About Me

“Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.”

– Alice Miller (from her book The Drama of the Gifted Child)

For many years, I worked hard to build a charmed life. I had been living that life to the fullest until I took a precipitous fall into the abyss of alcoholism. Unwittingly, I claimed my family as hostages and took them right along with me.

I survived addiction and have been in recovery since February 9, 2007. Since that time, I have been working courageously, and sometimes not, to face the trauma/emotional pain that caused my addiction and ripples through my life today.

Writing My Story has been revealing and cathartic.  Glad that you stopped by!

 

Finding the Right Therapist

 I’m sure that you are aware that sobriety is a lot more than quitting alcohol or drugs.  Newly sober, it seems our human nature wants to make everything right as quickly as possible.  From my experience and from observing many others, I don’t believe that it is humanly possible to fast track recovery.  I tried to carry that out with all the strength I could muster and, in hindsight, I might have been better off by going down to the beach to try to stop a few waves from breaking.  This takes time!  And for me, it also took a village!

 And of course, as someone who is prone to addiction, it is completely foreign to seek help or to allow others to step in and row the oars for a bit.  But taking “contrary action” is critical.

 I have had good and bad experiences with therapy.  While chemically dependent, my experiences were mostly ineffective – go figure!  As I gained strength in sobriety, through time and effort, my experiences with therapy became more rewarding.

Here is what I learned.  Your therapist is critical.  I would focus less on one that has addiction counseling experience and focus more on finding one that has a good understanding of their own self.  Of course, if they have both, then you’re probably in good hands.  The best way that I know how to describe what I am referring to is to direct you to the website of Alice Miller, a wonderful psychologist and author.  The website address is www.alice-miller.com . 

I have found Alice Miller an incredible source.  Enter a search on her home page for “enlightened witness”.   That description would be my recommendation of how to find the right counselor.  Her book “The Drama of the Gifted Child” has changed my life.

 If you’re newly sober, my one caution would be that getting too deep into this material (with so much going on already in early sobriety) would be putting the cart WAY, WAY before the horse!    It has been my experience that tackling the subject that Alice Miller addresses is something that is better received when you have had some sobriety under your belt.  I was well into my third year of sobriety before I was able to fully absorb her material.  Before that, I was just too broken and too mentally weak. 

Strength in sobriety comes the old-fashioned way – by putting in the time.  And sometimes that’s just being sober and letting time heal you.

Our Nations Shame

What Can Happen to Abused Children When They Grow Up –           
 
If No One Notices, Listens or Helps?

  For purposes of this document, abuse and trauma are defined as: interpersonal violence in the form of sexual abuse, physical abuse, severe neglect, loss, and /or the witnessing of violence. 

Prepared by The Office of Trauma Services,Maine Department of Behavioral and Developmental Service’s State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333 Phone: 207 287-4250, TTY 207 287-2000, fax 207 287-757  January, 2001

 If no one notices, listens or helps, childhood abuse can lead in adult years to:

 SERIOUS MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS

The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood trauma:

·50 to 70% of all women and a substantial number of men treated in psychiatric settings have histories of sexual or physical abuse, or both.  (Carmen et al, 1984; Bryer et al., 1987; Craine et al., 1988)

 ·As high as 81% of men and women in psychiatric hospitals with a variety of   major mental illness diagnoses have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse. 67% of these men and women were abused as children (Jacobson & Richardson, 1987)

 ·74% of Maine’s Augusta Mental Health Institute patients, interviewed as class  members, report histories of sexual and physical abuse. (Maine BDS, 1998)

 ·The majority of adults diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (81%) or  Dissociative Identity Disorder (90%) were sexually and/or physically abused as children.  (Herman et al, 1989; Ross et al, 1990)

 ·Women molested as children are four times more at risk for Major Depression as those with no such history. They are significantly more likely to develop bulimia and chronic PTSD. (Stein et al, 1988; Root & Fallon, 1988; Sloane, 1986; Craine, 1990)

 ·Childhood abuse can result in adult experience of shame, flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug use, feelings of humiliation and unworthiness, ugliness and profound terror. (Harris, 1997; Rieker&Carmen, 1986; Herman, 1992; Janoff-Bulman & Frieze, 1983; van der Kolk, 1987; Brown & Finkelhor, 1986; Rimsza, 1988)

