addictions

Thriving and Surviving

Ron Johnson addictions, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.

People who are surviving

  • People with physical limitations
    • Blindness
    • Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
    • Physical disabilities
  • People with household difficulties
    • Financial limitations or challenges’
    • Deteriorating living quarters
    • No living quarters
  • People who interpersonal difficulties
    • One partner is seriously physically limited
    • One partner wants out of the relationship
    • One partner is unfaithful
    • One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
    • Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
    • Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
    • Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
  • And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving

People who are surviving personal matters

  • Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
  • Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
  • Peter is not happy with himself. He thinks he is smarter than everyone
  • Both Marge and Peter are lonely
  • Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
  • Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
  • Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because she is more like #1

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. The essence of avoiding these difficulties means that they avoid the feelings associated with these difficulties. When they don’t finish the feelings associated the challenges, these feelings stay with them. These feelings then become repressed. It wouldn’t be so bad if these feelings stayed repressed but that is not what happens. The feeling show themselves in things they say or do. When they are speaking or doing something that is a result of not having felt through these feelings, they are accommodating. Very likely, they are not aware that they are accommodating. What happens is that the things they say or things they do are coming indirectly from the repressed feelings without their conscious knowledge. It just “feels right” to say something or do something that may seem quite odd or offense to other people. What are the things that they do to accommodate?

Accommodation

Depending on the individual, the subculture that they live in, the people they live with, the work they do, they play they do, or the any environment where they live, there are many possibilities of accommodation including:

  • Being distrustful of everyone
  • Being dishonest, or at least easily dishonest when they run into some kind of challenge
  • Fall into some addiction, chemical or behavioral
  • Become isolated. Introverted people tend to isolate
  • Become very active. Extraverted people tend to talk a lot
  • Fall into depression
  • Fall into a generalized anxiety
  • Take some kind of radical action
  • Take some kind of radical philosophical or religious orientation

To avoid these unfortunate accommodations, what can people do to move from surviving to thriving?

Positive coping mechanisms

  • Without a doubt, the most important thing for a person to do when he or she has faced with the trauma that caused the person to survive is to face the trauma and understand that they were in a dangerous or untenable situation and they did what they needed to do to survive. This takes away the false guilt of being a bad person.
  • Grieve the loss of what happened. This is easier said than done. It is hard enough to face the violence of sexual abuse or any other kind of abuse. It is much harder to face traumata that occurred over a longer period of time or traumata that occurred to one’s family or one’s heritage. How will Palestinians cope with the trauma of being assaulted? How Israelis cope with their traumata? How will Black people face the trauma of slavery that occurred for 300 years and the aftermath of racism for another 100 years?
  • Most people need a confident, which could be a good friend, family member, therapist, or clergy person to do this kind of grief work.
  • Slowly replace surviving words and activities with thriving activities.
    • Being more honest
    • Being more trusting
    • Taking a chance with some activity like work school, friends
    • Facing and overcoming addictions whatever they may be
    • Finding a community of people who have moved from surviving to thriving

I wish you a time when you can achieve a life of thriving, which of course, will be imperfect. It will also be more honest, graceful, and peaceful. But it will also be sadder as you see that you lose things every day and have disappointments every day.

And I wish you a wonderful holiday season.

The Basic Anxiety in All Men

Ron Johnson addictions, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, men's issues, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

Since my practice is composed of entirely men, I frequently hear similar things from these men, and surprisingly from men of very different ages. I have come to believe that the central ingredient that men where when they get distress in some way is some form of anxiety. I will discuss the various faces of anxiety in this blog a bit. We will also talk about the secondary effects that these other “faces” of anxiety cause in their lives. I want most importantly to identify what I think is the basic building block of this anxiety, which is not anxiety itself but rather a very important element of manhood. This is not something wrong with men, nor is it something wrong with women or with society in general. We want to look at the causes of men’s anxiety and most importantly look at what can be done to reduce it to zero.

The faces of anxiety

  • Anger. This is, of course, one of the most obvious challenges that most men face. We tend to get angry too easily, speak too loudly, yell and scream, or, God forbid, become physically aggressive in some way.
  • Avoidance. This is the second most common thing men do when they are anxious. If they don’t yell and scream, they go into the man cave, whether that is a real physical place or whether it is just sitting silently on the couch or in front of some kind of screen.
  • Addiction. This is the third most common form of men feeling anxiety without an understanding of what to do about it. Addictions can be chemical or behavioral. Chemical addictions include marijuana, alcohol, or script drugs. Behavioral addictions include gambling, some form of excessive sexual expression, overeating, working too much, not working enough, or playing video games.
  • Physical and medical abnormalities. This would include the simplest headache to the serious heart attack or cancer. With little doubt, anxiety aggravates a man’s inclination to some kind of physical abnormality. Not every man will have headaches, nor will everyone have heart attacks.
  • Dishonesty. Dishonesty is usually not in the form of stealing or outright criminality but rather hiding some activity or outright lying about some small thing in life by a man who otherwise might be a man of quite good character
  • Depression. I don’t not use the term depression, like anxiety, as a “diagnosis” of a mental disorder but rather the extended realm of a man’s unhappiness. A man can become increasingly unhappy with one or more elements of his life, like work, relationships, play, or life in general. They all stem from anxiety.
  • Helplessness. There is a helpless component of depression, but the more serious helplessness is when a man feels that he just can’t do what he knows that he should do. As a result many men work all the time, while others do nothing at all.

