COMMON THEMES IN ALCOHOLISM TREATMENT: DEPENDENCY ISSUESOne of the most provocative points Wallace makes concerns dependency issues. Many articles, and indeed whole bookSj have been written about dependency and alcoholism. Sometimes the alcoholic is depicted as a particularly dependent type who has resolved conflicts inappropriately by the use of alcohol. It is doubtful that this point of view should be taken as a theoretical framework for the development of alcohol treatment programs. However, it must be noted that many alcoholics do tend toward stubborn independence versus indiscriminate dependence in their relationships. They seem to have an evil genius for attracting the very people they don’t need— ones who, in fact, are harmful to them. The need for loving relationships, the development of unsatisfactory ones, and the consequent pain and misery are responsible in an unusually large number of instances for relapses. The alcoholic needs, maybe more than most, to realize that people are all interdependent to some degree. The trick is to recognize the dependent need, and to ask, 1. Upon whom should I be dependent? 2. For what? 3. At what cost to me? These questions should be asked in regard to all the relationships, not simply the primary love one. It may well turn out that dependency is being channeled into one relationship instead of spread out more effectively. Once these questions are squarely faced, selectivity and judgment stand a better chance; the extremes, with their threat to sobriety, can be more successfully avoided.Another issue may well be encountered by single alcoholics, or those caught in unhappy marriages. It is not uncommon for them to find themselves “suddenly” involved in an affair or an extramarital relationship. With a little bit of sobriety, they are very ripe to fall in love. This may have several roots. They may be questioning their sexuality, and the attentions of another may well provide some affirmation of attractiveness. Also possible is that with sobriety comes a sense of being alive again. There is the reawakening of a host of feelings that have long been dormant, including sexual feelings. In this sense, it may be like the bloom and intensity of adolescence. A romantic involvement may follow very naturally. Unfortunately, it can lead to disaster if followed with abandon. The counselor needs to be alert to this general possibility, as well as the possibility of being the object of the crush.*106\331\2*
Archive for the ‘Anti Depressants-Sleeping Aid’ Category
STRESS BREAKDOWN: THE GREAT COPING DEBATE – THOSE UNABLE TO AVOID STRESS
It is obvious that many people suffering from stress-breakdown symptoms could cure themselves immediately by letting others take over some of their responsibilities and problems. However, it is true to say that a great many people are not in a position to do this. The human condition being what it is, the willing horse gets the work and the others avoid stress-breakdown symptoms.Unfortunately there are many people suffering from stress-breakdown symptoms who would dearly love to let other people take over their problems and responsibilities, but who know that if they did so, the results might be disastrous. We only have to think of people with specific skills who are temporarily in an essential role. If others should take over, the lowering of standards might even lead to danger to others.I don’t have an answer to this problem, and my solutions might not work for anyone else. However, for people in this position and who are suffering from stress breakdown symptoms, I will attempt some advice:1. Don’t stay indispensable for any longer than is absolutely necessary. Insist on someone being trained to do the work or handle the responsibilities you have. Or at least train somebody to take over in an emergency, without waiting for the emergency situation first.2. Don’t arrange or design systems that only you can operate. A common example that comes to mind is the complex bits-and-pieces procedures that some people use in their family banking and the way they handle their accounts. It is not uncommon for widowed people to be almost overwhelmed when the one who always did the banking and paid the accounts, dies. In lesser crises, it is as well to have your own affairs simple and able to be handled by others in the family if you are not well.When people don’t comprehend your systems they will leave it to you for fear of making a mess of it. I notice that in recent years, an increasingly more common situation is occurring, where a relative comes in to help with the household jobs when someone is sick or has had a baby; the machines – dishwashers, washing machines, microwave ovens and so on – can be so complex that the person coming in to help is unable to do much for fear of causing some disaster by setting the buttons or the dials wrongly, or failing to respond in time to the flashing red lights.3. Try being unreliable at times when you know it is safe to do so, while they don’t. You don’t have to let them know that you are deliberately being unreliable. It will do them good to realize they have the capacity to function without you.4. Actually practice non-coping. Try being helpless now and then and see what it feels like. It might have some good spinoffs. You might realize what it feels like to be disabled or to be dependent on your family and it might make you a more tolerant person towards your own failings.5. Keep a diary and don’t attempt to commit things to your memory. Otherwise you will find yourself worrying if you have forgotten something.6. Try (at least once anyway) having someone else arranges your priorities. A good secretary works this way; in the household it might be a reasonable idea to have priorities set by your spouse, in consultation.7. Discuss your responsibilities and problems with your friends. Quite often, surprisingly, a friend may come up with a solution that you hadn’t thought of.
*76/129/5*
Practice makes perfect. A swimmer needs to swim regularly before he can win any competition; a cyclist has to practice regularly before he can beat others in a race. Mental exercise is no different from physical exercise. Hence you must practice this psychological switch regularly before you can achieve the ability to self-hynpotise and attain an artificial THS and subsequently sleep control. It is perfectly normal and healthy that we have occasional nights when we cannot sleep. We must not feel despair and immediately grab sleeping pills.
