Enter Label: Recovery check in (#2)
July, Month 2, is done, and as always, I say a prayer for finishing 30-days of recovery from the hell zone. Month 2 had some breakout moments, with one leg still in The Abyss. I’m not yet comfortable or far enough removed to summarize my version of The Abyss, but let’s go with David Hanscom, a spinal surgeon who now believes that most spinal surgeries should be avoided if mind body practices can work. He suffered from all kinds of symptoms including terrible OCD for 15 years.
Of The Abyss he writes as follows:
“Suffering from unrelenting pain is like having your soul pounded into the ground by a pile driver. Your life is being systematically destroyed, you may have achieved a full and successful life only to have it consumed by pain. The dark place that develops in and envelops your mind is deep. My patients cannot find words to describe the depth of frustration they feel being in the Abyss. I was in this hole for 15 years and I will never forget any aspect of it.”
I guess one finds that the human experience, any shape or kind, is shared by many. So if you can’t find the words yet, look around.
If asked, I can say I’m about 25%-30% recovered. I can manage the very basics. I still cry everyday, but not as long, not as hard. Tears of loneliness, fear, struggle, and pain. But sometimes I cry self-compassion for the battered willpower that has been called upon to carry me through, and also subject itself to immense examination and surgical elimination. Harikari style. The crying feels akin to a soldier on active duty taking a smoke break.
Not to state the overly obvious, but what makes this so hard, as my dad pointed out, is that the progress is so incremental, it’s often very delayed, and then on top of that, it’s all happening internally. Furthermore, sometimes progress means more pain because you’ve pushed yourself past your comfort zone. With a most nefarious trickery, it begs the self-loathing question: Is this to be named as progress at all?
The anxiety goes down, but still shadows and prays on me. A good night of sleep may be followed by a terrible one.
It waits for that a time of day when the lull of recovery bangs that existential drum and shouts into my ears, WHEN WILL THIS END. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl described his incomprehensible ordeal in detail. He said that the worst part of it was not the hardship itself, but not knowing if and when there would be an end.
Frankl also said:
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
I absorb a slew of materials on TMS, on how stress impacts illness. Videos, podcasts, books, people, coaches, I follow religiously. But, I also pay attention to some unrelated things now like Dan Carlin’s Hard Core History podcast Supernova in the East (6-part series) on Japan, Sino-Japanese conflicts, leading up to the Pacific Theater of WW11. The series is phenomenal. I cannot recommend it enough!
Like Clockwork Orange, I simply was not able to stomach the subject matter at the beginning. But during Month 2, in small pieces, I have become more resilient. I took for granted that we have the constitution to handle so many things, like learning about history, but now I do not. Seeing as how Winston Churchill is always relevant for someone in deep shit, I would like to share this quote which explains his feelings about Pearl Harbor:
“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured the marshall might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!
England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals.
Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force…United we could subdue everybody else in the world. Many disasters, immeasurable cost and tribulation lay ahead, but there was no more doubt about the end.”
Right about now, I can play a game of chess. I can do a downward dog for about 10 seconds. I can make a phone call that lasts up to 28 minutes! I once walked 4000 steps. I can spend 45 minutes with my daughter in the morning and sometimes an hour as well as night. I can trod through a 2-hour zoom with a community of sufferers (although I need many off-camera breaks). Most recently (technically in August but what the hell) I went something like 33 hours without ibuprofen. I’m not consistent in these things, but they happened. They tested my limit, but they happened.
Each time, with each milestone, I have to fight off all the negative biases that whisper the wins somehow don’t really count. So I bought a large desk map where I can write my wins down in bold marker before my brain tries to mess with it. In fact, to counter these automatic negative thoughts (coined ANTS), I’m reading David Burns’s Feeling Good. He’s the seminal guy, and this is the seminal book on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This book has a bit of that Clockwork Orange effect on me. I’m reading it verrrry slowly. Burns says:
Depression has been viewed as emotional disorder throughout the history of psychiatry, and therapists place a strong emphasis on “getting in touch with your feelings.” Our research reveals the unexpected. Depression is not an emotional disorder at all! The sudden change in the what you feel is of no more casual relevance than a runny nose is when you have a cold. Every bad feeling you have is the result of your distorted negative thinking. Illogical pessimistic attitude play the central role in the development and continuation of all your symptoms.
Did you know that emotions run through you in a matter of 1.5 minutes? That they stay around for so long is actually a function of our thoughts. That is mind blowing! 90 seconds is all it takes to identify an emotion and let it dissipate.
It’s August 6th, I can feel that this month has more motion, moving a tiny bit faster. Like a raggedy kite with slightly longer wings, my mind is able to get absorbed in moments of distraction, moments of love, or the practice I’m developing, but I also find myself stuck in the tree feeling like I’m somehow back at Square 1. I know it’s still going to be a very hard month. The battle wages on.
Cheers everyone for all that you do to help, big and small, it all counts, to be here with me, to be engaged, to be intertwined in this thing called life, and allowing me to share my thoughts that drive me forward another week. Thank you for supporting my journey!