Transition without attachment

Traveling is its own constant state. Although the scenery changes, the way of being on the road is constant. For one thing, it's a meditation on transience, for better or worse. Some places, you're glad to leave, others elicit a sad farewell. You wish you could leave sooner or you wish you could stay longer. 

It's also an interesting I Ching hexagram:

Wilhelm's translation of the title of this hexagram is The Wanderer. A wanderer is one who has no home, or who is between one home and another. This reminds us of the gnostic notion of the "Alien": the incarnate soul exiled to wander in the space-time dimension (i.e., this world).

The alien is that which stems from elsewhere and does not belong here ... The stranger who does not know the ways of the foreign land wanders about lost; if he learns its ways too well, he forgets that he is a stranger and gets lost in a different sense by succumbing to the lure of the alien world and becoming estranged to his own origin ... The recollection of his own alienness, the recognition of his place of exile for what it is, is the first step back; the awakened homesickness is the beginning of the return. Hans Jonas -- The Gnostic Religion

The Gnostic Alien. Small attainments are possible if the Alien keeps a clear head and maintains his self-discipline. The initiated Adept is intelligent, discreet, and displays vigilant wisdom: he maintains and protects his gnosis via cautious reserve in worldly disputes, eschewing needless contention. [He can do this because he knows that this is an illusory reality: a set-up, a trap, a Loosh factory created by the Demiurge.] A chun tzu uses brightening consideration to avail-of punishing and-also not to detain litigating. [In other words “do the work in the place in which you find yourself” quickly, and efficiently, with as few entanglements as possible under the circumstances. Shun new karma. Implicit is that this experience is preparation for the bodhisattva vow.]

Escape

I don't see fire escapes very often anymore, as I guess most newer buildings have stairwells inside for emergency exit purposes. 

But out walking last night in Fort Worth, this caught my eye.

And I had a flood of memories of hours out on fire escapes in Philadelphia and New York. They used to be (and perhaps still are) important urban spaces for endless private conversation, drinking, smoking, getting outside without going downstairs, checking out what the hell those noises are on the street, etc. In typical fashion, humans devised all sorts of uses and purposes for fire escapes that had nothing to do with escaping from a fire. It was common to see people haul their mattresses out there and sleep, for example, on hot summer nights in Spanish Harlem. 

Here's a beautiful series of photos. 

Profound challenge

My goal yesterday:

To not complain once, the entire day. 

I think I succeeded. It was such an interesting exercise. Very disorienting. Trying it again today. Wish me luck. 

Getting off the victim vertex

Karpman triangle! The damn thing has been on my mind a lot since I first encountered it a couple weeks ago. 

Any important relationship activates these three drama vertices at various times for both people, or even for three people, when the triangulation becomes real. Because I WAS WRONGED (which would make a good bumper sticker), most often, lately, I have been impaled on the victim vertex. 

"Martyr," by someone named merkchen, from DeviantArt

While I was driving yesterday, I started to think of all the tools I have available to move away from that. And what I am already doing to work on being resilient, accepting the facts, learning from what happened and letting go, etc. All that stuff. The stuff that everyone, including myself, wants to happen basically overnight. But it happens somewhat on its own time, with some input. I can assist the process but it refuses to be rushed. The weird thing is, it seems like I can definitely slow it down. Odd how healing cannot be rushed, but we can definitely undo it. The Axiom of Time's Relationship to Creation and Destruction, we could call it, if we wanted to put everyone to sleep. Basically, it takes a long time of care and love to build something. The same thing that took all that love and focus and dedication and energy can be destroyed in seconds. 

Anyway, what's the very first thing you do to get off the Victim Vertex? Obviously, since the key phrase is "I'm blameless," eventually the victim is going to have to accept responsibility for his or her reality, one way or the other. But it's a long, long way from A to B sometimes. 

In 1990, Acey Choy published the transmuted Karpman triangle with each of the problematic drama roles converted to assets-- it's referred to as The Winner's Triangle, which I find annoying, but it's still a useful schema:

If you are an analytical person to any degree, and tend to be self aware and to enjoy conceptual frameworks and the ideas behind drama, stories, roles and situational strategies, you can see how these two triangles would provide endless "fun." Especially on long road trips. (side note: I wish the phrase "getting your needs met" would be outlawed and its use punishable by the user having to do a year of service work, but more on that another time). 

More later on moving from the victim role to new places-- and getting clear without jumping to one of the other drama roles. 

Difficulty saying it

When I first got sober from drugs and alcohol, in April of 2004, I had no trouble at all saying "I'm Peter and I'm an alcoholic." It presented no difficulties. I heard a lot of people in meetings talk about how they had a hard time saying it, how it had been difficult for them to admit. But it seemed completely natural and automatic to me. 

Now that I have recognized that I share nearly all of the characteristics of codependency, I'm in recovery with that and looking for freedom. 

And I'm having a difficult time saying "I'm Peter and I'm codependent." 

I was talking with a Facebook friend yesterday about this and realized that alcoholism and drug addiction have a certain cultural legacy, a rough and tumble almost-glamour, and are also tied up in male gender performance in particular ways. Of course, it may well be that only an alcoholic would think it's tough, or cool, or poetic, or rakish but charming, or whatever, to be an alcoholic. And through some series of miracles, recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction has actually gained cultural cred and lots of very cool people are getting sober.

But codependency? Not tough. Not glamorous. No swagger in it at all, as a matter of fact. So here I am encountering shame over this realization, and the phrase "I'm Peter and I'm codependent" is not by any means just tripping off my tongue. 

