stinking thinking

Maintaining emotional sobriety (and sanity) via Steps 10-12

Posted on by alcoholicsguide

When I have did my steps 4-7, noting the situations, the people, the institutions  that have caused persistent resentments in me, then examining what parts of my self have been affected,  I also, thanks to one sponsor was asked me to,  put down exactly what “sins” or defects of character I also experienced during these resentments. This jotting down of the exact sins I was in during these resentments  has proved to be very useful in my recovery ever since.  What I noticed was that I had the same array of sins or negatively (immaturely) expressed emotions in relation to all resentments regardless of the situation or the person I had the resentment, the same web of sins was weaved in every situation.  For me this shows clearly how I do not process and regulate my emotions properly, how it has a canalized form of reaction.

I have found increasingly in recovery that when I want someone or something to be the way I want it and it doesn’t go that way or I want something to stay a certain way or I believe someone is threatening to interfere or take away something that I have (when I am controlling basically), I find I respond by either being dependent or dominating of the person or situation. This is what Bill Wilson also found out in ten years or so of psycho-analysis with Harry Tiebout.

Immature emotional response I call this, followed by emotional reasoning. I rarely react in a balanced manner to these prompts. The situations invariably provoke a fear based response in me which somehow also leads to me suddenly becoming dishonesty in my thinking. It is as if this self centred fear as cut me off from the truthful sunlight of the spirit and I am suddenly in the dark shadow of dishonesty. In fact, according to Father Ralph honesty comes from the Greek to be at one with God funnily enough.

Then I feel shame as the result of my pride being hurt, which can lead to self pity it if I let it. I may also feel guilt. Then I may decide to strike back via being arrogant, impatient or intolerant, in behaviourally expressed sometimes as putting others down to elevate one self. Again immature emotional response. I am obviously also being self centred and selfish while in this process. I can also be envious or jealous of others in the midst of this for taking what I wanted or threatening what I have, like a child in the park or playground with friends. Other ways of fixing my feelings rear their heads and I can be gluttonous as a reaction or become greedy. Eat too much or go on a shopping frenzy. All instead of processing the emotions which are driving this behaviour I react, act out of distress based impulsivity. I can be so distressed that I can tend towards procrastination, which is sloth in five syllables. These sins or negatively expressed emotions truly grip me and these sins seem to  hunt in packs.

I found this fascinating when I first discovered this during my steps. It seemed to map the reactions of my heart when I react via resentments to the world. They describe accurately how I relate to the world especially when the world does not give me what I want or I have stood on it’s toes.

What else is this but an immature emotional reaction based not just on me being the same age as I started drinking  but also on the fact that the regions of the brain which govern emotional regulation in the brain of the alcoholic are immature, are smaller, not connected as well or do not function as well as healthy folk.  This is according to many academic studies and also seen in the brains of children of alcoholics, so our emotional brain regions may never have worked properly and thanks to years of alcohol abuse have gotten a whole lot worse.

When I am not in charge of my emotions they are in charge of me, in other words. They are controlling me and not the other way around. This type of emotional immaturity happens throughout the day sometimes. So there is no point waiting to the end of the day to do a step 10, to see when have I been fearful, dishonest, resentful or selfish. I have to do it continuously throughout the day to maintain my spiritual and emotional equilibrium, because it needs constant attention and maintenance, because I have no naturally maintained balance. I have to manage it. I impose homoestasis to an allostatic system. There is not naturally resting place. I am in charge of my serenity.

So I spot check continuously to ensure my emotional sobriety. Another word for sober is sane. I ike this because  while I am in emotional dysregulation or immaturity, I am far from sane. In fact, I am strangely deluded, distinct from from any reasonableness. I need to do my step ten to be restored to sanity.

The other problem with this emotional lability and dysregulation is that it send streams of distorted thinking into my head. I remember ringing my sponsor in early recovery, a few months in, with the startling relevation, to me,  that my thoughts were all leading me to a place of emotional pain. My emotional dysregulation leading to cognitive distortions which leads to further emotional dyregulation etc.  Spot the negative emotions underpinning these thoughts and they disappear like wispy evaporating clouds. This has similarities here with the practice of mindfulness.

