The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, May 04th 2017 (The Elephant Effect)


I'll be meeting with mum in a couple of hours to kill some time before I have my next session with my clinical psychologist. It's this session that I'm really holding out for. That's all that really matters today. Fuck the rest of it! It's all about trying to figure out how to defeat these Schema Modes I now know I have as these are the things that will kill me if I don't find some way of ridding my personality of, or at least keeping a check on them. Resentment may be the number one killer of alcoholics according to AA but I know myself better than this. I know that it's prolonged isolation that will do it to me.

This isolation used to always come during times when I felt as though I had nothing to offer anyone in this world. That everything I did and tried to do actually only served to hurt or frustrate other people and so the best type of defence, during those times, was to retreat. Retreat to where nothing you say or do affects me you. It's not healthy but it works short term. This kind of thinking was at its absolute worst when I went through my suicidal phases (or the suicidal phases were brought about from this type of thinking for too long) and then it subsided a little during times of my two years sobriety when I've felt I've been doing well. It's back again now though – and I feel in the mood to be doing a whole lot more isolating this weekend.

Working through some of my issues with Dr. Bacon as well as attending the ACA meetings for around five weeks now (so that's five sessions of both of these services) has brought about a far more acute sense of who I am all over again. This is similar to what things felt like when I was working through the Fifth Step with Stu. Only the negative stuff about me is discussed and there's so much of it that I can't even think about trying to imagine there being any good. It's another one of those moments where you have to stop and think. Another of those moments where you realise that everything good about yourself that you thought existed is all bullshit. It isn't real. It's instead consumed by the vast amount of badness. The defects. The shortcomings. These same shortcomings that the God of my understanding is supposed to be removing from me.

I've been reading a book that Sandra from ACA loaned me this week. It's called ''I Got Tired Of Pretending'' and was written by some dude called Bob Earll. He says this:

''Giving up all or any of alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sugar, or nicotine is a great way to start pulling some nails out of the coffin lid you've got covering your feelings. In doing the family-of-origin work most of us will encounter all three of the angels/demons: repression, suppression, and splitting off. They are angels when we are children because they protect us from the pain that (hurts too much) to live with. They are demons when we are adults because they keep us in prison..........I realize now that my attempts at meditation were no more than disguised repression, suppression and splitting off. Trying to meditate was one more way to cut me off from my feelings.''

So yeah – without finding a tool that works for me in terms of dealing with my overwhelming negativity I am as good as back to the beginning again. I don't have the same grated nerves or sense of panic that I had when I first stopped drinking but I am effectively back to the start again emotionally. Life's become like some old-school board game that one might have played with their grandparents back in the day. I keep landing on that square which demands I go all the way back again, like most alcoholics do I guess. The longest snake on the board.

I can remember Super-Zoe (psychologist I saw before Dr. Bacon but who specialised in addictions and didn't want to see me full time on account of her not sensing a threat of relapse from me at all) saying that she didn't want me 'shopping for therapy' in that I try everything out but don't really give it much effort before moving onto the next thing. I guess that this is why I'm putting so much effort into these sessions with Dr. Bacon. I have little interest in trying anything else out to be honest. The things I haven't tried seem silly, some of them, and I have no wish to roll another dice that will likely land me on that nasty square or that long snake again. So I have to work as best I can with what I've got just now. Keep faith in that things will improve given time.

It's the homework he gave me that's fucked me up this time though. I was asked to try very carefully to notice when my two defensive modes (the Detached Protector and Bully and Attack) come into play during my day to day life. I have done this and have been amazed at how often one of them controls my thoughts, words and actions. Almost every time I open my mouth it is one of these two modes doing the talking. It's terrifying and utterly exhausting. It's getting to the stage where I don't know what to say, when to speak, what to do. So I isolate. It's safer for everyone. The only person it hurts is me. People say that this is bullshit – that when we isolate we hurt others who love us. This isn't at all true.

I'll be seeing mum in a couple of hours for the first time in months. She wouldn't know any different whether I spent these months alone in my cave. It affects her not at all. My brother and nieces are the same. In the weeks it's been since I was last there how has what I've been doing or where I've been touched them at all? It hasn't. As long as when I show up I am nice and good at pretending then all is well in their worlds. They couldn't give a fuck about mine.

Lindsay? She's too busy with her exams and children's hearings and job interviews for anything that I do when I am not in her company to have any effect on her. Plus – she won't know!! Gillon has become used to me popping in to see him once in a blue moon, if even that regularly. English Sara and Dennis must be starting to feel the same way. Nothing I do has an effect on anyone. The butterfly effect does not quite work the same way we think it does when it comes to us isolating. It's more like the Moth Effect for us – couldn't get more different. Or the Elephant Effect. Something silly like that.

AA isn't affected in any way by me being away from their rooms for twelve weeks now. The college won't mind that I am not in attendance this morning when I should be. The charity shop would miss me, I have to admit that, but this is simply because we are short on volunteers at this time. It's nothing to do with me. Anyone else could be there in my place. Then I could isolate and they would neither know nor care.

This is all good for humility. I am effectively nothing and what I do has little to no effect on anyone else. Humility. That's the way I should look at this.

The Elephant Effect.

I'll post tomorrow on the meetings with my mum and Dr. Bacon.

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Stevie

Suffering from the Elephant Effect and unaware of any cure for it.

1328

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, May 05th 2017 (Lunch With Mum)


There were a few things that came up during my first one to one with my mother in some considerable time. One to one? Sounds like she's my therapist or something (she's certainly not that) but no – we'll get to my therapist tomorrow. She's just my mum, but someone important to me whatever the case. There used to be a time when I think that she used me to catch up with all of the family news as I saw my brother and nieces a lot more often back then but now it is I finding out from her how the rest of those in my family I was once so close to are getting on these days now that I am barely a part of their lives. Quite well by the sounds of things.

She always wants to talk about my children for some reason. I get it – they are her grandchildren after all – but I'm not as keen to see them as she is. Makes me feel a little terrible but mostly at how I don't feel terrible about it. I guess I can think of Lindsay's situation and see mine for what it really is. Mum follows them on Facebook.

Stevie – ''How can you see their accounts without being friends with them?''

Mum – Both of their accounts are set to public, for some reason. He had posts up recently about a march through Edinburgh with the army cadets.''

Decent. At least he's active and involved in things.

Mum – ''But he really doesn't post much at all. She doesn't post anything really.''

Mum seems sad about this and I can't tell if it's because it is a chance to see how they are getting on missed by their reluctance to share their lives online in an unhealthy way like so many others of their ages do – or because she is deluded into thinking that a lack of social networking activity is synonymous with them not having social lives. Have they inherited from me my poor communication skills and my lacking abilities to form and maintain lasting enriching relationships with other human beings? I don't see it like this. Perhaps the reason they don't post much about their lives on social networking sites is because they are actually out and about and doing stuff. It's possible that they are emotionally healthy and so don't need the validation we think is on offer in places like the forums and networking of the world wide web. It's possible that they actually have real, live, offline friends.

Lindsay's son, on the other hand, is really heading south. His attendance at school is down to forty odd per cent and it's looking like he's going to be heading into a temporary foster home or into a care institution until his school performance picks up to acceptable levels. The school has done everything they can do to help him. They've even reduced the number of subjects he's expected to attend, dropping things like chemistry in a bid to try to get him to pass those essential subjects in maths and English. It's all been in vain though. He's a fortnight younger than my daughter and so is eligible to leave school officially at the end of next year, a month after he turns sixteen. Lindsay lost access to him during 2014 after a particularly bad drinking spell. Now she has supervised visits in public places with a social worker present.

Mum – ''Does Lindsay have similar problems to yourself?''

Stevie – ''Lindsay's in AA so yeah, she's got issues.''

Mum – ''It's just some of the things she posts on social media....''

I do wonder about this actually. All these inspirational quotes and so on. People aren't stupid and putting up some of the things she does (and it's nothing that members of these very forums don't put up themselves) does suggest a certain type of person. Were I to continually post videos of electric guitar solos it wouldn't take people all that long to suss out that I was probably a player of the instrument myself. People aren't as dumb as I sometimes say that they are. Well, actually they are but we'll move on for the sake of keeping things relatively civil.

Mum's partner, who I call Johnny Bravo, has his own problems and it would seem as though mum has to step in and do the work that Dr. Bacon does with me. Mum isn't qualified for this and I can tell she's struggling and perhaps feels that it's a good thing that I am available to talk to about this kind of stuff given my present situation and the fact I'm open with mum about my own self-help and therapy. Perhaps she feels as though I won't be as judgemental as others might be in knowing that her partner is in need of some extra assistance to live life. I am judgemental though. Johnny Bravo comes from a different class than that of myself and all my loser friends. We are on the bottom – Johnny Bravo is still much nearer the bottom than the top but it's still night and day to what I have known in recent years. His daughter is a GP; I don't even know what the fuck my daughter does. He built his house; I rent mine from the council. It's a different world I inhibit. Here he is though – behind me in a sense. I am putting the work in to try to get better and move on; Johnny Bravo, from what mum tells me, is still very reluctant to seek the help he clearly needs from what mum tells me.

That'll do for now.

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Stevie

Sometimes can't be assed writing.

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, May 06th 2017 (Chair Therapy: Part One)


After the usual pleasantries to start off with we get straight on with it. I start by explaining the problems I've been having since the last session which I've talked about in here over the last few days.

Dr. Bacon – ''It sounds like it's been a bit depressing, a bit unpleasant, to tune into and start to recognise this mode-driven behaviour...''

