3 am, character defects, nightmares, Vespa, WW3

I awoke last night at 3 am also. This time it was a dream of an ex wife refusing to get medical help. I remember my first death. He’d refused to take the medicine doctors prescribed.  He lied.  He died.  She refused to get medical help and I had to live with her knowing i could treat her.  But it had nothing to do with the illness.  Just more passive aggressive stuff. 

“I can treat a hundred people at the office or I can treat you. I can’t do both.”  

Virginia Satir called it ‘crazy making’.

I specialized in addiction medicine because it was the worst of the insanities. Ultimate non compliance and non adherence to medical regimen.  There are always a thousand excuses and it’s always aggression with a smile. I really want to get better they say but I want you to do it not me. I want a teleportation machine. I want a magic pill.  Are your fucking legs broken I say.

The ‘helper’ tried to pressure me today to give drugs to the addict. I’m the bad guy.  The proxy war. The pharmacist got in on it He make money if I give in.  I have been back stabbed repaeatedly by the authorities who say do the right thing then cave themselves and scapegoat you.  Two faced sociopaths.  

I’m caught truggling with character defects.  

Anger - I’m furious to be in the same relationship crisis as divorces ago and realize I don’t have control.  It’s her and not me.  She doesn’t care. She’s the addict. She’s self centred.  She’s hostile and angry and afraid.  But I can’t go to work all day and come home to the I can’t see a doctor. You’re a doctor.  I never asked you to help.  No you just bled in the bed and shit in the bed and pissed in the bed.  

I was so thankful about heard.  They’re so pretty.  They can’t be bad.  Men are bad. Women are good. Men are victimizers.  Women are victim.  Don’t you love your mother.  You don’t even know if that’s your father. But the courts deny you DNA tests. There’s a law for the rich and the powerful and a law for you.

I’m powerless

I listened to a friend talk about not being in control and how that usd to cause hr to drink.  

I was future zooming to.  Fear.  Living out scenario’s in my mind. 3 am.  A nightmare of an old marriage.  I can’t be your doctor. She had addiction,  Cocaine addiction.  I liked that about her when I met her.  

She was a princess and I liked being a shiny knight,

The children didn’t come and she took to wearing diapers in the house and talking with the baby voice.  She didn’t want children just for me to be her sugar daddy.

I woke at 3 am and felt trapped. The panic. The inability to breath. The feeling like I’m going to have a heart attack and letting it go because it’s not now. It’s then. The past is triggered and I’m just insane. I crawled out of the abyss.  I paid a lot for these late days of peace.  

Character defects.  

Envy - the affectations on face book. I am happy for them. I see them doing things I did before the age of selfies.  I remember the trips and journeys and rewards.  But that was then and this is now.   I had my time in the sun and now I’m really having a good time except for my mind which compares my insides wit their outsides.  I’m really thankful for my life. It’s a good life. I’m blessed beyond my wildest dreams.  I’ have so much.  I look though at the one thing I don’t have and forget about all I do. It’s the cognitive distortion of the one drop of ink in the glass of wart. It’s 3 am and I’m woken by a nightmare of a time in a marriage when she wanted me to rescue her from herself and said she really didn’t want my help but lay there bleeding.  I sent her off to a treatment centre but she didn’t arrive.  Denial.  I did the whole thing but they couldn’t help me help her and they thought they were so good.  I’m not the problem.  I’m not in control. I can’t control. 

I walk away.  At 3 am I wanted to leave. I wanted to take any one of my escape pods and flee. Cappadocia. Meteora.  The wilderness. The sea. I’ve studied them all.  I must let go and let God.

There are no children.  There’s a dog.  I have freedom and no real obligation.

Iran has attacked Israel.  Israel is prepared to attack.  Russia has moved forward in Ukraine.  Iran is the ally of China.  Nuclear war.  War and rumors of war.

The American election is weeks off.  There’s so much corruption and lies and communism and sharia.  Hundreds of Christian churches have been burned to the ground but no mosques or temples or synagogues.  

Character defects

Self pity - poor me 

I struggle to maintain an ‘attitude of gratidude’ but there’s this curse in my mind which takes me down.  I spiral.  Looking at the negative. Adding them and piling them and soon a litany of horror, the weight of the world

I’m powerless.  I’m not in control. 

Live and let live.  

She wanted her cocaine.  She wanted her addiction.  She wanted her mausoleum.

I wanted freedom. I always vote freedom.  Scots war have where Wallace lead.  Down with tyranny.  I’ll not be a slave.  My mother and father had my brother. My mother wanted a daughter.  She had me.  My dad had his son. I was the sensitive one.  