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I do this all in a very simple way – I simply ask God to remove my sins, which are usually fear, dishonesty, pride, shame,guilt, self pity, leading to intolerance, arrogance and impatience and so on, warmed in a dendritic spreading across my heart and polluting of my mind with stinking thoughts.

It is interesting that in the 5th century a religious man called Evagrius Ponticus suggested that one gets rid of troublesome thoughts by pinpointing the negative emotions which were somehow underpin then and weight these thoughts in one’s mind, like anchors weighing down lassoed clouds. I do the same effectively.

I ask God to remove these emotions after I have first identified them and offered them to Him for help in removing. What I am doing, in a sense, is also identifying, labelling and letting go (processing) of the negative emotions that have kept these thunderous grey black clouds of thoughts in my head, and striking my heart with forked pain. I am asking God to help me do what I cannot do for myself it seems; namely emotional regulation.

People outside AA often wonder how this spiritual program can help people recover. As  I blogged about recently recently it does so, I believe partly, because it helps us learn how to practice identifying, labelling  and processing emotions (often by verbalising them to someone or via step 10)  in a way that is not only healthy and adaptive but in a way I was seemingly never able to do prior to coming into AA.  Or had never been taught to do.

I have learnt all these development skills not in my childhood but in my surrogate home of AA.  How many of us have come home in AA?

When fighting your neural ghosts make sure to surrender!!

Posted on by alcoholicsguide

When I was in early recovery, in the first weeks and months my brain would continually trick me into thinking I was not an alcoholic and it did this via a combination of  stress and memory.

The process went like this – first I would have an intrusive thought about alcohol and drinking which I did not want and had not consciously put in my own head. Which used to annoy me! So what was it doing there then? I must have put it there right? why else would it be there?

So I must still have wanted to drink?

I would find this thought very threatening, frightening and upsetting. I would try to get rid of it by suppressing it, pushing it out of my consciousness. The problem was this didn’t work.

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In fact, it made the situation a whole lot worse. The intial intrusive thoughts about drinking would then proliferate and there would be other thoughts about drinking; where, at what time, who would be there. I would then have a visual read out of all these scenarios. In the bar, the sunlight streaming through the window, the golden glistening pint of lager in the summer sun matched only by the pearly white smile of the beautiful buxom bar maid slowly pulling my pint, looking at me longingly etc. in a busy atmosphere, full of happy your attractive people laughing and enjoying themselves. people dancing and hugging. Sweet music drifting acorss the bar. You get the picture.

Delusion! This was nothing like the last bar I drank in a can assure you!! It was however the image my brain was evoking partly via memory association partly by motivational embellishment.

I have an alcoholic brain which wants me to drink. It uses, still, memories from the past, to whisper sweet nothings. It never casts images across my feverish mind of violently vomiting, bent over the downstairs toilet, or me staring through half blind eyes at my severely jaundiced face in the bathroom mirror. Or being thrown out of various bars onto the hard concrete pavement outside, on my head. Or the tears and violent rows. And the distress and confusion on loved ones’ faces.

No my alcoholism never accesses these images. Ignores them completely. Instead, as my alcoholic brain wants nothing more or else than to drink, it sends memories like neural ghosts into my head to cast a spell of delusional images and suggestive ideas, mainly promoting the idea of how good it was.

This is why in AA it is said we should wind the tape forward a bit to the disgustingly horrible reality of our final drinking. The constantly wretching and living in isolaton in our alcohol induced psychosis and the shivering terror of delirium tremens.

We have a inner voice of alcoholism that quite simply lies. Distorts our memories. The motivational voice of our alcoholism is a pathological liar. It only wants to drink because it is like a psychotic carer who thinks that drinking is the thing to do when we are in full of stress or in emotional distress. It automatically says hold one I have a solution to this distress, DRINK!

This is what the brain has become hardwired to do when distressed enough.  it is a habitual response of our implicit memory which then recruits our explicit memory which paints the picture of why drinking would be such a good idea.

I have a distress based illness, so I do get distressed from time to time. Sometimes over the most innocuous things sometimes.

Not as badly as in early recovery.  No, things have improved beyond belief since then.

