I can't stop drinking

[mook]

Hi to all who've posted on this thread, and of course to eyessoblue,

I've been on here only a week or so, and was overwhelmed where to start reading and interacting, but this post caught my eye and I was so touched by everything that all of you posted, even the conflicting views mirrored my own contradictions, I am feeling your anger and frustration Coco, tapping into my murderous rage (as my therapist pointed out a "him or me" solution towards my F with nowhere to put it) and also the stoicism of Dee and sanmagic7,  Kizzies experiential story, as I have used alcohol to cope, and still do just the same as you eyessoblue...

I have to say, that my first reactive thought tallied with Coco's... CBT is great for surface rethinking, it helped me control emotional outbursts (usually aggressive and confrontational, leading me to lose work and sabotage places of comfort) but I found it lacked the depths I needed to get to for understanding my subconscious behaviour triggers and dissociated emotional and physical trauma... as I'm now going through psychodynamic therapy, although "brutal" it has finally exposed why I see the world in the way I do, and not just adjust the behaviour... (until I did that the issues just kept reoccurring) I'm still definitely in recovery and a way from some of the other posters, but that gives me hope that there is the other side to the bridge, and I may not just stay frozen on it for ever, to have contact with others, all at different stages of recovery is SO useful and supporting,  I have just arrived back from therapy and I waxed lyrical about how much I've felt connected here and how much it has helped to talk to you all knowing you all get it, and not feel like an alien trying to communicate with the world and getting nowhere... truly for me the biggest beauty of the internet... to be able to reach out to people who will hear you...

I totally agree with the sentiment that you must not be berated for your self medication... my current therapist heard me when I finally told him I'd been drinking, he has barely mentioned it and certainly not judged me or told me what I must or must not do... He never uses that kind of language, which has led me to finally trust someone and let them in... I don't react to a finger wagging or "you know what your problem is" approach from therapists, all my walls come up and I get nowhere, one therapist after a few years gap said "oh I remember you, you didn't engage with me at all" needless to say that didn't set us off to a good start, I think finding the right therapy/therapist is paramount,  I agree that you should stick with your current therapist for now, but they differ so massively in ability and approach, you could definitely benefit from considering looking until you find the chemistry that works, and when it clicks you'll know, our kind of trauma is so powerful that it needs handling soooooooo carefully,  and a good therapist will have no judgement because they can see how that trauma still lives in us, and want to guide us gently toward treating ourselves better than our abusers did (resonance with the posts that swore they would never become like them but we mimic their behaviour towards ourselves)  Mine totally supported coming on here and sharing, so my thought is that you've looked and found somewhere to talk to others who really do understand, and that is worth it's weight in gold... I hope you get as much from this community as I have in such a short time already...

ps... Coco, much love and thanks for expressing yourself strongly, I struggle with expressing my anger when I'm in control and your passion for justice is infectious, my F was a policeman, and when my abuse was flagged up (several times) the system conspired to protect it's own, not me, and your posts helped me to reaffirm to accept I have a right to feel let down by the services that should have protected me... the world isn't fair but boy we have the right to not be happy with that!

peace.

[Eyessoblue]

Thank you mook. Yes finding that right therapist is tough isn't it. I had another cbt appointment today and she thinks I'm doing ok and am nearly at the point of having the therapy with a trauma specialist, she is also very keen for me to go down the EMDR route as in her opinion that is the answer for cptsd. What concerns me there is that I regularly read that someone who has suffered multiple traumas doesn't benefit from EMDR, she must know this so I'm not sure why she is suggesting it to me, I told her I had looked on you tube and internet search and she told me I must not do this as I will only focus on the negative results and not the positive ones which I guess in some way is true but I need to know what my next step is and that it is the right one for 'me'. Very hard knowing what the right thing to do is.

[sanmagic7]

hey, eyessoblue,

there have been several people on this forum who have had wonderful results with emdr, others not so much.  a lot of it has to do with the therapist and the therapeutic relationship.  i am an emdr therapist, and have gone through it as well.  i've  found it helpful at the time (this was before i moved here and before i knew i had cptsd).  i hope you have a very positive result with  it, and very positive therapy as well.  best to you.  big hug.

[Spirals]

Hi, Eyessoblue

I've been reading through the responses and I really agree with sanmagic7 and Coco. I'm concerned about how your therapist is handling this. This post is really long (sorry; I'm a "wordy" person. Lol).

