Thursday, May 04th 2017 (The Elephant Effect)
I'll be meeting with mum in a couple of hours to kill some time before I have my next session with my clinical psychologist. It's this session that I'm really holding out for. That's all that really matters today. Fuck the rest of it! It's all about trying to figure out how to defeat these Schema Modes I now know I have as these are the things that will kill me if I don't find some way of ridding my personality of, or at least keeping a check on them. Resentment may be the number one killer of alcoholics according to AA but I know myself better than this. I know that it's prolonged isolation that will do it to me.
This isolation used to always come during times when I felt as though I had nothing to offer anyone in this world. That everything I did and tried to do actually only served to hurt or frustrate other people and so the best type of defence, during those times, was to retreat. Retreat to where nothing you say or do affects me you. It's not healthy but it works short term. This kind of thinking was at its absolute worst when I went through my suicidal phases (or the suicidal phases were brought about from this type of thinking for too long) and then it subsided a little during times of my two years sobriety when I've felt I've been doing well. It's back again now though – and I feel in the mood to be doing a whole lot more isolating this weekend.
Working through some of my issues with Dr. Bacon as well as attending the ACA meetings for around five weeks now (so that's five sessions of both of these services) has brought about a far more acute sense of who I am all over again. This is similar to what things felt like when I was working through the Fifth Step with Stu. Only the negative stuff about me is discussed and there's so much of it that I can't even think about trying to imagine there being any good. It's another one of those moments where you have to stop and think. Another of those moments where you realise that everything good about yourself that you thought existed is all bullshit. It isn't real. It's instead consumed by the vast amount of badness. The defects. The shortcomings. These same shortcomings that the God of my understanding is supposed to be removing from me.
I've been reading a book that Sandra from ACA loaned me this week. It's called ''I Got Tired Of Pretending'' and was written by some dude called Bob Earll. He says this:
''Giving up all or any of alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sugar, or nicotine is a great way to start pulling some nails out of the coffin lid you've got covering your feelings. In doing the family-of-origin work most of us will encounter all three of the angels/demons: repression, suppression, and splitting off. They are angels when we are children because they protect us from the pain that (hurts too much) to live with. They are demons when we are adults because they keep us in prison..........I realize now that my attempts at meditation were no more than disguised repression, suppression and splitting off. Trying to meditate was one more way to cut me off from my feelings.''
So yeah – without finding a tool that works for me in terms of dealing with my overwhelming negativity I am as good as back to the beginning again. I don't have the same grated nerves or sense of panic that I had when I first stopped drinking but I am effectively back to the start again emotionally. Life's become like some old-school board game that one might have played with their grandparents back in the day. I keep landing on that square which demands I go all the way back again, like most alcoholics do I guess. The longest snake on the board.
I can remember Super-Zoe (psychologist I saw before Dr. Bacon but who specialised in addictions and didn't want to see me full time on account of her not sensing a threat of relapse from me at all) saying that she didn't want me 'shopping for therapy' in that I try everything out but don't really give it much effort before moving onto the next thing. I guess that this is why I'm putting so much effort into these sessions with Dr. Bacon. I have little interest in trying anything else out to be honest. The things I haven't tried seem silly, some of them, and I have no wish to roll another dice that will likely land me on that nasty square or that long snake again. So I have to work as best I can with what I've got just now. Keep faith in that things will improve given time.
It's the homework he gave me that's fucked me up this time though. I was asked to try very carefully to notice when my two defensive modes (the Detached Protector and Bully and Attack) come into play during my day to day life. I have done this and have been amazed at how often one of them controls my thoughts, words and actions. Almost every time I open my mouth it is one of these two modes doing the talking. It's terrifying and utterly exhausting. It's getting to the stage where I don't know what to say, when to speak, what to do. So I isolate. It's safer for everyone. The only person it hurts is me. People say that this is bullshit – that when we isolate we hurt others who love us. This isn't at all true.
I'll be seeing mum in a couple of hours for the first time in months. She wouldn't know any different whether I spent these months alone in my cave. It affects her not at all. My brother and nieces are the same. In the weeks it's been since I was last there how has what I've been doing or where I've been touched them at all? It hasn't. As long as when I show up I am nice and good at pretending then all is well in their worlds. They couldn't give a fuck about mine.
Lindsay? She's too busy with her exams and children's hearings and job interviews for anything that I do when I am not in her company to have any effect on her. Plus – she won't know!! Gillon has become used to me popping in to see him once in a blue moon, if even that regularly. English Sara and Dennis must be starting to feel the same way. Nothing I do has an effect on anyone. The butterfly effect does not quite work the same way we think it does when it comes to us isolating. It's more like the Moth Effect for us – couldn't get more different. Or the Elephant Effect. Something silly like that.
AA isn't affected in any way by me being away from their rooms for twelve weeks now. The college won't mind that I am not in attendance this morning when I should be. The charity shop would miss me, I have to admit that, but this is simply because we are short on volunteers at this time. It's nothing to do with me. Anyone else could be there in my place. Then I could isolate and they would neither know nor care.
This is all good for humility. I am effectively nothing and what I do has little to no effect on anyone else. Humility. That's the way I should look at this.
The Elephant Effect.
I'll post tomorrow on the meetings with my mum and Dr. Bacon.
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Stevie
Suffering from the Elephant Effect and unaware of any cure for it.
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