench it, only the water is our hangup.  Think of it this way, you are dehydrated and you see a glass of water with ice.  Your body screams out to you to drink it.  Only, imagine the same scenario, except that the water has some salt in it.  If you have a deep thirst and have no other sources of water or fluid, you see the salty water, know that it has salt in it, but your heart says, dern it I'm thirsty.  So, you drink it anyway.  For a moment, you might feel a little better, but ultimately, you will become more dehydrated.  

Overcoming hangups and addictions requires a recognition that we are not dying of thirst, that the water that you'd drink is water that would never quench the type of thirst you have anyhow and seeking alternative ways of quenching the thirst.

Man in Motion, Carpe Diem, Lose Yourself, Don't Look Back: what it all means.

It's funny sometimes you turn on the radio and you hear a song that you've heard countless time and it speaks to you in a way that it never has before.  Today--July 9th, 2015, I heard St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) and it got me to want to step outside myself.  It got me a little fired up.  Man in Motion was about the story of Rick Hansen and his world tour on behalf of the disabled.

In the wiki page for him, it is said about him that:
--
In 1980, fellow British Columbian and Canadian athlete Terry Fox, who had lost a leg to bone cancer, undertook the Marathon of Hope, intending to run across Canada from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island to raise awareness for cancer research. He made it from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Thunder Bay, Ontario, before a cancer recurrence forced him to stop, about half of the way through his journey. Inspired by Terry's courage, Hansen decided to undertake a similar journey to prove the potential of people with disabilities and to inspire a more accessible world. But his planned path was far more ambitious: he planned to circle the world in his wheelchair.
--

Back to the memes and sayings--what do all these things have in common:

In all these memes and songs, we are exhorted to reach for a 'higher place' or calling.  But what does that mean when we are underneath the fallen debris and difficulties of life and what is a 'higher place'?

To me, a 'higher place' is the potential we have always had locked inside us, but were blocked from approaching it.  What are the steps to reaching a higher place?

• Recognizing that we aren't where we could or should be.
• It is hard to achieve a greater purpose when you are don't realize or are in denial about where you are relative to your potential.
• I believe that most people know on some level that they can do more than they are doing now.  This self-awareness I believe leads to stress, anxiety and often taking 'self-medicating' steps to deal with it.  For example, if you are the underachiever relative to your group, class or family--your circle--and you know that you are as capable as other in your circle are, it is hard to escape or miss it.  This often leads to taking steps to 'cope' with your perceived underachievement
• Having a mentor, counselor or close friend to relate to and to confer with can help us to visualize goals.

• Wanting to achieve a higher purpose.
• Not everyone wants to or sees the need or benefit of a higher purpose. Sometimes it takes a bad situation or circumstance to wake us up to where we need to go or that we do need to work on a higher purpose.
• “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

• Having or recognizing goal(s).
• In order to reach for higher you have to recognize a suitable or 'reachable' goal(s).
• Sometimes these goals are recognized in early life.  Sometimes they are recognized in later life.  
• Sometimes these goals are not recognized all at once, but rather in steps.   Though we tend to prefer understanding the big picture all at once.
• Effectively this implies long-term goals which house short and medium term goals.
• It's important not to get discouraged when the goal(s) haven't become completely obvious at once.
• This can require us to learn or practice patience.
• Goals can be diverse in nature.
• They can be professional goals.
• They can be personal goals.
• They can be athletic goals.
• They can be intellectual goals.
• They can be spiritual goals (or all goals can have a spiritual element to them).
• They can involve a clear winner.
• They can involve where everyone is a winner (betterment of society).
• They can be goals that focus on bettering oneself.
• They can be goals that focus on bettering lives of others.