 ·Adults abused during childhood are:- more than twice as likely to have at least one lifetime psychiatric diagnosis- almost three times as likely to have an affective disorder- almost three times as likely to have an anxiety disorder- almost 2 ½ times as likely to have phobias- over ten times as likely to have a panic disorder- almost four times as likely to have an antisocial personality disorder  (Stein et al, 1988)

 ·97% of mentally ill homeless women have experienced severe physical and/or sexual abuse. 87% experienced this abuse both as children and as adults.(Goodman, Johnson, Dutton & Harris. (1997)

Goodbye Blue Sky

“Look mummy, there’s an airplane up in the sky”

Pink Floyd, The Wall

 Have you ever listened to the lyrics of this song and wondered what they meant.  The melody is so soothing but the lyrics are anything but that.  The confliction reminds me of my childhood in a lot of ways.

 For most of my adult life I suppressed all notion of having anything but a happy childhood.  When certain unpleasant childhood memories did breakthrough the phalanx of my suppression, I played my own little game of “trump that”.  I just reached into my memory bank of abuse stories that I had collected, all ranked as being worse than any abuse that I suffered and I sought solace in knowing that others suffered worse abuse.  Like the woman who told me that eleven broken bones as a child is her badge of courage.  Or the man who told me how he, as a child, endured blows from a ball-peen hammer when he failed to memorize math formulas that his father had given him as an exercise.  In my mind, those were all worse cases of abuse.

 Today, I know that no rating scale for abuse exists.  If your soul was pierced as a child, you most likely have a deep wound that, unless addressed at some point in your life, will never properly heal.  A soul sickness will remain.  That has been my experience.

Alcoholism’s Gift

I experience internal conflict when I state that quitting alcohol was the easy part.  There is nothing easy about putting down the bottle and getting sober.  It is the journey that awaits you that is also very difficult; in fact, I found it a lot more difficult.  I believe it is that way because we are now going forward in life sober and not numbed out to the world around us!  I wish someone would have given me a heads up about this because it was a rude awakening that I did not find inviting when I started to make this connection.

The Drama of the Gifted Child

All text is © Anita Roy 2004. All rights remain with the author.

Alice Miller’s book The Drama of the Gifted Child is such an affirmation of my belief that what we are modeled to as children – and what we model to our children – is the key to future happiness. When Alice Miller says “gifted” she doesn’t mean academically gifted, but rather the natural gift that we have as children to survive, to find a way to survive when we are confronted with pain, humiliation, anger and sorrow that we cannot express, because we are not safe in doing so. As children, we are neglected and abused in varying degrees, despite the best intentions of our parents. We have nowhere to escape to and so have no choice but to consider our situation a normal life. It becomes our reality as adults unless we become conscious of the process.

As children, we need our parents to survive physically, for food and shelter, and when they cause us pain and suffering, we cannot express ourselves honestly lest we lose those who can meet these most basic of needs. We grow to love our parents because we have not known any other reality, and the ties, the connections, are profound. We are bonded to them and the reality they present us, even if that reality is painful.

We survive by taking the happy times and suppressing feelings about the bad times. We focus on the good times and sometimes, glorify them. The bad feelings don’t go away however, they go underground, and later surface as compulsive behaviors and grandiosity. My father vacillated between delusions of grandeur and depressed alcoholism. These were the recurring themes in a man who was otherwise intelligent, generous and charismatic. He had not had an easy childhood. Being the oldest son of an East Indian family, he had alternately been doted on and pressured into inappropriate responsibilities.

We suffered as children because we were walking on eggs not knowing how he might be mood-wise at any given time. There was a tacit understanding that we had to keep up the illusion of being a successful family. My mother, the enabler, would be equally unpredictable. She was the steadfast backbone of the household, but sometimes, regularly, she would fall apart, emotionally, and lose herself in despair and grief. Loving though she was, she didn’t give the love we *needed*, but only the love she knew how to give, which was to be affectionate and to care for us. She did not see our pain, as no one had seen hers when she was a child. She was looking in all the wrong places for the love she never got from her parents. She was hoping for unconditional love from her husband, but he didn’t know how. The one place where she got close to that kind of love was her babies, but babies aren’t supposed to give their parents the love they never had. Babies have their own needs.

