Tuesday, August 24, 2010

just like that

A week ago I posted something I'd written a couple of weeks ago about the yearning I felt for the last person I had an intimate relationship with, and this is what I said:
"I have urges to contact him, just to talk of course, to find out his take on the latest political goings-on or suchlike. I don't. Now. I did for a few weeks after it all went pear shaped, but after the last passive-aggressive response I stopped for good. I still get the urge to though."
Well... a few days ago the strangest thing happened.  I contacted him.  Just like that.  Without even thinking about it, I sent him a one liner email asking what he thought about the election results. 

Then yesterday I re-read the post from last week and the two tonne penny dropped.  WTF?  How easy it is for these maladaptive urges to drive my self-defeating behaviour, bypassing my better judgement and picking up a feebleminded rationalisation on way. 

How does this happen when only days earlier I was patting myself on the back for not acting on these exact urges.  Am I asleep at the wheel?  Is someone else driving?  I am gobsmacked at the sheer unconsciousness of it all and wonder what I means for me in working to get rid of my schema perpetuating behaviours. 

Tips anyone?

Monday, August 23, 2010

activated

It’s fair to say I’m feeling shite. Last night I was even having those (hypothetical) thoughts about cutting myself. I can’t remember having these thoughts since I was a teenager maybe twenties. That was back in the days when self harm wasn’t even fashionable, I’d never even heard of anyone else doing it. I think I only ever acted on them once, scratching with a safety pin. Nonetheless they’re indicative that my emotional state is reasonably fragile.
I’m feeling let down by my friends. I want support, holding, but noone seems to get that. Maybe it’s because I don’t let them know what I need. Although on Thursday I said to a friend “I’m having a life crisis” but she didn’t follow it up with a query as to whether I was okay. I hear the sound of emotional deprivation! Although now I think about it, a dear friend of 30 years duration said to me only a week ago that she’d like to be able to give me more support and that I should ask her when I need it. I could be partly perpetuating the feeling of deprivation by discounting the support on offer and by expecting people to read my mind about what I need from them.
I’m also very conscious that I’ve had falling outs with a couple of long term friends and am pretty down on myself about those aka I’m a bad person aka Defectiveness.
So my core schemas are pretty well activated at the moment. The trick is to manage myself while I’m feeling this way. Keep mindful that in this state I’m at risk of acting out some of my classic schema driven behaviours. I also need to be kind to myself, use the schema modes model and get my Healthy Adult supporting my vulnerable child (who can flip into Angry Child all too easily).

Thursday, August 19, 2010

fantasy, the ultimate avoidance

It was in reading Steven Carter and Julia Sokol's books that I came to recognise that fantasy played a huge part in life.  They talk about how fantasising about idealised partners and relationships is a reversion point for commitmentphobes that maintains their unrealistic expectations of real life relating.  This is so true.  There are a multitude of people out there convinced that the only reason they haven't yet experienced a deep, loving, long-term partnership is because Ms or Mr Right is yet to enter their orbit.  When you arrive at the realisation that there is no such person, you're on the way.

Now, undertaking this therapy, I am looking at my patterns more intently I am somewhat surprised at the amount time I spend in fantasy about desired (and often idealised) outcomes.  Obviously a lot of these have been around relationships but (and this is what has surprised me most) many are about work and other life domains. 

I suspect fantasy was an early emerging coping mechanism for me.  When you can't get your needs met in real life, you can make yourself feel good by living out your hoped for ideal future in your mind.   It really is the ultimate avoidance, you get to escape your reality and get an emotional dose of fulfilled desire.

Obviously fantasy, in the mode of visualisation can be useful - because it's being used to create the motivation to pursue adaptive life goals.  But that's different to what I'm talking about which is akin to a mental masturbation, which leaves you feeling temporarily satiated but doesn't serve to get you any closer to realising your desired life outcomes.  In fact, it does the opposite. 

I am now being more aware of lapsing into fantasy and stopping it.  I hope it will help with my procrastination and help me do, rather than just thinking about doing, a bit more.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

yearning

The last romantic encounter I had, the meltdown of which gave rise to me taking up this therapy, lasted grand total of six weeks.  You would wonder then why, two months later, I still find myself pining for him.  I have urges to contact him, just to talk of course, to find out his take on the latest political goings-on or suchlike.  I don't.  Now.  I did for a few weeks after it all went pear shaped, but after the last passive-aggressive response I stopped for good.  I still get the urge to though.

Seeing this pining as activation of my emotional deprivation is valuable.  I understand that what I have felt since it happened is not so much about him or what went on between us, but is (forgive the analogy) the scab being picked off my deprivation wound.

Harder to get my head around though is the reality that my choices created this situation.  Yes, it was him that pursued me but I: a) became intimate too fast, unleashing my strong need for physical contact on someone who needed a slower pace; b) didn't talk to him about this and other potential consequences of physical intimacy before the fact; c) mindlessly reacted to his pacing behaviours with contact seeking; d) lost my temper at what I misunderstood as a sign of rejection; e) chased after him when he angrily withdrew; f) blamed myself for all of it; g) continue to yearn. 