The neural ghosts of my motivation were like intoxicating sirens in early recovery. My impaired reward systems implored me to have liquid release. Both combined to conjure an alternative view of myself from that of my recovering self, which was still in it”s infancy. They seemed to have control of my brain!  I suddenly had a problem beyond my own will power, I couldn’t resolve these things under my own steam.

The thoughts would come and I would suppress them and the thoughts would multiply and then the memories would all chain link  and pretty soon I would have an Amazon warehouse store of memories, all providing evidence against those guys in AA, who were not telling me truth about me being an alcoholic, They were wrong…sure I liked to drink, especially given by traumatic upbringing and all?

All these thoughts and memories floating across my mind like edits in a movie to show me as a drinking person who wasn’t an alcoholic. Not many disorders go to such profound trouble!!

I would fight these images, memories and thoughts to such an extent my brain would quite simply end up paralysed, my brain felt like it had become locked and there was nothing I could do about it. It had frozen into a terrifying inertia. Stalemate. No resolution apart from increased suffering.

Fortunately whatever I had learnt in AA even in the early days would rescue me. I had learnt to habitually grasp at something close to hand, my mobile phone. After a few puzzling moments of indecision I realised I could get help from somewhere. Ring my sponsor!!!!

I had to use someone else’s head to help me with my head, my newly recovering alcoholic head. I needed a recovered head who knew what I was going through and could help me through it! I felt all fragile like a jaundiced chick.

Recovery is tough in the early days, let’s never forget that! Life without a sponsor and right from the start is a key to surviving this alcoholic possession by these deluded memories and these neural ghosts.

This is the most vital period, to keeping those who need help in recovery. Saying someone doesn’t want it enough doesn’t cut it for me anymore. Better to show them what they are missing, namely a solution to their problems. Who ultimately doesn’t want that?

If you have never trusted anyone in your life, like me, this is the time to start if you want to recover. Trust at least one person on God’s earth. One, that’s all. This is the start to a new world in recovery. A world beyond your alcoholic brain’s comprehension.

Anyway, remember that in the feverish brain of a person in early recovery who ends up engaged in this neurobiological possession, thought straightjacket and fighting for his or her life against a mnemonic Hydra when it is the last thing they should be doing, the only way to win is to give in. Surrender!

Ultimately, how we appraise and react to naturally occurring alcohol or drug related thoughts and associated memories  will determine if this process of “craving” is activated. If we use strategies such as acceptance of these thoughts as transitory then the thoughts will not affect this process and if we “Let Go and Let God” then the distress which initially activates this process will not do so. How we react to our thoughts and accompanying distress (as they appear be be coupled) will determine whether the mental obsession mentioned above will be provoked.

Also see Cognitive Craving Part 3  and Part 4

Don’t fight your thoughts!

Posted on by alcoholicsguide

The idea that abstinence will automatically also decrease alcohol-related intrusive thoughts has been dismissed by research and vast anecdotal evidence.

Practically all therapies for alcoholism e.g  AA, SMART and so on suggest that urges create automatic thoughts about drinking. This has been demonstrated in research that distress automatically gives rise to intrusive thoughts about alcohol. (1) This reflects emotional dysregulation as these intrusive thoughts are correlated to emotional dysregulation (2).

These thoughts to the recovering/abstinent individual can be seen as egodystonic which is a psychological term referring to behaviors, values, feelings that are in harmony with or acceptable to the needs and goals of the ego, or consistent with one’s self image.  Other conditions, such as OCD, have these egodystonic thoughts creating the distress that drives a compulsive need to act on them, rather than letting them pass. In other words, these thoughts are seen as distressing and threatening and compel one to act to reduce this escalating sense of distress. A similar process can happen to those in early recovery. Thoughts about drinking or using when you now wish to remain in recovery are egodystonic, they are contrary to the view of oneself as a person in recovery.  The main problem occurs when we think we can control these thoughts are that these thoughts mean we want to drink or are going to relapse!

Early recovery is a period marked by heightened emotional dysregulation and the proliferation of intrusive thoughts about alcohol .

In fact, empirical research demonstrates that alcohol-related thoughts can resemble obsessive-compulsive thinking (3,4).

