July 23, 2005

• Confessions and Confrontations

  Mama always said, “confession is good for the soul.”  I hate
  that

  word, “soul” (I’ve been in a snit all day about the inadequacy of
  words

  in general, must be Mercury Retrograde), about as much as I hate the

  word, “psychic”.  Both of them mean so many different things
  to so

  many different people, and so many people don’t even believe they
  stand

  for anything real, that the words are meaningless.  I know
  from

  experience that confession can free the mind and lighten the emotions,

  unless it gets you in so much trouble that it has the opposite
  effect.

  Confrontation is another thing about which there is broad general

  disagreement and misunderstanding.  Many people try to avoid
  it,

  and tend to avoid the people (aggressive, hostile assholes) who tend
  to

  practice it.  I consider myself fortunate indeed to have
  learned

  that confrontation doesn’t need to be hostile even when done

  aggressively.  The junkies who ran the Family House heroin
  rehab

  program in Anchorage turned my life around by confronting me

  unrelentingly on my bullshit until my defense mechanisms crumbled and
  I

  was able to be honest with myself and them.  I became a
  convert to

  therapeutic confrontation.

  In response to my blog yesterday about my cupcake
  and pizza binge, rosabelle

  suggested that the binge was connected with the issues I had
  confronted

  with Greyfox the night before.  In my finite observable
  universe,

  everything is connected.  Her comment set me to thinking
  about

  what those connections might be.  I knew immediately that the

  confrontation didn’t have any causal connection to the binge, and I

  could immediately see that both events, food binge and confrontation,

  had proceeded from causes that were related to each other in various

  ways.  Now I’ll try to marshall my thoughts and verbalize some
  of

  those connections.

  First of all, addicts don’t need reasons to do the stuff of their

  addictions, whether that may be drugs, food, or “process” (that’s

  treatment-psych jargon) activities such as sex or gambling. 
  We do

  the things we do addictively because it feels good.  Dopamine
  in

  the brain is all the reason we need.  As a group we tend to
  be

  good at finding excuses for our destructive and self-destructive

  behavior and we often lay it off on other people whose behavior we

  don’t like.  In 12-step groups we call that “getting loaded
  at”

  someone.  I certainly wasn’t pigging out on pizza, chocolate
  cake

  and butter cream icing AT Greyfox.  Thursday night his
  response to

  my confrontation had been so supportive and gratifying that I wondered

  why I’d waited so long to confront.  I wasn’t doing it out of
  any

  celebratory or self-congratulatory urge, either.  I’d as soon
  bash

  myself in the face with a rock to celebrate or reward myself, and

  that’s something I’m not likely to do.

  My waiting, my having put off the therapeutic confrontation, probably

  was a contributory factor in my food binge.  Twelve step
  dogma

  would have it so, anyhow.  The program contends that we need
  to

  maintain high self-esteem, enough regard for ourselves to stay

  clean.  My avoidance of the issues between Greyfox and me had
  been

  detrimental to my self-esteem and my peace of mind.  After my

  education in psychology and the programming by those Family House

  junkies, I can’t feel

  really good about myself if I’m not dealing with my
  feelings. 

  That’s one reason my avoidance was getting me down.  Another
  one

  was the strong convictions I have regarding the inadvisability of

  allowing fear to influence my actions.  I had been backing
  off

  from that confrontation out of both fear and resentment, as well as

  some other, more logical reasons I’ll go into later.  Fear
  and

  resentment are both feelings I know to be self-defeating.

  Maybe… probably, the lowered self-regard was related to my missing

  some doses of my nutritional supplements (hereinafter called “meds”
  for

  short — I just want to specify that my meds are supplements and I’m

  not on any anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, etc.).  Missing
  my

  meds most likely contributed to the foggy state of mind that led me

  into the binge.  It’s a classic love-hate relationship I have
  with

  my pills:  I love the improved function I experience when my

  biochemistry is balanced, and I hate taking pills.  I have to

  psych myself up by telling myself I’m worth the trouble.  If
  I

  don’t bother with the pep talk, I often don’t bother with the

  pills. 

  I had been skipping doses occasionally, for weeks.  I had
  also

  been eating an occasional gluteny wheat hamburger bun or slice of

  pizza, but hadn’t slipped over into binge mode from those

  indulgences.  It started small and escalated.  I
  think I’d

  gone two full days without my regular meds yesterday when I opened
  that

  transparent cupcake box, “just for a taste of the frosting.” 

  Maybe if my neurotransmitters had been in balance from the amino acid

  supplements and if I’d had my DMAE and all, I’d have seen the fallacy

  in that.  Today, after a few doses of the meds, I know that
  one

  taste of butter cream frosting, scraped with a fingertip from the top

  of a chocolate cupcake, is an invitation to disaster.  I
  tasted

  the frosting, then I ate the cupcake, then I ate the other

  cupcake.  Doug hadn’t wanted any of the dumpster-derived
  pizza, so

  throughout the day yesterday I ate almost the whole thing. 
  Today, my stomach roils at the thought.

