For Hops: R&L brain and Smoking

[Hopalong]

This whole post makes an enormous amount of sense!

What a great therapist.

What a bio-"mother" who earned NC...right? NC? Mostly NC?

What wonderful insight. Esp. about addiction = helplessness, and all that leads to.

Hooray,

Hops

[sKePTiKal]

NC  - LOL!!

Well, after I'd pointedly changed the subject in several phone calls to ME and my life and my feelings... she stopped calling me every week. I haven't talked to her in a couple of months; haven't visited in person in 10 years.

How much safer could I get, right? But, it was the projections - that "mom" in my head that we all know so well - that kept beating me up. I credit these sessions of bejewelled I've been playing that allow "space out" time - when those snippets of self come up & snap back into place - with finally pulling enough of "me" together... a critical mass with thought & emotion & consciousness.

and Ann's suggestion to SS yesterday: time to visualize a new you... that was a step I hadn't taken; spent too much time deciding who I WASN'T... not enough time on who I AM...

hopefully I'll get some time today to put together a new quit plan. To be enacted by Friday.

[sKePTiKal]

update....

today I was supposed to not be smoking. I am still smoking.

I am still smoking, because of things that I feel are completely out of my control that are creating chaos, despair, and mounting frustration. This time - it's the same old, same old at work - AGAIN. My boss - AGAIN.

A personnel issue was brought to his attention by the #2 in the office. It's an issue that boss & I have been discussing for weeks now. When I say what I want - he always throws responsibility for making it happen back to me - when what I want is for other people to accept some responsibility for what is THEIR JOB. 6 of us in the office have the same issue, with the same person. That person reports directly to the boss. He denies there's a problem; and we dare not suggest that he is the cause of the problem (he is) or we'll be threatened with our jobs.

Once again: life is giving me a glorious opportunity to change... do things differently... to learn. Dare I take it?

My subordinate pointed out yesterday that I seemed to be smoking a lot, for someone trying to quit. I haven't gone into detail about my story - but have told her about being an abuse survivor. She escaped a marriage to an N; she's also so sensitive to the boss, that I basically protect her from even having to speak with him. We were discussing the havoc that the boss is wreaking... and what, if anything, could be done about it... and also rumors she's hearing across campus that he will be removed from his position soon. I was getting ready to tell her:

that I'd decided that I wasn't going to be "collateral damage" yet again - i.e., smoking myself into illness & death - that the reason I was the victim the first time, was because I didn't TELL ANYONE... I didn't tell anyone how my mother was; it would've been "disloyal"; we didn't discuss family matters outside the home. That same kind of rule exists in my department.

However, when the VP asked me point blank about certain things he'd heard from others, last month - I was candid, honest, well - blunt. I meet with him again on Wed, just before our new president's inauguration the end of this week - and my two weeks at the beach. Wednesday, I intend to hand him a proposal I submitted to my boss last year; the same proposal boss says is sitting on some VPs desk - but that this VP knew nothing about. I think my boss is lying. I'm asking the #2 in the dept. to document what he knows are issues in the department and to suggest solutions; he is just as intensely upset as I am - and doesn't have anything in his past to be triggered about. That is going to be included in the packet I deliver.

And I'm going to tell this man - my last hope - that I don't know how much longer I can stand to come into work wondering what new crisis my boss has created; wondering if the whole department is going to mutiny or simply cease to function because of boss' lack of and mis-managment; and if I can stand to spend whole days trying to keep my panic and anxiety under check enough, to not climb the tallest building here and scream: will somebody PLEASE DO SOMETHING??? If you won't do it, will you PLEASE LET ME DO IT????

After what I've lived through; after healing this much; after doing as good a job as I can IN SPITE OF the boss - I don't DESERVE to be faced with this situation daily. I don't deserve to have to watch the department that the whole university depends on be destroyed and become non-functional... because no one seems to have the balls to deal with this idiot who abuses the very people he uses to earn his "brownie points" with the muckety-mucks.