• Obstacles to the goal(s)
• Important to recognize them.  If you can't put your finger on what is blocking you, it is hard to remove the blocks.
• All obstacles do not have to be overcome or conquered at once.  As a matter of fact, trying to do that can often lead to discouragement.
• Important to understand the type or nature of the obstacles.
• Unavoidable life circumstances get in the way.
• Death of a family member, job loss, etc.
• These often require time and processing.  It is important to allow yourself a break for these, but not to forget the endgame.
• Unforced errors/poor choices  (purposeful or unintentional)
• Can be demotivating or distracting. 
• We need to recognize that the errors don't define us, UNLESS we allow them to.
• We need to avoid pinning the blame on others for why we are not where we need to be.  We need to recognize our role in this process.
• We need to not let these become an excuse or define us.
• Setbacks
• These are inevitable.
• Once again, they don't need to define us.
• Realization that the status quo is so much easier usually.
• As they say, any goal worth having will not be easy to achieve.
• Often times the status quo takes no effort.
• Anyone can fail, all you have to do is not even try.  Then failure is guaranteed.
• As Imagine Dragons says in It's Time, "The path to heaven runs through miles  of clouded hell right to the top."
• Faith being weak/doubting ourselves.
• We have to recognize that while God rewards those who reward themselves, He won't usually have achievement or success come easy.  
• We have to push on towards are goals, but remember that He is ultimately in control and can help us to move mountains if we ask Him.
• Feelings as if we can't change and/or what difference does it make what we do.
• It is important to recognize this negative self-talk and to replace it with positive self-talk.  Not pie-in-the-sky, delusional or completely unrealistic, but still positive.
• Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

Achieving a higher purpose is not for the faint and often times requires a lot of sacrifice with little reward (at least at first).  But, it is important to focus on the One that created us in His own image and realize that God doesn't give us more than we can handle.  We just have to do our best and then leave it in His hands.

 

Some journeys are meant to be traveled alone, but with faith they aren't truly alone

I was talking to my fiance last night and she expressed concern for a family member's well-being.  Those who know what I am talking about will know what I mean.  But, to those who don't just say a prayer.

Anyway, unfortunately, life was humming along until 2009.   I'm not saying it was humming along great or that it was problem free--in some ways the problems were hidden.  Anyway, if you'd have told me that next 6 years would be a complete shakeup, yet I'd survive, I'd have thought you were nuts.  But that's just what happened.

It's hard seeing a loved one hurting, especially when it is a situation beyond their control.  Sometimes, we just want to reach in and help them out or point them to an easy solution.  But, sometimes there isn't an easy solution. Sometimes, we just want to find the right words to say, but sometimes there aren't the right words to say.   That's the perspective of the witness to the loved one who is hurting.   It's a helpless feeling...

When we are hurting--whether it is heath issues, the loss of a loved one, the destruction of a marriage, the loss of full-time custody, the loss of our beloved residence, etc--we sometimes wonder when the good times will come back (or if they ever will). Sometimes, like Christ we have to bear our cross and often we have to bear it alone.  We should remember that He bore the weight of world on his shoulders.  He suffered temptations, He suffered pain, He suffered heartache, He suffered a death of the flesh and he at the moment of His greatest suffering, He suffered separation from the Father.  Yet, despite it all, He lives!  

This is not to diminish and say our present suffering is nothing comparatively, but rather to give us hope if the Son endured and came out triumphant, perhaps with the Father's help, we can too.

At the moment of His greatest anguish, His disciples could not be there for Him.  They were weak in the flesh.  They could not stay awake for Him and they were frightened to identify with Him.  In a way, they didn't have what it took to be there for Him.  Often we have those moments too.  We feel alone and we feel that no one in our circle can understand our present suffering.  Perhaps that is true, but knowing, just as there was tomorrow with Jesus during his present suffering, we can rest assured that better days are ahead if we endure.

We may feel like the song below, especially when there is no one there who can truly understand, but if we put our faith in God, He will hope us through the tough times.  It hurts to travel alone, but sometimes it is a necessary self discovery step and if we rely on the Father, we are never really truly alone.

Life's Illusions: Only just a dream.

A number of years ago, an idea popped into my head.   What happens if the life we think we are leading is all part of someone's complex dream?  In other word's, to myself, I feel I am real and self-aware, but what happens if my reality is really just part of someone's dream?  The Matrix sort of dealt with this idea.

I'm sure I wasn't the first one to ponder this thought and I am sure I won't be the last.   But, I digress.

