Friday, June 21, 2019

"As One Thinks so Shall One Feel." And How One Can Change All That.

When I think back through the past 35 years through my experiences in recovery from substance abuse, then "codependency," then complex post-traumatic stress disorder, then non-substance (behavioral) addictions, and most recently from having been conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, and normalized in childhood to authoritarianism sufficiently extreme to induce me to join one minor and two major cults in my 20s... several repeated patterns stand out.
But none of them more than the common denominator under all of those psychopathologies: My mind did not know how to separate fact from installed fictions. Inside the box of its own conditioning, my mind could not see, hear or otherwise sense that it saw pretty much everything through a thick lens of "this or that," "all or nothing," "black or white," "right or wrong," "good or bad," "moral or evil" and other polarized, "binary thinking." My mind could not see, hear or sense what was in between any two polarities, let alone outside such spectrums. As was later explained to me by a prof at UC Davis named Charles T. Tart, my mind was stuck in a trance, a box, a mental frame, a cave, a cage, a trap.
The path of my recovery led through a number of 12 Step programs (including most significantly, Alcoholics Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families) to a progression of post-graduate studies in the development and treatment of psychopathologies, formally completed 12 years ago. I had to digest the entire contents of several hundred books and several thousand peer-reviewed, journal-published research articles, as well as spend several thousand hours in direct observation of and communication with hundreds of other minds infected with -- as it turned out -- pretty much exactly the same binary thinking... regardless of whatever collection of diagnoses those minds had been given, often over the course of decades.
Once having studied (with a highlighter and a pen to make notes therein; not merely read) the books listed at the first of the two links at the end of this post, I found myself far better equipped to see, hear and sense what was at least between my mind's binary polarizations. And that proved to be a major source of relief and recovery. For a while.
Ultimately, however, I ran into this little fellow and began to understand that merely "de-polarizing" was not enough. I'd have to get off the spectrums of appraisal, interpretation, evaluation, judgment, assessment, analysis and attribution of meaning according to conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, extrenally installed, habituated, and normalized belief... and learn how to use my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my body to feel what actually... isAnd with that in mind, dig into another pile of books at the second of the links below. 
I do not wish to be so presumptuous as to suggest that studying all the books on the two lists is either necessary or required to escape the prison cell of polarized, binary thinking that I have observed in virtually every person I have encountered who suffers from anxiety, depression or most other common mental & emotional difficulties. But I will say this: 

Everyone I know who has done exactly that has shown significant symptom reduction. If interested, see...

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Participation in a False Realty: A Key Concept in Motivational Enhancement for Deprogramming Cult Members?

Developed by William R. Miller and Stephen Rolnick in the 1980s for smoking cessation, the tools and techniques of Motivational Enhancement have become fundamental in the early treatment of all kinds of substance and process behavior addictions. Helping the addict to see that his mind is participating in a false reality is one of the "interview" techniques. 

Reading Jon Atack's flawed but nevertheless edifying and useful opening minds: the secret world of manipulation, undue influences and brainwashing contemporaneously with Ron Miscavige's pretty much flawless and illuminating Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige and Me, I was stuck...

By the fact of the senior Miscavige's long, slow descent into the mind of Eric Hoffer's True Believer. Miscavige was a living example of the live frog staying in the pot to be boiled as the flame under it is turned up one degree at a time over the course of hours. And then suddenly encountering Atack's five-word phrase. 

Dots connected.  Just as they did in the course of developing treatment strategies for dealing with so many other forms of conditioning all called "addiction." Consider the process: 

Does anyone start out to become a nicotine, alcohol, cocaine,  heroin or oxycontin addict? Does anyone start out to become a slave to the slot machine, to another slice of pie (when they already tip the scales at 350), to the paycheck signed by the abusive boss who throws bowling balls under their feet and them blames them for screwing up, to running another mile when their body is already exhausted and eating itself, to buying one more outfit on that credit card they'll never be able to pay off, to the irresistible image on the porn website at 4:00 a.m., or to working himself to death without adequate food or sleep for the guru's cause? 