This is just my perception of what you have described, but I think this therapist is mishandling the situation. I can suffer some intense reactions if I'm triggered and I've found some people seem to make it worse either intentionally or unintentionally but the result is the same. People who make it worse are the most insistent their way is helping, even if I communicate what works better for me. You were smart to be assertive in this situation; it helps signal or filter out people who may be more harm then help. Harm isn't always intentional.

I personally think it takes a special type of person to work with traumatized people. Many people in positions of authority got there because they enjoy the control it gives them. I've personally found that these types of people are bad at dealing with trauma unless they are humble enough to listen to the patient and not take the behavior personally (I myself get pretty crazy).

I feel a good therapist would be attuned to your current level of functioning and flexible enough to adjust her treatment style to it. From my experience, true healers tend to be humble listeners.

I felt a red flag when she said that you are "not yet ready" to see the trauma therapist. It sounds like she is using some aspects of Dialectical Behavior Therapy on you ("accept, and sit with the feelings"). Which is usually good for emotional regulation (it tends to emphasize mindfulness and frustration tolerance) but I wonder if she is actually trained in it? I'm pretty sure CBT and DBT are two different therapy styles.

I also heavy drink when I'm triggered. I personally feel that the shame around addiction and other compulsive coping behaviors can be counterproductive. I read about the Harm Reduction social theory when I was a teen and it had a big effect on the way I viewed addictions.

I had a driving phobia when I was younger. I would have severe panic attacks when I would drive, I had had panic attacks where I would threaten to jump out of the car in my teens when riding with other people (I was abused in the car as a small child). I used to smoke a cigarette then drive somewhere five minutes away. I had to know the route by heart (from riding in cars) already. When I got comfortable with that, I would drive somewhere ten minutes away, etc.

I wonder if maybe you could do something similar with your trauma reactions? Instead of feeling bad about drinking, start to slowly increase the time it takes for you to start drinking from when the reaction starts. So if you feel a reaction at say 3:11pm, wait until 3:41pm to start drinking and then try to slowly increase your tolerance for the intense reactions.

Or you could try to drink less. So if you are drinking a bottle of wine a night, maybe try to drink 75% of the bottle. And then when you get comfortable tolerating that level of trauma feelings, move down to 50% of the bottle.

The minute amounts or percentages are not as important as the fact that the discomfort threshold is slowly increasing. Feel free to adjust the rate to the pace that is working for you. A success is lengthening/decreasing your own personal average; it's not about keeping up with other people's averages.

I don't know if my layman version of exposure therapy is helpful to your particular situation, but I really feel for you. I've had intense reactions to triggers and it can be scary to feel that out of control. And when it's happening, I wonder if I'm ever going to feel normal again.

[Eyessoblue]

Hi spirals
Yes I've wondered too how much she actually 'gets it', my worry as I've said before is that she is so very young and can't have a lot of experience there, yes she wants me to be able to self soothe myself so once the trauma therapy starts I will be able to help myself without having to reach out to other methods such as drinking. At the moment I'm not triggered by anything so have no urge to drink which is good, but I like your theories on reducing the amount etc, will definitely try that when the next 'trigger' happens.
Thank you sanmagic about the EMDR advice, it does really frighten me the process of it and I have voiced my concerns she has basically said it's up to me but thinks it's the way forward apparently the results for people with cptsd/ptsd are hugely successful so I will keep thinking and re evaluate the situation in a few weeks.

[sanmagic7]

i think that's a good sign that she told you it was up to you whether to go forward with the emdr therapy or not.  the choice is in your power to make.  that's always a good thing.

emdr has been shown to be one of the leading trauma therapies out there.  there are lots of studies on it, and it has been around for over 25 yrs., so it's not new and experimental by any means.  i've been involved with it for over 20 yrs. myself and stand behind it.

i don't want to be a walking advertisement for it.  just wanted to let you know that it's a proven trauma therapy.   the best of the therapists will go slowly so as not to re-traumatize you.  it's a client-based therapy, so you really make the decisions about what's happening. 

if you do choose it, i sincerely hope it is a wondrous experience for you, both helpful and healing.  as always, i will also totally support whatever decision you make.  it's your recovery, and i respect that above all.  big hug.

[Coco]

The stats on EMDR's success are sensational, though of course clinical studies have their blind spots too. If I had the opportunity I'd go for it, but that's not to say you should. I live in an area of the world where things like that aren't available, so I'd try almost anything. I understand why you don't trust various modalities.

Hey I found this model that's really exciting and makes so much sense for me, and it made me think of you. I've gotta say I feel pretty joyous about it because it explains a lot for me. See if you can relate?

