Day 10

Nobody said it was easy
Aww It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I’m goin’ back to the start

Coldplay "The Scientist"

October 29, 2007

We live in a culture of victimhood. It has become so easy to remove accountability for ourselves by making attributions about the past, that people now cherish and even celebrate their victimhood. This in many ways reflects the current culture in psychology. We remove the load from someone by assigning them an insurance code. This allows people to justify their behavior and often perpetuates a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can't control myself you see because I am, (Borderline, Bipolar, ADHD), etc. etc. etc. Much of this is bullshit. For most people there comes a point in their life when they look into the mirror and realize its' time to take responsibility for their own behavior. This is why change happens. Not through medicine, psychotherapy, or religious experience, although all those things can certainly help as well as hinder.

That being said, it is also tremendously important to figure out where you've been and why you've been there before you can move forward. Our thoughts and behavior are deeply habituated, and without insight we can simply become little more than trained mice. This is the curse of the frontal lobes. We have insight and we can "think about our own thinking."

Even now I am stalling. I write all this because I realize I am going to have to make a deep examination of my own childhood that for many years has been filed away like a tax return that is now being audited. I will do this with my therapist but also through journaling and painful self-introspection.

The fact is I had an alcoholic father. He was funny, gregarious, a pathological liar, and nearly totally absent from my life. I loved being with him, but also knew my mom hated him for abandoning us. This shaped the way I see the world. Men are........ funny, friendly, yes, both good things. Men must...... lie when they have to, the truth is something that gets in the way of a good story. Men solve problems by........ Drinking, running, fleeing, avoiding. I swore I would never be like my father, but reading these things I know for a great deal of my life I have been all of these things.

What makes me different from my father is I became a doctor and developed some insight into the human condition as well as into my own behavior. To this point this has been virtually no comfort whatsoever. But... Perhaps I am strong enough to change although I haven't been so far. Perhaps the strongest thing I've learned from my father is that alcohol is necessary for people to have a good time. This has been, unfortunately very true in my own life and a piece of this puzzle I have yet to solve. I will continue to think about this and challenge myself to find at least one other reason to smile today. Perhaps this will be a start. Writing this down I feel I have exorcised a little piece of my demons. This has been useful.