Stevie – ''I was expecting that though.''

Dr. Bacon – ''I think so, yeah, but that doesn't make it any easier, it's still unpleasant. Do you feel it's been a worthwhile thing to do? Even though it was unpleasant can you see why you're doing this and why it's worthwhile doing this?''

Stevie – ''Why I'm?......''

Dr. Bacon – ''Why you're tuning into all this stuff and, you know, recognising all this stuff about yourself if it's just making you feel worse?''

Stevie – ''Well yeah, it's the key thing about this therapy, is it not!? If it's making me feel worse, if it's making me feel bad then let's figure out what it is and how to get rid of it, but, emmm... but I guess it comes down to that thing I used to feel all the time when I was drinking. If all of me has to be changed then it means that the current me isn't acceptable. Life seems all about just trying to manufacture ourselves into something that we feel to be acceptable. That hurts, as a thought......to think that it could be like that, as though it has to be that way.''

Dr. Bacon – ''What do you mean by acceptable? Acceptable to who? Acceptable in what way? Because to me that implies that there's something wrong.''

Stevie – ''Well there is something wrong isn't there!? In someone who walks around all day spending the vast majority of his time in one of two unhealthy defensive coping modes...''

Dr. Bacon – ''But is that wrong?''

Stevie – ''To bully and attack people all the time? Or when I'm not doing that to hide away and retreat? Yeah!''

Dr. Bacon – ''Why's it wrong??''

Stevie – ''Why's it wrong?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Yeah.''

Stevie – ''Ask any of my victims and you'll get an answer to that one.''

That's not a comment he's gonna like but it's too late to take it back. I'm thinking that Stu tried something like this once. When I asked him how he felt about my sick past he said that he did not see me defective as such – he just saw someone who was doing what he had to do to survive with the limited of life's tools he had to work with. I liked that way of looking at things. Dr. Bacon is trying something similar at the moment.

Dr. Bacon – ''It seems to me as though we're going down a very values based route here in the way that you're talking about it as being right or wrong. That's not the way I would look at it, because actually, you know, if you really think about these things there isn't really a right or wrong, there isn't a good and a bad – there's only ways that work better than others. A lot of that depends on the context you're in, the society you're in, how things have worked out for you in your life, I think we can say safely that what's happening at the moment isn't working for you but I think that's a different thing altogether from saying that it's right or it's wrong.''

Stevie – ''I guess.........''

Dr. Bacon – ''And you're right in that the way things are operating for you at the moment isn't helping you to get your needs met, isn't really helping this need to better connect with people.''

Stevie - ''…..''

Dr. Bacon – ''Would that be something you'd be happy for me to do? To be mindful of when we go down the route of seeing things here as being right or wrong?''

Stevie – ''Yeah.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Okay, well I'm really glad that you've been able to monitor this, and I'm sorry that this has been really unpleasant for you, and it seems as though noticing all that's been happening has really made you withdraw and to really take yourself away from the situations that cause you to feel that...''

Stevie – ''But it doesn't make sense. Why would I become so terrified of feeling my coping modes that I would seek to hide if hiding IS one of them? I must not find the Detached Protector to be all that bad. It must be the Bully and Attack I really fear.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Well you did mention ''victims'' earlier. What is it you've seen that you haven't liked?''

Stevie – ''There's so much.....almost every minute I'm outside of my cave I find something that isn't to my liking, something that just has to be condemned.''

Dr. Bacon – ''So that really critical, judgemental part of yourself that you're picking up on....''

Stevie – ''Can be very tiring!''

Dr. Bacon – ''What's to say it's not this?''

He points to our little diagram. On it we have the five modes that make up my personality. In the middle we have Little Stevie – the young vulnerable me. To the north-east we have the Detached Protector. To the south-east the Bully and Attack. To the south-west the Healthy Adult, and to the north-west, the one he's pointing at just now and suggesting might be responsible for my ongoing, unremitting negativity towards all living things – the Critical Parent!

Stevie – ''Because it's not doing anything parental. It's nothing to do with me, it's all external, it's...''

Dr. Bacon – ''Don't worry too much about that, really, I think the words we use on these modes can sometimes be a bit misleading in that respect, when we're talking about this parent part and particularly this critical parent part, what we're talking about there is a certain set of ideas or standards that we have internalised, that we hold for ourselves and potentially for others too.''

Stevie – ''So the world isn't meeting the standards of my Critical Parent?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Mmmm.... What are the standards of your Critical Parent? What is that part of you seeing that it doesn't agree with, that it doesn't like?''

Stevie – ''The million dollar question.''

Dr. Bacon – ''A couple of examples?''

Stevie – ''Hmmm.. I've just had lunch with my mum. I haven't seen her in ages, and I don't remember being critical of the situation or the venue, the food, anything, the whole time I was with her.''

Dr. Bacon – ''That's interesting because you haven't been short of criticising your mum in the past and you mention something interesting when you say the venue wasn't picked up on by your Critical Parent.''

Stevie – ''It's not venue specific – it's everyone in them too, but not this time.....for some reason.''

........

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

We look into several things. Could my lack of criticism at this time be to do with a feeling of safety while being with my mother? Could this be one of my needs being met and so the Critical Parent feels no need to be present? We don't know because for some reason I tend to try to control the situation by using my diversion tactics to get away from discussing what I may or may not be feeling about all of this.''

Dr. Bacon – ''What I'm sensing here is a bit of a deviation from, a bit of an avoidance, a bit of pushing away, from the central issue there. I think this could be one of the behaviours that the Detached Protector part of you does which is to take advantage of one of your assets which is your intelligence and intellectualise a little bit about something that's going on, to effectively make it mute, to make it not matter anymore.''

Stevie - ''...''

Dr. Bacon - ''….''

Stevie – ''What was the question again?''

Dr. Bacon – ''I think we've come back in lots of ways to the idea that a lot of the time what's triggering for Little Stevie is other people, other people not feeling safe, making him not feel safe, making him feel vulnerable, and I'm wondering if a part of that is related to these Critical Parent rules are for what makes the world.....okay. If you're okay then that's fine, you're okay, but if you're not okay them you're vulnerable and so you're bad.''

Stevie - ''….''

Dr. Bacon – ''I think we're bringing some really good stuff for us to get to grips with once you're ready. What I wanted to talk about today was to look a little at the patterns of behaviour at work. I think that one of the core unmet needs here, unmet emotional needs, is to do with relating to other people, connecting with other people, in ways that feel meaningful and enriching and fulfilling to you. I think that there might be other unmet emotional needs that we have to figure out as we go along and I guess what I'm interested in is what the patterns are that are emerging, what sort of things are happening on a routine basis as part of this mode-switching that are getting in the way of that happening? That are getting in the way of you getting those needs met. That's the essence of Schema Therapy.''

Stevie - ''…..''

Dr. Bacon – ''I was wondering if we might try something called Chair Work, it comes from something called Gestalt Therapy and the idea is that, because we have these different sides of ourselves it can be really helpful sometimes in the therapy room to create a bit of space because right now it can be a little tricky to see what kind of fits where and what belongs to which part of you, and the way that we would do that is that we would maybe have a kind of exercise where we set out a couple of chairs and because today you are perhaps really a little bit more in the Detached Protector mode that this chair here, this chair you're sitting in just now, is that part of you. But I might bring in another chair or two and what I'd like to do is I'd like to being in those chairs and mark them out as different parts of you, pop one down and say that this is the Healthy Adult part of you, and pop another down and say that this is the perhaps the Vulnerable Child part of you, and if we think right now as those three parts being the most important parts of you, I'd really like to just try a bit of an exercise, if you feel up for it, kind of asking you to rotate between those chairs, see a little how it feels to be those different parts of yourself, to see things from their perspective, to fill them out a little bit.''

Stevie – ''Yeah, I'm up for it.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Great! Sometimes it takes a little more convincing.''

He goes out of the room to fetch a couple of chairs.

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Stevie

Playing with modes.

1902

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, May 07th 2017 (Chair Therapy: Part Two)


We now have four chairs in the room. One is for our good doctor to sit in. The others are for the three parts of Stevie that we are looking at in this session: The Detached Protector, where I currently sit, and the Vulnerable Child Mode (Little Stevie), and the Healthy Adult Mode. Looks like we'll be doing a little role playing but I get it – the idea here being to isolate the characteristics associated with each particular mode here.

Dr. Bacon – ''Right, so you were saying there that you're kind of feeling a little more in the Detached Protector Mode at the moment...''

Stevie – ''You said that.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Well, yeah. I have said that so sorry, maybe you...''

Stevie – ''I think I've been more in Bully and Attack this session. I think I've been digging at you a little, trying to perhaps get you to just talk for an hour so that the time can pass by and I can just get outta here.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Thank you for saying that.''

Stevie – ''I suppose it is quite a Detached Protector thing to do.''

Dr. Bacon – ''But very Healthy Adult to say that to me. I'm a little conscious of that but I'm also aware of not trying to push you too much and make you feel too guarded because I'm guessing that today, recently, you've maybe been feeling a bit of that. So maybe I have picked up a little bit on that and I appreciate you bringing that up.''

Stevie – ''Mmmmm...''

Dr. Bacon – ''Maybe that's a bit of Healthy Adult coming through would you mind shifting over to this chair for a moment!?''

I get out of the Detached Protector chair and move over to the Healthy Adult one – a chair that I different in design deliberately from the other three in here. We are using normal NHS chairs for this task, complete with plastic painful seating and spindly metal frames, but this Healthy Adult chair is black instead of blue and has arms and a leathery feel about it. Relatively speaking, in this room at least, it's a seat of royals, more like a throne. Perhaps it's more just a fear of status that's making me feel this way as I move the short distance from one chair to another.

