Posted by Dinah on July 16, 2008, at 23:03:14
This is the new conceptualization I'm having trouble with. I do see how it fits. Although I think it's more an offshoot of the whole dissociative tendency of my brain. But I also think that a hammer is going to think everything is a nail. He does do a lot of addictions work, and is in fact training in sexual addictions specifically.
He thinks I'm a sex addict. I think he's missing the point.
I get enthusiasms. They could be seen as the upside to OCD. Or they could be seen as a facilitator of dissociation. In fact, my OCD anxieties could also be seen as a facilitator of dissociation. A powerful distraction from my real pain or real concerns. I think that's how I've come to see them.
My enthusiasms could be about anything. But they generally focus on any of a variety of interests and hobbies I have. Maybe one week every three to five years, it might be sex. I'm pretty sure that doesn't a sex addict make. While I do see why he's saying what he's saying, I'd say I'm an addiction addict. It's the process of the addiction that's the goal, not whatever the flavor of the day happens to be. It could as well be paint as sex, and if it was compelling enough it could well be watching grass grow. So he bends a bit and says that maybe I'm suffering from multiple addictions. And I *still* think that's missing the point.
I looked up the addiction cycle and found this..
http://www.sexaddicthelp.com/Articles/addiction_cycle.htm
And it does look very very familiar. The dissociation - I think that's the whole point of the exercise for me. The altered state - I've always expressed it as feeling like I'm in a trance, then snapping out of the trance and wondering what on earth I was doing? The release. Yes, snapping out of the trance often comes from buying something, or eating something, or cutting myself. Because in addition to the OCD anxieties, and the enthusiasms, I think my cutting behavior also fell into this cycle. Shame? Well, yes. I don't know that I ever do anything worth intense shame. But I definitely feel some shame. Resolve to do better? In the past more than now. I think I'm more resigned now.
So the addiction cycle fits. Absolutely. But I think he misses the point if he tries to tie it in to the object of the obsession. Because it really doesn't matter. It could be anything. The dissociation is the real object. It's another way of dissociating, like my forgetting sleeps.
Now this will sound a bit odd. I've always referred to something I used to call the Captain, until my therapist insisted on thinking it had consciousness, or that I thought it had consciousness. Now I call it The Controller. I see it as a series of circuit breakers or something like that. When my distress reaches a certain point, my brain switches something on or off and something happens to stop the distress from building.
It takes a lot of forms. Forgetting sleep is one. I actually dozed off in session Tuesday. Another is thought stopping. I can be in the middle of a sentence, and if I say something I'm not supposed to say I'll just stop talking and my mind goes blank. And my suspicion is that these addictive behaviors are another.
I have no conscious control over this process. That's why I call it the Controller, I guess. Yet I have never had any indication that the Controller had a separate consciousness or will or anything. It seems to me to be an automatic defense system. Albeit a rather intense one.
My therapist wants me to try to start a dialog with this part of me. I have no problem with doing this, although I'm pretty sure I'll get no response, since I don't think it's that sort of entity.
I'm wondering if this is the perfect time to try hypnosis. To plant the suggestion to my automatic defense system that it choose work or exercise or cleaning the house as the focus of the obsession.
Any thoughts? If you made it this far of course. In which case I congratulate you and thank you.
poster:Dinah
thread:840077
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080709/msgs/840077.html