Today I want to write. I want to drink coffee in cafes and face the mysteries. I’ve been the manly man. I’ve done the heavy lifting. I’ve faced the tyranny and saved countess lives. But there’s no appreciation in home. Even Jesus wasn’t blessed at home. Taken for granted. Poor me.  My father My father why hasn’t thou forsaken me

And we all go to heaven when the curtain closes

I’ m reading obituaries.  Friends are disappearing.

Character defects

Lust

I was a celibate monk when I was young.  I was a nun in marriage months at a time when they would be depressed arguing with their mothers and I’d be left out in the dark. No children. Just a lone.  I needed four wives or a new religion.  She wan’t there for sex and yet if I had sex outside the sexless marriage I would lose all.  We become sexually immune. The Eunuch’s of Canada. All the married men who are ‘rationed’.  The Feminist love the Moslems and hate the Christians. Maybe if there were children it would make sense.  Sacrifice for family and children. But she’s taken jobs and competing and demanding to be treated like a princess but won’t be a queen. I don’t want to return to celibacy in old age but she’s had it with intimacy and sex.  She never really cared for it.  Wanted a bad boy. They go with the bad boys and destroy .  They hate us good boys.  They say otherwise but at the end of the day Jesus died on the crosss. The women weep. The men die.  Now there’s war in the Middle East. What ‘s new.  

Character defects 

Sloth

I’m so tired at times. I never knew such fatigue.  The chronic pain wears me down. The chronic uncertainty of knife stabbing pain. A sneeze , a sudden move, sitting too long.  A fear of death. A focus on dying A denia.  Sloth.  All is not. I’m comfortable on the couch. . I understand those who don’t get out of bed. More and more they cone to me.  Depression.  I walk the dog The dog is my saviour.  My bladder gets me up.  I’m uplifted by a need to pee.

I love late night peanut butter sandwich’s.  The nights between delivering babies or surgery.  The days and nights without sleep.  Nodding off standing.  

I suffer sloth

Character  defects

Gluttony. - the sins are the character defects. The rocks we hold onto.  I’m avoid metabolic failure. The inflammation is a product of the sloth and gluttony. Fat. Diabetes II.  Pre diabetes. Inflammation.  

Depression

I’m alone. I’m powrrless. I could not levitate. I could not fly. I dreamed that when I flew crowds would run after me and pull me down.  I couldn’t get away.

There’s nowhere but death to escape too.  But Christians must live and serve.  I live and serve. My dog needs me.  I am of service. I have purpose. But I’m overwhelmed

Attitude of gratitude.

Gratitude lists,

Forget the nightmares and remember how much fun she was and all the good times in the past.  I ‘ve been remembering my mother’s grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and milk for lunch.  I’d walk home and that would be waiting.  I loved feeling safe with Dad , ex RCAF, and rifle in the cabinet and the Cold War.  

I’m supposed to be writing a paper.  I’m almost finished the research and readings. I’ve some pages that need to be editted. I hoped to do that today. I have work calls to make and photocopying to do.  It’s all like moving in molasses.

God is good all of the time, Thank you Jesus. Thank you God for the heat and the roof and the warm and dry. Thank you for the dog and technology. Thank you for my new Vespa. Thank you for good dreams Thank you for adventures. Thank you for this life. Thank you for family and friends. Thank you for all your blessings,  

Thank you

Passive Aggression

Passive Aggression is the serious form of aggression.  It's also been called 'covert' aggression as opposed to "overt".  It was once called 'female aggression' though it's always been beyond gender.
It's the strike and it's the lock out.  It is the pout compared to the temper tantrum. It's the little boy drawing attention to himself, holding up the class outing, by taking a long time to tie his shoes.
It's the beaurocrats and courts that make themselves look more important by delaying a decision to increase it's cost.  It's the headache feigned by the woman in bed not wanting to have sex but unwilling to be honest with her partner. It's the man who throws up by sticking his fingers down his throat so he can't make the visit to the mother in laws.  It's the strike.
It's the slow down. It's the half measure. It's the half hearted and half brained.  It's devious and deceptive. It's painful and adolescent and causes as much damage in it's permutations as any active or overt aggression.
It's nursed rage. It's revenge. It's the poison as compared to the gun. It's cold smouldering resentment. It's unforgiving.
It's faint praise. It's ugly. It's sick. It's mean. It's common. It's human and animal. I don't know if mollusks and snails do it.
It's immature. It's nasty.  It's pathetic.  It's going slowly to the emergency and arriving just as the patient dies. It's the follow up police moving slowly to the emergency and arriving after the first arriving unliked police gets shot. It's work to rule.  It's "accidentally" forgetting.
I don't think it's 'unconscious' and I don't think the word "passive" is appropriate.  I call aggression either covert or overt.  That puts the onus of proof on the aggressor. I personally hold them guilty until proven innoscent. Mostly I avoid passive aggressive people if  I can.  Life is too short.  Come back when you're toilet trained.