This my friends is schema reinforcement.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

going back to where it all began 2

This is another childhood imagery exercise, copied here from my notebook.  I'm not sure how old I was at the time, anywhere up to eight years old. 

'We were sitting in church - Mum, my friend Anna and I.  The priest was giving a sermon on the journey to eternal life. I suspect he was looking to do some teaching by analogy and keen to involve the congregation, he called for children to come up to the altar and tell stories about how they travelled to different places.  I had no intention of going up.  My mother had other ideas.  She told me to go, I refused.  And refused.  In frustration, and unable to raise her voice, she started pinching my leg and insisting I go.  I relented and went.  I felt awful.  I did what I had to do and came back completely embarassed in front of Anna. 

Although I couldn't have articulated it at the time, I felt completely invalidated.  What I wanted didn't matter.  All my mother cared about was looking good in front of the rest of the congregation.  I was learning that my wants, wishes and needs didn't matter. 

This is where I started losing myself.  Losing the ability to feel that what I want is right and okay.  This is where I became not important.  This is where I started giving up even trying.  This is where I split my existence into two realms - the real world where I would never get what I needed and the fantasy world where I could.

This is the roots of my rebellion.  Angry at everything. Refusing what my parents desired because that was the only means I had to be myself.  Me ≠ Them.  The anti-them.  The only self I could find.  The wrong self.  The defective self.'
Typing this out, the feelings evoked are very strong.  Anger is at the forefront, but also humiliation - the sense of being devalued.  I'm just breathing my way through the emotions, letting go the temptation to analyse it away or distract myself.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

commitmentphobia

Long ago, ten years in fact, I recognised I struggled with intimate relationships.  In the wake of having my heart well and truly broken, and on the verge of sliding into what became a drawn out depression, it was clear to me that something wasn't right and I had work to do.  Although I knew I was looking for something to fix, I had no idea what it was and in the years that followed fixing my intimacy issues became secondary to negotiating the unholy depression and run of disappointments that plagued me. 

Five years ago, I found a name for that struggle with intimacy.

I was spending a few month in New York, ostensibly to work on my PhD, but primarily it was an opportunity to live for a short time in a city upon which I had an unrequited crush, developed vicariously through the magic of various novelists, New Yorker contributors, and makers of film and television.

One day feeling flat, I found myself in the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Square.  Obviously drawn by the desire to salve my mood, I ended up browsing the self-help section.  I started reading a book called He's Afraid, She's Afraid by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol and there it was, the name. 

Commitmentphobia. 

This book, and another that followed Getting to Commitment, have remained on the top of my self-help list.  I can't do justice to the comprehensive and articulate work of these authors by trying to summarise it in a few short sentences here.   What I will do is borrow the opening paragraph of Getting to Commitment, which introduces the commitmentphobe situation beautifully:
Let's not be embarrassed about admitting who we are. We are the men and women whose relationships (or even marriages) never seem to work out. We fall in love, but we don't seem to be able to stay in love. Sometimes it's because the people we want are unable to love us back in the same way, and we are left with broken hearts and destroyed dreams. Sometimes it's because we are the ones who fall out of love; then we are the guilt ridden rejectors instead of the disappointed rejectees. Either way, typically we once again being the search for new partners, hoping against hope that the next one will be the "right one". More than a few of us have had our hopes dashed so many times that all we want to do is sit home with our computers, television sets, CD players, or our loving cats and dogs.
Reading He's Afraid, She's Afraid I recognised so much of myself in their profile of the commitmentphobe, particularly in the passive mode.  Choosing and falling for people who are unavailable, be it emotionally or physically, to love me fully.  Finding fault with those who are open to love.  Mourning failed romances for protrated periods.  Chasing after people who are rejecting or indifferent toward me.  Spending inordinate amounts of time fantasizing about idealised relationships or unavailable people.  Getting exhausted and having long periods of no intimacy peppered occasionally by one night stands. 

Carter and Sokol's books focus on helping people recognise their problem and providing strategies to deal with it.  They only touch lightly on the origins of commitmentphobic behaviours.  Schema theory and adult attachment theory fill this gap for me. 

However as we well know, while understanding provides a valuable foundation; the real work comes in the doing.  That's the challenge.  To stay aware, make changes, and keep doing so.  Over and over and over again.

Monday, August 9, 2010

schema manifestations

Schemas manifest themselves through our thoughts, feelings and behaviours, in the ways that we cope with their toxic effects.  Young and colleagues refer to these as coping styles.  As with many other psychological phenomena, behaviour is usually the easiest symptom to read. There are three ways of coping with maladaptive schemas - surrender, avoidance and overcompensation.  Surrender is giving in to your beliefs about yourself and acting in ways that reinforce them.  Avoidance occurs when you act to stop the feelings your schema creates.  Overcompensation is channelling large amounts of energy into acting against what your schema tells you about yourself.  They're not mutually exclusive, you can swap from one to the other, or do a bit of each. 