As you practice self-hypnosis every night, you will gradually gain confidence in sleeping. You will notice that you want to stay in bed longer in the morning because you enjoy sleeping, and you can sleep without drugs. If you are awoken in the middle of the night, you will feel good, as you know you will fall back into sleep again. You may even put your clock back on the bedside table, as you want to look at the clock because you want to find out how much more time there is left for you to sleep, as you enjoy it now. You have regained the confidence that you can switch off and fall asleep again and again whenever you need to. However, some people may be over-confident. Remember, if your genes are those of a poor sleeper, you have to work at it to maintain yourself as a good sleeper. In other words, you have to keep working at it.
*103\174\4*
Different people approach pain in different ways. This is largely determined by the personality of the individual, so that we come to fall into some particular attitude toward our pain without giving the matter any real consideration.
It will be seen that each approach has some merit and some disadvantages. You will be able to see which method you yourself are unconsciously using, and you will be better able to assess its strong points and its dangers.
Enduring the Pain-One can simply endure the pain. There is an absence of psychological reaction. “The pain is there. I have got it. That is all there is to it,” This is an attitude of a rather stoic and well-integrated personality.
The disadvantage of such an approach is that nothing is done to alleviate the pain. The individual merely endures it, suffers it, and puts up with it as best he can. The advantages are rather on the negative side. Inasmuch as there is no reaction, no distress, no guilt or fear, the pain is not made worse by any untoward response on the part of the sufferer.
*125\57\2*
Peptic ulcer
«It is there, just there, under my ribs. Gnawing. Sometimes worse. Sometimes a little better. I am always aware of it. Sometimes like a knot. Then pain. Real pain, enough to double me up.
‘It’s an ulcer all right. I knew that before the X-rays. He’s given me those new tablets. Says they are a great improvement on anything in the past.
‘Things I eat make it worse. Spicey things. Anything tasty, hot things, and my whisky too. Can’t go out to dinner and ask for a glass of milk. And stress makes it worse. No question about that. Stressful job. Good at it. Responsibility. Gone a long way. Now it’s all threatened. More stress. I’ve been reading about it. The ulcer may involve a blood vessel. Then hemorrhage. I don’t want that. »
The full story of peptic ulcer has not yet unfolded. An excess of acid in the stomach makes the cells lining the gastric wall more susceptible to ulceration. Greater motility of the stomach may have the same effect. Both these factors are mediated through the vagus nerve. Ulceration may start through clotting or bleeding of one of the small blood vessels in the stomach wall. Disordered enzyme activity may be the major factor.
And, of course, as we all know, stress plays its part too. If we reduce our stress we aid the healing of the ulcer.
Blood pressure
«He said my blood pressure was up. Not much, but enough. Enough to put me on some tablets. Said I should take them for the rest of my life. Don’t like the idea of it. It was just for a check. Before I went to him I was feeling all right. Now I’m not so good. They seem to have made me lose my zest. It seems to me they put you on tablets too quickly. Is there some other way?))
The basic cause of high blood pressure is the contraction of the muscle in the walls of our small arteries. This narrows the opening in the arteries, and so puts up our blood pressure. This becomes aggravated by fatty deposits and calcification in the arteries. The muscles in the arteries are under nervous control from the sympathetic nervous system. Various toxins, particularly those from chronic kidney disease, add to the trouble, and may play an important part.
But in the early stages it is certainly worthwhile to see what can be done by reducing stress and its effect on the sympathetic nervous system.
*55/98/5*
Any degree of ill health makes us more vulnerable to stress. Our brain receives a flow of disturbing messages from the affected part of our body. This adds to the sum of the messages which our brain has to integrate, and so forms a background which will add to impulses from other areas, and make us more likely to develop stress.
In this respect, ill health adds to the background of disturbing impulses in two different ways. First there is the flow of impulses originating in the part of our body affected by disease or injury. But our ill health adds a secondary flow of disturbing impulses originating from our worry about our condition.
Arthritis
«Damn it! I’m so slow. It’s my feet. Each time I put a foot to the ground it hurts. My shoes! Why can’t they make shoes that fit? They say it’s arthritis. I say it’s the shoes. But that’s not the trouble. It’s those damn grandchildren. Have to live with my daughter. No consideration for me. I don’t know what I am to do. »
The discomfort from his arthritis keeps the nerve cells of his brain over-alert. The noise of the grandchildren is just an extra stimulus. He overreacts, blows up. Everything goes wrong.
Any physical treatment that can be given to help him with his arthritis will make things easier for him with the grandchildren. And it works the other way. If the noise of the grandchildren worries him, his perception of the discomfort of his feet becomes so much the more intense.
The whole situation will be improved if he can be persuaded to let his mind run quietly for a short while two or three times a day. Such a proposition must be put to him in such a way that it will not offend him. Otherwise he will interpret such a suggestion as criticism of himself, and he is likely to blow up, saying, ‘It is the grandchildren that are the trouble, not my brain, and my feet are no help.’
According to circumstances, it may be wise to introduce the subject with this kind of approach: ‘Some time ago, I myself suffered persistent pain from a strained muscle. I did not know what to do with myself until a doctor put me on to the idea of relaxing in a kind of meditation. It would be worth a trial.’
*19/98/5*