Years later, after a series of setbacks that started with my mom nearly dying, my life as I knew it unraveled: job loss, marriage breakup, death of my closest brother, house on the way to being lost, loss of full-time parenthood, etc.   By this time, my now ex had moved out and cleaned out much/most of the items of value in the house.  A dear friend of mine walked through the house for the first time with me and noted that the house lost it's soul.  I guess in a way, the house was still standing, but the 'home' had died.  As I walked out back and noticed the patio, grill and backyard and started to walk out into the driveway, a strange feeling came over me.  I had the sense that my marriage had been an illusion.  The life I had known it was an illusion.  It wasn't the most healthy marriage from the beginning in hindsight, but sometimes you don't know these things until much later.

No one is perfect, save one.  In that vein, you bring your strengths and weaknesses or flaws and good points into a relationship.  In hindsight, our flaws clashed heavily.  We went in with a fairy tale of how we'd 'survived' dysfunctional in the past and were past that.  What we didn't realize is how mistaken that was.

--

This last year was pretty dramatic in the space of about a year. I had a friend, my mom and my dad die--two being unexpected.  In a certain way, this has seemed surreal to me.  It's like a few years ago I had my full nuclear family, now it is almost cut in half.   I'm still getting used to that.

---

I remember an episode of Married with Children called "Teacher's Pet".  In the episode, poor Bud finally seems to have luck with dating.  He has a date with his substitute teacher and a classmate.  In typical Bundy fashion, this situation crashes.   First he confides in his dad about the dilemma, letting his father know the teacher is 40.   Next day at school he finds out that the substitute teacher ran off with a football player.  The classmate then dumps him as he is thought to be no longer desirable after being dumped by the teacher.   As if it isn't bad enough at that point, his dad alerted the authorities to the inappropriate relationship.  However, the teacher had been replaced by an old woman.   His dad, mistaking the new teacher for the original one, tells her to stay away from his son and rips her telling her the only 40 associated with her was 1840--that being the year she would have been born.   The old woman is then hauled off by the police.  Bud, being humiliated, decides in his mind that this is all a bad dream. He figures that if he drops his pants in front of class it will shock him into waking up.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way and bud finds out it isn't a dream much to his further humiliation.

Bud: I know! I'll prove it's a dream. I'll take down my pants and it'll be so embarrassing, I'll wake up.

[Bud lowers his pants to the shock of entire class]

Bud: I'm even dreaming that I ran out of underwear.

Teacher's pet

The Married with Children episode was funny, but it did underscore a larger point.  When faced with a painful reality, we can either face it head on, pretend it isn't so and/or compound it.  Bud, seemed to pretend it wasn't so and compounded it at the same time, not a small feat.

---

Life sometimes hums along merrily for a long time and then boom, it changes.  One day we have the car, job, our health and that of loved one and then in what seems like a short time, a major shift occurs.  It seems surreal.   Immediacy and permanence of the change can make us question was what was before real?  I think the answer is yes and no.   Yes it was, but our perception of it being permanent or unchangeable was an illusion.

Sometimes, we just have to take a deep breath and understand that nothing in this life is forever.  We enjoy the good things when we can, endure the bad thing as they come, mourn the losses when necessary and we hold onto that which never fails.

Psalm 73:25-26New International Version (NIV)

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart
    and my portion forever.

In the meantime, we I realized a long time ago that for most this life is full of struggles and if we don't have a Higher Power, a greater calling, a Hope, then it can all seem hard to swallow.  This is why sometimes people seek the unhealthy 'highs'.

I guess if I would give advice to my daughter it would be this:

• Live your life with the Hope in Jesus.
• Live a purpose driven life.
• Enjoy the good times, realizing they that they don't always last.
• Be brave and face what life throws you knowing you don't have to face it alone. 
• Be true to yourself. 

Cheers.

The laughter that masks the tears and general coping mechanisms.

I've observed over the year that people have different ways of coping with pain that comes from the loss--whether it be a person, pet, life they used to have, etc.

Lately, I've become more acutely aware of the role of laughter as a coping mechanism and will address it more fully.  However, I will address the coping mechanisms I see.