It's not a threat; it's my own survival that I am responsible for thinking about; doing something about. I accept that my emotions about this are intense; at some level they are triggered by the similarity to the "original crimes" that I lived through at 12-13. But my emotions about this present situation are equally intense; they stand on their own, even when I separate the similarities of the situations from the present. I can not simply throw myself weeping at this VP's feet begging him to rescue me; but damn, if that isn't what I want.

So, I'm smoking to distance those emotions enough - to allow myself the space to think of an appropriate way to broach the subject of the last week of hell that has been a direct result of the VPs' requests of my boss (tho' the boss' insanity-reaction I am complaining about, is not his fault). And I'm smoking to be able to tell this person who could resolve the situation, that I'm not willing to work in these conditions much longer; that the combination of lack of caring at a high level about what they've known for some time, combined with my personal history, make the situation so unbearable - that while I don't WANT to leave, I may have to - to protect myself; explaining WHY it's difficult for me. And then releasing the outcome.... because I really don't WANT to have to endure another day of this; truly.

I'm hoping that smoking will help me to gain some magical insight or epiphany of understanding that will enable me to persuade the powers-that-be to correct this situation. I'm hoping that smoking will show me the "way out" of this horrible mess. I'm hoping that smoking will make me better able to be taken seriously, be respected, be HEARD. I'm hoping that smoking will somehow protect me from being seen as the "idiot" in this picture.

I'm hoping to be delivered from agony by smoking - which, of course, ultimately I would be, if I just keep smoking.... unless I can find a way to do what needs to be done Wed., without smoking.

[sKePTiKal]

the fear of abuse for daring to be my self was so great, that only continuing smoking could make it bearable.

Well - how in the world could I forget that in the space of a couple of days? Sure does apply right now. Maybe 'coz I'm hoping management will somehow rescure me... and the rest of the department... victim-thinking, again.

I'll think on this some more... some clues right HERE... in what I've written.

[sKePTiKal]

OH CB - THANK YOU!!!!  This is very, very helpful.

I have spent the weekend still in emotional upheaval; trying to get ready to leave for the beach next weekend - and deciding which projects are necessary; which I can let go... and then I was awakened in the wee hours of Sunday morning, by my brother. My Dad was admitted to hospital last week, with pneumonia again. This time, the doctors were saying they were doing everything they could; but they weren't sure if he'd last the night (he must have; I didn't hear otherwise). More than pneumonia: he'd had 2 seizures, fell, was dehydrated and his kidneys were failing.

So Sunday was frantic. Trying to get everything packed, in case I have to leave for MI before we go to NC on Saturday. Yard work, too. Housecleaning. I wasn't very kind to myself, either. As a result, I'm not feeling too well, physically - but oddly, the emotional side is beginning to clear. I think it has to do with preparing myself to let go of my dad.

Ya know: I've spent a whole lot of the healing process focussed on my mom; I gloss right over my dad. But the fact is: he is the "rescuer" that I felt abandoned by. He is the "hero" that I worshipped - because he was able to comfort me and stand between me & my mom. I thought he was a lot a things that he wasn't. He's not a very nice man, even though he can be extremely generous; a classic N - he likes this role of benefactor.

My Dad and I aren't close; we aren't intimate. I've gotten to know him more at the level of a business associate. So, faced with what looks like his final decline... I'm not overly sad. I almost expect myself to be sad, though. Through this expectation and the emotional reality, I realized that my childhood hero worship of my Dad was in his ability to be an antidote to my mom. He smoked; drank to excess on a regular basis - his way of running away from my Mom. His bad behavior led to my being vulnerable and becoming a target for the rapist. His behavior only made my Mom even worse than she normally was.

And when I was abandoned to being forced to be inappropriately intimate with my mother - what did I do? Pick up his way of dealing with her; his way of creating a boundary and reinforcing his separateness from her. It was the ONLY way that I'd been shown to deal with it. I FEAR intimacy because of how she misused this relationship with me.