Psychological Regression

It is extremely common to encounter psychological regression in therapy. It's so common that it is often readily apparent in observing friends and co workers over time.
What is meant by psychological regression is that a person reverts to an earlier developmental behaviour in face of new challenge or under stress.
Psychological regression is commonly noted where trauma has been significant.
Probably the most common today though not always so is the psychological regression seen in men and women who have been sexually abused.
Watching the behaviour and interaction of a 40 yo you might say, they are behaving more like people who are in their 20's. Alternatively a 25 yo might be said to be sounding and acting like an 13 year old.
Indeed diagnostically there's often a behavioral 'tell' which is a fixation that occurred around the time of trauma. I usually pick this up in 'tonal' shifts or use of language and in the inappropriate laughter which would be alright if the person were the stated age but really 'fits' better with a much 'younger' person. It's downright eerie at times and often comes across as 'fake' because of the inherent falseness.
Trauma is commonly associated with dissociation. While most people think of war and violent rape when they think of trauma, it's well recognized that to the growing immature individual a lot of experiences, clearly not in the league of front line war or physically violent rape by strangers, but nonetheless traumatizing to the undeveloped individual do occur. These are what constitute the inclusion criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, near death experiences, experiences of crippling or threatened crippling, significant sexual abuse, but also death of a parent, divorce of parents, multiple moves in childhood, serious childhood illness. Much of the psychological impact of the trauma is a product of the age of exposure. A 5 year old sexually penetrated will have far more likelihood of psychological regressive phenomena than a 17 year old sexually penetrated in an 'unwanted' sexual experience. Similar divorce is perceived by a 7 year old very differently from a 20 year old. Age and experience tend to protect so that the 19 year soldier shooting a child by mistake is more likely to develop ptsd than a battle hardened 40 year old sergeant who has been through many campaigns.
Multiple personality disorder is a direct consequence of trauma and most commonly associated with early childhood sexual abuse. This level of regression, often a childlike character in the midst of many other separate characters, is the most extreme.
Regression is seen in lesser degrees but is a part of the dissociative process.
Trauma leads to a person having a 'split' reaction to reality, feeling like they're struggling with two or more people inside. Having internal dialogues where they feel others wouldn't be so divided.
Alcohol and drugs are so commonly associated with trauma that regression is the norm the worse the disease. Indeed dissociation is considered psychologically to be the fundamental process in just addiction without trauma, the drug and alcohol abuse being it's own trauma as it subjects the brain to what biologically is a full blown chemical assault.
What I notice in therapy is a 'baby like' quality or 'innocent' quality in a person mature enough to be less naive. They also commonly are insensitive and indifferent to the really caring people about them. Their choice of friends is often poor and while this is associated with with the shame that is associated with alot of trauma, the fact remains that they commonly seek advice from those who have a limited experience. They commonly look for agreement and react sometimes violently in that adolescent and pre adolescent way to any wise or mature advice.
When men return from war the dissociation and regression is seen in their return to adolescent male activities, excessive drinking, drug abuse, playing games, lacking interest in commitment or work and generally childlike behaviour. This is a feature commonly understood when the inner workings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are recognized.
A very big problem is an individuals lack of commitment to the present and future, living in past failures and believing that the past will recur in the future. Rather than try they perpetuate the false belief by self destructive tendencies and trying to prove their negative world view while blaming everything on the outside world because they're experiencing themselves and others from a regressed childlike position.
The work of analytic psychiatry developed an understanding of the unconscious process that a person was being controlled by and explained much of the background noise that to those close to a traumatized person was just plain 'irritating'.
One can imagine reading Freud and Jung's histories of some of their early patients, especially one famously sexually traumatized woman, those around her, would just say "grow up". Yet as those famous analysts showed she was afraid of life itself and ran from the present and the future by regressing to the pre trauma levels so that she acted silly and like a baby at times. Indeed to the external observer the patient was ridiculous, phony and immature but seen through the analytic lens the doctors recognised that she was dealing with the unresolved effects of trauma.
