[person3]

I was asking Janine what to do when I had a bad episode of "unwanted" thoughts...like the fear you are going to do some horrible murderous/sexual/whatever thing. Her reply was this:

And sure, they are "yours" in the sense that you thought them up. But humans
can think up ANYthing - if you and I were writing a script together, we could
easily outdo each other moment by moment if our assignment from the studio
was to create HORRIFIC ideas/actions and put them on the page. The thing that
scares us so bad with obsessive ideas is the feeling surrounding lack of
impulse control.

CLEARLY, you have impulse control. But when we aren't used to USING it, we
have very little faith in it. That's the main reason why the "sitting with
one's feelings" is such an important thing to learn to do. It's not that it
really MATTERS whether we sit with them or act them out, but we gain a sense of
EGO CONTROL, we learn to trust our own ability to discern between what we CHOOSE
to do and what we insist we just "HAD" to do.

Except for breathing, there is not much we HAVE TO do. We sometimes live as
if we do, because we like the abandonment of self responsibility that comes
along with it....the ol' "I HAD to call him, I had no choice..." etc. We live
in reactive mode rather than Action mode....where are actions feel proscribed
FOR us by our own overwhelming emotions. Make sense?

I certainly did it most of my life (and still DO fall into that kind of
thinking big time on occasion). And the cost? Well, then the obsessive ideas
enter and we live terrified that we will DO something we don't really choose to
do...we are finding a sick kind of way to torment ourselves by praying on our
own weakness...we KNOW we are used to feeling like we have no control, so when
we want to torment ourselves (guilt, for example)
the Super Ego, sadistic and vicious, invites horrible thoughts to enter and
linger, knowing that we will never trust ourselves not to ACT on them (since we
walk around saying "I had no choice and HAD to do x" most of the time)

So part of the stuff i mentioned about lack of discipline and structure makes it easy for the mind to become a free-for-all.

I never in my life could have made this connection! I swore up and down that the way to tame these thoughts was to try to think them to the point of desensitization, and that didnt' work for me. Just scared me more b/c I was under stress. But doing some things in impulse control has helped.

 

[ret]

I'm not sure if you know, but that's a symptom of OCD.

 

[jake]

Geez what can I say. Talk about gettin to the heart of the matter!

 

[jake]

So person3, what do you make of it? I mean, does what she said apply and help? If you are in upset or still trying to take it in "mode" don't worry about answering right now. I just know I got a tremendous amount out of what she said for myself. I know you don't believe in coincidince anymore, if I'm not mistaken, bt I gotta say that I was surely led to read exactly what I was supposed to tonight
--jake

 

[person3]

reticient: oh yeah I'm definitely aware of the OCD-ness of it. I think i've been OCD since the butt-crack dawn of time...

jake: what am I doing about it? Well, I am taking moments to sit and think more. I was going to take a shower a couple nights ago (well I DID eventually) but I stopped and let the "shuffle" function on my music player go through songs...and I sat there, and instead of TRYING to think about something I just kind of let thoughts and feelings come to me.

I decided that since I found the AA book helpful but have the distinct problem of not being an alcoholic (damn I wish it was alcohol not drugs because those people seem like fun!), but I do have a penchant for prescription pills, I decided to go to an NA meeting last night. Honestly after sharing some stuff I felt WORSE...it was a small, scruffy crowd in an old office room of a rehab center...I mean it just looked all sorts of shady..where as AA at the local church is mix of yuppies and not-so-yuppie types. So I felt weird about being there. I think though, that this weird bad feeling (i even had nightmares last night) could be meaning that I am onto something. I don't know if I can follow their steps though, I don't know if i'm ready for that. I'm having a hard time deciding.

But yes, I am being a little less impulsive, when and where I can be, sometimes i'm not sometimes i am...like instead of thinking of everything i need to do before going to work (and arriving LATE), I just take my stuff, leave an hour early, I don't even decide which CD to put in...i'll let the radio play. Just really simplifying things. Makes me feel like i dont' HAVE to do as much.