Smoking truly IS a boundary for me - a way to avoid being infected with emotions that aren't my own; keeping crazymakers & their insanity at bay; the only self-defense I thought I had from my boundary-less, intrusive mother. Smoking was how I was able to be me - when she wouldn't let me.

Until this weekend, I was processing all this emotional stuff very rationally. Yes, I dove into lots of the feelings, a la Alice Miller style... but always I was trying to understand what had happened to me; what was keeping me locked in old habits and addictions. I slept long last night after relative sleeplessness Sat. night and Sunday's exertions.

Today, I feel very, very different. I feel that I am different somehow. As if there is something being expelled from me... or something else healing and becoming whole-er.

[Gaining Strength]

PR, as I read you last post I had a thought - it occurred to me that as your smoking helped you create a barrier for the inappropriate intimacy  your mother created just as your father had with smoking and drinking that perhaps now you can identify something else that will protect you and then you can swap a more healthy protection for the smoking. 

I know it sounds over simplified and I haven't any idea how you would identify the smoking substitute but I thought I would put out the suggestion in case it resonated.

[sKePTiKal]

Well, SS, funny thing...

One the one hand, I'm finding I don't have to "do" a thing... my sub/unconscious self seems to be doing it FOR me. I've frequently begun "forgetting" my smokes; even walked out of the store without them, right after buying them. And just now, I "dropped" the one I just lit outside of the jeep. I've had to make a conscious effort to remember to continue my habit - this, of course, out of old fear of the consequences of giving up this charade of a boundary. Smoking is becoming difficult, but of course, I persist.

As if I'm simply "becoming" a non-smoker, as this unification of myself takes place; as I finally understand the absolutely ABSURD rules I learned to live by. Additionally, my psychosomatic "symptoms" are all ganged up on the negative affects of smoking: switching brands is no help either; the only way I feel halfway decent physically: not smoking. And the funny thing is, that the less I smoke I find it's actually EASIER to manage those old emotional habits... I don't experience the anxiety, depression, or emotional chaos as much or as intensely.

As if smoking IS the TRIGGER for those old emotional patterns...

Not sure yet; still observing. Last week's chaos at the office got me thinking about why I let insanity around me actually affect my own feelings; upsetting me, making me anxious, waking up the wail I mentioned a couple posts ago. I do believe, it's 'coz I was actually EXPECTED to be responsible for fixing the insanity -- my mother's. Failing that, then I was supposed to feel what she felt. I finally connected this piece, when I remembered that my Dad had tried to encourage me to persuade my mom to go get stents for her heart disease... he was believing that I must have the ability to control her...able to reverse the process of what she did to me. I even tried; absolutely no headway as I expected.

As if smoking IS the TRIGGER for those old emotional patterns...

and letting this go (as it seems to be going, when I don't consciously think: time to smoke) might just the next step. Smoking never stopped the insanity before... but it did give the chance to be ME and not HER. Prone to magical thinking as a kid, I wonder how much power I assigned to this? Stripped of that "power"... I wonder how much of a hold the actual addiction has over me? Why don't I have the level of withdrawal symptoms, others report?

Finding a replacement for smoking is checked off the list. CBT 101. I've found a computer game I can play which is soothing, provides a mental break, seems to refresh me or adjust the left/right brain balance... and "satisfies" the need to reward myself. Best of all: no calories!  So far, it's working better than anything else. It's a time out - to just be me. I have a copy at home - and a similar version for my handheld DS game... that I can take with me anywhere.

And it must stimulate parts of my brain that were off limits, so long. While playing, a jumbled assortment of little tidbits of memory come floating up to the surface - of me BEFORE - the Sh*t hit the fan. Huh. Just now realized that very few of these memories are of that time; they are all me BEFORE. Don't have a clue what that means... or if it matters.

[Hopalong]

Amber...hon?

ANY possibility you could try the experience of clinical hypnosis to help you make the last step?

It is SOOO peaceful and healing.