Dr. Bacon – ''And as you're doing that I just want you to think about that part of yourself, so this is that Healthy Adult part of your that is different from that Bully and Attack mode, that's different from the Detached Protector – this is the part of you that has a sense of......what you really need, and how you might get it. This is the part of you that knows what's best for you even if you can't always put it into practice.''

This ties in with something mum was saying when we were having lunch just before this session. She was talking about her partner's daughter and how well she's doing. I think she's a GP and her husband owns a letting agency. They come from completely different places than my brother and I, were handed chances and opportunities all throughout their lives that we never had, and they seem to do well for themselves. I'm not really interested in how they are getting on but I have to accept that for mum they are perhaps success stories she can tell to others since her own children have been such dismal failures right the way into their thirties, and mum says to me that she thinks that these two have a firm sense of where they are going. They don't hurt anyone getting to where they are – they just have an acute sense of what they want and need and how to get it. Dr. Bacon is describing this to me right now as being Healthy Adult. I don't believe mum at all when she says that they don't hurt people on their way to what they believe the stars to be: anyone involved in letting homes to people at current rates is so terrible that even the referendum on Scottish independence picked up on it as a part of their YES campaign. Maybe if every letting agent was to sleep in a car for the worst winter in thirty years for a few weeks then they'd change their minds about things. This is ultimately what shaped my thinking on the subject. I didn't care about letting prices until then.

So is this Healthy Adult on my part? Setting standards based on real and genuine experiences!? If so then this man in question, the owner of this letting agency of whom mum speaks so highly, is motivated only by his need for cash and a feeling of success. This is primal in the sense that it is basically egocentric and wholly selfish, completely blind to what he does to contribute to a situation so terrible that it was brought up during referendum time. Egocentric must surely mean childish as my nieces are still incredibly egocentric and are five and (almost) four respectively. If so then it is not Healthy Adult on his part. Not seeing a bigger picture, or choosing to ignore it for our own gains.

Dr. Bacon – ''Now I want to ask that part of you, so I want you to speak from that part of yourself, when we think about the situation that you are in just now where he could go and see his friend tonight but the Detached Protector part of you is saying ''Why bother? You could do it another time!'' The part that's suggesting that you isolate as you have been doing recently – what does the Healthy Adult part of Stevie have to say about that?

Nothing apparently, for I begin to talk so much shit that barely a few seconds pass by before he butts in and I find myself back in the Detached Protector chair before I can believe it. Dr. Bacon seems to find this amusing.

Dr. Bacon – ''So when I asked you there.....to tune into that part of yourself, the Healthy Adult part of you, you seemed to go straight into the Detached Protector mode, and so what I'm interested in is what.....I'm interested in why you prevent, why this part of you that I'm speaking to now – Stevie's Detached Protector, why did you come in there when I was trying to speak to him, to that Healthy Adult part?''

Stevie - ''…..''

Dr. Bacon – ''Why did you try to keep me away from that part of him?''

Stevie – ''To continue existing......I suppose.''

Dr. Bacon – ''What does that mean?''

Stevie - ''…..Well....I've been in existence for thirty three.....thirty four years of his thirty nine......and I've done most of the talking for him in that time...''

Dr. Bacon – ''So you've been around Stevie's life for that long?''

It's clear now that I am being asked to play out the role – and only the role – of this Detached Protector (shouldn't be too difficult) and to try to acknowledge exactly what it is that I gain, or not, from spending so much of my time in this mode.

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Dr. Bacon – ''And what's your job in Stevie's life? All that time you've been with him – what is it that you've been doing for him?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''I've been helping him.''

Dr. Bacon – ''How have you been helping him?''

Stevie's Detached Protector - ''…..''

Dr. Bacon – ''What are you doing for this little boy in this seat?''

He's pointing over to the only seat in the room which hasn't been sat in at any point yet and the one I'm really hoping that I won't find myself in at any point in this session. The Vulnerable Child seat. I liked what he said earlier in the session about to feel vulnerable is to feel bad – and I don't want to be a bad boy this afternoon, I want to be good. To be good perhaps means to continue to keep up this pretence of not being vulnerable, of being strong. It's just a pretence though. I'm lying to myself.

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''You'd have to ask him, he created me.''

Fuck!! Why would I say that!? I pray that he will not take me up on my own advice and ask me to sit in that chair so that we can ask him but we're not interested in that at the moment – we're interested only in finding out what the purpose is in the Detached Protector.

Dr. Bacon – ''That's a really good Detached Protector right there.''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''Indeed.''

Dr. Bacon - ''I'm asking you because I'm hoping that since you're here to protect Little Stevie that you'll be able to see that I'm here to help Little Stevie too. That really we're all on the same side, and I want to understand, and I'm not going to ask you to do anything, and I hope that you can see that, but I haven't actually done anything to try to hurt him...''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''I think that you're always trying to hurt Little Stevie.''

Dr. Bacon – ''You think I'm always trying to hurt him?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''Yeah.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Well thank you for telling me that because that's really important. Why do you think I'm trying to hurt him?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''You just tried to hurt him there, to humiliate him, by asking him to play out some role of a character he has no idea about, the Healthy Adult. You tried to expose him and humiliate him. Asking him to act out something he has no idea about I felt to be quite cruel so I had to step in. I won't have him bullied.''

Dr. Bacon – ''I appreciate you looking after him in that way, but I want to be clear with you that my intention in doing that – so that might be different from what the effect was – but my intention wasn't to hurt, or humiliate Little Stevie, but was to try to bring out a part of him which I think is there but you perhaps try to convince him otherwise.....because you're afraid of that part of him a little bit. I think that you have to see that we're on the same page, that we're all here just to help that part of Stevie.......but I can't do that if you're always getting in the way.

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''How come Little Stevie doesn't ever tell me, the Detached Protector, that he'd like me to back off a little?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Are you sure that he doesn't? Are you listening?''

Stevie's Detached Protector - ''….''

Dr. Bacon – ''Are you listening for that? Or are you listening for what you want to hear?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''Maybe I should listen more closely from now on.''

Dr. Bacon – ''I think that would be a really important thing for you to do because I think we've both heard him talking, in these sessions, about things that he's unhappy with.''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''And one of them is me......''

Dr. Bacon – ''Things that you do sometimes, that he's unhappy with. Things that you do sometimes, that really hamper his life, hamper his quality of life, hamper his potential, what he could do.''

Stevie's Detached Protector - ''….''

Dr. Bacon – ''If you're there to help him then why's he so hurt still? Why is he still suffering so much?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''There are other modes.''

Dr. Bacon – ''You're right.''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''It's not just me.''

Dr. Bacon – ''No, you're right.....but I think that you're one of the strongest. I think that you hurt him as well.....by stopping people from getting too close to him, too close to anything real, stop him from feeling anything and taking any risks because of that. Where does that leave him?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''I let him take risks, I think?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Do you let him take enough? I think you can be very 'all or nothing' about things, which doesn't really give him room to grow.''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''I wouldn't be able to call myself a protector if I'm not going to come to him whenever he shouts.''

Dr. Bacon – ''I don't want you to get rid of him completely, there will be times in Stevie's life when he will need somebody like you, when it's a good thing to have you there, when it's a good thing to have a bit of Bully and Attack in there too, but if you keep doing what you're doing, if you keep things as they are, where is he going to be ten years from now?''

Just thinking about this fills me with a skin-crawling sensation, or more something I can feel in my bones. What would things be like indeed!? It's a horrible thought. I don't know if all of us feel the same way though. The Detached Protector part of me has been working hard at trying to isolate me over the last two or three weeks. It's been avoiding me visiting with Gillon and English Sara; it's been shortening the time I spend at Lindsay's each week; it's been trying to (and doing quite a good job actually) convince me that I enjoy spending large amounts of time alone. I've been falling for its charms too and have spent more time in the cave these last couple of weeks than at any other point in 2017. It's quite scary. Where will Little Stevie and all of these other parts of him be in ten years' time? I don't really want to think about it but thinking about it is the only way to show the Detached Protector that it doesn't actually do me as many favours as it thinks it does. We talk about the possibility of my Detached Protector allowing me to visit with Gillon, Sara, and not cutting my trip to Lindsay's short this weekend.

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Dr. Bacon – ''Would it be okay......for you to let me speak to Little Stevie for a while? Are you ready to let me do that yet?''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''I think that Little Stevie wants to go to Gillon's tonight, and to Sara's tomorrow, and to Lindsay's over the weekend.....''

Dr. Bacon – ''You did a good job there, like a good Detached Protector, of not letting me get close to him again. You're very good at what you do, you're good at doing your job, you're not letting me get close to him.''

Stevie's Detached Protector – ''He called me into action there.''

Dr. Bacon wants the Detached Protector part of me to think about anything else that he might be able to do or say that might help show that there is no threat to Little Stevie in this room. The fact that it isn't the cave, my natural habitat, is perhaps enough for things to not feel safe. Even in the cave there is a large amount of unsafe feelings and insecurity. There's nowhere safe to be and so Little Stevie remains protected, the Detached Protector part of me shutting this part of the conversation down. He points to the chart on the desk, to the vulnerable child part, Little Stevie.

Dr. Bacon – ''We all have this part of ourselves, this vulnerable child part. This is how we connect with other people, vulnerable part to vulnerable part. There's only so far that I or anyone else can get with you. Your whole purpose is to keep people away, to keep people from getting too close to him, but by getting close to him is the only way to have a relationship with him.''