Sometimes it is a fine line, between healthy and unhealthy.  For example, anger can be a necessary component of processing, but too much can be poisonous or destructive.  Similarly, relationships can give us comfort from pain, but shouldn't be a mechanism to completely avoid it.

• Negative Emotional coping
• Sarcasm 
• Sometimes it can be funny, but sometimes it can be very hostile.
• Very often a detached way of expressing true feelings.  
• Can be anger masked by a veneer of 'witty'
• Anger    
• Can be healthy, a stage, a part of the process.  e.g., Anger at a loved one for not taking care of his/herself and/or leaving behind a mess when they pass away.  
• Too large of a dose of it at once and/or too extended of a dose can move from simple venting to self-poisoning.
• Bitterness
• Often reflected in sarcastic tones.
• Can be anger that has hardened.

• Cathartic/Comforting
• Sadness
• A general feeling of blue.  
• Often characterized by the inability to 'move'.  Emotional molasses.
• Depression
• Sadness that has hardened to the point of almost a numbness. 
• Deep emotional molasses.
• Crying
• The pain becomes so acute, that it literally hurts to keep it in.
• Releases the toxins or poisons from our body
• Release endorphins.
• Laughter
• Can be finding joy where little exists.
• Can be making the best out of a rough circumstance
• Can provide a faux happy appearance where there is real pain waiting to be released.

• Faith/Spiritual/Relational
• Prayer
• Reaching out to our Higher Power/God.  Asking Him to take away or give us the tools to better manage our burdens.
• Meditation
• Pushing out the negative energy.
• Focusing on the positive.
• Counseling/Writing/Sharing
• Working through to the cause/root of the pain.
• Determining what is real/valid and what isn't.
• Discussing/hashing through the steps of healing.
• Friendships/Relationships
• Can be like our own personal counseling.
• Can give us a reprieve from the pain.
• Can let us know that we have support.
• If we rely solely on them to cope, we may be excluding effectively taking other steps to work though/deal with our pain.

• Destructive/Addictive coping
• Drugs/Alcohol
• Relying on a chemical to deal with what we should be processing.
• Destructive to progress, physically unhealthy and can be deadly.
• Relational
• Relying on addiction to other people--real or 'imaginary'-- affairs/porn.
• Reaching so heavily and often for it can suck the productive life out of us.
• Circumstances/Things
• Compulsive gambling, compulsive shopping, hoarding are examples.
• Expensive and drain us of emotional/necessary physical resources
• OCD behaviors
• Eating disorders, excessive cleaning are some examples.
• Time consuming and can in some cases be physically damaging.

I am sure there are many more ways of coping.  But those are the ones I readily see.  As I indicated I've become more acutely aware over time of the role of laughter in coping.  A sarcastic, condescending laughter is the way a narcissist might deal with pain/loss.  A nervous or excessive laughter is often a way of 'laughing vs. crying'.   In each case, there is a feeling of acute or intense pain.  In the one case, you may be avoiding displaying pain by pushing it out into laughter.   It can appear as being cheerful or happy--sometimes wittingly and sometimes unwittingly--but often is really a way of avoiding the vulnerable appearance of crying.

I well known saying is that "Laughter is good for the soul."   But, if it is a way of avoiding the other necessary coping mechanisms, it can be a nice storefront to a rotting soul. 

That being said, by all means I encourage people to laugh until their heart is content, but make sure it isn't completely at the expense of crying, praying, writing, meditating, etc.

Not crazy for you, but crazy at you

Unfortunately, as we know the passing of a major family member can unleash problems with the surviving members.   This is especially true if the family member that passed away was controversial and/or thought to have assets (even if the latter was not so true).  The 'black sheep' member of my family has decided that they are/were entitled to the assets of my dad, which in reality were very limited.  I basically am presiding over just a little bit more than a pile of rubble.

Anyway, this led to a blog idea.  The ways to deal with a destructive, manipulative and likely mentally ill person.  In my case a family member.  Here goes:

Dealing with destructive, manipulative, mentally ill persons:

1) Attempting to rationally discuss their gripes with them. Generally pointless and frustrating as they are experts at irrational thinking.  To them the irrational is quite rational.  No matter how you try to pull them back toward the rational, they will tend not to concede rational, logical points.