  Today, I’m back on track nutritionally.  I’ve reflected on the
  path that led to

  the binge.  I’d been drinking diet Coke (sweetened with
  Splenda)

  instead of the herbal (maté) tea I usually drink.  The weather
  has

  been hot.  The Coke was cold, and its sweetness was
  qualitatively

  different from the sweetness of the Stevia in my tea.  Stevia

  helps stabilize my blood sugar, and low blood sugar was one of the

  factors that led me to eat those chocolate cupcakes for

  breakfast.  I was hungry and they were right there. 
  Today, I’m drinking iced maté and

  Stevia tea, and I’m eating healthful natural foods in frequent small
  quantities to get my blood

  sugar stabilizied again.

  Another factor I cannot ignore is that the cupcakes were THERE, right

  on my worktable beside the computer in a clear plastic box, inviting
  me

  to indulge.  I’d salvaged them from the garbage for
  Doug. 

  I’d felt a twinge of parental guilt at the time, knowing they weren’t

  good for him even though he likes that sort of stuff and will go out
  to

  the local store for ice cream and candy if he has cash on
  hand. 

  The kid is about to experience another of the periodic absences of his

  mother’s forbidden foods that he has been subjected to from time to

  time throughout his life.  If it’s not around here for him,
  it’s

  not avaiable to me.

  In my confrontation with Greyfox Thursday, I was confronting myself,

  not him.  We were confronting the issues together, which is

  something we had agreed to do after his last drug binge two years and

  two months ago, during those initial months of better communication

  than we’d ever experienced in our dozen-plus years together. 
  We

  had done very well at that, confronting issues together, up until last

  fall.  The major issue we had to confront was his NPD

  (narcissistic personality disorder).  I’d been acting, at his

  request, as his therapist. 

  Expert opinion gives NPD a poor

  prognosis in talk therapy (in any therapy, actually) because the

  narcissist is unlikely to feel motivated to continue the therapy since

  its aim is to destroy the defense mechanisms the N depends

  on.  If the client doesn’t walk out of therapy, often the

  therapist quits because all narcissists are assholes
  difficult

  clients.  Their

  disorder is characterized by grandiose lies and cruel behavior toward

  others.  The therapist’s job is to dispel the N’s false belief
  in

  his own infallibility.  Each therapeutic success is likely to
  give

  the client a narcissistic
  injury, which in turn can and usually does trigger narcissistic
  rage.

  That is what happened to us last fall.  I’d been blogging all

  along about our therapeutic efforts, and Greyfox had also done a
  series

  of blogs about the therapy from his perspective.  I think I
  had

  referred to him as an asshole

  a difficult client one time too many.  Greyfox came on in a

  towering rage and left a four-paragraph comment to my blog, filled
  with

  venomous invective.  In it, among other absurdities, he said
  that

  I have NPD.  That’s false on the face of it because one of the
  N’s

  defining characteristics is a lack of empathy and empathy is something

  I’ve no lack of.  I don’t know how many people read that
  comment before I deleted it.  Only lupa had commented on it,
  and hers was something like, “Wow!” or “Sheesh!”, terse and
  non-committal.

  Greyfox‘s

  reaction blindsided me.  We’d gone through many cycles of

  narcissitic injury and rage in our years together, because I’d often

  shone a light on those aspects of his true self he preferred to hide

  and deny.  After he had diagnosed his own NPD and committed

  himself to therapy for it, we had been allies facing a common

  adversary, rather than being in an adversarial relationship. 
  One

  of the things he said in that comment and reiterated in a later phone

  conversation was that he was firing me as his therapist. 
  Since I

  had told him from the start that our arrangement was his choice, his
  to

  keep and his to break, being “fired” put me in a psychological bind

  that I resolved for myself by telling him I would lay off the

  therapeutic confrontation unless and until his NPD “stepped on my

  toes,” and he agreed to that.

  Greyfox’s actions undertaken in that time of rage had scared
  me. 

  My biggest fear was that he’d get loaded at me.  He had done
  it

  many times before.  My telling him my honest thoughts and
  feelings

  had often given him what he thought was a good excuse to
  drink. 

  In his rage he had also decided to keep his little cabin at Felony

  Flats through the winter instead of moving back in here as he had the

  previous winter, and he opened a new checking account and stopped

  depositing money to our joint account.  Within days, however,
  he

  was back to acting as if nothing had happened.  It has always
  been

  that way with him and he had always resented it when I had reminded
  him

  of his explosive rages and the extravagant threats he made and the

  insults and abuse he had heaped on Doug and me.  That time,
  my

  being fired as his therapist put me in a bind.  He needed to
  be

  confronted but I was constrained from doing it.

  This Thursday, I’d run to the end of my ability to keep quiet about
  it.  Greyfox had continued to progress at transcending the NPD
  and
  his addictions, and I felt myself sliding backwards in regards to my
  food addictions and my resolve not to let my fears dictate my
  behavior.  I said I needed to talk to him and proceeded to
  spill
  my guts (as I’d tried and failed to do in a blog here earlier in the
  week).  When I mentioned his firing me as his therapist, he
  said,
  “I did?” and any trepidation I’d had about broaching the issue then
  evaporated.  We talked it out, and then as I was leaving he
  decided to browse the dumpster and I went with him.  That was
  my
  big mistake… well, browsing the dumpster wasn’t a mistake, but
  taking
  the cupcakes and pizza home was really stupid.  I hadn’t learned a
  thing from all those times Greyfox told me about finding booze in the
  dumpster, and leaving it there.

  • 7:38 pm
  • 10 Comments