Stevie's Detached Protector - ''….''

Dr. Bacon – ''I'm conscious of our time here today, so what I'd like to do is, if you feel able to, as a kind of demonstration I suppose if you like, a commitment to a path that we are going down here...''

Stevie's – ''I'm gonna have to sit in that chair!?''

I look across to the Vulnerable Child seat. It's been empty the whole session. It's a horrible thought. Sitting in there? After spending almost all of this session in the Detached Protector part of myself? I can't imagine it. I'm not ready for him to see me vulnerable. It would really progress things further but I can't do it.

Dr. Bacon – ''I think we could sit in either of these chairs, I don't want you to sit in that chair and to just finish up and not really give it much time, I'd like for when you move into that chair for it to be a bit more meaningful and for us to spend time with it. I wonder if moving into this chair – the Healthy Adult chair – might be something that would be a nice way to finish up, to show that this part of you, this Detached Protector part of you, is willing, in principal, we're not going to go into anything I'm just asking you to change seats before we finish up, that in principal can see the rationale and logic, because this part of you is very logical, can see the rationale and the logic, to taking a step back a little bit and to letting another part of you – and this part will look after all of these parts, all of the parts of Stevie, but in a healthier way...''

Stevie's – ''Yeah, we can finish up in that chair.''

I manage to do it and we begin to finish up. I have homework for between this session and our next, which will take place a fortnight from now on May 18th.

Dr. Bacon – ''So, there might be the odd occasion where Bully and Attack and Detached Protector are useful, but it's a measured way, where and when they're required, and remember that if you're in either of these modes then you're not going to have real connections.''

Stevie - ''…...''

Dr. Bacon – ''That's one of the problems that we're talking about here, that's at the core of Schema Therapy is unmet needs. That's why we think that people suffer. Because their needs go unmet. One of the things that this part of you, the Vulnerable Child part, needs is to feel safe, particularly to feel safe around other people.''

Stevie – ''It's struggling with that.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Yeah, but it's been struggling with that the whole time. It's been struggling with that for most of your life. That won't change overnight.''

Stevie – ''Is there supposed to be a 'no pain; no gain' kind of thing with this? Are they supposed to get harder?''

Dr. Bacon – ''Yeah, usually things have to get worse before they get better.''

Stevie - ''….''

Dr. Bacon – ''It's because you're facing up to a really tough situation. You're seeing things about yourself that you don't like.....and you're not just running away from it entirely – I know you've done a bit of running away...''

Stevie – ''I have.''

Dr. Bacon – ''But you haven't just quit therapy and given up. You've said that I'll do what I have to do, you've committed to this still. You know....''

He points to the Healthy Adult part of me on the diagram on the desk – the part of me that I refuse to acknowledge exists in any form.

Dr. Bacon - ''….I think there is a reasonable amount of this here.''

Stevie - ''….''

We look through my homework sheet. It's pretty much what I've been doing but with a little structure thrown in. I've to spot the activating event, what I was feeling during it, which modes were most prevalent during, the parts of my reaction that were justified, and the over-reaction – the part of my reaction that was too strong.

Stevie – ''These modes of mine don't always make things worse, depends what way you look at it. Long term pay-off perhaps isn't great, but....''

Dr. Bacon – ''You're right – people don't do things for no reason. That's what we've got to remember. The whole of psychology is based on that principal, that people don't get stuck in patterns of behaviour that don't work in some respect for no reason, there's always a short-term pay-off of some kind. It's just that the long-term consequence is what causes problems. That's one of the things that the Healthy Adult part of you will be interested in as well. What is the balance here between short-term benefits and long-term consequences?''

It would appear that connecting with other people is what we're working on here and that an essential part of that is my feeling safe when around people.

Dr. Bacon – ''And I'm interested in what are the different modes and patterns that come into play that prevent that from happening!?''

And then some hope:

Dr. Bacon – ''Because I think that once you can start to make this work for you, have your Healthy Adult come into play enough so that your needs can be met, then I think you'll start to feel better. That's the idea of Schema Therapy. Once your needs are met adequately.......you should be alright.''

Stevie - ''…..''

Dr. Bacon – ''What would you say were the main things you have taken from today?''

Stevie – ''I've been encouraged by the idea that there might already be some Healthy Adult in there. That was a surprise. That it's not a case of learning from scratch what it means to be an adult. I liked the idea also that connection-building is based on the two vulnerable parts of people connecting. It's quite scary but......well, two Detached Protectors aren't going to get along for very long. Or two Bully and Attacks.''

Dr. Bacon – ''Bully and Attack and a Vulnerable Child. I see quite a lot of those types of relationships. Or Detached Protector and a Vulnerable Child. We talk about this in terms of Schema Chemistry. You see it all the time. People drawn to modes.''

Stevie – ''Why would?......''

Dr. Bacon – ''You see it quite a bit actually. People who are quite emotionally fragile and spend lots of time in the Vulnerable Child Mode, people who don't have very strong Detached Protectors themselves, it could be quite nice, to have somebody who just gets the practical things done. And sometimes with a Bully and Attack it can be quite nice to see somebody bully and attack someone else....can make them feel protected, this is one of the things we see sometimes in domestic abuse situations, that this person is strong because look at how they are bullying and attacking that other person......but the problem is that they can turn it around on them.''

I wonder what fit we are, Lindsay and me. What our 'Schema Chemistry' is. It's actually quite frightening to think about at the moment when my confidence and sense of self is taking a battering like it has been since my birthday week. We could literally be any combination right now but whatever it is it doesn't feel as though it's working too well at the moment. I'm glad that the next session is in a fortnight's time. That three week spell was a little on the long side. It's starting to feel as though my Detached Protector loves the sessions as he gets to hide in there, escape the rest of the world, but this isn't a case of me avoiding living out there by hiding in here. Dr. Bacon started off all this mode-driven stuff to begin with and so it's with him only that I'll be able to get through it.

Lots of good stuff today. It was suggested to me that I already have a partly functioning healthy adult somewhere within my psyche; I spent some time really noticing that the Detached Protector part of me, perhaps my strongest mode, does very little to help the healthy parts of me. It was explained to me that good human connections are based on the two vulnerable parts of either party connecting first and so as long as I am in either of my two (pretty evolved and efficient) coping modes then I can never connect with other people. It's also been suggested to me that once I start to work this Schema Therapy in ways that benefit me then I should start to feel much better.
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Stevie

Thanks for reading.

4155

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, May 08th 2017 (Ninety Days Smoke Free)


How easy was that!? Totally fucking easy – that's how easy! There's been no withdrawal of any kind. As a former thirty roll-ups per day smoker I have now, by the end of today, saved myself from inhaling two thousand and seven hundred cigarettes at an estimated cost of around five hundred quid. Five hundred bucks!! Wow!! That really is something. But I'm not going to bang on about it as the actual quitting of the cigarettes is nothing special. I'm not going to act as if I deserve some kind of medal or something for quitting – more I deserve a slap for the thousands of days I was a smoker. Let me outnumber them with smoke free days before I think about medals.

Lindsay and I are struggling. There's no doubt about it. Maybe there's too much pressure with all of the therapy and whatnot that's going on. Normally I am at hers over the weekends but last weekend was a little shorter and this weekend even shorter still with me not actually staying over for a single night. I think that since my birthday my Detached Protector has been in full control and it's pretty much dictated things ever since, even after all that stuff I spoke about with Dr. Bacon last week. I'd rather be isolating than being with people. I managed to get myself to English Sara's on Friday evening but left before too long. On Saturday I finished up at the ACA meeting and then was due to be with Lindsay but couldn't be bothered. I boarded the bus set for home but as it was passing through Lindsay's neighbourhood decided at the last minute to get off and go and see her like we had arranged. As soon as I arrived I knew I'd made a mistake though and that I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be in my cave. Isolating. Lindsay picked up on this and we argued for a bit, ending with me leaving to get the same bus I could have been on anyway only the one three hours later. I don't know what's going on now. The time I spend with her from week to week has been decreasing gradually. I think we're struggling now.

I guess we've always been struggling, ever since the beginning. Come to think of it - how could we not be struggling? The extent to which I have been damaged throughout my life is only just becoming clear to me now through my sessions with Dr. Bacon and it's in quite a frightening situation I find myself to be. I've kind of been here before. When I went through my Step Five with my AA sponsor Stu I discovered the exact nature of my wrongs, or was supposed to have, as the program tells me. I discovered the exact nature of my wrongs in terms of some behaviours I had followed in the past, sure, but I didn't actually learn much about myself in the process. AA is quite sure of itself when it says that its program will help you to get to know yourself but that hasn't been my experience at all. But when I went through my Fifth Step there was this sort of hangover that followed me around for a while afterwards, like a huge fear and negativity in everything I thought or tried to do. I focused only on the negative about myself. This has been the case with therapy as well. I'm feeling as though I am emotionally struggling more now than I have been at any point throughout my journey since the Fifth Step work I did with my old sponsor, way back in the summer of 2015, nearly two years ago now.

I'm struggling more now with my sense of self than I have been at perhaps any time since back then too. At least after Step Five I had something to look forward to. I would soon get to see what there really was to this guy – what Stevie lay behind all of these defects that would soon be getting removed. And I did get to find out too – another bunch of bloody defects is what's there, that's what!! And so my sense of self is confused once again. Why did I have to go and have that fucking birthday??? Things always get a little tougher for me during the last week of April and the beginning of May.