Statements that men make regarding their anxiety

I use the term anxiety with care because it don’t see anxiety as a mental disorder that needs to be treated. I see it as a result of men not knowing who they are, how they feel, how to speak, and what to do about the causes of anxiety. Nevertheless, I have heard the following from various men:

  • From a very successful professional man, 55, when I asked him what he felt when he thought his wife might be mad at him: “terrified,” he said
  • From another successful man, 65, when I asked him what he felt when he thought his wife might find out something he did that she didn’t approve of: “terrified.”
  • From many men including a man of 32, many men in their 40’s, and some in their 20’s:

“I feel a constant feeling of anxiety in my stomach (chest, back).”

  • From many men of various ages: “I feel some kind of anxiety every time I make any decision. This could be turning my car into an unfamiliar driveway or deciding what to eat at a restaurant.”
  • “I might have some kind of death fear. I think of the possibility of my dying all the time.”
  • “I think I made some dumb choices in my early years that still cause me anxiety, almost like I think I can turn the clock back and make different choices.”
  • For some parents: “I can’t seem to shake the fear that my son will die for some reason>
  • “I am afraid that they will discover some mistake I made at work and demote me or fire me.”
  • “I’m afraid that they (whoever the unknown “they” might be) might discover that I am a fraud in some way.”
  • “I am afraid that will be impotent in bed with my wife.”
  • “I am afraid that I am a failure in life, despite my apparent success and accolades.”
  • “I just don’t know what to do so much of the time. This could be if to take a shower, go to work today, or tell my wife that I love her.”

The causes of male anxiety

This is the most important thing I have to say about anxiety, and it leads to our final discussion: What can we do about it? The essence, the foundation, the cause of male anxiety is around the concept of responsibility. Every man feels a kind of immense load of responsibility in life, no matter how old he is. This feeling of undue responsibility starts in adolescence, develops in his 20’s and accelerates in his 30’s as his responsibilities become larger and harder to manage.

This concept of felt responsibility is very hard for me to communicate, especially to women, and certainly to most men because they don’t think about it consciously, but the feeling that “I have to do something, something important, something significant, something real,” is always there in some form. President Truman said it right when he spoke of the responsibility he had as President: “The buck (bucket) stops here.” Most men are not presidents but they often feel the burden of responsibility

  • Adolescence is difficult for everyone, boys and girls because this is a time of transition from the freedom of childhood and the freedom of early adulthood, which is what adolescence is. There are the general challenges of adolescence for guys like what to do with emerging sexual interest, academic interest (or disinterest), and some initial thoughts about one’s ultimate vocation. There are more specific challenges that every boy faces, like the adolescent who doesn’t like reading in school, doesn’t like sports, really likes music, or can’t find anything that he really likes. However good at one thing, like reading, sports, or music, he feels the insecurity and inferiority associated with not being good at something else.
  • The 20’s is particularly difficult because the guy is now in college or the world of work trying to find his way. He also has to deal with the challenge of how to relate to women (or to men if he happens to be gay). Marriage used to come during the 20’s but many men forestall marriage for a live-in arrangement that can be complicated by pregnancy, the partner’s children from another relationship, or the desire not to have children. All of these responsibilities are on the guy’s shoulders with no one really able to help him through these difficult years. A good deal of addiction begins in the 20’s, whether chemical like alcohol or pot or behavioral like promiscuity, video game-playing, or gambling.
  • I think the 30’s is perhaps the most challenging time for men. Some men I see haven’t been married and desperately want to do so. Many men are in the wrong profession, perhaps something that makes them money but not happiness. Marital struggles usually are at their height at this time of life, and children are now a dominant part of the man’s life.
  • After the 30’s a man’s responsibilities continue to grow including vocational, relational, financial, geographical, and ultimately personal. Few men migrate these waters without some form of addiction, avoidance, and anger. Suicide is four or five times greater for men than for women, often because of the burdens that they have without any guidance.