Strengthens your ability to trust, to relax, to tap your calm that pre-existed trauma.

It really is amazing.

love to you,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

For what it's worth, Hops - I am able to hypnotize myself. Get to a calm soothing place in nothing flat. It's an underutilized skill, truthfully. I'm not in the habit of doing this for myself. You're absolutely right about hypnosis being helpful. But so is my campaign to rid myself of the emotional habits that sustained my addiction so long.

Spent some time today digging through info on dopamine - and it's relationship to adrenaline. Not so long ago, I considered myself an adrenaline-junkie. Just didn't feel like "me" without that rush-rush, panicked, compulsive fight/flight feeling. No more. But, I still have the reaction - the emotional habit - of responding that way in certain situations. And yes, I tend to smoke more in that state. Like I need to create some balance - equilibrium - to the excess adrenaline. While initially there was a brighter, mental-clarity effect from tobacco - of course tolerance to nicotine ups the amount needed.

I found a recent study that found that dopamine can also cause fear, when injected in mice in a section of the brain very near the "pleasure center". And it's curious - I wonder what would happen if one's neural pathways were scrambled? Like with a head injury? And then, there's my funny response to certain medications - the paradoxical effect - where I experience the opposite effect to what is "indicated". Especially when the dosage isn't dramatically reduced. This study goes a ways toward confirming my observation, intuition, that rather than creating calm... my long-time habit is only fueling an anxiety-response; keeping those adrenaline levels up; stimulating fear and it's emotional over-reactivity. Smoking isn't pleasurable anymore for me - not even the first one in the morning, when the need for nicotine is the strongest. If anything, it's become so UNpleasant... that I find it hard to believe that I am continuing to smoke.

Maybe I'm just using a susceptibility to self-deception here; making it up as I go along to match my intentional choice to quit... but functionally, how does that differ from auto-suggestion? I have to say though, I'm sure this single-topic issue fixation is getting boring & frustrating for people (I'm with ya there)... but it's all working to the same conclusion as hypnosis - convincing myself that it's safe now, to quit. That smoking was the flimsiest of boundaries - the illusion of a real, emotional boundary - and I don't have to settle for that, anymore.

[Hopalong]

I'm not bored with you, Amber!

I think the act of trusting, when you do hypnosis with the help of a certified hypnotherapist, does something deeply healing that is different.

The transaction is direct, applied, intentional healing from one human being to another.

I found it very powerful. It saved my life.

(Tell me if you want me to drop it though, and I will. I know nagging is the opposite of help.)

love to you, still glad to listen,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

No, Hops - you don't have to drop it. I do appreciate what the act of caring from one human to another can mean for the healing process. I think you've already supplied that for me - as have others here. Thank you.

A la SS's thread on replaying old wounds: I've realized that this problem of smoking is keeping me locked in a self-perpetuating cycle or circle - my attempts to try to quit, my attempts to figure out the magic solution to how I can quit are keeping me locked into the naval-gazing position. It's Lbrain knowing it needs to quit - and realizing that without smoking - Lbrain ceases to be the "master". When the monkey becomes the master - or the horse of the cart isn't responding to the commands of the driver - then there's no cease to misery, chaos, and no final "answer" to the "why".

Misery triggers the old wounds... and then I'm off naval-gazing yet again, smoking - smoking - smoking... hoping that I find that magic solution. Ad infinitum.

As Twiggy, that intentional adoption of smoking was her silent cry for help - for wanting to belong somewhere, to some OTHER people - to escape. The wail: SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE PLEASE DO SOMETHING - OR LET ME belongs to Twiggy. My inner child who so desperately needed a caring, responsible parent. She can be a brat, too - when she uses smoking as the LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO - which, of course, she learned from her mom as an acceptable way of being angry. Smoking was the boundary behind which, I could be me - and not my mother's projections.