In a true history of the war, well represented in the movie Patton, the general is haranguing a shell shock soldier who is literally regressed to infancy, almost sucking his thumb as a result of war exposure. The general harangues him and abuses him such that subsequent official complaints almost lost Patton his generalship. Wiser minds than his understood the effects of trauma. Indeed it was in WWII building on the horrendous experience of WWI that it was recognized that 'everyone' had a breaking point in war and all (including General Patton) would collapse and regress and dissociate if they were exposed to (I believe 40 days and nights was the rough number) of days and nights of actual assault and threat. Ancients knew this and it was the basis of many defeats that followed long sieges. Trauma with it's tendency to nightmares damaged sleep and interfered with other reparative psychologic and physical processes.
Judith Herman, director of the Harvard University Trauma center, is a leading authority and her book Trauma and Recovery remains a classic decades after it's writing.
Regression has been seen as a 'generational' response and indeed some questionable elders wrote off the 60's hippy era as a collective psychological regression of young adults who had come through a cold war and now were threatened with conscription in the Vietnam war as the western world feared the expansion of that war to WWIII.
First Nation elders in Canada saw that their young were commonly psychologically regressed and unable to maintain commitments and marriages with more often than not the grandparents caring for the children because of the effects of residential school system sexual abuse on the community. Increasingly these young adults however as the community heals and returning to the normative and health producing, community building roles of child raising, work and longer stable relationships.
This is especially true in the AA and NA communities where drugs and alcohol and trauma were associated with the immaturity recognized by psychological studies as far back as the 30's. In recovery the flip side of the irresponsibility is the joy people take in the privilege of parenting and work. As one fellow said, "I'm thankful I can pay taxes today."
Indeed the move from narcissism to altruism is often seen as the key evidence of recovery from trauma. The person traumatized is often in survival mode and regressed to a self centered child but when she or he makes that critical decision the change occurs and the person begins really considering how their actions affect others, putting children first, or caring for old people, asking what benefit an action will have in the short term and long term rather than just thinking of the one night stand or the party.
What is so sad is that the 'regression' is so obvious to the adults in the community around the person. However only when the person is ready to give up the temporary and destructive false self soothing that comes with the almost masturbatory quality of the regression is there any hope of growth and recovery. This movement towards health is commonly seen when the adult turns to those more experienced, recovered alcoholics or addicts for instance, soldiers who have been to war had ptsd but got on with it, sexually abused therapists who have left the subsequent gender wars to go on and have successful marriages and raising children so they can talk seriously about recovery firsthand as well as from books, and seeing the elders of the community, the old people, those old elephants as it were who look like shit but have indeed been there, done, that and got the tshirt and ball cap to prove it. Sometimes the latter individuals are physicians, psychiatrists, priests and ministers. Sometimes they are not.
The key though is when the regressed individuals ask and follow advise from those more experienced rather than childishly wallowing in their own shit, making more muck and being what kids today call these men and women, "drama queens".
Indeed modern psychaitrisy, especially the work that has come from the pure laboratory of war zones, indicates that the longer the person is 'stuck' the more long term potential for growth is lost. Being 'stuck' in the past, living in the safety of the masturbatory " I'm alright, you're not" world, since alone and with those who agree with me " I'm right, you're not," is a nice safe suckling sort of zone. It's like people with elevator phobia. As long as they avoid elevators they're fine. But the longer they avoid , the sicker they become and the more difficult it is for them to get back on the elevator.
This was seen in the political gender wars of the 60's and 70's with the girls lining up on one side of the room in angry feminist camps while the boys lined up on the other side in indifferent playboy camps. One was in the classic tempertantrum regressive mode while the other was in the equally classic regressive pout mode. In the 80's and 90's the Sex in the City 'role reversal' occurred with the playgirls and the angry househusbands. This mirrored the political world of left and right before the real movement to the so called 'third corner' positions.
Without getting into the historic developments in modern and post modern psychiatry, group and marriage therapies or the developments in political science which is beyond the scope of a regression discussion, it's just worth considering the equivalent terms from other areas such as 'devolution' and "reactionary" and 'luddism."
Sometimes the regression is so obvious, the behaviour so plain that I find myself as a therapist listening to a 30 year old and asking "were you traumatized" at 5 or 6 and seeing them do that "how did you know' thing. Similiarly I ask the 50 yo 'playboy', were you in the Vietnam war and he tells me he was. It's not rocket science. It's just obvious when a person isn't acting their age but it's also true that no one who has ever really been there can 'snap out of it'. It's just that the sooner they do the sooner they get help and heal.