All of this accelerating responsibility and the results of these responsibilities lead most men to a deep-seated feeling of anxiety:

  • Do I want to stay married to the woman I married 10 or 15 years ago?
  • Do I want to stay in the job that makes me money but I hate?
  • Do I really like my children (of course, I love them)?
  • Do I like my house?
  • How do I deal with the fact that the electric doesn’t work in the bedroom?
  • How do I deal with my gaining weight and all that goes with it?
  • Am I having any fun
  • How do I deal with my addiction(s)?
  • Where’s the guy who could help me navigate these rough waters?

How to deal with the anxiety I feel regarding all my responsibilities and questions?

  1. Admit to it. You can’t get to the bottom of feeling anxious, much less cure it without first admitting that you feel overwhelmed
  2. Observe that you either work too much trying to stave off your anxiety or avoid your responsibilities
  3. Note the addictive tendencies you have: eating, playing, working, drinking, gaming, talking, or perhaps the more serious addictions like alcohol or promiscuity
  4. Find someone to talk to. This should most certainly be a male, perhaps a therapist, perhaps a wise uncle, perhaps a clergyman. But not your neighbor, your brother-in-law, or the guy at the bar. You need someone who understands and can help you through this crisis of feeling overwhelmed
  5. If you have a significant other in your life, tell her (or him) but be careful to keep her from advising you. A good way to develop a later intimacy is to learn to talk about yourself and feel vulnerable. Then you will be able to listen with as much love as has been rendered to you by your loved one.
  6. Avoid anxiolytic medication. It is addictive. More importantly, it covers the symptoms but doesn’t treat the problem. The problem is a very male-centered thing of feeling responsibility for everything and everyone.
  7. Begin to notice that you feel better, less anxious and more content. The more you admit to your feeling of anxiety and all the other steps along the way, the better you will get in talking and reducing your anxiety.

I’d Rather Die

Ron Johnson addictions, emotional maturity, grief, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

You’ve heard people say something like, “I’d rather die than…” followed by something that they abhorred. Maybe, they hate tomatoes and would “rather die” than eat them, which would be true of my grandson. Or maybe, the person would find it abhorrent to own a green car or watch a football game on TV. We generally understand that the expression, “I’d rather die than…” means that the person really dislikes something. He or she wouldn’t really prefer to die than to eat tomatoes or watch football. Emotional expressions like that are just typically said in order to give flavor to one’s dislikes.

Knowing that “I’d rather die…” doesn’t really generally mean that the person would rather die than do something, I have heard many people actually say these words in earnest. Odd as it sounds, many people would, indeed, rather die than do something. Sometimes the thing that they’d rather not do is live.

People who feel that they would rather die than do something:

  • A pastor’s wife who “would rather die” than admit to anyone that she has not been aware of the financial situation that her husband and she find themselves in.
  • The pastor who “would rather tie” than go bankrupt.
  • A man who “would rather die” than go through the near-death experience of Covid that he had.
  • A man who would “rather die” than give up his addiction to gambling. And another man who would prefer dying to giving up his promiscuity; another who can’t give his addiction to alcohol; another with heroin; and many more behavioral or chemical addictions.
  • A man who would “rather die” than end a profoundly unhappy marriage
  • A man who would “rather die” than give up his righteous indignation towards someone who contributed to his son’s death

There are many more people who “would rather die” than do something, do without something, have something, give something up, change their lives in some way, accept the world the way it is, or accept the way they are. We have recently heard of some of the individuals who participated in the December 6, 2001 riot who were fully prepared to “die if necessary” for the sake of what they believed. Likewise, we have heard of many terrorists who truly have chosen to die “for Allah” rather than live with a situation they found intolerable.

What are the causes of this very real preference to dying than living with something? Hopelessness, shame, and addiction.

Hopelessness: I don’t want to live

The pastor’s wife whom I noted above feels a profound hopelessness. Her life was shattered by the discovery that her husband had hid their deteriorating financial situation for years. It didn’t help that a primary cause of the choice he made was largely related to keeping her happy and avoiding her hurt and disappointment. The man who had Covid also was hit with his wife’s filing for divorce, and he really did not want to live when I first met him.

The two emotional ingredients of depression are helplessness and hopelessness. Many people who have these feelings, indeed, attempt suicide (usually men) or make suicidal attempts (usually women). More often, people who are depressed would just rather die than live. I encounter this feeling with many of the men I see in my practice, which has brought me to help these men admit that they would really rather not be alive even though they really do not want to die and certainly don’t want to suicide. Odd as it sounds, it often helps for me to help them admit this “don’t want to live” phenomenon clarifying it from wanting to die.

Many more people have the genuine feeling of “I’d rather die than….” They are feeling shame.