 

[jake]

Sounds good, that you might be onto something. I always like to hear ppl say that, gives me hope. Especially dreams and/or nightmares. I usually go w/o dreams. This past week I've had two nightmares. So, new Grist for the mill eh?
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RE: NA & AA I know some ppl who come to AA cuz they said NA was too intense or something, but they were ppl who had heavy drinking in their story always along with RX or street drug use. I have seen snippets out of their Big Book and I thought it sounded really good though.
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There is an NA mtg that lets out at 7pm and I get there to make coffee early for our 8pm AA, so I have had a chance to mingle a little. It IS different, just a different feel. Can't put my finger on it.
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My first love was always alcohol, though drugs are in my story..especially hash and pain pills. Talk about DP!! Jesus I ran straight to the bar to try to come down toward the end of my smoking days. I Was also one of those weirdos who hated cocaine and speed. I used to pray for one more decent "high" from weed or whatever, cuz I hated to give it up but it bit me in the ass!

 

[person3]

jake, you said you have been sober for 20 years, I believe.

What brought on the DP? Just curious.

 

[person3]

also yeah that is weird!

I HATE pot but there were times you could give me all sorts of fun stimulants and I'd be a happy camper.

 

[Monkeydust]

I don't so much hate pot as I hate the people who think it's cool to act stoned ALL the time, stoned or not, and to make the word "dope" seem really appropriate.

 

[jake]

Hi person3, I'll try to give you the short version if I can:
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I was a really anxious kid. I picked up alot of my Mom's fears and terrors about "the outside world" and it's people, even though part of my young self knew she was irrational (paranoid schizophrenic, untreated). The first thing I used to alter reality was sniffing lighter fluid. 19 cents a can and a short alteration, but it worked. I was an escape artist from first grade on. I skipped, hid from the school bus, anything I could think of to not deal with school. I only knew I hid b/cuz school made me nervous and there was shame about being poor and mainly felt incredibly flawed. This came from lotsa types of abuse, I think.
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Fast forward to my first pot experience..age 13. My brother was shipping his things home ahead from the military..Guam to San Francisco, to Ohio. There were no boundaries at our house so of course we opened his stuff. I found a lid of clean reddish brown something, got my sis in on it, and we smoked and smoked till it was almost all gone. Turns out to be Thai-soaked in opium-stuff. Needless to say nothing really held a candle pot-wise from then on. But some good stuff came through ourr area and I couldn't get enough of smoking and drinking by then.
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Kicked out of High school before I was 16, s'posed to to Youth Corps. Evaded it as per usual and contnued to party but then my Dad passed away. I had been trying to help with the care he needed daily at home..hungover..starting to get some physical withdrawl but I blew it off.
------------
Next couple years my Mom clung to me and I always tried to keep a wall up but to be loving regardless of what all had gone on in childhood with her. She was homeless, I had a girlfriend a job pumping gas, and an apartment. So she wanted me to drive her around and find her a place to live and help her pay for it etc..or live with me!
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I had been drinking to oblivion every other day for about 4 years by this time. Doing much hash and pot, pain pills I stole, and two acid incidents, orange sunshine. What's weird is that smoking Angel Dust was more intense than the acid. People started telling me things I had done, places I'd been, and I could'nt recall. More often than a few incidents in my earlier drinking career. One evening in May of 1977 (see you don't 4get your first DP event).
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I went to a fast food place w/my girlfriend (whose ex-husband had been following me, put sugar in my gas tank, ruining the engine, hired trash people to jump out from bushes with pipes to take to my head, etc..I was dumb and naive, I'd never had an enemy in my life) This was when you pushed a button, and a car hop brought out the food. I had no appetite but thought I "should" eat. I'm 5'8 and weighed maybe 125 lbs.
----------------
Suddenly I looked at my girlfriend talking and could not tell what she was saying or if I was hearing it from somewhere else. I felt a horrible rush of adrenaline, dizzy, blurred vision, and I told her we have GOT to leave right now. Drove like Nascar to the apartment, put car in park, fell out and shook like an earhtquake uncontrollably. I would be told a year later I was in DT's and should have been in a hospital.
---------------
I tried to trudge on but I had the DP bug and started getting agoraphobic, and I defintitely didn't ride in car wih anybody after that If I could help it. I made the association that nobody could ever see me fall apart like that, ever again, so I would drive alone thank ya very much.
-----------------
I don't know much about the next few years but I continued to try to change, and my world got smaller from the phobia. All sorts of accomodations I made to live somewhat "normally" and stay out of the place I feared the most---a mental hospital I was convinced I had what Mom had.
------------
Got sober in '83...ppl kept saying all that fear will go away etc etc..well It didn't. I'd have good times and other times I was paralyzed with DP and anxiety. I got a Psychiatrist and therapist in 1992. They gave me low doses of mellarill at an alkie clinic a couple years b-4 this, b//cuz I would go so many days with out sleep. They didn't call it an antii-psychoticb/cuz they knew I'd run and not take it. It is used for sleep I finally came to see, but oh what a nasty ass drug.
-------------------
Fast forward to the mid 90's and all the tricyclics..nothing worked for my diagnoses, which at the time were, late stage alcoholism in remission, major depressive illness, dysthymia, anxiety reaction and PTSD.
Docs used Buspar with alkies back then for fear of re-addiction to something benzo, but Buspar, no good for me. I got worse. Never picked up a drink thru all of that and nothing to get high on. I kept trying to fit in and be ok and trust God.
-------------
Had finished High school w/ GED and had an Assoc. in Business, but could not keep jobs. I would stress about mistakes and finally just resign. I got a life chagning job in 1989 and managed for 7+ years to keep it, love it, and be one f the best. I actually bought a home, took care of Mom in her illnesses which had physical aspects now of a serious nature, and ad the same g/friend 6 years. Then I broke down
----sigh-----
I had been in therapy with a lady who s'posedly specialized in childhood trauma? She and I worked together for 3 years and I got worse. She used to make sexual comments then say she didn't recall saying. I was tring to be real, but I adored her and she finally said she loved me too. We went underground in a sexual/romantic relationship for two and a half yrs beyond the 3 yrs "therapy"...turned out I was not the "special case"..she was being sued by someone else who she exploited, a female patient. So I was a mess, and got a therapiist, a real one---