Are any of those attachments to true realities? Or are they slowly conditioned, habituated and normalized obsessions with fantasies of satiation that only exist in the mind? (Ask any heroin stabber. Unlike most actively participating addicts, they know how they got there.)

Atack used the metaphor of being captured by the intensity of the emotions triggered an hour or so into a well-scripted and effectively photographed scene in a film like "Jurassic Park" or "Alien" or "The Terminator." Imagine being captured by such intensity day after day and week after week in the "service structure" of group devoted to "saving the world," such as I was in Werner Erhard's est or as Miscavige was as a member of the Sea Organization in L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology for 27 years. 

None of the proffered "realities" were true. But they were compelling. And intense.

Addiction molto-expert Patrick Carnes built a powerful case for slowly increasing intensity as one of the most significant components of the addiction process in several of his books. In time, the intensity of the experience blinds the addict to the increasing costs of his obsessive attachment to whatever it is that masks off his increasingly uncomfortable emotions and somatic sensations. 

The mind of the cult member ascending the (to him, invisible) levels of the guru's pyramid is boiled slowly. In time he is addicted. In time his participation in -- what is to an even minimally educated outsider -- a false reality is just as invisible. He is no longer sitting in the audience capable of reminded by someone else that "it's just a movie." He's up there, on the screen, in it. 

Does that have any relevance in reaching out to the cult member who's still at stage one of the five stages of therapeutic recovery? If the addiction model is relevant here, then I -- as someone who's been dealing with addicts of many kinds in recovery for over 30 years -- am forced to say, "You bet your sweet @$$."

And I would use all the same experiential, explanitory devices used in modern-day addiction treatment to demonstrate to the cult member to make it as clear to him as it is to the substance or process behavior abuser that there really are other possibilities than being "up there, on the screen, in it."

Further reading:

Cult Membership as an Addiction Process... and a Process Addiction

Treating Cultism as an Addiction 

Monday, June 3, 2019

Cause, Risk & Rescue Addictions

I just ran into an example of all three about two hours ago. (An excited young "freelance journalist" hot on the trail of a well-known, rural religious sect he believes is building an "armory" and making noises about taking over the county. (It's not the first. It won't be the last. And, yes, There Will be Blood somewhere again, just as there was outside Waco, Texas, in 1993.) 

A conversation ensued. I used some Motivational Interview Techniques to both qualify (or disqualify) the "journalist" for certain forms of attachment to outcomes in general, and to cause, risk and rescue obsessions in particular. He "failed" all the "tests." (Sigh.) And waxed enthusiastic (in somewhat bipolar hypomanic and possibly OCPD fashion) about setting off soon to "immerse" himself into the group as a "spy" to get a better look. (Look. Mr first BA was in journalism. One learns in a decent school to be cautious when doing "investigative reporting." And to make sure one has plenty of informed and assertively watchful "back-up.")  

In a limited effort to "reason" with him, I offered links to a pair of pop psych articles somewhat on the topics here. He didn't "get it." But I discovered that -- at least in the Google realm -- there isn't anywhere near the information on "behavioral process addictions" vs. what one will run into on substance addictions. Given what little I found on the former, it looks to me like one has to dig into such as a Complex PTSD Library (and even deeper into my own list of over 650 "psych" books) to locate much of any substance on non-substance addictions other than the most obvious ones.  Which are gambling, sex, romance, relationship, religion, work and sadomasochistic abuse. But there are many others... and cause, risk and rescue (as well as persecution) are on the long list. 

If one stops to recall one's acquaintances over the course of a decade or two (or three), it won't be that hard to find a "ward-heeling," political, or social welfare, or save-the-planet, or join-the-march-against-whatever (at the front), and/or religious cause addict or two (or three) in there. 