And it also seems bound up in gender performance. Real men are supposed to be strong, independent, assertive and decisive. Right?

There are no popular culture depictions of down and out codependents who are scruffy but lovable and feeling suicidal over a breakup but who go into treatment and find healthy love or God or whatever and are set free. Especially, no depictions of rough and tumble codependent men incapable of setting boundaries or letting go of trying to control everyone around them who courageously face their codependent demons and ride off into the sunset. Not that I am aware of. 

It's funny how the ego gets involved in the identity formulas of forms of suffering, disease and recovery. No one wants to appear weak, needy, pathetic, hopelessly enmeshed in toxic relationships, insanely attached, etc. These are not glamorous or impressive appearances in any way. In a lot of storytelling, these are simply regrettable, darkly humorous or even dangerous flaws of pathetic or tragic characters. 

But it's also true that the depictions of alcoholism and drug addiction in our stories tend to lean toward glamorization, even when intentions are to show how horrifying addiction is. There are very few brutally honest portrayals of the late stage alcoholic. Even at meetings, one can often hear people (unintentionally?) gussying up their awful last days. 

No blinders, and no blocking

One of the first things I saw this morning at 5:30 while idly browsing my Facebook notifications on my phone, woken up yet again by a yapping dog that is a charming new audio installment in the neighborhood, was A's new profile picture on Facebook, in which she and her new person are together, in that typical couples selfie pose, looking maybe serene or in love or well, whatever. She had commented on the same thread on a mutual former student's timeline as I had commented on, and it showed up in my notifications. 

Here they are in all of their romantic bliss, in case you've been wondering what they look like. Jk. I have no idea who these dingeldodies are. 

You are probably asking-- why don't you block her and the new guy so you don't stumble onto these reminders?

This is an excellent question. Believe me, I have asked myself the same thing repeatedly since March. It's funny, because I blocked both of them while A and I were still living together, three and a half months ago. And now, after such a strangely surreal and painful series of events, I am not blocking them.  

So this gets to a lot of different perspectives regarding reality, the new social structures and experiences made possible by social media, what it means to have mutual friends with someone who is problematic (one way or the other), and, maybe most importantly, the general theme of attachment, in all of its gory glory. 

My goal in recovery from this relationship is not to forget and move on. It is to learn, grow and perceive as much as possible and stay put. I refuse to run. I can't stare directly at the sun all day, but I can remember exactly where it is and let there be reminders of it. 

For example, what does it mean about me that I invested several years of my one wild and precious life in what I was deluded into thinking was an intimate and real relationship with a person who, a little more than three months out, publicly posts a couples selfie with her new partner? Who was I in reality, all along that way, where I trusted and relied on a person who discarded me as soon as it was convenient for her to do so, without compassion, kindness or any sense of continuity or care? What does it say about me that I was even willing to stay with this person in the midst of her new relationship and work on "accepting" it, just so we could stay together? And most importantly in this context, what have been all of my subsequent reactive, performative and theatrical behaviors and decisions and fantasies in reaction to the plain facts?

Here's the thing-- taking any action at all relative to what A has decided to do with her life (including writing this post, to some degree, although one has to move from A to B no pun intended somehow) means that I am acting on my remaining attachment to the situation. As much as love is attachment, all of the so-called "negative" emotions are attachment. Reactivity is a symptom of attachment. Wanting to erase parts of reality is a sign of still being attached to those very real parts. 

This heart is dramatically anatomically incorrect.

And none of those actions do jack shit to reduce or eliminate the attachment. Instead, for example, blocking her and her new person is an action *in support* of remaining attached, for a couple different reasons. One: if I were working on eliminating the attachment, I would not be interested in what A has decided to do with her life in any entangled or reactive way. Two: what I am calling "reality" (for convenience's sake) always (and I mean always, when I pay attention) conspires to set me free. After the initial cognitive gut reaction to the picture of "what the actual fuck who are *those* people?" wore off, a series of reconciliations have already settled in-- in the shadow space between attachment and non-attachment, which is the underworld trip through what is absolutely necessary to reach acceptance. 

I refuse to live my life compartmentalized by the choices of others. Facts is facts. Blocking, in my case, in this particular case, is a symptom of my codependent dysfunction, trying to construct my emotional life based on the choices other people have made. 

Seeing the picture let me know exactly where things stand, again. And, frankly, provided a salutary corrective for the weird imaginings in my funhouse imagination and exposed in me some strange wandering thoughts. As time ineluctably unfurls farther and farther away from the harrowing breakup, my odd coping mechanisms begin to tell some fucked up stories. "Maybe they have discovered they made a mistake. Maybe my low opinion of the new person will be justified and I'll be vindicated. Maybe she'll face the shitty and fucked up way she discarded me and be destroyed by inconsolable remorse. Maybe if I just forget that she hooked up with my first year college roommate, I'll be happy and free again." You know, all these fantasies the ego cooks up in reaction to wrongs, perceived or real. 


Or you look for funny couples selfies on the internet and find this article from Cosmopolitan and feel a vague thrill of schadenfreude.

Sure, blinders and blocks create a safe, trigger free and protected space, absolutely necessary for recuperation when very real harm, trauma and downward spirals are a strong possibility. I'm aware of this acutely, of course, and who knows, maybe blocking is the right thing to do *for myself* after all. But for now, it's in my face (moderately and at widely separated intervals-- I'm not going looking, that's for sure). 