---and I wound up in a 2 year litigation b/cuz I had lost my career and sanity keeping this secret for the sake of her career. I sacrificed my self and health b/cuz she was my Higher Power. I never told anybody in AA except two ppl. It all came out later. I got a settlement after they tried to decimate me--her insurance lawyers--just doing their job. The settlement wasnt even what I used to earn in year. Over the next year my Mom died, my sister went nuts, and my family splintered, hither and yon....I love and miss them.
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I sold the house, the motorcycle, the other car, took my dog and moved to a rental one bedroom house, been sober, been on Remeron and Klonopin since about 1998, trying to finish auto tech school. I've had 3 arthritis and neuro surgeries past 3 years. I want to be able to work and--well, maybe not have EXACTLY what I had...the material stuff is rather unimportant comapred to trying to get a permanent handle on depersonalization, panic attacks, from stress and anxiety. Sorry so long.

 

[jake]

I just wanted to add this: I would not be alive 2day if I had not gotten sober. A.A. does work if one is willing; it just does wisely say, it can't solve all your life's problems. I wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell to deal with anything else until I arrested my alcoholism, not to mention tat on top of anxiety and depression, drinking adds to those and drinking for me promised to create more crisis. Now at least I have one thing less in my way. And I found a Power greater than me there, which is elusive to me--I mean faith--but I had slim to none b-4. I just needed to add these important bits or the post I made b-4 feels incomplete. Thanks for reading and being interested enough to ask. It helped me to write it all.

 

[person3]

that's totally cool..did you work all the steps?

 

[jake]

Hi there, haven't seen you in a couple days. Me having free time, a mixed blessing at this point,, have been on every day. Anyway I think it's like that for me with something new. And yeah I went all thru the steps with a sponsor who had gone thu them too, and then you just keep realizing new ways that they fit your life. I have used the powerless one with other stuff and moved on thru the steps, like with relationships. Sometimes I have just written aninventory on one particular thing that crops up and then share it (5th step) with m sponsor. Some people quit smoking a day at a time with like the patch and using the steps.

So far here lately I am just trying to get relief on anxiety of the crisis type so thnigs can calm down and I can sort thru how to come out the other side. 11th step I been using asking for God's will for me and the power to carry that out --it helps me get things done big time. I pray even when I don't believe, because I know (somewhere inside) God knows me and understands.

It's best I stay in the habits of going to my home group at least once a week, staying in touch with my sponsor and other ppl in recovery, even when I feel like isolating, etc.The steps are a way of life the way I see it. The long post I did --I think I might figure out how to put in story section since it turned out to be more like a story. Glad to see you again. I'm so paranoid and tend toward feeling all powerful in a negative way, I was afraid my posts put you off from wanting to talk to me ...ahhhh..trying to learn how to communicate and not take things personally---such a big "issue" for me at times of vulnerability!