Tag Archives: triggers

AA how I loathe you

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A text message exchange between me and my friend Ken …

Me: I just left the AA alkathon, too many guys in the meeting reminding me of my father. Oy. So triggered. There’s an over abundance of older men telling drinking “war tales.” I hate that.

Ken: Sucks when meetings go that way.

Me: Yeah, makes me pine for the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meetings with all their meeting rules. Alas, I get triggered there for different reasons. I have the air conditioning jacked up in the car to try to shake myself out of it. Strangely funny …

Ken: Funny cause it’s 20 degrees out 🙂

Me: Yeah …

You know how I have a blog … Well, I found out the day before yesterday that another fellow blogger I used to correspond with took her own life. I didn’t mention it at dinner, didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to sully the evening. She actually lived less than 3 hours from me, but I was too scared to try to meet her. Not because of her, just because I am generally afraid of people.

We used to trade stories about the different psych hospitals for PTSD and DID. We had the same ideas and theories about how these places are run.

Then I just got out of the habit of emailing her, and now she’s gone. And I feel like somewhat of a disappointment. Like maybe if I hadn’t been so scared of the world I would have visited her …

Bizarre to pull up her last email to me with the knowledge that the person that wrote it is now gone.

Ken: You have no power over other people. She had her own stuff you could not control or change.

Me: The wise brain part of me knows that, and the other part of my brain feels incredible disappointment in myself. Then on days like today I feel ridiculous with all the effort I expend.

Ken: Are you making it into a meeting? If not the alkathon, is there another?

Me: I was on my way to one that starts in a few minutes. But I don’t know …

Ken: I think it would be a good idea to try.

***

And with that I arrive with trepidation to a meeting at the infamous “A-frame” as people like to call it, so named because of the architectural style of the church. A common question is, “Going to the A-frame for a meeting tonight?” The A-frame has meetings several times a week, sometimes several times a day, depending on the day.

I take a breath right outside the doors, and I can hear the twelve steps being read. I open the door, take notice of the familiar wood floors and strangely comfortable plastic folding chairs, then I take a seat near the side wall. There’s a fiftyish salt and pepper haired guy with an Old Navy hoodie chairing the meeting, and I close my eyes and take in the odd, but comfortable feeling from being present in that room. I’m consciously relaxing into the chair when I hear salt and pepper haired guy say (to the best of my memory), “This is a simple program, and I find that when you keep it simple it works. When people get into this therapeutic PTSD stuff, I don’t know … you know … I don’t know about that, just keep it simple.”

Well, shit, that got my attention. When salt and pepper haired dude finally noticed me with my hand up this is what I said, “I’m going to go out on a limb here, but with respect to the PTSD I want to say something about that. As someone who’s an alcoholic with PTSD I can say that the combination, for me, makes it difficult for me to be in these rooms as much as I would like to be. I wish that weren’t so, but it is. I wish that it was not the case that too often I get triggered by simply hearing about drinking or consequences from drinking. I am glad I did not know how almost unbearable my PTSD would get for me when I quit drinking. I want to be here, but sometimes I have to make the choice to leave when I’m getting triggered. Even so, I’m grateful that the program is here for me when I’m able to be here.”

As predicted there was the typical reaction to my share that one has to keep it simple, stick to the program, and that if you don’t veer from the program you’ll be fine. Such a belief is overly simplistic in that it conveys a presumption that the believer knows everything there is to know about what works for every possible person with this addiction. Let me take the opportunity to say that such a belief is beyond foolish, beyond embarrassing and devoid of taking in the bigger picture of the varied individuals that present as addicts.

And that is why too often I find myself driving past the damn A-frame when I’m not in the mood for the self-rightous words that I will inevitably hear over and over again in any meeting I find in that church in the shape of a summer camp.

just a kids birthday party

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You are minding your own business typing on your laptop and spacing out. Then bam! What the hell is that? Your body instantly shakes. You want to hide, but there is no table high enough to get under as you only have a coffee table in front of you as you sit in your favorite cozy comfy chair at the tea shop. The guy next to you sees you shake and says, “It’s just a kids birthday party.” You feel a part of you get angry at him, and you can feel the hot gaze that you are giving him. He offers his hand to yours, but you’re too much in touch with this angry part of you to take his hand. Another kinder part of you wishes you had taken his hand. This nicer part of you knows that he was just stating a fact to you without judgement, but the other angry part of you still fights this understanding, and insists on being a weenie jerk with a wall of silence.