My counselor, in fact, says it seems like the theme in my life right now is "Everything is in your face." You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. The truth, the truth, the goddamned truth. It's what I need to stay in recovery. Otherwise, I'm going to delude myself again. I'm going to harm myself and others based on the unexamined, selfish, dishonest and manipulative patterns of my past. 

Not running. Not hiding. Not forgetting the truth. Looking squarely at the whole deal. Freedom. 

Thaumaturgy

I need awe and wonder in my life. I realized when I was on my trip to Baja in May that the big spaces feed my soul, definitely. Ocean, desert, forest, stars. 

The west facing side of Isla Magdalena

Endemic pines on the peaks of Isla Cedros

But there's also the wonderworking of human connection. Something vast also exists in the soul connection with another person. I'm learning how to recognize and value it for what it is. In one framework, we navigate four distinctly identifiable realms: spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual. It's too pat, of course, but it just might be useful. 

My habitual reaction to a more vast and sublime spiritual connection with a woman in particular is to try to bring it down to the ground somehow-- usually physically. In this way, gaining control and moving from the sublime to the beautiful (in Kantian terms).

A good summary from Wiki:

Kant, in 1764, made an attempt to record his thoughts on the observing subject's mental state in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. He held that the sublime was of three kinds: the noble, the splendid, and the terrifying.

In his Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant officially says that there are two forms of the sublime, the mathematical and the dynamical, although some commentators hold that there is a third form, the moral sublime, a layover from the earlier "noble" sublime. Kant claims, "We call that sublime which is absolutely great"(§ 25). He distinguishes between the "remarkable differences" of the Beautiful and the Sublime, noting that beauty "is connected with the form of the object", having "boundaries", while the sublime "is to be found in a formless object", represented by a "boundlessness" (§ 23). Kant evidently divides the sublime into the mathematical and the dynamical, where in the mathematical "aesthetical comprehension" is not a consciousness of a mere greater unit, but the notion of absolute greatness not inhibited with ideas of limitations (§ 27). The dynamically sublime is "nature considered in an aesthetic judgment as might that has no dominion over us", and an object can create a fearfulness "without being afraid of it" (§ 28). He considers both the beautiful and the sublime as "indefinite" concepts, but where beauty relates to the "Understanding", sublime is a concept belonging to "Reason", and "shows a faculty of the mind surpassing every standard of Sense" (§ 25). For Kant, one's inability to grasp the magnitude of a sublime event such as an earthquake demonstrates inadequacy of one's sensibility and imagination. Simultaneously, one's ability to subsequently identify such an event as singular and whole indicates the superiority of one's cognitive, supersensible powers. Ultimately, it is this "supersensible substrate," underlying both nature and thought, on which true sublimity is located.

So the inspiration for my own thaumaturgical impulses is, in this perspective, fueled

by an experience of the sublime. It's the sublime in music that I often look for-- for example, the seeming 

boundlessness of One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye .

Or the suggestion of the sublime in visual art, one reason abstract expressionism always appealed to me, I guess. 

Yet, somehow, when a woman really blows my mind and we meet in a sublime space where boundaries and categories get obliterated, my impulse is to define, contain, possess the experience, etc. I have been unable to allow mysteries to be mysteries, in some ways. For example, one can't really partner with the sublime, so the impulse to form a partnership with implicit or explicit agreements is another strategy to find a container for a vast experience that is otherwise unwieldy. 

My first AA sponsor used to try to explain to me the difference between relating and being in a relationship. Relating is happening in the present at all times. Being in a relationship is seeking a form for that experience. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, except that it often takes the place of relating, since we're prone to wanting everything to be human-sized, "manageable" and reliable. He used to say that a relationship is when you put your relating on a ship and wave goodbye. Ha. 

Another way to look at it is that we just can't hang for too long with the sublime. We want to make it beautiful. There's no problem in this at all, except that I tend to forget that it is a creative act I am doing that makes it seem possible. I am creating the beautiful out of the sublime. It is vital for me to recall that the materials for this creative process come from and return to the sublime-- something far greater than myself. 

Permissions

Two of many possible approaches to communication:

1. Try to finesse it in order to predict and control the response of your audience

2. Say what you have to say to take yourself seriously and let your audience sort it out for themselves. 

Number 1 has been my go to for years and years and is one of the hallmarks of codependency. So many times I have felt and thought a particular set of feelings and thoughts that I predicted would make a person angry, sad, disappointed, make them hate me. It is especially in this arena of the difficult conversation that my codependency has tended to kick in and I have been incapable of uttering simple things like:

1. I enjoy spending time with you but I do not want to get married
2. I am not ready for more than what we are doing
3. I like you but I am not sexually attracted to you
4. I love living alone and I am not ready to give that up to live with you
5. I don't feel supported or understood by you, yet you keep saying you love me
6. I am not prepared to help fix you, manage your emotions or even be very reliable at this time
7. I want to get some space
8. Let's slow down
9. I disagree with you
10. I dislike these things that you like
11. I had a great time but I would like to sleep alone tonight
12. I would rather not be in constant contact throughout the day and feel I'd rather put a boundary around our interaction
13. I am (also) attracted to someone else
14. I have a problem with how things are going and I am unhappy and would like to talk about things
15. I do not want to make an exclusive monogamous commitment
16. I feel disconnected from you and I'm sad about it

Those are 16-- there are a lot more, The basic idea is that I have not felt that I have permission to say things that I expect will cause another person, usually a woman, to reject me, hate me, be disappointed in me, be angry with me, be sad or jealous or whatever. 