Nor will it be unlikely that there's a risk freak running the gamut from the kid who does 15-foot-high flips on his motorcycle off the humps in the hills... to the one who smokes gange and races drag races with others out on the back roads... to the one who's been raped four times because she keeps going to the bar and leaving at midnight with men you wouldn't be caught dead with in broad daylight... to the one who came back from Iraq in a wheelchair he'll never get out of after volunteering for his ninth patrol in the "bad neighborhood"... to the one who was raised in a bizarre religious cult but left it in a huff as soon as she was old enough only to join an equally bizarre human potential cult known for enslaving hundreds of slave laborers in barbwire-fenced compounds in California and Florida. (I could go on, but I'm hoping the examples are sufficiently clear to illustrate the concept.)

Rescue addicts are somewhat like cause and risk addicts combined, though they get no obvious excitement from their obsessive behaviors. Most of the ones I have encountered are so obviously trying to escape the "victim" corners on their intra- and inter-personal Karpman Drama Triangles. Deeply -- but unconsciously -- conditioned, in-struct-ed, socialized, habituated and normalized to what researcher Martin Seligman called "learned helplessness" and psychotherapist Stanley Block called the "victim I-dentity system," they cannot see, hear or otherwise sense their anxious attachment schemes and dire need to fix others so they can feel "okay" and "secure" themselves. 

All of these behaviors manifest the reward-&-reinforcement schemes of Watson's, Skinner's and Bandura's operant conditioning and Bateson's, Watslawick's, Haley's and Jackson's notions of the "double-bind." The cause, risk or rescue addict may indeed experience cognitive (and emotional) dissonance about their behavior on occasion. But they are so powerfully rewarded by it in the short term of their bias toward immediate gratification that they return to the behavior regardless of its possible long-term consequences. 

How is that any different from the addiction cycle any "drug & alcohol counselor" with an AA degree and a CADC sees in his or her patients at the local rehab? Because once the addict of any kind experiences any form of internal persecution or punishment on his Drama Triangle, he will start back into subconsciously rationalizing the addictive behavior as the means of "rescuing" himself and escaping the "persecution" (one more time).  

BUT... one may ask, how do people get on that cyclical treadmill to begin with? In my experience of knowing thousands of substance and behavioral process addicts since 1977 (and with a bit of schooling since 1987, and with a lot of schooling since 2006), it all comes down to having been conditionedin-struct-edsocialized, habituated and normalized to learned helplessness and the helpless victim identity in early life, usually by the time they were no more than about five years old. 

(World-renowned addiction experts Michael Bozarth, Patrick Carnes, Carlo DiClemente, Lance Dodes, Edward Khantzian, George Koob, Pia Mellody, Anne Wilson Schaef and Harold Shaffer -- as well as child development, abuse & treatment experts Sandra Bloom, John Briere, Christine Courtois, Judith Lewis Herman, Richard Kluft, Peter Levine, Marsha Linehan, Alice Miller, Bruce D. Perry, Frank Putnam, Arielle Schwartz, Ono van der Hart, Bessel van der Kolk and Pete Walker -- and many others have been all over this topic since the 1980s.)

Beyond that, however, it seems to me that the concepts of defense mechanisms in general and dissociation in particular point to the foundation of the dire need to find some way out of the bottom of the Drama Triangle to the socially approved -- however dysfunctional and costly -- "rescuer" corner thereon... vs. the socially disapproved "persecutor" corner at the other end of the top line. The sad fact, however, is that once on the Drama Triangle, there is no getting off without facing the fact of its existence and manifestations in any addict's life. 

See also "Cult Membership as an Addiction Process... and Process Addiction"

Resources & References


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(I wanted to illustrate the depth of background that informs my point of view about addiction and its etiology in the first third of the bibliography. Henceforth, I'll limit the list to direct references only.)

Jackson, D.: Myths of Madness: New Facts for Old Fallacies, New York: Macmillan & Co., 1964.

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Mellody, P.: Miller, A. W.: Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Live, San Francisco, Harper, 1992.

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Putnam, F.: Dissociation in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Perspective, New York: The Guilford Press, 1997.

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Van der Hart, O.; Brown, P.; and Van der Kolk, B.: Pierre Janet’s Treatment of Traumatic Stress, in Journal of Traumatic Stress, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1989. 

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Van der Hart, O.; Nijenhuis, E.; Steele, K.: The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization, New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.  

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