It's called Internal Family Therapy/Internal Family Systems. https://www.selfleadership.org/about-internal-family-systems.html

You know how everyone says things like "A part of me wants to eat chocolate, but a part of me hates me for it?" - there are at least two fragments of the psyche there, with different opinions, different jobs, at odds with each other. Two bits of the same person arguing with each other. Two parts of the same person wanting different things, having different agendas.

This concept, developed by a guy named Richard Schwartz, explores those parts further. He developed this by genuinely watching, listening to and learning from his patients who had severe eating disorders, addictions and self harm behaviors. He noticed different parts of his patients emerging and arguing with each other - not as dramatic as DID, more subtle than that, yet very distinct personalities within the same person.
He'd noticed that when he had a patient who was traumatised, dissociating, depersonalised, very distressed, and was coming to him for help with self harm for example, if he pushed in certain ways, the self harm escalated. He had the humility to stop what he was doing and try new things. This allowed these new ideas to organically come together through direct experience with his patients.

The guy who wrote 'The Body Keeps the Score' said his lecturer at a prestigious school told all his first year psych students to ignore the text books and learn only from the patients. That's very wise. We're not there to tick boxes and fit the agenda of the therapist.

Richard Schwartz says that all of us have parts of ourselves who are forced into different roles. These parts are willing to change their roles as long as they feel safe to. ALL the parts are trying to protect you, even if their methods appear outlandish or counter-productive.

He proposes that all of us have parts of us that are split off from each other, called managers, firefighters and exiles.

The exiles are our little children and any other parts of us who have experienced pain that was too big to process at the time. They are shoved down deep within the person and not allowed out. This is to protect those parts from being hurt again, and to prevent them from emerging and disrupting the whole system as in the case of triggers.

The managers have the job of making you appear normal, making your life as functional as possible, and it would be your managers taking you to things like CBT and other therapy. The managers are often critics. In my case, the managers are the only ones who seem to have a vague idea about what I would be like and should be doing if I wasn't hyperaroused, so they're the ones I tend to try to listen to because they make the most sense, but they don't seem to take into account that it's virtually impossible to just 'be normal' without help.

The firefighters leap into action when an exile has been really strongly triggered. The firefighters' job is to numb you, take you out of that experience, stop you from being consumed by the latent agony and overwhelming force of pain in the exiles. Firefighters don't care about the same things managers do. They don't care about longterm effects or consequences, they are impulsive and in a rush to protect you and the exiles. They find the right thing to numb you, then they take over when the system is under huge pressure, and carry out the action they know will help you dissociate. This can be drinking, drugs, gambling, cutting, staying in bed constantly, watching TV constantly, escaping into fantasy - whatever your particular escape method is. Again, their primary job is not to harm you or sabotage your life, but to protect you from your own pain. The firefighters are not bad. They have your best interests at heart. They're doing the best they can with the tools they have.

This model of therapy also posits that there is a Self, a unifying presence within the person that everyone has. This Self tends to immediately know how to communicate with managers, firefighters and exiles compassionately, it knows what they need to hear to feel safe and step back. Usually the managers and firefighters don't particularly like their roles but are faithfully doing it to protect the psyche from itself. When they learn to trust the Self, they let go. They are happy for their roles to change. The Self can be found and that is often the first step in this type of therapy, because the patient needs to feel safe before anything can happen at all. One of the goals of this therapy modality is to allow the Self to lead the life and choices.

Obviously the managers and firefighters have very different agendas and focuses. I know that my firefighters literally take over and carry out behaviors that I can't seem to control or stop, and I don't know why. It's been very painful. My managers scream abuse at me for these behaviors and push and push and push me to be better, perfect, etc. I'm somewhere in there feeling so confused, hurt and further abused. And lost. It seems that the firefighters and managers and exiles aren't necessarily in communication with each other.

Anyway, when I read about this concept this I thought of you.

Something is agitating and awakening your exiles too much. Your firefighters are taking over the body and mind and causing you to drink. The managers are stepping in and berating you for drinking. Your therapist is offering the advice of 'try harder' and 'learn to self soothe'.