So I script these conversations in advance. I play them out in my head. "I'll put it this way to make it as palatable as possible. Then she'll say this. Then I'll respond with this to reassure her. Then she'll confront me about this. Then I'll respond by defending myself this way. Then she'll be angry anyway. Then I'll try to moderate what I said by saying this." 

I also try to "figure it all out" in my head before even broaching the subject. Problem: "it all" usually also has to do with *the other person* in intimate ways, and the way a lot of this shit gets "figured out" is via dialog. Not via super clever completely internalized thinking. 

One of the results of this process based in fear is that shit that is very simple gets incredibly, stupidly complicated.

A Powerpoint slide for a Pentagon briefing that has been called the all time worst Powerpoint slide ever, which is saying something

This internal attempt to finesse the conversation often goes on for a long time. For example, I was once in an exclusive, monogamous, domestic partnership where what I wanted was to move out, have my own place again, but still see the woman I was living with, but also have more freedom and maybe form attachments with other women as well. That was what I desperately and decidedly and honestly wanted, in reality. 

I finessed that conversation in my head for 3 years. 

And the partnership exploded and died anyway. 

My counselor yesterday (I want to call him Chiron, but that's kind of too cute) asked me two things about a new relationship that has been forming over the past couple of weeks:

1. Why do you feel you do not have permission to say flat out what you are feeling and what you want?
2. How much do you want to be on the hook for in this?

Boom. 

So I am grateful to be getting more awareness of this shit. And to be changing my behavior. I expressed some "difficult" things to a person I respect and love last night, and yeah it was disappointing (for me also), and it was hard for me to articulate exactly what I was feeling, and it was messy because I had to sort of work it out in collaboration with them, and there was some proportional anger aroused in the other person and the danger of rejection. But the sky didn't fall, the person and I remain close. 

More importantly, for now, by far---- myself and I remain close. 

Recovery and Character Defects

The topic at the home group last night was step 6 (the step of the month!) and the process of dealing with/living with/getting rid of more subtle character defects. When we first get sober, we are often astonished at how our more glaring and potentially fatal problem behaviors magically stop, sometimes very quickly. Some of us stop threatening to kill people or ourselves, stop stealing cars, stop lying and cheating, stop putting people we love at risk-- and all of that change often happens pretty much overnight. 

But we stay sober for a while and begin to realize that there are other...issues. Naively, some of us think that if we just don't use drugs or drink, everything else will magically improve. We begin to realize this is not the case the longer we stay sober. Some of us truly struggle with being indomitable assholes for years after removing the drugs and alcohol. Others of us were better socialized to begin with and yet, we find that certain challenging attitudes, values and behaviors just won't go away, no matter what we try to do. 

The process naturally leads to revealing what our character defects and shortcomings are and then our realization that our lives would be a lot better if we found ways to at least moderate their influence, if not get rid of them entirely. Once we do step 4-- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves-- and step 5-- admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs-- we are usually willing at least to some degree to cut at least some of that toxic shit out of our lives. 

Steps 6 and 7 come along naturally, in this way. 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

What's the most interesting thing about this movement of the soul in recovery is that the steps DO NOT say "6. Beat the shit out of ourselves when we realized what pieces of garbage we were. 7. Tried with all our might to embark on a desperate course of self improvement to finally become perfect on our own terms."

Because there is an entire industry dedicated to exactly that. 

Instead of suggesting a program of self improvement, the steps address two approaches: readiness and humility. Be ready to have the defects removed, or at least be ready to be ready. Then just keep requesting that they be removed. 

It seems like this stance of combined willingness and humility gets obfuscated or outright ignored by a lot of recovering people. I have never encountered a group of more self-loathing, self-attacking and self-castigating people than in 12 step groups, especially AA. It's one of the great riffs of recovery-- how much of a shit person I was before I got sober, and how, now that I am sober, I am a much better person, but I am still a bag of shit. In the face of this performance of self-hatred, I often wonder how some of us stay sober at all. If it were really true that I hated myself that much, why not just drink myself to death?

A friend of mine jokes: "I would totally work on being kinder to myself if I weren't such a worthless piece of shit."

I suspect instead that it is not all that real, this performance of self-hatred. I think it's based in fear and ego. "Self-centered fear is the chief activator of our defects," wrote Bill Wilson in the 12 and 12. And one of our defects, it turns out, hilariously, is publicly performing how fucking defective we are. 

This is one reason I almost always get to Cheri Huber's wonderful book, There is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self Hate, when I am working with sponsees. In fact, I have loaned about 6 copies of this book and not gotten them back. haha. 

I know what some of you might be thinking, because I resist this idea myself. My context growing up was the opposite of this in many ways: There is Nothing Right With You: Who Do You Think You Are? would be the book I could write from that perspective. (The sad thing is, it would probably sell a million copies). 

I just read an article yesterday about how narcissism is on the rise-- diagnoses have increased and the mental health profession is taking notice. You'd think that it would be like throwing kerosene on the narcissism fire to promote the above book. But, having read it about 6 times, I am reminded that it is in fact incredibly painful from the perspective of my own narcissistic tendencies, ego inflation and lack of empathy. Because, in my experience, it turns out that that arena of character defects in myself stems from self-hatred, not from too much inaccurate self-love. 