In fact, one way to measure “craving” in alcoholics is by scale called the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale (5) , thus highlighting certain similarities in pathomechanisms between alcohol and OCD.

This finding is also supported by clinical observation and leads to the expectation that among abstinent alcohol abusers, alcohol-related thoughts and intrusions are the rule rather than the exception (6)

Relatively little is known about how alcohol abusers appraise their alcohol-related thoughts. Are they aware that alcohol-related thoughts occur naturally and are highly likely during abstinence? Or do they interpret these thoughts in a negative way, for example, as unexpected, shameful, and bothersome? Answers to these questions obviously inform with implications for relapse prevention, because misinterpretations of naturally occurring thoughts may be detrimental for abstinence (7).

 

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A number of conceptual papers and empirical studies have shown that individuals’ appraisal of their intrusive thoughts as detrimental and potentially out of their control may lead them to dysfunctional and counterproductive efforts to control their thinking. Alcohol-related thoughts cause an individual to experience strong emotional reactions; however, alcohol abusers will increase their efforts to control their thinking only when they have negative beliefs about these thoughts. For instance, spontaneous positive memories about alcohol (‘‘It was so nice to hang out at parties and to drink with my buddies’’) may be appraised—and misinterpreted—as ‘‘the first steps toward a relapse’’.

Such an appraisal of one’s thoughts about alcohol as problematic may instigate thought suppression and other efforts to control the thoughts. Because these efforts must be assumed to be counterproductive (Fehm & Hoyer, 2004), they will increase rather than prevent negative feelings and thoughts, and they may even demoralize alcohol abusers who are trying to remain abstinent

If positive alcohol-related thoughts are not appraised as problematic but as a normal part of abstinence, the awareness of these thoughts might even lead to the selection of more adaptive coping responses, which could help to reduce the risk of relapse.

In the context of mental health, metacognition can be loosely defined as the process that “reinforces one’s subjective sense of being a self and allows for becoming aware that some of one’s thoughts and feelings are symptoms of an illness.”

The assumption that metacognition mediates reactions to alcohol-related cues may help to explain why “craving” does not inevitably lead to relapse.

In one reported study (8), participants who reported on their thoughts about alcohol in the previous 24 hours, 92% reported experiencing at least some thoughts about drinking that ‘‘just pop in and vanish’’ without an attempt to eliminate them. This suggests that if both suppression and elaboration can be avoided, many intrusive thoughts will be relatively transient.

An “accept and move on’’ strategy provides an opportunity for the intrusion to remain a fleeting thought.

 

References

1. Zack, M., Toneatto, T., & MacLeod, C. M. (1999). Implicit activation of alcohol concepts by negative affective cues distinguishes between problem drinkers with high and low psychiatric distress. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108(3), 518.

2. Ingjaldsson, J. T., Laberg, J. C., & Thayer, J. F. (2003). Reduced heart rate variability in chronic alcohol abuse: relationship with negative mood, chronic thought suppression, and compulsive drinking. Biological Psychiatry, 54(12), 1427-1436.

3. Caetano, R. (1985). Alcohol dependence and the need to drink: A compulsion? Psychological Medicine, 15(3), 463–469

4. Modell, J. G., Glaser, F. B., Mountz, J. M., Schmaltz, S., & Cyr, L. (1992). Obsessive and compulsive characteristics of alcohol abuse and dependence: Quantification by a newly developed questionnaire. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 16(2), 266–271.

5. Anton, R. F., Moak, D. H., & Latham, P. (1995). The Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale: A self-rated
instrument for the quantification of thoughts about alcohol and drinking behavior. Alcoholism:
Clinical and Experimental Research, 19, 92–99.

6. Hoyer, J., Hacker, J., & Lindenmeyer, J. (2007). Metacognition in alcohol abusers: How are alcohol-related intrusions appraised?. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 31(6), 817-831.

7. Marlatt, G. A., & Gordon, J. R. (Eds.). (1985). Relapse prevention: Maintenance strategies in the
treatment of addictive behaviors. New York: Guilford Press

8. Kavanagh, D. J., Andrade, J., & May, J. (2005). Imaginary relish and exquisite torture: the elaborated intrusion theory of desire. Psychological review, 112(2), 446.