One of the early schema therapy exercises is to examine your behaviour for all the ways in which your schemas mainfest themselves.  Below is the list I drew up with elaboration of some items, its a conglomeration of surrender, avoidance and overcompensation strategies and I them I see manifestations of my defectiveness, emotional deprivation and failure.
  1. Alcohol - this has been my demon and it operates in a number of ways.  First it is an escape from feeling awful about myself.  Second, after I get very drunk I have strong feelings of shame.  Third, it handicaps me, disrupting my sleep, muddying my thoughts and making it hard to do the things I want to do, thus reinforcing feelings of failure.
  2. Being judgemental and critical - both of myself as well as others.  I can see as clear as day that this drives people away, but I still do it. 
  3. Spend inordinate amounts of time fantasising about idealised scenarios, in work, in love life. 
  4. Trying hard to prove I'm okay - even the outcomes of small tasks become means of making me feel that I'm not a bad person.  Two of my big adulthood achievements (finishing PhD and running marathon) were also these try-hard efforts.  Somehow I thought my identity would change for the better after doing these but the effect was short-lived. 
  5. Passive aggressive e.g. late (especially with my family), unreliable, withholding.
  6. Angry outbursts, being unconscious of my impact on others, or not caring.
  7. Failing to make my needs/preferences known (being 'easygoing') then being passively resentful.
  8. Don't begin or complete tasks that would give me satisfaction.  Procrastinate, don't follow through on plans.
  9. Being drawn to withholding people most particularly in my intimate life.
  10. Put others up on a pedestal, seeking their validation.
  11. Dissociate, sometimes unconsciously, othertimes through compulsive self-soothing behaviours (I've got a whole repetoire of these).
  12. Scapegoat passive people - this one is very scary as I can see myself doing it but it's like no matter how hard I try I can't stop myself.  I did it to a lovely man I dated earlier this year - it was ugly and distressing.
  13. Get very attracted to people who are emotionally unavailable or not particularly validating.
  14. Am hypersensitive to perceived signs of exclusion and rejection.  Brings up a lot of anxiety and compulsion to close the distance. 
I'm sure there are plenty more where those came from.  I'll come back and edit this as they come to mind.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

going back to where it all began

One of the first steps in schema therapy is go back to where it all began.  It's a exercise in remembering - taking yourself back in time to trawl for memories of experiences coloured by the core feelings of your schema. So for me its the fundamental feelings of shame and deprivation.  when I first read about this exercise in Reinventing Your Life, a few childhood memories came to mind.  To do the exercise you focus on the memory, go through it in as much detail as you can, feel all the emotions it brings up and stay with them.  Essentially you are taking yourself back to be that child again.  Then you tap into your adult self to comfort and reassure your child self.  The book suggests one way of faciliating this is writing in the voice of the child in your non-dominant hand, then writing the response of the adult in your dominant hand.  I have done this with three memories now and below is the first one.  The first paragraph is narrative of the memory, the second (italics) is the child and the third paragraph is the adult.

'My mother went away, overseas on holiday for a few months.  My sister, brother and I stayed at home with my father.  I'm not sure how old I was, probably about 8.  Thinking back this was obviously distressing for me.  One morning, instead of going to school, I went to our local church.  I sat in the back rows and cried.  I remember the violence of my sobs.  I sat outside the confessional boxes, where usually a priest sat inside.  I was hoping he would appear and comfort me.  It was the only place I thought to go to get comfort.

I want my mummy.  Why isn't she here?
Please help me.  Please hold me.

Come here, give me a hug.  A big cuddle.  Let's just sit.  If you want to tell me about it, you do that.  Otherwise let's just sit here and cuddle.  You're okay.  You just feel a bit scared.  It's okay.  I'll look after you.  You just tell me when you're scared or you need some help.  I'll look after you.'

Monday, August 2, 2010

assessment

Usually when you start psychotherapy with a professional, they take your history and in doing so sometimes use an assessment tool (usually a questionnaire which is scored) to measure your 'symptoms'. 

Since I'm doing my own therapy, the history is already known.  And I will take you through bits and pieces of it in time.  Reinventing Your Life has assessment tools at the start of each chapter on the differnt schemas/lifetraps.  Jeffrey Young has also authored/coauthored a number of questionnaires or inventories that measure schemas and the ways people use to cope with them. 

I, like others, show manifestations of more than one schema.  The two most obvious are Defectivenss and Emotional Deprivation, which seem to go hand in hand.  I can also see bits of Subjugation and Failure. 

You're meant to choose your most dominant or core schema to work on first, but I can't really pick whether I should work on the Defectiveness or Emotional Deprivation.  I'm tending toward the former because its where the shame comes from, and the shame is what comes the most, because its there under everything else.

Defectiveness it is.