Anyway, the idea is to just let go of all that self loathing, and, especially, stop the egocentric public performance of self-hatred. The steps and their call for willingness and humility propose a way through the challenging aspects of ourselves that has nothing to do with our own self will or plans or designs for self improvement. Nothing. Become ready and ask. Being ready includes fierce awareness of our shortcomings but without attachment. You can't be ready to let go of something if you are attached to how fucked up you are. One way of dissolving attachments is to see where the shortcoming affects behavior and act from the outside in, stopping the behavior. How does it feel to stop the behavior? Are you even able to stop the behavior? If so, how? If not, what will you do next?

Become ready and ask. 

What mental health care is like, or, one was ignored by the cuckoo's nest

A friend of mine was experiencing a relatively severe crisis involving self harm and thoughts of suicide that had progressed to an actual plan a couple nights ago. This person lives with Borderline Personality Disorder and was recently greatly helped by Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, but was unable to continue this therapeutic process after returning to work. Unable to continue because the DBT sessions that are available and covered by insurance are from 10 am to 1 pm, weekdays, guaranteeing that people who are in desperate need of DBT but also in desperate need of income are fucked. There isn't much DBT in the Valley, although there's more now than there used to be. 

Fancy facilities at Banner Behavioral Health, Scottsdale, including, for some reason, squadrons of landscaping plants

Anyway, the crisis was serious enough that I should have called 911, but I didn't. The person going through this was up pretty much all night long, then went into work. At work, people became aware of the crisis and the corporate liability crisis response process started. 

The crisis team that was called in was totally incompetent. Basically. After a lot of nonsense and after this person in distress, whose life was at risk, was escorted through the work place by security and the crisis team and her supervisor in front of many coworkers, the decision was to transport to Community Bridges for an inpatient intake assessment. 

Problem: Community Bridges doesn't do inpatient mental health. Only outpatient. They do inpatient medical detox for junkies and drunks, but not inpatient behavioral health services. So the supposedly trained crisis team sent a person in crisis to a locale where the services needed are not even provided. 

At this point, exhausted and without support, the person decided to get an Uber home. I met up with them and we relaxed for a little while and considered several options. The person indicated not feeling safe being alone, so we either were going to get some people who could be there 24/7 until DBT classes started up again or we were going to go to Banner Behavioral for an inpatient intake. 

I felt the crisis was serious enough that medical attention was warranted and the person agreed, so we went to Banner. 

The daily bed rate at this facility is $2500. There are no typos in that sentence. 

One of the first things a staff member did, before any trained psychiatric personnel interacted with a person having a life threatening crisis, was go over how much being admitted would cost. I understand that it's good to let people know what their financial responsibility will be, but it also seemed callous and not conducive to creating a calming or reassuring context for a person in crisis. Fortunately, my friend has a dark sense of humor and joked that the deductible ($2500) from insurance that would have to be paid made suicide seem like a good idea. The staff member didn't laugh at this, but I did. 

We waited for nearly 4 hours for the assessment process to be completed. The lobby was a dreary place and there were a couple of very seriously disturbed, unsupervised people there, as is fitting for the lobby of a behavioral health hospital, but one of them in particular was acting out in an aggressive way and generally creating an atmosphere of some tension, with hardly any response from staff. The television featured UFC boxing matches, which I thought was strange for the lobby of a behavioral health place. The original intake interviewer rapid fired boilerplate questions aggressively and obviously in a hurry-- the person having the crisis was able to be an advocate and say "You are making me feel uncomfortable and attacked." The response of the staff member was "Sorry! It's a shift change!" 

Anyway, after almost 4 hours, the determination was that the crisis had moderated and the person could either choose to be admitted for observation or go home. It turned out that admission involved a 24 hour observation period in a big open room where several patients were placed on recliners, wearing paper gowns, with a television going 24/7. ($2500 to spend 24 hours in a big room on a recliner and not get any sleep). The person having the crisis was exhausted, hungry and just completely worn out. The wisdom seemed to be to go to the dark quiet privacy of home, after getting some food. 

So we did that. 

So if you trace this sequence of events, you get an idea of how America and a lot of our current culture worldwide deals with (or doesn't deal with) mental health emergencies. This was a person who had engaged in self harm and who had strong suicidal impulses connected with a plan, who did not feel safe alone, who has taken steps to get help for a serious illness. And throughout an entire day, *none* of the people who supposedly function entirely to support people in a crisis were able to come through in any supportive, consistent, effective or helpful way. None. 

Keep in mind also that the behavioral health hospital is located in Scottsdale. Imagine the scene in South Phoenix, or any other already medically under-served area. And when you are out and about, and see the abandoned, lost, forgotten, raging and disoriented people who are everywhere, who do not have friends or family anymore, who are really just treated like human garbage in a society with no compassion and only a profit motive, have a heart. If you are able, get into advocacy for the mentally and emotionally ill. If we consistently ignored and discarded people with physical illnesses, as we do in so many cases with mental illness, we would have had a fundamental health care rebellion long ago. 

mysteries and staying in the game

I continue to reflect on the I Ching and tarot almost daily, but haven't posted much on either in a long time. This morning's message from the I Ching, hexagram 43 changing to hexagram 1, seems auspicious somehow (especially considering that Disintegration, hexagram 23, was in the air a few days ago-- the opposite of hexagram 43).

