Symptomatic Behavior

Not My Image

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. 

-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (12 Jul 1817-1862) 

Trigger Warning: Discussion of coping skills and behaviors that can be self-harming. 

This is only my take on the topic at hand. I am hopeful that it is helpful to discuss it here. 

For years, I struggled with addictions/problems beyond drugs and alcohol. Nicotine, compulsive behaviors, attitudes, self harm, compulsive eating, the list goes on and on. I'm sure that there are folks who can add to this list of coping skills and behaviors meant to cover up pain. I wish I could say that I'm free and clear from this infinite list. I am not. 

I'm also of the belief that clinging to these behaviors is a way to dictate the pain I am feeling. What a powerful action to consider something that will bring harm to oneself. Not everyone finds themselves three or four steps into a destructive behavior wondering how they got there. Many will choose the behavior as a means of delivering some level of pain. The choice to do so is nothing like the daily psychobabble folks can be bombarded with (You're making bad choices. You should consider healthy behaviors) by well-meaning friends, support systems and providers. 

On the contrary, choice can be at the crux of our decision to deliver pain unto ourselves. There is power in the choice, and the pursuit of control is at the heart of that power. 

As a survivor of adverse childhood experiences, I was used to self-medicating my pain. Having the additional propensity for addiction, led to a path of consumption of drugs and alcohol to the point of self-destruction. At 27 years old (and after numerous attempts at getting clean and sober), I was able to access the right amount of treatment to match my internal willingness to recover. The road was rocky, but the treatment placed in my path enabled me to attain sobriety. To be sure, there was work to be done, and (for me) maintenance of that work is essential to my daily abstinence from drugs and alcohol. 

But very soon in my recovery, I discovered resistance to looking at what I believed were my core issues. True, there was support for coming forward and declaring that I was a trauma survivor. But there were also professionals and peers alike who discouraged me from "looking too early" at those issues. They cautioned me that opening up old wounds too soon, may leave me even more vulnerable to relapse.

But the old wounds were already festering at the surface. And one of the motivating factors in my getting clean and sober had to do with this. I simply couldn't get drunk or high enough to escape the truth that I had been violated as a child. And the pain of these memories manifested themselves at full bore, regardless of my being drunk or sober.

Looking back, I can even see where there were unethical practices of counter-transference that manifested itself as downright hostility. Sometimes the hostility was facilitated by providers in group settings. But I also see (only in hindsight) where I went looking for this kind of mistreatment, as a way to discover immediate pain so as not to feel the magnitude of the terrible losses sustained in childhood. 

I remember one provider in-particular who did a "leaving session" from a day treatment facility where I was seeking services. Now they call these places intensive outpatient or IOP treatment, and they do phenomenal work with those struggling with addiction. But this guy! He practically begged me to drink. He kept making statements to me about how relapse was OK. And how, given my issues, I may not stay sober. 

I've seen him out and about, drink in hand, and eager to get away from me . . . Hmmm. 

Facilitated hostility is hard to gauge at times. People in treatment have a right to get angry in group settings. But what I saw in this day treatment program were staff who wanted to give other patients the opportunity to express their frustration with the openness of my treatment.  

Almost 28 years ago now, I was a gay man who worked with youth at risk, and I cruised for anonymous sex. This somehow got twisted into my being a danger to working with children. When the added (and commonplace) symptoms of obscure dreams I disclosed were thrown into this mix, I was confronted by both the facility and the patients. There were numerous instances of aggression thrown at me, and the possibility of suicide as a viable option was my daily companion. After a peers rage and accusations were levied at me during a group setting, professionals involved would insist that I had triggered the aggressor, after all. 

Ironic, because I had also found a group of trauma survivors (outside of treatment) who were working on their recovery from abuse who embraced me, told me that my twisted dreams were symptoms of the trauma, and that cruising adults was different than working with children. 

But the facility's position was that cruising was bad, very bad. And that I had no business working with kids. Talk about institutionalized homophobia . . . I'm amazed that I'm still here. 

It took years of recovery, therapy and a host of help and support to peel away the layers of shame dumped on me at this place, by the very professionals I had entrusted to help me. I now know that they knew of my trauma history. It's why the inpatient place I detoxed at wanted me to attend. In contrast, I worked with some of the most gentle, trauma informed people I have ever had the privilege to be associated with both personally and professionally.

Yet the place I got referred to was ill-equipped to work with someone with my history, and the nightmarish mental state that I was in at the time. Nothing was clear to me about my memories, and I was convinced I was the guilty party. And the memories of abuse were coming at me at a rate of speed and frequency that I simply could not process without help. 

So they sent me to a place to "work on" cruising, meaning that I must stop the behavior. As you can imagine, this did nothing to augment my behaviors, and I was left with additional shame at falling short of the providers' expectations. I carried this expectation and disappointment long after completing this outpatient program. 

And I stayed sober. Some days, I had no reason to stay sober. It was all just too much. But the thing that kept me going was that every moment I didn't drink was a big "Fuck you!" to that provider who begged me to relapse, and the awful facility he was connected to. I worked as hard as I could, just to show them that I would not knuckle under to their prediction of my eventual relapse.

