i like many survivors have had my share obsessive compulsive behaviors:
food
drugs
alcohol
nicotine
caffeine
relationships [no i didn't forget to mention sex, that's never been an issue for me, but rather the need to be validated, however that has played out on the stage of my sexuality]
workaholism
shame
anger
*[__________________]* fill in the blank
just to name a few of the more obvious ones. i am grateful that i have addressed each one of these and have put them to bed.
last january after 23 years of recovery from drug and alcohol abuse i made a decision to reintroduce it back into my life. this decision was not made in the context of any type of turmoil or tension emotionally, psychologically or otherwise. the decision was made in a challenge to unlock that door. so much energy was being poured into keeping that door shut locked, bolted, nailed etc. i felt in order to truly move beyond the 'ism' of OCD in the realm of alcohol that i needed to look deep into its eyes as a stronger and better equipped person. there was initially a period where i wrestled with the best way to include it back into my life in terms of quantity, but nearly a year later i am gratified that this formerly OC behavior is a thing of the past. how do i know this is true? because these things have ceased to become issues, and my relationship to them has returned to what it was prior to them becoming issues, as if they did not exist. the stressors that created conditions for their apprearance have dissolved
now, all those things listed above are the topside expression, the visible manifestation, of the deeper infestation.
did the disease OCB just go away? no way baby!
what i have come face to face with is the recognition of the disease at its factory level deep in the far reaches of the labyrinth of egoity.
as i look at my own self-history past the apparency of the visible manifestations of the disease, glaring at me now are the other faces of this disease:
self as chronic point of reference
chronic dissatisfaction
chronic search for affirmation
i could not have recognized the fact that i had been living my life, making all my decisions within the context of these, had i not addressed the most recent one, shame. yes, in a shame cycle these would have merely further indicted me, and caused me to keep focusing on, and dancing with the disease in its physical manifestations.
a lot of times there is a sense that what i say here lacks resonance of the community at large, but i realize too that this is another form of 'me-ism' that has kept me inside my own bubble all these years. we are all in different places and stages in life, and i fully get that i am outside the middle track of survivors who are at this point trying to reconcile the warring forces that need to be reconciled in the early stages of life. i myself am currently dealing with fundamental questions that one wold most likely not deal with in life stages where the ego is still fascinated by life's potentials and alternatives.
at any rate, here i find myself, confronted as the result of a self-history shaped and formed by an ongoing, lived and carried moment to moment, self-idea compulsively hunting for verification and validation; caught in rituals of self-contraction which loop back and forth between reactivity to rejection and retaliation.
there is my fundamental OCD:
the ritual of rejection and retaliation. an obsessive compulsive thought principle dominating my life and formerly manifesting itself in physical behaviors. and the sorriest saddest part of this legacy is the ultimate surrender that is inherent in the notion that his ritual/dance has so dominated my life all these many years, that i have forgotten who to be and how to live outside of its tether.
like my abuser, i cannot say no to it, because that would presume that other options were available, and in truth, for me, there were none then.
and the biggest knock on the noggin is that there existed a 'me' PRIOR TO the aforementioned one who arose to use these defense mechanisms for surviving. the never ending onion.
..........hmmmmm, back to pondering my freedom
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