From Jim DeKorne's website:

The forty-third hexagram is an image of the eradication of an inferior force from the situation at hand: five yang lines resolutely advance on the single yin line, which is about to be pushed out of the hexagram at the top. This is a negative image of the twenty-third hexagram, Disintegration, which shows the opposite situation of five lower yin lines undermining one upper yang line. It is instructive to compare the nearly identical message for the superior man in the Images of each of these figures. The idea is one of fostering an equitable distribution of energy within the situation -- Disintegration and the Resoluteness required to rectify it are extreme situations requiring extreme measures. Such extremes must always be neutralized through a justly distributed balance of forces.

It's not the concern of law that any one class in the city fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring this about for the whole city, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit that each class is able to bring to the commonwealth. And it produces such men in the city not in order to let them turn whichever way each wants, but in order that it may use them in binding the city together. Plato --The Republic

The changing top line is definitely problematic-- suggesting *both* the eradication of some aspect of the current situation that is detrimental or undermining, as well as its persistence, or re-emergence in a new and unexpected form. 

The shadow cannot be eliminated. It is the ever-present dark brother or sister. Whenever we fail to see where it stands, there is likely to be trouble afoot. For then it is certain to be standing behind us. The adequate question therefore never is: Have I a shadow problem? Have I a negative side? But rather: Where does it happen to be right now? When we cannot see it, it is time to beware! E.C. Whitmont -- The Symbolic Quest

That is, quite simply, the way of the universe, or the way of samsara in particular. 

Doing any meditation with the I Ching that involves either hexagram 1 or 2 always feels vaguely transcendent and definitely archetypal and impersonal, somehow. These primal forces-- six yang or six yin lines- are like walls in a way-- not really speaking directly to one's actual circumstances. I often feel the same way about the last two hexagrams, 63 and 64.

The symbolism of all of the hexagrams works on many different levels, and this is especially true of the first two, which must be studied together for a full comprehension of each. (Kabbalists, for example, will recognize in these two figures the same forces found in Chokmah and Binah on the Tree of Life.) For the purposes of this comparison it must be noted that the first hexagram symbolizes Heaven, and the second symbolizes Earth: Force and Form. (As consciousness is to the body it inhabits, so Force is to Form and Heaven to Earth.) Form is magnetic, or "negative" in polarity, and Force is dynamic, or "positive."

In esoteric symbolism "Heaven" does not mean the universe above us -- it means the consciousness within us. This polarity is also reflected in the relationship between the ego and the Self -- in a properly regulated psyche, the ego is always magnetic to the dynamic Self.

There is an invisible universe within the visible one, a world of causes within the world of effects. There is force within matter, and the two are one, and are dependent for their existence on a third, which is the mysterious cause of their existence. There is a world of soul within a world of matter, and the two are one, and caused by the world of spirit. 

F. Hartmann -- Paracelsus: Life and Prophecies

I'll be carrying these two hexagrams around with me all day, I'm sure. One immediate association that comes up is my tendency to want to "eradicate" completely anything that I think of as destructive, counterproductive, or even simply ambiguous. There's a reason why Hippolytus   is still one of my favorite Greek tragedies. 

I also love the sly humor of the I Ching that is always pulling us back into the game. As long as we are flesh and blood and tied to the wheel of time, nothing will stay put. We can fight this or embrace it, but there is no reasonable or enduring way around it. Each place we land contains the next clif off of which we have to fall. If we think we are finally standing still in a goal and securely protected from the shifting of reality, we're in for it. 

feeling and talking about feeling

My usual modus operandi is to ignore feelings as they arise, or, if they are unable to be ignored because they are too strong, to keep them to myself, try to "figure out what is causing them," and work on "figuring them out" and "dealing with them" entirely internally, without "bothering" anyone else about them. 

All of the scare quotes are because none of that shit is actually what is going on. It's about shame-- any and all feelings are a). very bad news, b). a sign of weakness and a warning that I am going to be fucked and not in a good way and c). invalid from square one because who am I to have feelings anyway? So all of the stories I tell myself are really just rooted in shame. 

Shame has been on my mind a lot lately. I carry way less of it unconsciously than I used to, but its essential engine of hiding everything away except what makes me look good is still roaring away. 

I was reminded recently of a very insightful passage on shame in the Big Book:

These patterns of course are not limited to alcoholics, by any means. 

Most of us live a double life, I expect. I'm not sure if Bill is right that alcoholics live a double life "more than most people." I would venture that "shame bound" people absolutely do. 

the experience of a CoDA meeting

Bah, I say to myself, I don't need this CoDA shit. I have a solid program of recovery in AA, after all. 13 goddamned years sober have to amount to something! Work the steps, go to meetings, get a sponsor, sponsor guys, pray and meditate. I got this. Besides, yeah, alcoholics are crazy, but these codependent people are fucking BATSHIT. I'm probably not codependent anyway, just wrecked by the breakup-- that's totally normal!! I'm really just a very loving person-- That's what it is!! 

But somehow I get myself to a CoDA meeting anyway. 

And every single goddamned thing every person says there, whether reading from the lit or sharing their experience, floors me, as if I myself am speaking-- but without resistance or denial. 

And whether I like it or not, I belong 100%-- the puzzle piece fits right in. 

Makes me relieved. And angry af. Is there no end to the work I have to do to be "happily and usefully whole," as Bill W describes it in the intro to the 12 and 12? WHEN WILL THIS END. Can't I just BE. 

An interesting idea-- just being. Not having to work on anything, or recover from anything. Not having to grow, or change, or learn anything else about myself or the harmful ways I have learned to be in the world. To just sit absolutely still, and get covered with spider webs and mold, and die. Nice. 