And I also saw others close to me from detox drop off, one by one. Within a matter of weeks, I was the only one left from a group of fifteen or more that had came in together to get clean and sober. I returned to that detox often to take a moment and help folks who were "shakin' and bakin'" in the detox. There was a smoking room, and I had permission from the staff to sit in there and encourage others to go to groups and participate in their recovery. Never did I mention my trauma history to the patients, unless directed to do so by the staff. Stringent confidentiality laws prevent this type of intervention (Heck! Co-intervention!) from happening now. But it was so crucial to my early recovery. At about a year sober, the detox pushed me from the nest, and told me I would have to sign up to volunteer to continue my work. It was time for me to fly, and they knew it.

And I surrounded myself with sober and other recovering people. My day began and ended with prayers, and several moments with God in-between. At 90 days sober, I moved into the Serenity House. I've been sober ever since.

But I engaged in other behaviors for a very long time. My realization from all of this writing is that I recreated the dynamics of what happened to me in a public restroom at seven years old. At age thirteen, my body was screaming with puberty that I thought was a dirty secret. There was no one I could talk to about my feelings, so graffiti on bathroom walls, and homophobic rhetoric led me to public restroom where an adult man exploited me. This began a process that led to almost daily cruising by the time I got sober.

When this daily cruising was discussed with professionals who were only able to draw on subconscious wounds and internalized homophobia, the prescription was shame and abstinence . . . Total abstinence; with a healthy dose of AIDS-phobia thrown in for good measure. I truly grieve for the level of pain these providers in outpatient must have felt at the time.

There were moments of abstinence, but no real support around me regarding finding a relationship, or even networking with the lgbt recovery community. It was there, but seemed inaccessible to me at the time.

At around two years sober, I met a man that was gay, sober, and happy. I couldn't get these three things in the same zip-code. But Ron had an awareness and wisdom about him that was like music to my soul. He helped me come out, both to my own community, and the community at large. There were other individuals to discuss my behaviors with, but Ron was not beset by the internalized homophobia that these other, well meaning sober people in my life. That's not a knock on anyone who genuinely tried to help me. It's just that the context of being gay some 25-plus years ago in my area had inherent difficulties too numerous to mention here . . . Perhaps another blog entry, for another time.

Back to injurous behavior. I want to be clear about something. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CONSENSUAL SEX BETWEEN TWO (OR MORE) CONSENTING ADULTS! I'm not here to lecture or cast moral judgement on the sexual proclivities of others. I am only taking the time to write about this, because my behavior brought me shame, and emotionally, self-delivered punishment. It was shame that I could wrap my arms and psyche around to feel the feelings of shame, without processing or embarking on a deeper journey of discovery of my own trauma history.

This does not invalidate the trauma work I was doing at the time. In retrospect, I was right on schedule, discovering things about myself at the appropriate rate that the greater universe saw fit to reveal it to me.

But I struggled with many behaviors, the most glaring of which was the continued cruising for almost two decades of my sobriety.

And yet, I continued to grow, change, discover ethics that changed the behavior, excluded and carved subsequent pieces of it away from my life, and worked like hell to find a place where I could drop it altogether. At times, I would slip back into a careless mindset that illustrated my having given up. I am so grateful that something bigger than me carried me through those places. During work with alcoholics/addicts who had relapsed, I began to hear my story around sexual promiscuity from the very people who were venturing back into sobriety. I called on my experiences in outpatient, then committed to treating these people differently; both professionally and personally. Love, acceptance, and support are a prescription for recovery, regardless of my collecting a paycheck or not during the intervention.

And in making room to love and accept, I found little spaces to heal myself. Though some stories scared the crap out of me, I would double down on love and support. And in doing this, I found areas of personal growth and development.

I also gathered other skills sets of physical stimulation over the years. Thank God for Women in recovery. They taught me to pamper myself. Give myself a "buff and puff" night. Take a bubble bath, listen to a battery operated radio, and enjoy a cigarette in the tub. Other folks taught me how to prepare a meal in a way that was about self-care; either alone, or with a group of friends.

And I learned at a workshop in my professional life that utilizing an ice cube can create the intensity to satisfy urges to do other forms of self harm. Nothing like laying an ice cube on a facecloth and setting the bottom of my uncovered foot on that cube. I still hand it out as a skill to folks struggling with self-harm.

Men taught me that it was ok for men to cry. Crying could release pain, stress, and grief in ways that nothing else could. I can get so caught up in something being wrong in my life if I'm crying. Crying is a healing and nurturing act; a gift that only individuals can give to themselves.

And I learned that processing through my memories, naming what had happened, and deciphering how I bring the shame of that behavior into my adult life can be one of the most nurturing things I can do for myself, and my soul. The behaviors are branches of my symptoms. Looking deeper can free me from the root of this abuse.

I'm not going to go into what my current maintenance includes where letting go of self injurious behavior is concerned. And one person's healthy coping skill might signal another person's danger zone of behavior. Working out comes to mind as something that can exist along the spectrum of both these worlds. Sex and food and a couple of others where the lines are easily blurred, and fanaticism can skew what is recovery for the individual.

Even drugs and alcohol are not something that need to be summarily dismissed. I know folks who use marijuana to manage their anxiety. I also know people who may struggle with abstinence who still have recovery that is admirable. Abstinence is not for everyone. Daily abstinence is something that I aspire to, but I will not reject those who choose otherwise; provided my personal safety is not at risk.

I haven't placed a new entry since Sunday, so this piece is (admittedly) multi-layered and voluminous. But as always, I offer it as something to view that may be fruitful to you, the reader.

And I want to restate that your gentle feedback/comments will contribute in ways that reach folks I may not be serving.

Best regards,

M :-)