If I allow myself to think about it then I could see how I could seriously save face by just forgetting all about this Lindsay thing and moving on, carrying on with my solo journey without her. My Detached Protector would love that. It would think that it's protecting the young and vulnerable Stevie from any future upset. I could look back on our time together as being nothing more than a complete disaster, in many ways just as big a disaster as all of my previous relationships with women. I could start thinking along the lines that I am just not the sort of guy who is supposed to be with someone. That I am one of those lone wolf types. Perhaps relationships just bring too much in the way of complications to life to make them worthwhile. My Healthy Adult not anywhere remotely close to being able to come out during these times and run the show instead leaving nothing but my defensive modes to do so which inevitably ends in disaster. But I'm going to try not to think along those lines. I've been given the potential here for an out. She'd likely think me an over-reactor or perhaps even pathetic, but should I take this out I have been given?

One of the things she said before I left was that relationships are supposed to be a two-way street, an equal partnership, but that this is not the case with me. That she offers me so much emotionally yet gets little to nothing I return. I can see a little more clearly now the ways in which my Detached Protector and Bully and Attack modes have had a field day with Lindsay. They've been terrified of her at times and have almost completely shielded the young and vulnerable me, Little Stevie, away from her altogether. I should get some of this written down onto my homework sheet. I've heard this a lot throughout my life: that I offer up so very little of the real me, that I am a closed book. So often that I'm sick of hearing it. I think that I am in the right place in terms of mental space to begin working on these schema modes, and that Dr. Bacon is the right man to be helping me work with them to find out behaviour patterns that work best.

Whether this happens quickly enough to save Lindsay and I only time will tell. But it will happen. I have a strong feeling about that.

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Eager to get on with his next session. A week on Thursday can't come quickly enough.

1205

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, May 09th 2017 (Day Eighty Seven)


This is day eighty seven away from the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and so I am scheduled to return this coming Saturday. We'll see. The Fife Convention is not the weekend I had predicted and is actually the Saturday of the following week, May 27th. One of Lindsay's friends is getting married that same day and so I don't know what's happening there, don't know what's happening with much to be honest. I know that she has plenty to wear and has ordered a new dress for the occasion. I'm thinking that I will probably need to shop for something also. For my brother's wedding I rented a kilt, a man-dress. That won't be happening for someone I don't even know though. Like I said _ I don't really know about much at the moment. All I know is that I am onto the next college project and we're doing a remix.

I've been reading through that book that ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) loaned me. It's called ''I Got Tired Of Pretending'' and it's about how an adult raised in an alcoholic/dysfunctional family finds freedom. Then I stop. It isn't actually about this at all. The same problems can be found in this book as can be found in any AA meeting or ACA meeting. They tell you what it was like and what it's like now but mostly tell you sweet fuck all about what happened for them to manage to make this change. It's really disappointing. The book has a few more examples than the meetings though so there are at least one or two little insights and pointers to be taken from spending time with it.

Let's back up a little to Sunday. For the first time in a fair few weeks, certainly I think the first time in 2017, I wake on a Sunday morning in the cave and not in Lindsay's bed. This is okay though. To be honest I could do with a little break. It's not that I have anything against Lindsay – it's just that with the way we've been this last week and with her having her final university exam this coming Friday (not to mention how acute my senses are in terms of noticing my schema modes in the Detached Protector and Bully and Attack and how much they are constantly fucking with me) I think that spending a week away is just about the right thing to be doing. This leaves me with a full Sunday with nothing planned. I suddenly get that anxious feeling I used to when I had time to do things but no things to be doing. All of a sudden in these situations time can become an enemy, something I'd rather not have any of.

I head down the town centre for some lunch after having a bath and so on. I'm still awaiting a hair cut but can't find a barber that is open on this – the God of other people's understanding's day of rest. I grab a filled roll from a rip-off bakery and sit outside in the sunshine for a while. A guy that works in the Charity Shop Cafe on Friday's in the kitchen walks past and we end up chatting. I offer to buy him a pint and we head to the local Wetherspoon. I used to eat and sit writing and posting in this very pub a few times a week last year while I was trying to get better and awaiting the start of the college course. I haven't been in much since starting college but nothing has changed. I get the round in: a pint of Tennant's for my colleague (two pounds and forty pence) and myself a large latte (one pound and twenty five pence). We get chatting, the situation and atmosphere allowing us to go places previously untouched. This time it is more than the latest football scores, although that does come up (his team Rangers coming from one down to win two – one against Partick Thistle and my team Raith Rovers winning against Ayr United but seeing other results go against us so finishing ninth meaning a play-off to stay in the division. Another season where our decline is evident).

I left my phone in the cave deliberately as I wanted to be in control on this sunny day. When I have a phone on me I am not in control of who I speak with and how I feel. Phones dictate things – they have a sort of power over us that we just should not allow them to have. My phone sits at home while I am out and about from ten in the morning until just after nine in the evening. That's more time than some people have ever been away from their phones. After our drinks are finished I survey my change. I can afford another round. My colleague doesn't have cash on him. He's on the dole and doesn't get paid until Tuesday so I'll do the buying. One more won't kill me. I get another round in.

Next I make a trip to see Gillon. Dr. Bacon had said on Thursday that he was going to leave the decision of whether I should go there after our session to my Healthy Adult mode but in the end my Detached Protector won and I went straight back to the cave and stayed there all evening, not surfacing until I had to work at the Charity Shop Cafe the following morning. Here I am though, on this warm and pleasant Sunday afternoon, sitting out in Gillon's garden drinking coffee and watching him smoke.

I finish off this rather sociable day with a trip to English Sara's. This is my second visit there in three evenings. I was conscious of my homework this entire day. Dr. Bacon gave me more structured homework this time but basically the same thing as before in asking me to really look out for and try to notice when either of my defensive coping modes come into play. I am to focus on patterns of behaviour that do not serve me well, that do not work. When the Detached Protector mode starts snooping around and speaking for me I am to try hard to acknowledge all of the ways in which allowing it to does not work in terms of getting these psychological needs of mine met.

I have to say that the entire day I have nothing to report in terms of negative mode-driven behaviour. I guess that while at Wetherspoon in the morning; Gillon's in the afternoon; and English Sara's in the evening – I guess these are all places in which I feel safe and so there is no need for my coping modes to show face. I wonder where they dwell when I do not need them and so don't summon them. They perhaps just lay around in the limbo of my psyche waiting for the call.

Right, I feel like I could write for an hour here but I'm going to leave it there.
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Stevie

Having a really sociable Sunday.

1209

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, May 10th 2017 (The Jazz Trio)


All this writing behind really screws things up. Because it takes so long to type out the sessions with Dr. Bacon I used them as my posts for the weekend. This has left me a little short in terms of what's been going on. I have little to do at the moment though and so I can relax and do some writing. I don't know how or when or why daily writing became the part of my life that it has done but it is both a privilege and a pain in the ass if I'm being honest. It definitely has its good points but it also takes a bit of time and is often awkward trying to fit it into each and every day that passes by. It's a little challenge though and to be honest it starts to creep me out if I don't do it. I don't know what would happen if I was to lose my arms in an accident or something and wasn't able to type. Better not even go there actually. Moving on......

I think that today has been another Detached Protector run day. That's the part of me that's been most prominent throughout this last twenty four hours. I avoided getting my hair cut this morning for the simple reason that there were too many people in each of the barbers I passed for my Detached Protector's liking. He also tempted me away from the college this afternoon. There is a jazz trio of drums, double bass, and keyboards, in the college this week doing some recording and the lecturer had me in on Monday morning helping get them set up. My Detached Protector stepped in this time as well. He's been stepping in more and more since I started working with Dr. Bacon and became aware of this coping mode's existence. There's never an ideal time for this to start happening but I felt a little nervous in the studio and started forgetting things I know. I did what was asked of me but I fumbled around more than I might have done. For some reason my confidence didn't come into the studio with me. It's frustrating as I feel as though my attitude and workflow in situations like this is more important in terms of getting work after this than the projects and paperwork in the classrooms is. I was supposed to help out today but didn't. This Detached Protector is really starting to fuck with me and my future. I keep thinking of what Dr. Bacon said: Keep this up and where will Little Stevie be in ten years? It's a frightening thought.

I'm on my way to Lindsay's town just now (on the Loser's Bus as usual) but had to fight off the desire to be alone for another evening. Lindsay is going to want to talk and stuff – things I can't be arsed with at the moment. I realise the importance of not letting my Detached Protector define me but he's certainly been out and about, allowed to run free today, stepping in and stopping Little Stevie from getting on with his day. Yesterday I noticed the Healthy Adult part of me keep him on a tighter watch and as a result I went out and did the things I set out to. I was at the college all day and then attended the meeting about working together as a community to improve the lives of people living in the area. This is a similar project to the Starter for Ten project I was involved in last year but seems to have a greater scope. There are more volunteers and staff involved. It's the turn out from the punters that is the main concern, but then to be fair this was hardly well advertised. I noticed it when I was at the Charity Shop Cafe.

I can see how my recovery is starting to take shape by looking all around me. We are to answer questions regarding our community and specific parts of it. I listen carefully to what my peers and neighbours have to say about the area they live. The reason I am saying that I can see how my recovery is beginning to take shape is because I can hear a lot of the old me in these guys as they moan and groan about absolutely everything. One guy even voted every single category the lowest score possible. Blame blame blame. The council should be doing this and that and more and all the rest. If some of these guys had their way then the council would pretty much do everything from dressing their kids in the mornings to taking them to school to you name it. Desperation is dripping from the ceiling of the rooms.

