The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Th.
I just wanted to start this post by explaining my points of discussion here are not an attempt to minimize or trivialize peoples real experiences of trauma, I recognize there are life events for many people that can be very painful and hard to get past, there are things that happen to people that I cannot even begin to comprehend. This post is more about a Curious Observation of my own experience and how my addiction/recovery narrative developed, changed and broke apart.
When I talk about narratives I am talking about the story of our addiction and the characters in that story. I personally believe we are as humans pre disposed to create these stories to make sense of the world. Sometimes (especially in my case) we can create a story with such definite detail and cartoonish descriptions that we separate ourselves from reality into a world of make believe.
I will start this discussion with an experience I had at rehab.
About 2 weeks into my rehab, I was doing well (in my mind) there was nothing about the processes I didn't understand, I pretty much had a 'just do it' approach to all the activities and learned early on that the therapists liked my courage a lot and again in my own mind I already had my own plans of being a therapist myself, I am fairly confident that this process was more about ego than courage. The downside was that certain people in the patient/peer community seemed to really get irritated at being anywhere near me, I imagined and put this down to those people "just not getting it" and one day they would come around and understand it is all part of the process, Blah Blah Bah
Anyway we a had a special kind of heavy duty program to attend within the rehab called "changes". 4 days of "psycho theatre" and self examining guided visualization. Lots of shouting and crying ( with a unbridled catharsis).
In our small group I listened to the stories of childhood traumas, and digging deep back into my past (and driven by a need to have some kind of "inner child suffering" story) i mentioned a strange sexual experience I had with a 14 year old girl when I was 11. I had never considered this traumatic and when I mentioned it to the therapist and the group that it felt like a kind of seduction, everyone immediately pounced on the idea that "No it wasn't seduction, it was child sexual abuse"
My therapist insisted that I was a victim of abuse, and this was part of my "wounded self" that needed healing.
I went with it hook, line and sinker. I distinctly remember feeling a weird kind of Pride when I learned I was a victim of this, (again no disrespect to those with real and harmful trauma) I walked into that Room that day a Compulsive Gambler with anxiety and depression and walked out with an identity that I was a victim of child abuse. My whole demeanor changed, my mind began to create a story of victimhood and my ego began to create a story of "a survivor", my whole recovery narrative changed.
The human brain is amazing at creating stories (even memories) to explain why things are the way they are. I spent a lot of time and money living a recovery life under this story, and for the most part it was false. I don't deny for one moment that I felt disconnected and fearful as a child, (many of us did) but I had no major events to glean onto.
I could and still cant really explain my gambling addiction and perhaps some things in my past contributed to how my life ended up with out of control behavior but I don't know for sure, what I do know however is how easy it can be to latch onto things, to turn correlation into causation, to enhance and exaggerate the hits and forget the misses, to (with great sincerity) make up a script that made me feel like I had a purpose and provided me with belief and comfort Ohh yes some stroking of the EGO as well. All of these things happened to me, and at the first sign of reality that kind of recovery would break down, into pieces.
What grew out of the ashes of all that stuff is me, a person who has not gambled in 10 years, me a person who became an atheist, a skeptic and a humanist. A person who can face most realities that life throws at me.