Anyway, the most recent paradox is accepting Cheri Huber's basic formulation that there is nothing wrong with me, yet being in recovery. There is nothing wrong with me, but I need to be in recovery every day as a way of life. Both are true. HOW CAN THIS BE. 

No idea.

Check this out if you want to know how I relate with other people. It's like my honest Tinder profile. 

13 ways of looking at dysthymia

Things that happen when you are living with persistent depressive disorder, which used to go by the much more poetic "dysthymia":

1. You have enough energy to get the laundry started in a half ass way on day one. You feel pretty okay about that or even proud-- look at me, adulting!--but your sense of competency extends only to sort of jamming all of the dirty laundry into the washing machine in one load, and you know you *are doing it wrong* yet again, and you know that *doing it wrong* is why you have been abandoned and unloved *all this time* and it's all you can do to push through and just sort of get the laundry done. 

2. It's day two and you are putting up with your laundry being all over your bedroom because you didn't have enough energy on day 1 to finish the process post-dryer.

3. On day three, you get almost all the way through the job of folding and at least sort of organizing the laundry, and you go to hang up your shirts but there aren't enough hangers for some reason, even though you could swear you've been able to hang everything up in the past, and you stand and stare at your closet for a while trying to figure out what could come off of hangers in order to hang the shirts, but you really can't figure it out, so you go to bed and sleep for 4 hours. 

4. On day 4, you finally figure out the hanger situation, after a few hours procrastinating on getting started with several different projects you have to get done before June 25, while feeling guilty and ashamed for not contacting one of your committee members for the PhD who has generously offered support for a crucial phase of the work you are doing. You reflect totally reasonably on how every idea you have had for the PhD is the most stupid fucking idea ever conceived by any human and how all of your field work and research has been utterly in vain because what you are doing is trivial, has been done before, and will be completely laughed out of the room anyway. While you are pushing your way through the whole laundry ordeal having these totally reasonable thoughts, you remember the 2 or 3 people you have recently emailed or messaged and how they have not replied and of course, why would they reply? You are, after all, a laughable and insignificant piece of shit. In spite of how harrowing that thought is, you keep on task. All the clothes get put away almost completely perfectly, but a few are just up on a top shelf in the closet and not really folded correctly and you feel haunted by that and can't get the introjected ex-girlfriend out of your mind who would have scoffed in an outwardly light hearted manner at the shitty job you did with the laundry that took forever (outwardly light-hearted but one of the actual reasons she abandoned you and thinks you are a fucking loser asshole dumbass) and a cascade of excoriating self hatred runs through your body at a cellular level and you flash on thoughts of suicide again. 

5. You get back to the projects you absolutely have to have completed in the next 10 days but while you are at your desk and looking at your home screen on your laptop you notice your resume that you meant to revise a couple months ago (which task is intimately tied in to the burgeoning debt you amassed from transitioning from being homeless after the breakup to having a place to live with a bed and a desk and having to fund field work and so on...so it's not really about noticing the unrevised resume at all, it's really about at least seeing the crest of that mounting tsunami of complete incompetency (which is why your ex-girlfriend rejected you, really, and why you are laughable and why you will die alone) rising on the horizon like the last scene in peter Weir's The Last Wave), a folder that has unedited photographs in it that you need for your projects, 30 new notifications on Facebook and also remember that you still have vinyl you need to digitize. In the midst of this weird "large field" stimulus of several things you could do, at first, the projects you have to work on take the backseat, and then they fade, and then they dissolve entirely-- until you snap to them again about 12 hours later and feel guilty and panicky that you have done shit all to move them forward, *still* haven't called your generous committee member and have been in your pajamas all day. Instead of self care like eating and taking a shower and getting some sleep, you "decide" to stay up until 3 fucking around on Facebook.

6. You make a resolution like "I am going to work out at least for some time every day until I leave again on the 25th" and the first time you miss a day you sullenly decide fuck it, I'm not working out any fucking times at all, that was stupid and who do I think I am anyway? You remember that at age 55 you lose any of the gains from working out in a very short period of time anyway. You think obsessively about being 70 in 15 short years. You subtract 15 years from 55 years and recall that being 40 years old seems like just yesterday, so of course, turning 70 will happen pretty much tomorrow. This throws you back into a miasma of self loathing, anxiety and self doubt where you picture yourself at 70 being a comical figure teaching school (the ridiculous old man the kids all laugh at, a comfortable kind of old scarecrow) because you have no retirement savings and your social security is laughable and it will probably be completely gutted by greedy politicians by then anyway. The combination of all of these cast iron thoughts of decay, disintegration and doom leads to either more hours of restless sleep with awful dreams or more hours of aimless procrastination. 

7. You wake up one day feeling pretty good, actually, so you jump on the opportunity and manage to schedule one-on-ones with two of your 4 sponsees, set aside times to hear their 5th steps and to do your own 5th step with your own sponsor, manage to push through a few aspects of the projects that have to be done, pay some bills and generally operate almost like a competent adult. Somewhere along that trajectory suddenly and without warning the dark, heavy figure of bottomless sorrow and grief straps itself to your chest again and you find yourself standing in the middle of the backyard sobbing and not even knowing exactly why and let's just say that nothing else is getting done on that day that started out pretty well, actually. 