I guess that this is the damage that the documentary has caused. Damn BBC! They made a three part miniseries last year about life in this county and it was screened back in December. They made us look (or rather WE made ourselves look utterly pathetic and pretty much incapable of doing anything for ourselves and the BBC totally miked it for viewing figures) like complete morons. We all laughed and joked about it at the time though, all excited about seeing ourselves on the television so we were, but now this feeling that it is okay for us to be pathetic – indeed to be pathetic but not even know that we are pathetic – is dominating and the staff involved in this project are going to have a difficult time in sorting out what to do with any funding that we do manage to secure. I've put my name down so I'll be at the next meeting tomorrow afternoon. I don't know what can be done to help people within this community see that we are perhaps not as helpless and pathetic as we seem to believe that we are. I think that only by helping people to see this can any real changes happen around here.

I was speaking with Gillon at the college the other day. Yesterday morning, it would have been. There wasn't much going on in the classrooms and so I went for a seat and a coffee with him. I haven't spoken much with him this year but here we are chatting away twice in the space of three days. I did say that my Healthy Adult schema mode was coming out to play a little more yesterday than he has done today and I guess things like this are testament to that. When I'm feeling good perhaps it means that this mode is in action. When I feel negative and defeatist then perhaps this means that one or more of my coping modes are in action. It's maybe as simple as that. But anyway – I'm chatting with Gillon and he's talking about life in general but pushing it a little bit, trying to get a little deeper. Then he mentions that thing that almost all of us alcoholics and drug addicts know well, especially when we are new to the recovery world. He mentions that emptiness inside.

When I joined Alcoholics Anonymous there were some who would talk about this emptiness. My old sponsor used to mention it all the time. He would say that most of us go out into the world trying to fill this emptiness in any way that we can. First we try to do as our society has told us we do this and we seek out love, look hard for money, and try to attain approval from others, specifically strangers, to validate us. This is a short term fix. The feeling of emptiness then comes back. So we go out and try to make more money and attain a greater level of approval and (what we believe to be) respect and admiration from the strangers who make up the communities we live in. This works only as well as it did before. The emptiness inevitably returns.

Gillon is doing well on paper. He is studying for his diploma in renewable energies and has a guaranteed university place for next year. His mum is helping him to buy his house from the council and he's to pay her back so he'll be on the property ladder. He has a healthy son and daughter. Both he and his girlfriend are doing well. When I left on Sunday I put my empty drinks can into his outside bin and noticed it full of empty Frosty Jack's cider bottles. His partner is still drinking every night. Now he is talking to me about an emptiness that he has not found a way to fill.

Stu would always tell me that this emptiness will never be filled with external stuff. I suppose he's right. Just look at anyone who works in business. Every year they strive for more. They can never have enough. The emptiness is always there. Stu told me that it's an inside job. That we can only fill this emptiness by working some kind of program or spiritual system into our lives and this must be done on a daily basis. We can help get rid of it by completely restructuring our thinking. We should try to forget ourselves every now and then by helping others. I think he's right to an extent. I just think that the feeling of empty is supposed to be there. We're supposed to feel it so that we are motivated to better ourselves or better our situation. I think that with Stu's method we can perhaps be slightly guilty of not paying attention to our natural thoughts and desires which is basically running away from our feelings. Was that not what I read in that book and mentioned here the other day!?

The bottom line is that I cannot see Gillon meditating. He just doesn't seem the type. This is not to say that he never will, I just don't see him getting rid of his current feelings of emptiness by this method. Maybe it's his mind telling him that he's on the wrong path. He's possibly supposed to feel this so that he can change paths and head in another direction. It's not as if the emptiness he's experiencing just now is killing him. I think it's just a little uncomfortable. But uncomfortable enough to feel it worth mentioning to me in any case.

There is more I could scribble down but I'm nearly at my stop.

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Stevie

Take care.......

1778

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, May 11th 2017 (What's The Score?)


In terms of the soccer match between myself and not going to AA, that is. That's been eighty nine days just about (or will be by the end of this evening) and so that means eighty nine minutes of the ninety have passed. We're still tied at one goal a piece. Should there be a winner? Should one of us score again and claim the match? Or would it be fair to call it a draw and both sides just play out the last couple of minutes to a tie?

I think it would probably be the respectful thing to do to just hand AA another goal. Let them win this match. Score at the death so I have no time to recover and strike back. After all – many of the reasons I have been able to stay away from the meetings for three months without even the slightest temptation to drink, take drugs, or smoke is down to the lessons I learned in those rooms and with my sponsor and AA readings. Maybe I should concede that this has been a challenge that was pointless. What was the need? Why stay away from the meetings for ninety days?

But then I remember why. I am still quite clear on this. My reasons for leaving are two-fold. I had to show myself that I could do it but also I was becoming very sick to death of it. The same things were being said by the same people ever single meeting I went to. There was very seldom anything that was said that I might consider insightful or helpful, mostly it was just people talking about their pasts, so it had become incredibly stale as well. The fun and excitement has long since left. Now I have managed to get used to not being in meetings I can go if and when I feel like it. Just think about Sunday. I managed to have a great day by going to the pub in the morning with a charity shop colleague; visiting Gillon and family in the afternoon; and then Dennis and English Sara in the evening. Great stuff and very Healthy Adult. Or I could have gone to a meeting. I have proved to myself by taking this holiday that I am capable of finding other things to do. I didn't obsess about not being in AA – I just got on with it.

In saying that – the number of times I have mentioned the fellowship in this journal during the time I have been away must be in the hundreds, at least the dozens. It has been a fantastic source of information and friendship, unity, if you like, AA, and without it I would have had a hard time in getting sober. I just can't have seen it being doable. The thing is – I don't feel in any rush to go back. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if I just tried to keep this run going, see how many days I can build without entering an AA room. There are people I'd like to see once more but I fear that nothing will be any different. The same people will say the exact same things – in some cases word for word as if they've been saying it for years, maybe even decades – and it will be as if I never left. That's the big fear I think.

There's a real lack of people my age. What I feel tends to happen is that people arrive in need of help and batter the meetings in, in cases such as my own they go every day for months. Then they get a little bit better and go back into the real world, only visiting the rooms once in a while to keep their feet in the door. Years later, when they retire and have little else to do and don't have the workplace to feed their need for a sense of belonging, they return to the meetings under the disguise of helping others and giving back and attend on a basis so frequent that some might deem it obsessive. As it's been so long since they were new to the rooms, worked with a sponsor, and did any work on their personal development, and added to this that sense of knowing it all that retired and elderly seem to possess, you have someone who will bring only his opinions into the rooms. This is what the majority of rooms are made up of: new people and very old retired people. You also have those who only ever seem to turn up when there's some drama going on in their personal lives but for the most part it's young blood in for a brief spell Vs. retired elderly.

I wonder what mode it is that is writing this post. It could easily be my Bully and Attack but I don't think it seems this way as I'm writing. I don't feel any bitterness towards those I may be writing about but I am beginning to get the sense that others would judge me as bullying and attacking by what I write. Maybe this is when I know I'm getting better – when I somehow start to know that my modes are coming to the fore even when it doesn't feel as though they are.

Lindsay asked me a couple of times last night what was wrong. Nothing is wrong. It's just that I have to think so carefully now about what I might say that I have began to not have the time to say it. Trying not to offend anyone can be difficult. I notice how defensive I am when with Lindsay now. Not just her but I am starting to see how all of this working on the schema modes has alerted my Detached Protector so much that it is running the whole show now, maybe always has been, but it's really in control now. Apart from Sunday there. It seemed to stay in bed on Sunday and I had quite a sociable day. Since then I have retreated back into myself, never sure if what I might say has any place and so remaining quiet. I did this at ACA last week as well. I didn't contribute. I have been given chair duties for the next four weeks and so this means I can do the same. I can use the cover of chairing the meeting to save from contributing myself. If I know that I am not expected to speak then the stress is taken out of the situation.

I can't see me saying anything at the AA meeting either when I drag myself there kicking and screaming on Saturday night. I think that the only place I really feel safe in speaking is at my psychology session every second Thursday. I am really looking forward to my long walks this coming weekend. Hours on end I will be outdoors and won't have to worry about the pressure of saying the wrong thing the whole time. My Detached Protector will enjoy this but I also feel that all this walking for this goal is something that only a Healthy Adult would do. All this walking is perhaps letting these two modes get to know each other better and to find some common ground.

Anyway – I'll be at the college soon so I'm gonna get going.

I like the college. The fact that we work with headphones on all the time means that I never have to worry about what I may or may not have to say.

Which my Detached Protector loves.

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Stevie

Gonna just keep his mouth shut again today.

1306

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, May 12th 2017 (Lindsay's Congratulations Card)



Another trip on the Loser's Bus must mean that I'm on my way to Lindsay's town for the weekend. I'll be taking trips to many towns over the course of the weekend but not while sitting in buses like this one unfortunately. No – the walking schedule is getting to its extreme sections this weekend and next before it chills out a little for a week and then we have the full fifty miles just four weeks from now. This weekend and next see me with some challenging walks to look forward to.

Lindsay had her exam this morning. That's the last piece of university work she'll ever have to do. Now she has three months worth of placement hours to catch up on and everything will be done and dusted. With a job ready and waiting on her she'll no longer be a student nurse. The whole time I was at the Charity Shop Cafe this morning she was sat with pen in hand. Yikes! A pretty long exam then. It's over now though.