When I realized all this in my personal work I spent a lot of time being pretty angry at them. Furious actually. Both my parents were victims in their own right. It was an edifying time in my life when I realized that my parents were just people who happened to have made babies, and not perfect humans who understood everything. Nevertheless, I had been wounded and I needed to take care of myself.

Paraphrasing Miller, if we don’t become *mindful” of our pain and what happened, then we are condemned to repeat the pattern and make our kids suffer. This is not an easy path, it is fraught with pain and sorrow, but that is the only way to become conscious of which we are. It is “lonely work” and we have to deal with some pretty scary demons. Alternatively, we may look for parent figures in an authoritarian church, political party, domineering husband, Alcoholics Anonymous, or corporate career, so we can exchange personal power for protection just like when we were babies. That protection may be valuable, for a while, until we are stronger: a holding pattern to build courage. But in my experience, at some point, we can no longer stay away from seeking our true selves.

 Quoting Anais Nin:

“And the day came when the risk (it took),to remain tight in the bud was more painful, than the risk it took to blossom”.

All text is © Anita Roy 2004. All rights remain with the author.

Surrender…Surrender Not!

“Try Not! Do, or Do Not! There is no try.”
Yoda

On Feb 9th, it will be 3 years since I “surrendered” to my alcoholism and entered a 28 day treatment center. WOW! Today….it is painfully obvious to me what I would do if I were in that cycling struggle of trying to stop my drinking. I would go to treatment as soon as possible. And, if I didn’t have the money, I would borrow it. Isn’t hindsight amazing! I tried and I tried to get sober for 7 years. But it doesn’t work that way. There is only Do! Unfortunately, we generally have to experience much pain, over and over, before we actually do something about it. Hopefully we don’t die in the process, or worse, kill someone on this destructive journey.

I was commenting to my wife the other day about how I watch the daily struggle on the Sober Dare page. Where it is not so painfully obvious of what to do when one cannot stop drinking, despite continued adverse consequences. If I offer up my advice and tell them what to do, in the kindest way possible, it just seems to fall on deaf ears! Hell, I owned those ears for 7 years!

And So It Begins…..

I have always considered myself to be a pretty good planner. From a very early age onward I seemed to have my life pretty well planned out. Go to school, get good grades, play sports, have fun, graduate, go to college, get a degree, pursue a career, fall in love, get married and have children. Living the American dream had a real appeal to me!

I never considered the fact that things might happen in my life that I had not planned. At about the age of 35, career on an upward path, married with two small children and another on the way, I began to have an affinity for alcohol that seemed to gradually escalate beyond normal social drinking. Hey, who could blame me though for having a good stiff drink or two or three or four! There were now a lot of demands in my life and alcohol just seemed like a pretty good way to offload some of the burden that I had started to feel.

As my family grew, my marriage carried forward and my bank account increased as my career began a meteoric rise, my alcohol consumption kept pace with all of the things that I had so carefully planned for. For the next few years life was pretty darn good!

They say that a DUI is the first legal indication that you might have a serious drinking problem. In fact, you might even be an alcoholic! I learned that in one of the AA meetings that I had been sentenced to attend by the Courts. When my children were the ages of six, four and two, I went out partying one night after work. After leaving the night spot, that I had been at, I drove my vehicle down a winding road on my path homeward. Traveling at about 50 mph, I passed out as I was navigating an s-curve and proceeded up an embankment until my Jeep Cherokee began a barrel roll back onto the road that I had been traveling on. Amazingly, my Jeep came to a stop on all four wheels and did not take out any other vehicles in the process. The police arrived, assessed me for any injuries and then assessed me under the suspicion of driving while intoxicated. When I failed the field sobriety test, I was handcuffed, put in the squad car and driven off to the county jail.

In all my 38 years I had never been arrested. Being arrested was never anything that I had planned for in my life. Neither was the precipitous decline into alcoholism that I had yet to become aware of