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It’s Complicated

This chick flick with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Marten is marketed to bitter unforgiving women. Man leaves self obsessed woman for younger woman. Man comes back to now ex wife and has an affair with her. She thereby trumps the original marriage breaker.Old woman beats young woman. She then destroys the husband who has come back to her and their family. Such sweet revenge.

Finally, she's supposedly the good mother. In the end all her kids are with her. It looks more like fear than love. She has the big house and gets the architect. It's such a cold hearted superficial movie whose only redeeming feature is Alec Baldwin's sensitive portrayal of a three dimensional character. American woman at it's worst. Reminded me of the Guess Who song. It's only wrong if the man does it.

DNA evidence shows a third of children aren't their father's in the increasing patrimony suits. Affairs take two. Jesus said, he without sin, should throw the first stone. She is definitely a stoner in this movie that celebrate marijuania promoting it as the solution for the geriatric set. But it's all vengeance. Family and community are secondary to the self centered individual. The culture of narcissim at it's ugliest, disguised in a veneer of fine food, wealth and 'sex in the city' clothing.

The new world order – Hedonism becomes Shedonism :"You've come along way, Baby" - "She who has the most toys wins." Thank you Hollywood!

Personality Disorder

Personality is seen in psychiatry to be a collection of traits and behaviours that can be traced from adolescence forward. Everyone has "personality traits". DSMIV asks examiners to record what these traits are in Axis II of the diagnosis. Broadly is the person 'odd' or "peculiear' or are they introverted or extroverted.

The traits reflect the internal defences that an individual develops to cope with the desires of the individual child and the introjected demands of adult society. Defences were the 'interpreted" mechanisms of interaction between the super ego and id. Eissenberger describes the history of this development in his thoroughly brilliant classic, "The Discovery of the Unconscious". Later these 'defences' would be more commonly called 'coping strategies" referring to how the individual interacted with the society about them.

Personality and character were terms to described the facets of the individual who 'rough' is 'smoothed' in their relationships to the external demands of the group. A defect was sort of an "unpolished' bit or indeed a coping strategy which worked well enough at a younger age or in a different social milieu but was no longer adaptive.

Personality disorders have much in common with addictions because the disorders themselves can be understood as addiction to an earlier useful 'strategy'. With alcoholism there's 'fun', 'fun and trouble' and 'trouble'. Alcohol and drugs serve to cope with the anxiety the individual feels and serves to 'self soothe'. Similiarly personality disorders reflect persistence of 'self serving ' or even 'self soothing' strategies beyond their 'do not use date'.

Borderline personality disorders act in many ways similar to the adolescent in the first phase of adolescence. Adolescence is that time of leaving home and establishing an adult family. The first phase is usually a partial or complete rejection of the parents and a move to the safety of the same sex age group. Once separated with hopefully at least an uneasy détente with the past the adolescent comfortable in the new group moves on to establish a primary bond with another and moving on to form in the third phase the new nuclear unit.

It's a fact of modern and priviledged societies that childhood can be prolonged. In cultures more involved in survival the length of adolescence is not uncommonly brief, at most a year or two and the rituals of the group clearly delineated the end of childhood and the obligations and responsibilities of adulthood. In the west post modern contemporary society adolescence has extended into the 20's with the extension of education and adults living at home for lack of funds to establish a separate home.

With personality disorders there's a tendency to be somewhat surprised to see what is a normal acceptable behavior developmentally much earlier being pulled out and used in interactions in adulthood. The passive aggressive personality disorder famous for prolonged "pouts" and "chronic depressions" is reminiscient of the "terrible twos" with the child refusing to put poo poo in the potty and treating the whole issue as a kind of 'game' much to the horror of parents.

The dependent personality disorder is the 'clinger' , the child holding onto mommy's skirt and refusing to move further. They glom onto people taking hostages and calling that "love".

The antisocial personality disorder is the school yard bully who as an adult has a quick draw baton or gun if he's blue collar and quick draw lawyer if he's white collar. Wealth and status don't mean there are 'less' personality disorders but in fact wealth and status can increase the very tendency to develop and sustain personality disorders. However in the rich and powerful these are usually called "eccentricities". Only the truly rich and powerful can fully avoid growing up and live of life of childhood with it's narcissistic entitlement and utter disregard for the concerns of others.

Personality disorders are terms that are given to those who encounter the psychiatric system, the social support system, or the courts and the less resources the more likely one is to fall afowl of these societal agencies vested with powers of maintaining the peace.

Personality disorders tend to 'rub' one the wrong way. The borderline personality disorder threatens suicide a tad too easily or perhaps too often. The antisocial personality disorder would rather beat you up as to have a cup of tea. The paranoid personality disorder sees conspiracy in every action of the government, including garbage collection.

The fact is everyone is looking for love and personality disorders are usually people who didn't get it in their families. They may have got it but didn't recognize it but on the inside they look like those obese or anorexic or scarred kids whose hurt shows. Personality disorders are the hidden handicaps like learning disabilities and physical disabilities like deafness. I've told personality disorders that they'd probably have an easier life if they just wore a bandage around their head or wrapped their chest with white linen to indicate to the world that they're 'wounded'.