She was supposed to be heading out with the girls from the class after the exam but this didn't seem to happen. Because of Lindsay's mental health issues she is allocated more time for her assessments and with everyone starting together by the time she was finished the others had left. I don't think she was all that fussy but I do feel as though she senses she's missed out on something. Lindsay is well liked in AA and people seem to like her when they meet her but with regards to the other students in her university class she appears to be something of an outsider. It could be that the others have known each other for longer and so she's the new girl. She started with a different group. When Lindsay last picked up a drink she suffered a brain haemorrhage which meant she ended up taking a year out. The others in her original class sat their final exams last year. Lindsay joined the third year group late, the year that was originally a year behind her.

I wonder if there might be something else though. I wonder if social media is perhaps biting her on the ass a little bit more than she might see. Lindsay is one of these people who posts quotes about positive mental health and all the rest of it. These seem sweet enough but people suss things out. My mother asked about Lindsay when we were out for lunch the other day. She managed to guess by reading the types of quotes that she puts up for others to read that she may have come from a background similar to my own. Sometimes I think she posts a little too much. She posts quite honestly.

I don't think that this is the correct way to play the social media game to be honest. Those I know who seem to be most successful at having online lives are those who post the most superficial things – the ones who lie! The ones who post frequently and pointlessly. I think that it's a very sad but true case of us liking those we don't really know and afraid of those we do know. I think about my own experiences on the first forum I started journaling. The website WQD which has since been closed down. The most popular people on that forum seemed also to be those who were best at keeping their true selves guarded yet frequently feeding the rest of us little bones of balonie. Those of us, like myself, who weren't afraid to (or weren't afraid enough to stop) tell others all about ourselves and not just highlighting the things about us that we think made us worthy of love. Thinking back to that forum after being away from it and its members for over four months now and I have to say that there were some extremely sick people visited that forum. I'm actually wondering if I ''met'' anyone on that site that I would consider healthy. The bottom line though is that I was not well liked at all on that forum, not because I'm a complete asshole or anything (debatable in some circles) but because reading me was like living with me – I couldn't hide my faults like all the others prided themselves on being able to do.

It isn't as busy here (whichever you might be reading on: Ryver or My Way Out) and anyway I take very little interest in anything anyone else writes on these things anymore. I don't actually like the recovery world all that much. It does wonderful things, I believe, but I think that the biggest egos I have ever met have been in this world of those who no longer drink or take drugs. I wonder if Lindsay would post a little more often and post shite that only makes her look good and popular and funny and so on if she would have been out with the university girls this afternoon. Either way I think that they'll probably still be out and are bound to be steaming drunk by now so I don't think that she would have still been out and about.

Today is my ninetieth full day away from the rooms of AA. When it reaches morning I'll be on day ninety one but since I'm gonna force myself there tomorrow night then ninety is as far as I'll get. That's thirteen weeks. Thirteen Saturday nights and Tuesday evenings I've missed out on. Actually – in the whole time I've been writing and posting on the My Way Out forum I have never been to an AA meeting. It is quite a long time. But then nothing lasts a long time really. In five years I might look back on this time in my life and in the grand scheme of things the ninety days will seem like nothing, just a little experiment, which is all it really has been. The more time that passes the smaller this experiment will become. It's been extremely worthwhile though. I've managed to regroup and think about things not related to drinking. I've managed to become able to see my drinking as just a symptom of a much bigger problem (which I always have been able to see I think but now I really can see that this is the case which kinda puts AA's entire philosophy into question for me) and I now have other tools to help with this.

I guess that this means AA now serves a different purpose for me now than it did when I first joined back in February of 2015. Quite what this will be will be interesting to discover and I presume this will begin tomorrow night when I make my way there. Lindsay is off out with friends and so I'll be heading there myself. I already have it totally fixed in my mind that I won't be sharing anything at all. I'll just say that I'm glad to be there and glad to be sober. I'll talk to people out in the smoking area at half time (but not while smoking a cigarette myself this time) but will be a closed book when in the actual meeting. This is perhaps a very defensive (and some might say Detached Protector-ish) way of looking at things – why not just wait and see how I feel at the time? Why decide now not to speak? It doesn't make any sense!! - but I think that there is a sense of wanting to protect myself from some members of the fellowship.

Some will not want to hear that I have managed to stay sober for ninety days without AA. They might actually get a little hostile about it as they certainly did when I mentioned that I was thinking about trying it. I can't think of a better word to describe how a few of the were that afternoon than hostile. It's the most fitting word I can think of. So much for unity. I don't know why they weren't in support of someone in their ranks feeling as though the time had come where they felt strong enough to leave home and try it on their own in the big, bad world. It's not just that though, this fear of hostility from those who want to know nothing of someone managing without the fellowship for a while, that is going to keep me quiet tomorrow night when I force myself to return to its rooms. It's more the case of me just not talking as much now anyway.

Lindsay had asked me if everything was okay the other night as I was pretty quiet. At college yesterday, Shaun asked me if I was okay as I was quieter than usual. This morning Sandra said a similar thing at the Charity Shop Cafe. I'm quieting down drastically. There is a lot of negativity goes on in my head. Even people very new to my musings will have already sussed that out. It's okay to write about it all here though. I can't afford to let it out when I'm in the real world though. So much for not being afraid of my faults. Now I am so afraid that people are noticing very quickly a difference in me. Over time this will serve me well though. It might not mean that my Healthy Adult is active but it keeps the Bully and Attack at bay.

It's more likely a case of my Detached Protector branching out. Since my last session with my clinical psychologist my Detached Protector knows that it is hampering the quality of Little Stevie's life by talking for him all the time and keeping him isolated indoors. This way he is allowing me to venture outside still but, rather than speaking for me, is simply silencing me.

But it feels better. It feels like the days are a lot less hassle when I don't have to worry about talking or saying much.

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Stevie

Has Lindsay's Congratulations card in his bag.

1709

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, May 13th 2017 (2-1)


I woke with the alarm at half past five this morning and checked outside. The weather forecast has got it right. It's pissing down with rain. To be fair it's been a while. Either way I've used this as excuse enough not to go on my long walk this morning. Now I wonder if I'll actually be able to complete this mammoth fifty mile walk in four weeks. Lindsay says that I'm just being negative but I know my body and at the moment I don't think I'd have a hope in hell of finishing this double marathon walk. I get to around twenty five – thirty miles and I begin to cramp up and limp. I can't see me managing to limp my way through twenty miles. I'm not keeping to the training plan and so I can expect problems when the time comes. Can't say I'm looking forward to it all that much.

Lindsay is out tonight so I'm home alone. I was out at my first AA meeting for three months earlier and will be heading out later to meet Lindsay and then walk her up the road. Her friend from university is getting married in two weeks and we'll be at the wedding but only she could attend this evening, it being a party for the bride and all that, and I don't know the groom so I had to make do with the Saturday evening meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Out of respect for the fellowship and the help it has given me I decided last night that I would give it the win in my little football match I was having with it. Last night was the end of the ninetieth day away from the rooms and so the ninetieth minute of our contest and I decided that AA should score. It was out of respect for AA that I decided to do this. It was out of respect for myself that I decided to leave the meeting at half time this evening.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here: it was fucking dreadful!! I hadn't given much thought as to who might be taking to the top table when I returned but it ends up being a complete bore. Two old guys who I'm sure if you asked them to answer honestly would tell you that they only attend for the social aspect of the fellowship and the fact there's little else for them to do at home. This is okay, there's nothing wrong with wanting to get out on the weekend, but it makes for a total and utter sham of a top table. The share was muddled and all over the place. He used almost every cliché in the AA book (but none of them can actually be found in our Book) and offered nothing of how he managed to stay sober. He told us plenty about what he used to be like and what he's like now, sure, but he missed out anything to do with how he managed to get there and so doesn't talk of recovery at all.

Another thing he does is lie. We all want respect. I get that. But in the recovery world there is this tendency to make our personal stories out to be much worse than they actually were. We dramatically exaggerate our drinking histories so that we look more impressive now that we have recovered. Our sharer tells us how, when he got into AA, he had no house, no job, no wife and no children, he had ''nothing'' so he says. He then slips out that he's celebrating forty years of marriage later this year and he's just turned thirty eight years of sobriety. So was he married or not? Where's the fucking consistency? Is he lying to make it seem as if he is more impressive, that he endured more, that he deserves an extra big medal? It's pretty lame.

I can't do it. I just cannot stick around to listen to the others in the room throughout the second half. It's too painful. I'm actually seeing this meeting in a very different light from before. Everyone here appears sicker than I remember them being. Young Nicola is sitting next to me and she's all chat. ''I haven't seen you for ages'', and all that (which a few people do say to be fair to them) and then the meeting starts and I am sure as I am listening to our old man jumping back and forward as he talks about nothing but the distant past from the top table I am certain, absolutely certain, that I can smell alcohol on her breath.

There's a desperate sadness about this room for me just now. This was the room where Lindsay and I really got to know each other. It's the room I brought in the new year. I was here on Christmas Eve too. It holds some decent memories for me. But now there is something different about it. I walk back to Lindsay's feeling pretty terrible. What is the cause of this? Do I feel bad about myself being so judgemental that I can't sit in a room for ninety minutes and listen to people talk about the distant past and recite cliches? Perhaps. Maybe I'm sad at the thought of not fitting in there anymore. This would mean I am doomed – if I can't even find a place to belong in the rooms with a bunch of sick people.