Well - this morning, I realized that someone DID hear Twiggy. I did. And it's my task now, to be the caring, responsible parent and tell her that she has my permission to stop smoking now. It's no longer necessary to be silent about needing help. That this was not an effective boundary; it didn't work; it was only the illusion of a boundary. More crazy-making. In fact, I need to MAKE her stop smoking, if I truly am a responsible caring parent. That's what being responsible for yourself MEANS.

Being responsible for my SELF, was yet another thing I didn't learn in my FOO; like brushing your teeth twice a day.

The fact is, the reality is: there is no magic solution. There is only ONE PERSON who can quit: me.

Because of the brain-assist of nicotine, I believed that I "needed" this to pull myself out of the fog of dissociation & gaslighting. Wrong; it all became painfully clear on it's own, after a time.

I believed that smoking helped me hide or manage my feelings - a common belief of those of us who have PTSD symptoms - and this belief led to another: that not smoking would cause my feelings to go completely out of control. And of course - for me - this creates the pavlovian expectation of new, more, abuse. This is ALSO wrong. During my 3-day quit, I didn't have any out of control feelings - except for false need, the habit - to "work on myself" and naval-gaze. Which of course, is all part of the smoking ritual... part of the self-perpetuating cycle.

My inner child is helping as much as she can. Each and every cigarette exacts an immediate physical rejection response from me now. And it's only these desperate, shallow beliefs that are engraved on my left-brain beliefs/routines/habit/addiction that is keeping me saying: well, just one more. Or: after this meeting... or... that's the bargaining of Lbrain's addiction. The desperate monkey wanting to maintain the illusion of being the zen master.

So am I me: a responsible caring adult? Or am I just like my mother - helpless, addicted, and trapped in my own self-created hell?

Time to shit or get off the pot, even if it means I have to LET GO the habit of journaling the process and re-evaluating all the old original wounds.
Hubby said it a long time ago; before I remembered Twiggy; before therapy: you can't go forward if you're always looking at the past.

[Gaining Strength]

I have come to the very same conclusion about myself. 

I am reviewing and reviewing and reviewing.  I needed to up until TODAY.  Now I must get up and start moving.  When I look back I must self-correct or turn into a pillar of salt.  I couldn't move forward until today, but now I must.

Between yesterday and today I decided to let go of the healing analogy and move into the athletic training analogy.

I'm still sitting on the pot but during the past months the more I believed I could overcome the more I have.  So even if I am sitting on the pot I am requiring of my own mind that I move forward - mentally until it becomes physically.

I have been amassing critical mass and suspect you have been as well.

[sKePTiKal]

Don't know about the critical mass... maybe.

I use "practice" instead of training... practice means that I don't have to be perfect while I'm learning - to be me, in this case.

[sKePTiKal]

Funny/weird thing happened this morning, while I was journalling...

completely out of context to my stream of thought, I wrote: "don't remember". I only discovered this phrase when I went back to review what I'd written - and at the time, I wondered: WHERE did this come from??? WHO did it come from???? "Don't remember" WHAT?????

At the time, the only association I could make to this phrase, was the commandment to forget what had happened to me - the trauma - and my self. But it seemed clear that the phrase came from my unconscious self - which persisted all along, even though I wasn't able to be aware of it or open to it, all these years.

But now: a thought just occurred to me. I'd forgotten my smokes in the jeep when I walked into work this morning. I was able to "let them go".... but I'm off to a meeting soon and my "habit" is to smoke while mentally preparing myself. As I was walking out to get them, I realized that I felt good enough to simply go get them - but not smoke. Then: it dawned on me......

my unconscious wants me to simply FORGET - don't remember - the cigarettes; the habitual link between certain things and smoking... just don't remember smoking is something I "do"... because it's not who I am.

Lbrain is laughing at this idea; calling it stupid; saying it can't be that easy. But maybe it IS. For me.

[Hopalong]

Neat!

A smoke-free rivulet opening in the brain.

Your fine brain that has life force...driving it.
At the lizard/limbic level, our most powerful...you want to live.

Awesome.

xxoo
Hops