Every therapist I have listened to or whose opinions I have read online or in a book, says that the very first step with people suffering trauma is to establish a sense of safety and equilibrium in the person, helping them to learn to self soothe as you've been told. They acknowledge that we are living in constant terror or hyper-arousal and many of us literally do not know what it is to feel calm and safe, as we have never learned that feeling or had that experience (in the case of developments of CPTSD in childhood). They all say that when they first started out, it made sense to them to go straight for the memories in an attempt to heal that, but they learned that the outcome for the patient was dreadful. 
All of the experienced trauma experts say that learning to self soothe takes TIME. Time and trust. The ones who are really smart have realized that the agitation is beyond the control of the mind, and is coming from the body. So they use things like EMDR with great success to soothe the body, and the good therapists and researchers experiment with a lot of things. Self defense classes. Yoga. Theatre. Dance. Rhythmic games. Role playing. Improv. Massage and other body work. Acupuncture and acupressure. They recognise that more is needed than just thinking and talking.

If this girl is telling you that you need to self soothe BEFORE you start trauma therapy, I'm hoping that doesn't mean that self soothing isn't going to be something the trauma therapist explores with you.

People get on bandwagons, including therapists. There was a lot of hype around CBT a while ago and it was presented as a cure-all. Therapists can get blinded in this way, and get into this rut where they're sure this model works, and if it's not working, it's the patient who has to try harder to get it. I'm sure this is true in some cases. Your therapist probably truly thinks she is helping and doing the best for you, but as others have mentioned, trauma is a very, very specialised field and therapists can inadvertently do harm if they do not understand it correctly.
Reading about how to ride a bike is a world away from riding a bike. The ideal trauma therapist would be someone who has experienced it, or had extensive experience working with people who suffer trauma. I can read about schizophrenia but have absolutely zero concept of what it is viscerally like. So I'd best listen to the schizophrenic person in a conversation, rather than being so arrogant as to assume I know what they need. it would be a real shame if I was blinded by my training if I were a therapist, wouldn't it? I wouldn't be much help to people.

So, I'm not telling you about IFS to burden you with another therapy modality, but because I've found it really healing to have a framework of why this happens to me. It takes a lot of the critic's judgment out, and my body feels more calm. The link I gave you explains the whole thing a million times better than I have here, and the vids are great. It's a big deal, for me, to understand about the firefighters in particular. I have a lot of respect for all my selves now. God, have they worked hard and relentlessly to protect me. MY GOD have they done a good job.

Hats off to you for your resillience. All of you. All of us x

[Coco]

Hi Candid, thanks for your enthusiastic and encouraging response about 'my life's work' lol. It's genuinely appreciated.

Mooks, what a beautiful post. I'm looking forward to reading more from you.

[Blueberry]

I told her I had looked on you tube and internet search and she told me I must not do this as I will only focus on the negative results and not the positive ones which I guess in some way is true but I need to know what my next step is and that it is the right one for 'me'.

Eyessoblue, I have little alarm bells ringing in my head when a therapist doesn't want me to look up information about my diagnosis, my illness or therapy forms.

[jdcooper]

I am struggling with drinking as a way to self-soothe as well.  On a good day I only have one drink.  Bad days are four drinks.  I never go over four drinks.  And I do feel shame when I have the four drinks, but only in certain circumstances.   If I am really triggered and sobbing and in pain I don't feel shame for drinking four drinks.

I do feel shame when I am having vague discomfort and I still drink to cope.   If I am sobbing and in pain, and I am doing the work in therapy that needs to be done, the drinking is more understandable.  After all I have been massively triggered.  But sometimes the worst days are those when I don't cry and don't get angry but I just feel like life sucks and I don't want to feel that way anymore and I drink.  Then I feel shame.

My therapist knew about my drinking and urged me to get help from AA.  Eventually I got to the point of just having one drink a day so I told her it was under control.  Now she doesn't ask me about it but I am still drinking to cope. Even my husband doesn't know that I sometimes have more than one drink a day.

I feel like when my life is better I won't need to drink.  After all for years I managed just fine without drinking that much.  Going through this painful process without my crutch would be very difficult.  Drinking can bring such relief.  I used to exercise to cope with bad feelings but my depression got so bad I didn't want to exercise and now I am completely out of the habit and have to force myself to even walk my dog.

As far as therapy and being triggered, my feeling is that we need to go between working out the feelings (sobbing and angering) and having more positive states of just living normal life.  We can't continually be triggered and sob or flashback everyday.  And if we are being massively triggered where the flashback is lasting for hours and hours something needs to be done to slow that down.

I agree that CBT therapy isn't going to get to the real cause of the symptoms we are experiencing.  Its not really on a cognitive level.  It's more primal, more unconscious. 

I got a workbook once that had CBT exercises in it.  I couldn't handle it.  If I had to go through all of my negative thoughts and challenge them, well that would be overwhelming because there are just too many negative thoughts.  Trying to come up with alternate thoughts also seemed impossible. 