I must try to remember that this is not the only meeting in my area. In saying that – I don't want to get caught up in trying to find a meeting I can belong to, that will consistently offer me something, I have been there before and it only ends up in tears. It's possible that I've just outgrown the fellowship. At ACA this afternoon we were discussing how this is the next phase of our recovery. AA is the very first phase – the stopping of the drinking. Then we have our Twelve Steps with which to take it to the second phase. After this we then get serious about our recovery and seek help from doctors and psychologists – really try to sort out the problems in our lives. Seems that I am doing things in the right way then, it's just that it's not happening as quickly as I'd like. By going back to AA, especially a meeting that does not ever talk about the program or Steps or anything, is perhaps me going backwards. This is possibly why I don't find much there anymore.

I was really disappointed this evening. I actually wish I'd never gone.

I would have liked to have remembered AA as I remembered it before.

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Stevie

Not really sure on his involvement in AA now......

1162

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, May 14th 2017 (The Weigh-In After the AA Meeting the Night Before)


It was an interesting weekend for football. My own team, Raith Rovers, was relegated to the third tier of Scottish football last night after a dramatic draw and resulting penalty shoot-out. This kinda sucks but it's sometimes a good thing to go down. We can regroup and try to win it next season, get back to where we've just come from but with a trophy. It's not ideal but it's progress. The natural world forces progress, whether good or bad, on us whether we like it or not, and so even a season that has seen us lose our place in the second tier is progress, although I doubt that many of the die-hard Rovers fans will see it that way this morning. Tottenham played their last ever match at White Hart Lane this afternoon before they move to their new ground for next season.

All this talk of football? I guess I'm just trying to distract myself, trying to find some way of coping with that incredible disappointment that was last night's AA meeting. My big return after ninety days away ended up being very regrettable. I didn't have much time to ponder over it last night as I'd arranged to walk down to meet Lindsay at her friend's house but ended up staying for ninety minutes before we got a taxi up the road. One of her pals is getting married in a fortnight and this was her Hen Night. There were nine women all drunk as skunks (except for Lindsay of course, herself being an AA member) in one small space and I was caught amongst it.

It's fun at first but after a while I can feel a headache coming on. There were a couple of times when I was sitting quietly, just watching and listening to the sound of the room, and I have to say that I found it quite remarkable that only a few women could manage to create such a racket using only their mouths. The alcohol was helping, I'm sure. I didn't find being there stressful at all, besides the coming slow-burning headache, but I mean that the temptation to drink was never an issue. To be honest I have to sometimes remind myself that I'm supposed to be thinking about drinking when I'm in situations like this. That not drinking is supposed to be some kind of big deal for me, that I'm supposed to spend time trying to freak out about not drinking.

I'm standing on the scales this morning and looking at my weight in preparation for this week's Slimming World weigh-in. I have to try to reach target as soon as possible so that I don't have to pay for these classes any longer but over the last two weekends I have done nothing which suggests that this is the case and that it's up for grabs. I haven't been following the diet plan at all and last night Lindsay and I had pizza for dinner and then I ate loads of crap at the party last night. This has been what my diet has been like for the most part these last two weeks. I've also not been walking like I should have been. We're getting to the part of the training plan for the coming Walk The Walk fundraiser where I need to be taking it seriously yet I seem to have stopped training altogether. I haven't been on a deliberate, long walk since that big thirty mile one I did two Saturdays ago. This isn't good enough.

So it is with some trepidation that I step onto the scales this morning and then again this evening just to check and make sure of what I'm seeing. Both times I've weighed myself today I have been under my target weight. This surely can't make sense. Perhaps our scales are running out of battery power and so the readings are inaccurate but there is a possibility that this is the true weight I am. I've been losing even while not paying attention to watch what I'm eating and while reducing exercise. This is fine, I'm not bothered by that at the moment, but the plan here was never to wither away to nothing – it was to establish healthy eating habits and make sure that I didn't put on any weight when I quit smoking. I've done these so now it's time, assuming I am at my target when I am weighed tomorrow, to keep my weight stable – to make sure that I don't lose any more. At the moment (again – assuming that the scales at Lindsay's flat are accurate) I weigh nearly twelve pounds less than I did when I stubbed my last cigarette.

I'm been thinking on and off about the disaster that was last night's meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous. It was, like I said last night, terrible. I have to find a way to make this easier on me. I think that I'm going to play a little game. I'm going to look and listen for only the good things said in meetings from now on. I'm going to then try to write in this journal the three best and most insightful things I hear at each and every meeting I have go to from now on. The only catch is that I am not allowed to repeat the same thing. This means that something said last night that I'll write down in a second can never be written again. This does set it up for me to find it more difficult as time goes by to find good things but it also means that I have to listen harder to find them.

The three things I will mention from last night are all AA cliches. For some people I think it they are the only pieces of recovery advice and experience they have to offer.

1) Stay away from the first drink.
2) Get to as many meetings as you can.
3) Try the Twelve Step program.

One is obvious but still really good advice. Two should only apply to the early days. Three is optional but definitely something I would recommend myself.

Hopefully as the weeks and months go by (I can't see me going to meetings all that often) I will be able to add to this list some interesting things. No matter how shite a meeting is (and there will be some shite ones to come regardless of how careful and selective I am over which ones I attend) try to find these three things. It's something to take the sting out of meetings.

I do accept, though, that I was perhaps really unlucky last night and that not all meetings will be nearly as bad as that one was.

I'll be back at college tomorrow. It's about time I started thinking about that.

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Stevie

Focussing on three pieces of insight and recovery advice.

1180

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, May 15th 2017 (Our Boxing Friend)


I've started this post early doors but I'll be leaving for the bus any moment and so I'll have to pick it up later on. This means that at the moment I have no idea if I'll be reaching my Slimming World target this evening (it seems like a long way away) but by the time I post this I'll already know so I should be able to finish this post by saying whether or not I managed to achieve this.

There are certain things you can do to change your weight throughout the day. It must be water retention or something but I notice that my weight can increase by up to five pounds over the course of a day. I've just tried the scales and as things stand at this very moment I will make target. The task for the rest of the day now is to somehow avoid putting any weight on, or, if I do, to knock it back off again by the time weigh-in time comes at half past seven this evening – more than five hours from now.

So – two boiled eggs for breakfast (oh my God of my understanding – I've become one of those people who goes online and starts talking about what he's eating, please help me!!) and I'm good to go. By the time I have my soup for lunch and the morning is spent sitting in front of a college computer I'll likely increase by the pound I'll have to in order to go over target again and so will have to pay for my Slimming World class next week. This will not do and so I can kill two birds with one stone. I haven't been walking much at all these last two weeks and I should really get my arse into gear if I even hope to finish the fifty mile walk in less than four weeks' time. I'll walk from the college to the class this evening which takes place in the next town. It's around eight miles. This should hopefully lose me any weight I've picked up during the day. It's kinda weird that it works out like this but it really does. As soon as I stop walking I will begin to put the weight back on very slowly but by this time I will have been weighed and should hopefully have reached my goal of eleven and a half stone (around seventy three kilogrammes).

Speaking of that weight I was trawling online yesterday at Lindsay's request and discovered something about a boxer who weighed approximately this weight I am aiming for this evening. It didn't say whether he was an up and coming star or anything, just that he had fought a couple of bouts here and there. He then blew his future by taking six hundred pounds from a friend to take a baseball bat off someone's head. Apparently there had been a disagreement over money and so our boxing friend had been paid (with a further one hundred and twenty bucks being paid to his accomplice) to act out a vengeful act which left the ''victim'' with twelve hours of facial reconstructive surgery. Really nasty stuff. Our boxing friend's accomplice served two years in a young offenders' institution while our boxing friend himself (twenty one at the time of sentencing back in 2011) received eight years behind bars.

This is the guy who is to be wedding Lindsay's friend in a couple of weeks. They apparently had it out with her not long before I arrived at the Hen Night to pick up Lindsay a couple of nights ago. These friends wanted to know why it is that they have not yet met this guy. Why it is that she barely keeps in contact with them anymore. The most disturbing thing about all of this is that just as Lindsay and I had began dating late last summer she had been to a funeral. This was the funeral of a guy who had committed suicide – this friend of hers' husband. Now, in the ultimate rebound, she's marrying this new guy just a few months later. They've been going out for less time than Lindsay and I. It's not surprising that her friends are concerned by this new partner of hers when, to top it all off, she reveals his full name and that information about him can easily be obtained online. The information I just mentioned. It's not my position to judge but I'm wondering if some people ever deserve a second chance. I'm talking about the type of person who'd take a bat to a guy in his mid-fifties.

Anyway – I have to get to college.......

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Right! Now I'm back from college and have been to Slimming World. It's nearly eleven in the evening and I'm writing this in bed while Lindsay sits through in the other room catching up on soaps and reality television. Not really my thing. Just creates a multitude of things for me to get all negative about and feel the need to criticise. Not worth the hassle. So I write about my Slimming World experience before I get an early (ish) night for a change.

Like I said at the top of the post – when I woke up this morning I was at my target weight, the problem was trying to stay under it as the day progressed. I tried this by having two boiled eggs for breakfast and a small soup for lunch with just a couple of drinks in between. After college I walked to the Slimming World meeting – a good eight and a half miles away. I had time to pop into Lindsay's to grab my book and change out of my sweaty clothes and weighed myself to see for sure if I'd be getting it tonight. Eleven stone and four pounds. I'm three pounds under my weight. Any more lost and I would be too low – you're allowed three pounds either side of your target. By the time I got weighed I had put on a half pound which means that my official weigh-in came to eleven stone and four and a half pounds. I made target. As long as I stay within the guidelines and don't go more than three pounds either side of it then I don't have to pay and I only have to show up once a month to keep my membership active.

Ahhhhhh... Feels good to be chalking off these little goals of mine.

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A target member.

1113