You feel stupid when you realize it’s just a balloon popping from the birthday party in the next room of the tea shop. A river of tears comes pouring out of your eyes, and there is no place to hide, no way to shield it from the people sitting around you knitting as the set up is a series of comfy chairs around a coffee table. Someone asks, “What happened, hon?” You can’t answer because you have not yet found your words. Your words are floating around you like bubbles you can’t catch. You reach for your words and they disintegrate before they come out of your mouth as articulated verbiage. The lady next to you says, “Did someone say something mean to you?” Then the guy beside you says, “Balloon popping from the birthday party startled her.” Thankfully, his explanation lessens their attention on you. Everyone mercifully goes back to their knitting.

Your mind is still amped up and jumbled like a slew of cords that can’t be untangled. And just like Adam Sandler’s character who fought PTSD in the movie, Reign Over Me, you put in your ear buds and turn up the volume as loud as you can take it. You need the jolt of music to hit all your senses so that you can try to get out of this cloak of fear that will not come off. Coincidentally, when you hit play “Shake It Off” is what you hear. That’s ok, it’s just the song you need to distract you because you do need to shake it off.

My response

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I’ve had something profound happen that I, unfortunately, cannot write about in any depth or specificity yet as there is still a great deal of fear attached to what has occurred. I’ve been experiencing abject fear since last week with this particular person, and it has come to a head.

By the grace of the universe, I am able to extricate myself from having this person in my life. Or at least I will be able to do so in short order.

I’ve spent the better part of the last few days dreading tomorrow when I will finally see this person since our last interaction. I’ve alternated between realistic and calm brain, and fearfully active brain. I’ve hiked, gone for walks, talked with friends in person and on the phone, and still the fear would not leave my being. I even resorted to watching a bad movie last night for distraction to no avail. The movie, You, Me and Dupree did not serve as a distraction for me, but that could be because I am a movie snob.

I woke up this morning with that fear that just envelopes me like a big heavy blanket thrown over me that I cannot get out from underneath.

And just so you know the bizarre way my mind works, here’s how I finally found some peace with this …

To distract myself I started reading the Kripalu catalog of upcoming workshops, and I found a workshop by Noah Levine scheduled for the upcoming fall season. His workshop is related to overcoming addiction using the Buddhist path as an overlay to the Twelve Step approach. I immediately looked up a YouTube video of a talk on Buddhism he gave at USC to see what he’s all about.

The following quotes from the talk, I believe, are the reason I came across this today:

“My goal is to meet every unpleasant experience in my life with love, with compassion, with kindness.”

“Compassion is responding to pain with kindness and love rather than aversion and hatred.”

I found myself listening to the entirety of his hour long talk, and I looked up others as well. Before I knew it a couple of hours had passed, but I noticed that I finally started to feel at peace for the first time in days. I finally started to feel like I could handle this difficult situation, or at least I finally feel hopeful that I can handle it.

I then headed out to the bookstore to purchase his new book, Refuge Recovery. Alas, though the bookstore indicated it was in stock I could not find it, and I was not in the mood to ask if it was shelved elsewhere. I then happened across Sharon Salzberg’s book, Loving Kindness, and I believe everything in this quest happened as it was supposed to happen because I opened up that book to find an exercise on contending with a difficult person. This was exactly what I needed.

I needed to read that compassion was tantamount to this challenge. The exercise advised to contemplate a good thing about this person (and in this particular case, that is not hard to do), and direct loving-kindness phrases towards them such as, “May you be free from danger, may you be happy,” Though, as the book advised, I replaced “you” with “we” because articulating the “you” was a stretch for me at this point. The author calls the compassion we send “metta.” It was surprising to find that I was able to do this. I thought of a couple of vulnerabilities that likely bring her suffering, and I was able to feel compassion for her.

I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve no background in meditation or Buddhism. Let me be clear: I know nothing, absolutely nothing aside what I’ve gleaned from today’s journey. All I have is a great desire for peace with this person.

There is still some fear left in me, but I believe in peaceful interactions with all my heart, and that is all I want. All I can control is my response, and my reaction to whatever happens tomorrow. I am asking the universe for all the strength we can conjure for the best response.