They're the survivors of the 'war of childhood' in which a child wants attention from their parents much as another child may long for food. Often the parents didn't get what the child seeks so can't give what they haven't got. More commonly the natural disasters and losses like deaths and calamities have disrupted the child raising process.

Paranoia is a life saving trait in a war torn zone and may well be what keeps you alive if your father or mother is an violent alcoholic. The histrionic personality disorders desire for intimacy is coupled with a fear of in depth engagement more commonly because of countless broken promises that result in that superficiality and external warmth coupled with the guarded interior.

The borderline wanting love says come hither, stay away, vacillating in between and so comfortable in being rejected that they more commonly set up a set of 'traps' and 'challenges' for any one who is considered to be let in but of course everyone or most everyone fails these "tests".

The 'coping mechanism' of the personality disorder are like 'guns' and to learn the more adaptive tools of the adult trade one has to put down the 'gun' and learn to wrestle or bargain or trade. It's terrifying to let go of a 'gun' and there's little promise of safety in a handshake or an embrace. At the merest threat one goes for the gun that might even have been tossed away.

So in times of crisis all the 'old' ways surface. And sadly drugs and alcohol make even the best of us look like "personality disorders' because chemical addictions cause a reversible brain damage with higher levels of functioning , the forebrains most human aspects of what theorists like Piaget called the realm of 'abstract thinking' and Maslow described as 'self actualization' slowly eroding giving alcohol and drugs the name, "the great eraser'. They take everything away even character.

No one is immune. It was the arrogance of the men of the age of rationalism who figured if they were captured in the female sex trade and fed heroin and cocaine then put out to work as slave prostitutes by their sociopath pimps that they the men wouldn't do this but women 'succumbed' because they had weak character.

Patton almost lost his generalship when he beat a 'shell shocked' soldier. Later research showed everyone would develop 'shell shock' if they were exposed to 220 days of a war zone necessitating the modern effective rotations. Much of the damage being done by noise and sleep deprivations. Sleep deprivation studies showed that everyone went psychotic eventually.

And the senior crack cocaine researcher in New York said that in his experience that if anyone did crack for 6 months steadily and kept doing it , they'd sell their grandmother for more crack at two years because crack changed the brain drastically.

Sometimes the treating community feels sad for the personality disorders or even those with the more offensive 'eccentricities' because the alcoholics and addicts who abstain from alcohol and drugs and join AA or NA or one of the other therapeutic communities, they have a higher success rate for recovery than those who haven't turned to drugs and alcohol to smooth the interface between themselves and society. Sober, personality disorders are treatable within the community and with therapy individually after the 'first stage' of recovery.

It's one of the amazing facts of work in addiction psychiatry but it's a place where the personality disorders are seen to disappear especially for those who enter into service, get jobs, develop altruism and humor and have gratitude for being able to pay taxes. It's a process of maturity and it begins in the addiction community with saying no to the first drink or drug.

It's harder for a mere personality disorder to 'volunteer' or 'pay taxes' or 'say no to angry outburst or running away, or to join a club. Personality disorders show most when people are in longer term relationships or in longer term jobs or when they have to change and their limitations in adaptation to change show.

The fact remains there is love and it can be found and when the 'guns' are dropped adult love is possible without the drama. Thankfully for all personality disorders are treatable conditions and not uncommonly simply 'burn out' as the individual gets 'tired' of burden of carrying all the 'baggage from the past' and having the same old same old problems always seem to be recurring.

Self Righteous Anger

I'm interested in the process of my own defensiveness and anger. It's probably best to call this "self righteous anger". I notice that I do good things that I get rewarded for and are expected of me, such as my job. But in addition to do the basic work I do a whole lot more than is necessary or expected of me. Though increasingly the government or employers expectations are impossible and at variance with the clients who pay the government to pay me. I have many masters and trying to please them all is a gargantuan task . So the expectations are a problem.

Similiarly however I will generously contribute my time in a voluntary position or participate in group membership activities rather than just accepting the benefits of being there without contributing. I'm what is known as a 'giver'. I belong to a church and support charities and generally am thought of and think of myself as a good guy albeit irritating, opinionated and unconventional.

What upsets me is not when someone questions work I'm being paid for or asks that I do something in that realm that would serve them more, but rather it's in this other realm, that area where I'm already a 'giver', already 'serving above and beyond the call of duty', doing more than 'chasing the blessed buck."