"I feel like crap remembering when my Dad did x".  How I am supposed to challenge this event with a more positive thought.  It wasn't so bad?  Other people have it worse?  He really didn't mean it, it was unconscious on his part?  It was so long ago, I can see it differently now?  There is no challenging my thoughts about this event so I don't feel bad about it.  Its because the feelings are overwhelming (those feelings have been pushed down and repressed for so long).  The only way to challenge these negative thoughts and feelings is to work through those feelings and over time they diminish and then I can think more rationally about it (put it in perspective in my current life).

I am not sure how CBT works so maybe my analysis of it is way off.

I keep telling myself not to feel shame about my drinking.  It actually used to be worse-when I was triggered I might have up to 8 drinks.  So progress is progress.

I hope that you get into trauma therapy and get some good healing going.

[Kizzie]

"I feel like crap remembering when my Dad did x".  How I am supposed to challenge this event with a more positive thought.  It wasn't so bad?  Other people have it worse?  He really didn't mean it, it was unconscious on his part?  It was so long ago, I can see it differently now?  There is no challenging my thoughts about this event so I don't feel bad about it.  Its because the feelings are overwhelming (those feelings have been pushed down and repressed for so long).  The only way to challenge these negative thoughts and feelings is to work through those feelings and over time they diminish and then I can think more rationally about it (put it in perspective in my current life).  I am not sure how CBT works so maybe my analysis of it is way off.

I think you're correct that it recovery isn't about seeing what happened in a more positive light, there's just no way around it, what happened us was traumatic or we wouldn't be here.  My understanding of CBT is that it is to challenge our thoughts about what we can do with/about all of that.  For example, my thoughts that drove me to drink were that I was alone in the world with no-one to help me (I was as a child, but it's not the case now), that I could not handle the memories (which I could not as a child thus the dissociation, etc., but can as an adult), that I was worthless and deserved how I was treated (easy to get a child to believe that), and on and on - incessant voices that drowned out anything remotely positive.

When I drank it was those kinds of thoughts --hopeless, bleak, critical and utterly frightening I was trying to numb out, escape from.  I finally had enough and reached out to my doctor who referred me to a psychiatrist and addictions counselor and it was then I started to challenge those voices.  I remember thinking things were going to be OK when I told the addictions counselor I had been hiding in my closet most days until night fell and it was dark (social anxiety was in the stratosphere when I was at my worst), and he didn't bat an eye, in fact he told me he could understand why I felt I had to hide away and drink.  No shaming or judging and that moment was just amazing, those parts of me that were incessant kind of went "Huh?"  He spoke in a caring and supportive way to those angry frightened critical parts and they heard him.   It had never occurred to me to challenge my weaknesses, my defects before in a compassionate way or to look at the fact that as an adult I had more resources and strength to get through what I could not as a child.  It was the point when things began to turn around for me.  It does take time and effort but we are so worth it.

For those of you who are struggling with self-medicating and aren't willing/able to speak with your physician/T,  there are help lines available in most countries (I googled them and there really are a lot!), and I encourage you to pick up the phone.  If anywhere there will be some compassion and support, it will be from organizations that deal directly with the issue.  If the first doesn't feel quite right, try another until you find that compassionate and caring help I found.  It's out there, it really is.    to each of you, I hope some of this helps. 

[sanmagic7]

hey, jd,

it sounds like you're hiding your drinking from those who most want to help you.  that's a red flag for me.

i'm sober 15 yrs. now, no more drugs, no more cigs (those were the hardest!) so i understand about the numbing and self-soothing.  alcohol is great for that.  the problem is that when we begin hiding what we're using or how much to self-soothe, we are driving ourselves into a shame-based tunnel.  the only way to eliminate shame is to bring it into the light.  shame grows in the darkness of secrecy.  it withers and dies in the light.

perhaps your t is allowing you to move too fast and you're becoming overwhelmed by triggers, etc.  if you talk to her about what's happening, the two of you may be able to come up with a better plan for you.  our recovery is completely individual - our pace, our space.

for someone who's been traumatized, i found that question example you stated as ridiculous.  not your responses - those were spot on.  trying to deal logically with emotional trauma just isn't going to work.  cbt is very good at helping someone change illogical thought patterns, but, like you said, it can't get to the core of an emotionally psychological wound.

thanks for having the courage to post about this.  i sincerely hope you are able to help yourself in a healthier way in the future.   i have faith in you.