2) Getting into the mud with them.  Generally a bad idea as they are experts at attacking in an irrational way.  It can effectively result in 'poked bear' response from them.

3) Attempting to appease them.  That's like trying to feed the crocodiles and hope they are satisfied enough not to attack you.

4) Shutting them out, ignoring them, not giving any oxygen.  Only surfacing long enough to make it clear you will not tolerate their abuse and preferably through a third party.  This will upset them, probably piss them off that you are not making yourself a target for them, but will save you the stress of dealing with them directly and leave them with uncertainty.  In other words, they may think twice when trying to mess with you as they won't be able to read how you'll react.  However, this is a long drawn out process and can be very frustrating waiting for the fruits of it.

5) Attempt to completely destroy them.  This could very well result in very serious consequences for you and could unleash 'fear biting' in them.

6) Use the law to disable them.  It could be a long, annoying, draining and seemingly frustrating process which requires a sacrifice of time, energy and possibly money.

I am leaning toward option 4.  It is a bit frustrating as when you are attacked by such a person.  There is a tendency to want to immediately shut that person up.  But, as we know the law isn't always on the side of the harassed person.  I guess if option 4 fails, I will go with option 6.  I've tried option 1 and 3 already.  I figured option 2 would be both pointless at best and destructive at worst.  I don't want to engage in option 5 as it is not my intention to punish a person for being mentally ill, besides trying to destroy someone typically has serious repercussions or reverberations

Denial: The lies we tell ourselves to cope.

A friend of mine inspired this one.  Not by her actions, but rather by her suggestion.

Denial, is the cliche goes, it isn't just a river in Egypt.  Denial can be seen as the following:

1. A form of self-defense.  We are protecting ourselves from the torment of 'facing reality'.
2. A necessary evil.  Sometimes, facing all things at once is too much.  If  we make a point to deal with a limited amount now and 'pretend' that that we don't need to deal with the other stuff, it can give us the space to deal with what we need to over time.  Such as unwinding an estate.
3. A way of avoiding dealing with a problem we have.  Our car makes an odd noise, it just doesn't sound right.  Well, if we avoid it, then we don't have to deal with it, so the thought goes.  Likewise, if we have an addiction of some sort or an illness, by denying it we are fooling ourselves into believing it isn't there and/or doesn't have to be dealt with.
4. An obstacle to tackling problems BEFORE they get too unmanageable.  Again, health, auto or addiction example.
5. Lying to ourselves and/or keeping secrets from ourselves.  Denial obviously is a mechanism by which we can be untruthful with others, but ultimately, the one(s) we are untruthful with us more than anyone is ourselves and God.
6. Relying on our own tools rather than on God.

I don't say denial is all bad.  Sometimes, we just can't cope with everything life throws us at once.  For example, I was grieving over the loss of my mom and to a degree of my brother still.  Also, I was dealing with my own surgery as well as other family issues.  In a way, I didn't have the luxury of totally indulging the extent of my dad's failing health.  So, I would do what I would need to on that score with what I had of emotional/spiritual energy.  I let his caregivers step in an do there jobs and one of us would step in from time to time and make sure they were doing there job.   They have seen it often enough to know the process of failing health/dying.  So, they were better equipped to deal.  Denial saved my energy for a time.   However, the time to stop denying crept up on me and with the help of friends, I faced the inevitability of my dad's passing.

The 'lie' that he was going to live indefinitely was useful as a coping mechanism.  But, eventually, it had to give way.   What I found is that surrounded by Godly friends who reminded me of God's role, I didn't have to live in the denial about it.

I guess one take away I have from this all, a little bit of 'denial' for a time can be a coping mechanism, but if we let it out of control and live in it indefinitely, we are avoiding the healing and adjusting.  In terms of spiritual warfare, to let the enemy win all we have to do is do nothing.  To triumph, we face our pains/hurts/demons/secrets with God's help.

In the 12 step programs, it is often said, we are only as sick as our secrets.  It may be cliche, but it is true.  I don't think that that means we have to answer 'do I look big in this dress', but it does mean being true to God, ourselves and others.