8. You are driving 4 miles or so to one of your regular AA meetings and every single driving behavior on the part of others makes you fly into a Philadelphia style road rage of peak absurdity and irascibility. "What the actual fucking fuck, you fuckhead, find your goddamned gas pedal and use your gas pedal, I'm right here behind you, turn the fuck left and get out of my way you fucking asshole!" and so on. On the way to a meeting of recovery. Where you are trying to work a spiritual program. And you feel like a fake, and an asshole, and like dog shit on the shoe sole of the universe, but you can't get out from under the red rage. You try praying for the well being of all sentient beings who are pissing you off and you just feel like a New Age, culturally appropriating fake ass motherfucking ASSHOLE fake Buddhist who should just die. And this cascade of insanity leads to a panoply of memories of all the times people were actually with you-- mostly girlfriends-- in the car, when you were insanely irritable and in a rage, and how they had to catch the sidestream of it, and no wonder you're alone and no one ever wanted to stay with you. But you do make it to the meeting. Where you say the serenity prayer at the beginning and have about an hour and half of relief. So there's that. 

9. You can't remember a lot of things. For example, you didn't finish your coffee yesterday and didn't want to waste it, so you put your full coffee mug in the refrigerator in order to have ice coffee "later," then you go through the whole clothes hanger debacle, sleep for hours, head out to the meeting, experience insane rage, etc. Then you get home at 10 at night and go to put the half and half you bought in the refrigerator and you see your full coffee mug in there and you don't at first even remember putting it in there and then you just feel crazy, like an idiot. Like an incompetent old fool. Meanwhile someone you care about is having a hard time and you want to offer support but everything you think of messaging to her you judge as being stupid, meaningless, trite, ineffective, moronic, condescending or forced. And somehow this combination of self-embarrassment at forgetting the coffee in the refrigerator and helplessness in the face of the suffering of someone you care about makes you flash on how much your ex girlfriend seemed to end up just hating you completely, refusing to even speak with you as you slept on the sofa in the living room the last month you were at what was always really her house anyway, and the most searing memory of her coming back inside on a cold February night a week after Valentine's Day (on the 13th anniversary of the night of your DUI and the night you spent in jail) when you know she was out for a walk talking on the phone with her new paramour and when she comes back inside she lies and says she was "just getting some steps" but the look in her eye is one of complete joy and lovestruck glistening and shine, almost on the level of how she used to look at peace and full of contentment and inspiration after the two of you would make love. And these things all congeal into a kind of autonomous monster that lives in your guts or is parasitically attached to your cervical spine and won't be shaken for anything and is desperately eating you from the inside out or sucking your blood and you flash on suicide again as the most obvious, reasonable and pretty much welcome solution to these things. 

10. You try to talk with someone in the AA program about all of these things and they a). don't give a shit and tell you to work the steps harder, b). do not respond directly but offer some kind of behavioral strategy for "dealing with it" or c). seem completely baffled and start talking about how hard it has been for them to quit smoking. 

11. You go to see your counselor and lie to him because you are ashamed of how bad off you actually seem to be. "Oh, yeah, making a lot of PROGRESS. Really feel like I'm getting out from under it! I might even phase out the Wellbutrin over the next month!" He knows you're lying to him but he doesn't push it. He just has you do some non-verbal exercises that bypass the whole lying thing altogether and at least you feel a little bit connected and that someone gets some of it. 

12. You make a beautiful and nurturing connection with someone who honestly enjoys your company and you're grateful for it, but the dementors flying around on the sidelines start in with their Greek chorus of scolding, doubting, insecurity-inducing mocking and anxiety-inducing what ifs. "She doesn't really like you. You're faking it and she likes the fake you. You're a toxic selfish dishonest piece of shit and you should be ashamed for involving anyone else in it. You'll just fuck this up too, like all the rest. You have no business being with people at this point but should isolate completely until you figure out your stupid fucking shit. You are a useless, untrustworthy sex and love addict and every single thing you do with women is abusive. You should be ashamed of having desires of any kind. Who do you think you are, letting someone think she is getting close to you?" There really isn't much available relief for this so you sit in breathing meditation for 30 minutes. You camp in the middle of nowhere for days. You avoid all people, including the person you began to form a connection with. You disappear. You disappear more, as much as you can. You are tempted to say untrue and cruel things to the person. To dismiss them somehow. You feel utterly and completely broken and incapable of simple human relationship. You know that you will "never" form a real bond with someone that is good for them, let alone good for you. There you are in yet another cascade of shameful projection, and back come the thoughts of annihilation, and of course those just reinforce the whole deal. 

13. Every now and then, and maybe even more frequently as time goes on, especially as time moves ineluctably more and more away from the breakup (which you are actually embarrassed to say was traumatic), you start to have light days. They are astonishing. You don't trust them. You know with certainty you will sink again. But even so, the days stay light. You are glad you stayed sober. You're happy to be alive. You're glad you never made a plan or carried it out. You are on the other side of something, at least for a time. You are something like Walker Percy's "ex suicide."  It may not last. The next maelstrom may even be worse than the last. But for now, you'll take it, because a part of the astonishing aspect of the light day is that you will take it. It's so light that the lightness actually includes faith and hope again. But even more than that-- it includes no faith and no hope at all-- it is in fact an opening into having nothing to lose by being alive. Of course, you can't tell anyone-- because then they would expect you to be "all better," and it would exasperate them when you inevitably sink again. But you can hold the light day as your own secret, your own grace. Maybe it will be a lighthouse along the rocky shore where the rock beneath the waves is what it always was.