Shame: I don’t want to be seen

The pastor whom I noted above feels shame. He would truly rather die than admit publically to his financial dilemma. He has been a good and faithful person all his life but hasn’t had the courage and wisdom to manage his tendency to give too much to his wife and family, something that led to a heavy burden of debt from which he has seemingly no way to correct. How, you might ask, is he unwilling to go bankrupt given the opportunity that America gives people to get out of intolerable financial situations. Indeed, many people have been irresponsible with their finances, have not worked faithfully, and perhaps have acquired gambling debts. But no such situation confronts this man. He just can’t accept the “shame” that he would feel if anyone knew that he had made a mess of his finances, this despite the fact that he has generally and genuinely helped thousands of people in his ministry of nearly 60 years. He would rather die.

Many people suffer from the same malady: shame. What is shame? I suggest you read my previous blogs on shame and guilt for a more elaborate description of these two related, but also quite different phenomena. Guilt, or perhaps we call it real guilt, is the feeling of sadness one has for having said or done something wrong, perhaps hurtful or harmful to someone or to property. Guilt (real guilt) is thus valuable because it is the result of a person having an internal ethic that has been broken. Guilt of this kind can lead to self-improvement. Shame is quite different. Shame is fear-based, not sadness-based as is guilt, namely fear of other’s potential disapproval. Guilt leads to improvement; shame leads to hiding. This pastor is hiding from the potential disapproval of people, know or unknown. Often, when people feel shame, they are afraid of anyone knowing the error they made. Shame is never helpful.

Shame is the driving force behind the real “I’d rather die” phenomenon. It is a very powerful element in life and is not well understood, partly because we have such a shaming society. As bad as shame is in America, it is even worse in some countries and sub-cultures. Japan has a history of suicide that is related to one’s shame, which is usually related to shaming the family. Likewise, there is a shame factor in Latino society as I am able to detect, and seemingly underlying the Black community in many circumstances, but shame is nearly universal in humankind and a driving force for hiding, defending, or causing harm to other people.

While shame is the primary element in most “I’d rather die” phenomena, and hopelessness is the driving force in depression, another significant factor is with people who are addicted to something.

Addictions: I’d rather not give up my wat of life

Addictions are behavioral or chemical and sometimes both. Very often an individual is addicted to more than one element often combining a chemical with a behavioral addiction.

  • Behavioral addictions include sexual activity, gambling, eating, buying, hoarding, working, playing, talking, never talking, athletics, and screen time among many other addictions. Screen time includes TV, video games, cell phones, and computers.
  • Chemical addiction include alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, and eating. Note that eating is both a behavioral and a chemical addiction. Many people are addicted to so-called “bad” carbohydrates, like pure sugar, while others are addicted to salt or fat.

An addiction is generally understood to be a behavior, chemical or behavioral, where the individual has found something essentially good for him, which then became a good habit, and then became a “go to” phenomenon, meaning that he or she went to this behavior or chemical as a means of coping life. Other elements of addiction include a need for more of the substance or behavior for the same positive effect, attempts to hide the addiction, and then failed attempts to end or reduce the addiction.

I am not an expert in addictionology, but I do see people who “would rather die” than give up their addiction. Ever see people who weigh 300 pounds and wonder why they just don’t give up their excessive eating, or people who have had their seventh DUI but can’t stop drinking, or people who have been prosecuted for some sexual crime but continue with sexual promiscuity? All of these people are addicted to something and would rather die than change their behavior.

I there any solution for this problem of “I’d rather die than…”?

Wanting to live: an alternative to wanting to die

It would be great if I could just tell people things like, “You don’t really want to die,” “A lot of people would be hurt if you would die,” or “Just give up this thing and you will be happier.” But such statements never help. In fact, they may actually increase the person’s addiction, hopelessness, or shame. The first thing we must realize is that this “I’d rather die” is a real feeling. So, if you’re facing some kind of choice and “would rather die” than change, admit to your feeling. And, if you’re someone who is trying to help someone who feels such things, know that this is a very real feeling. Admitting to how I feel is a beginning, and in fact the essential ingredient to overcoming the “I’d rather die than…” feeling.

If you can admit to the feeling of “I’s rather die” feeling, you are well on the road to face the underlying phenomenon. The underlying phenomenon is always love lost, hurt, and unfinished sadness. In other words, you need to find, feel, face, and finish the loss you had in life. This loss might be the marriage you got into, the loss of the use of your right arm, the shame inflicted on you by a parent, your financial mistakes, or whatever you did…or didn’t do. Face the feeling. The feeling is always unfinished sadness. You probably need a good therapist to help you through this process.

If you can find, feel, and finish the sadness of your past, you will need to find a way to develop discipline in your life. You can’t go to discipline if you are still feeling shame, addictive coping, or depression. Discipline is doing what I don’t want to do in order to get to a place where I want to be. Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is not pleasant. Discipline is not fun. It is necessary. Unless you find some kind of discipline in your life, you have not gone far enough. Good psychology begins with feelings, leads to good thinking, and then leads to meaningful action.