My immediate reaction in that world is , "Don't they know I'm doing this for free? Don't they know how much I give? How dare they criticize my generosity and my charity." In a way I don't expect pay but am partly looking for thanks and appreciation. I'm hypersensitive to criticism. I'm thin skinned. Yet, I think of myself as tough and chose to work in what I was told and indeed turned out to be the most 'thankless' jobs. I also liked the idea that 'anonymous' giving is the least egotistical so I often played down the giving I did and have not sought accolades for my generosity. I figured God was taking care of that however I 'didn't expect to get criticized.'

So I want to whack the offensive little mealy moused critical person but can't because that would spoil my good guy image. I often think in fleeting thoughts how I could discretely dispose of the critic and not get caught. Anonymous giving back in a different sense. Then fed up, I want to walk away and let the organization, fellowship, project or whatever it is I've been contributing to 'suffer'. I want the imaginary 'group' /'audience" to see that they had a choice, the generous giving, kind, handsome, smart , great me or the little critical shit who usually doesn't do anything but tear down, the prick.

Now I can't see antecedents in my family but I certainly see evidence of this pride in my adolescent behavior. I organized charities like carole singing at Christmas, fund raising, and coffee shops for YMCA and YWCA and various church basements. I also started improvisation theatre groups and in medical school organized 'non profit' contributions by doctors to various activities, volunteered as editor for magazines, contributed much writing for free, sat on committees and generally was very much one of that small percentage of people who participate and do the 'work' of community and society. Interestingly I don't do as much of this anymore. It speaks to the pouting ego, arrogance, self pity, and righteous anger, and thin skin.

I remember as a late teen ager, early youth organizing a very successful coffeehouse that became packed every weekend with the top musicians wanting to play. I liked seeking out new entertainment and getting to know the acts and getting them for the least amount of money. I loved bringing in different almost elegant vaudevillian things with symphony players on the same night as blues bands. A group of us were involved but I'd been asked to participate because of my MC and entertainment connections. But our success was my undoing. We raised a lot of money and the organization hired a psychologist who was to be 'consultant' to the program. He wanted to see the MC position and hiring of groups be democratized and wanted everyone to rotate through the different positions like door greeter, coffeemaker and money taker, things which we'd done as necessary and ad hoc but the formula had put me on the stage and arranging with the entertainers because I was one myself and on my own time went out to the various activities and met all the new people. I also had an eye or ear for what was 'new' and what would bring in the crowds. We were very popular and only those coming early were able to get seats.

Within weeks the psychologist had closed the place down. I left in fact after a few weeks because it wasn't the 'in' place to be and I was commited to the 'excellence' rather than the group in some ways. I remember taking some pleasure in being asked to come back and resurrect the destruction of the coffeehouse. I have this thing for 'vindication'. I've been 'vindicated' so many times in my life that I once thought I'd change my name to "Vinny". At the same time I wished people weren't so stupid as to mess with me, my friends and the things that I and they created.

But the original founders and I talked and none really wanted to do 'that thing' again. Our core group had moved on. Three or four of us kids had been the main thrust and we'd been over run by the 'johnny come latelies' , the 'carpetbaggers' and this 'ideas man' who was getting paid and clearly was the sort of person who didn't understand the 'passion' that we'd brought voluntarily to doing things. We went our separate ways. Mostly putting our extra efforts into our various university and work obligations. I think I was a teen ager at 20 and in retrospect remember a bit of swaggering arrogance too. I'm fairly tolerant of the kids these days who like me looked and acted a bit like assholes because I know they're just insecure, often trying really hard, quite bright, and very creative and just don't have the polish yet.

That "group" process event represents an early example of my inability to express myself or deal with what I felt was a 'bullying' situation well, when something I had worked hard for and cared for was being 'taken' away. I even thought of 'communism' and 'revolution' and how people who couldn't make something themselves always wanted to come in and take what someone else had made but they always seemed to run it into the ground since they really only wanted the end result and didn't want to be there from the beginning or do the leg work of building a thing from the bottom up. A lot of people just want the finished product. It's a throw away instant society of many users and few doers.

Later I'd come across a type of man and woman who could be called "marriage breakers" . They preyed on married people, attracted to the type of good home that they thought they could steal but only destroyed because they lacked the capacity to nurture and care for something once they had it. They were called "cowbirds" because cowbirds sneeked their eggs in Robins nest and left the Robins to raise their eggs for them.

I remember when I was married I'd do 'extra' things around the house, like washing the wives clothing by hand or vacuuming on a day more than we might usually vacuum, or cleaning the washroom, making a special meal, since I was already always cooking, but doing that extra special meal. Then she'd criticize or ask "why didn't you vacuum behind the couch. Why don't you move the couch when you vacuum." "Couldn't you have used cream instead of milk in the sauce, you know how I don't like the sauce thin?" Married people can be very critical of each other. It's always struck me as a Pink Panther /Cato relationship.

Even today I get angry thinking of my ex wife's constant criticism when in my mind's eye (I'm probably cross eyed) I was always trying to do 'extra' nice things. It's like I have this internal "b" grade standard, strive for the A and then say 'screw it' if someone says 'why didn't you get an A".

And it came back to me, thinking of this. In a grade school year I had straight A's with one B and brought home my report card and my mother asked "why didn't you get A" in this class. Looking back I know it was "curiosity" because she was overall very proud and pleased but I took that as criticism and then spent the next semester doing the very difficult task of getting only B's. It's really hard to do straight B's. Years later I'd aim and get straight A's routinely but in retrospect think that year of straight A's was one of my hardest academic challenges.

After that I didn't bother working towards A's in school for some years later.

It was so much more work to get an A and it was even work to get all B's . Later getting all A's was easier that 'straight B's. I never tried 'straight C's but expect it might be an even greater challenge.

So I got mostly b's and c's for a while preferring fishing and extra curricualar activities to school.

That's the source of righteous anger for me and a character defect for sure. I'm praying for God to help me with it. That's all I can do for now. It's interesting to me to know the nature of this 'fault' and hopefully be able to recognize it when I find myself 'angry' so I don't have to feed the 'anger' and "make a case" for being 'wronged'. It's really just the same old same old 'stuff'. Let go and Let God.

Few today are trained in the psychoanalytic traditions. I count myself as one of the lucky ones. It remains in my mind one of the greatest teaching tools but could not compete with some of the modern therapies in consideration of cost and efficiency of behavior change. It still has great merit and the changes that occur are often superior over time to the quicker solutions. What interested me in the process was that understanding myself through therapy I observed "my reaction" to a patient as much as what the patient was doing or saying. With experience, especially now having treated thousands of people, especially the dangerously insane, the personality disorders and sometimes really ghastly disturbed individuals with the roughest edges, I'm fascinated by when and why a person "irritates" me or "triggers" a thought or emotion or memory. Trained in the use of story telling to get around anti authority defences I react to the 'trigger' by sharing a story parallel to the experience. Because of the 'process' factors I'm talking about 'us' rather than me and not surprisingly the person 'gets it' days or weeks later when the 'insight' blossoms, the seed having been planted. But to do this I've had to spend a lot of time in therapy and reflecting on my own humanity. Indeed it's hard to be judgemental when one looks closely benath the layers of the onion skin and realizes 'there but for the grace of God' go I. Empathy is indeed about the common connections through experience and it's so much deeper than the 'sympathy' that so often holds us back.

It was once said of me in a hospital I worked, "the doctor doesn't tolerate fools well unless they are his patients." The truth in my life is that I expected my co workers and my superiors to be less insane or sick than my patients or me and that just doesn't happen to be the truth. My expectations (very unrealistic given the history of destruction by leaders and institutions and countries) has created for me a lot of resentments. Resentments are best described as "taking poison and waiting for the other guy to die."

I find only with age, and that's sad in many ways, do I have the 'empathy' for my superiors and co workers that I lacked when younger. Increasingly I try to rotate the picture and drop the "up down" scale and see things on their 'side' so that I get a more 'planar' rather than 'linear' take on things. It's a real eye opener. Recently I realized that an academic colleague who sits higher in the conventional totem pole paid dearly in his life for the priviledge of that position. I've had a life of adventure and learned many skills while he was completely dominated by living the politics of what Hesse might well have called the "glass bead game". We make choices and when we envy another person their position or wealth or whatever we forget that we may well have taken a 'road less travelled' , starting out on it long ago. I certainly opted for spirituality and learning over amassing wealth, adventure and travel over hoarding and position power. I found the life of a millionaire stifling in so many ways compared to being " free man in paris." What I wonder about now is the 'baggage' of character defects and these traits that served when I was younger, how I'm going to let go of them now that I'm older. I remember as a kid I handled bullies but fighting back and hospitalized several with punches and kicks but that is not going to serve me well if I one day end up in assisted living or a nursing home. I'm not about to roundhouse on the next guy who bullies me but even 'saber rattling' lacks luster now. Living and letting live is it's own kind of skill. My academic friend has certain skills I admire even though I usually think him a pretentious deceitful toady. I pride myself on much more 'practical' and "pragmatic skills" like fixing my diesel heater last night, sailing solo across oceans, that sort of thing.

Righteous anger just doesn't seem to be one of those things that has a lot of 'stock life'. I wouldn't want to let it go but I really have to be careful with how long I hold onto and how much I keep in the cupboards. It does tend to attract a rodents.