Surrender
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’
Into the future (Steve Miller, 1976)
In the introduction to his book Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn observes (and then asks), “whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you’re thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, ‘Now what?’”
These questions have been much on my mind lately, as I find myself not having escaped, the least little bit, the chaotic, unstable nature of my existence. In 2004, after a job loss, I moved 120 miles to the north and spent two years in yet another organization rife with turbulence. Then, this year, I moved 180 miles south and find myself in an even bigger predicament. What the heck is going on? I have wondered if it’s more than just the fiscally-challenged and politically-unpredictable environment of Oregon higher education; maybe it’s me?
In any event, here I am. One life challenge after another continues to appear, and I have to, everyday, figure out, “now what?”
I have written earlier about how to cope with life in an addictive organization. And I’ve suggested that the Four-Fold Way (namely, Be Present, Pay Attention, Tell the Truth, and Be Open to Outcome) provides a good set of guidelines to follow in managing the emotional minefield of a truly unhealthy workplace. As I continue to attempt to apply these principles to my day-to-day existence, I find life to be (still!) a never-ending challenge.
I continue to be present for, and pay attention to, the people who seek me out and want to talk about their struggles. I speak my own truth, privately and publicly. And, though mindful of the risk, I do my absolute best to maintain my integrity. I guess the most difficult Way of the four-fold, is that of surrender. I am thinking that since I have not let go of outcome (that is, I have not really surrendered to the forces of the universe), I continue to struggle mightily. My body is a mass of stress symptoms, tight as a knot because I am unable to let go. My mind can say, “surrender, Jim,” but, undeniably, there is some large and finite part of me that doesn’t know how.
If I could let go, I could relax. If I could relax, I could ease these symptoms. If I could ease these symptoms, I could let go. Round and round I go, where I stop, I still don’t know…
Stress-Related Stuff
First to consider, I suppose, is the age-old question: the chicken or the egg: which came first? An interesting intellectual exercise, no doubt, but isn’t the energy expended in trying to decipher this dilemma rather futilely spent?
How about if we let folks with more time on their hands tinker around with this particular debate, ok?
Next up: Nick Hornby asks, in his thought-provoking novel High Fidelity, when considering some of his favorite songs (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” “When Love Breaks Down,” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself,” etc.): “[w]hat came first—the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?” (pp. 24-25)
Again, more of life’s great questions that I think I’ll leave to the pundits and amateur therapists & philosophers out there who focus on our popular culture.
All of this is just a weak lead-in to where I’m really going with this self-reflective, self-indulgent discourse today: my own questions about chronic pain and depression. In a 2003 Stanford University study, not surprisingly, the correlation between chronic pain and depression was found to be quite high: sufferers of one likely needed treatment for both. “The question now is which comes first: the depression or the pain,” they asked. Of course, I think it likely works both ways. For example, just as depression is common among individuals who suffer from lower-back pain, it also appears to be true that depressed individuals can develop lower-back pain.
In my case, I have lived rather my entire life wondering about such issues. After approximately 40 years of chronic physical pain (beginning in my early 20s), the downturns to my physical self are quite typically mirrored in a mood decline. And, then again, when an outside entity or event exerts a change to my emotional well-being, my body almost always follows. The peaks and valleys for my affective state completely parallel my physical ups and downs.
In sum, this serves to remind me that I need to revisit a book I started a little while back, and then subsequently got sidetracked from…Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping. It’s a rather large and scary tome, but valuable information is contained therein, nonetheless. I need more of what’s in there, I think.
More News From the N-Zone
In my most recent entry regarding the experiment with low-dose Naltrexone (LDN), I mentioned that there seemed to be some improvement in my CMP (chronic myofascial pain) symptoms, though I had, at the same time, developed some additional pains after 12 days on the drug. Here’s another report on my LDN experience.
I believe the LDN trial was probably worthwhile, but, for me, it just didn’t work out. The additional pain symptoms overtook any possible gains I was noticing just one day after my last report. So, after 13 consecutive nights on the drug, I discontinued it for the next two. Amazingly, after backing away from the medication for just that short period of time, the tendonitis symptoms in my arms began to recede. I had been reading on the LDN listerve that some individuals need to start LDN at an even lower dose (1.5 mg per night) than I had been taking (3 mg) in order for the body to adjust. So I started back on the drug, taking one pill every other night for the next two weeks (another 7 pills). All told, I took 20 of the 30 pills I had been prescribed, though I have now stopped altogether.
I am completely distressed to report that I am in worse shape than when I started; the last pill I took was six nights ago and I’m still looking for an improvement in the new and additional pain symptoms that ultimately resulted. Although my arms have seemingly recovered, I am now experiencing more back pain than ever before, and in new locations. It has me rather scared about what I may have done to myself, though the dose of the drug was so low and the time period so short, I’m hoping that if these new symptoms are at all related to the drug (and not to the hugely increased stress in my life in the last week), then I can look forward to the pain backing off in the next few days. However, as of yet that has not happened, and the pain level is really getting in the way of normal life. I took a day and a half away from work this last week because of it, and I’m likely going to need some more time away tomorrow if I can get in for an appointment with my chiropractor in Eugene. I have decided that I need help to deal with this.
My advice to anyone trying the LDN approach is to be very watchful and mindful of what you’re doing. At the first sign of unpleasant side effects (which are supposed to be practically non-existent, but in my case was not so), critically evaluate what you might be doing with/to your body. LDN was not approved for many of the things it’s being used to treat. Be careful out there.
Indicators
I’ve previously written about my struggles with “fitting in.” This has been another one of those weeks, and especially one of those days, when I’ve re-engaged with that issue. I’m in a pretty much “glass-half-empty” kind of space tonight as I contemplate a few indicators of a life that’s not working all that well at the moment. So, here they are: how you might tell your life could be in better shape…
Losing a job that you’d had for nearly a decade. Being ignored, unappreciated and unceremoniously dismissed in the process.
Spending the best hours of every day on the downhill side of life working and looking for work. (Well, and writing the occasional blog entry.)
Worrying about health. Worrying about safety, security, and stability. Worrying about worrying to death.
Finding work that is merely temporary. Being treated like a temp.
Having (or at least taking) no time to stop and smell the roses. Having no time to produce art. Having no time to read a novel.
Barely enough energy to get out of bed, lots of times, just imagining the difficulty level of the day ahead.
Constant, chronic myofascial pain, accompanied frequently by headaches and symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Other strange aches, pains & afflictions and occasional infections.
Coming home after work and always finding that it’s another evening alone. And, consequently, anticipating that dying and death will also come very alone.
Spending part of every evening taking a hot bath, trying to soak away some of the pain. Easing into the hot water, being overwhelmed with hopelessness. Feeling, fighting, the inclination to sob.
Feeling the large part, of most every day, like a misfit.
Addictive Organizations and the Four-Fold Way
If you’ve ever discovered the need to show up at work everyday by first forcing yourself out of bed, and then dragging yourself into the office because you’re dreading the day there: perhaps you’re working in an “addictive organization” (a concept I briefly outlined in my recent Analysis Paralysis post).
How does anyone really cope with life in an addictive organization? How is it possible to survive, much less thrive? What is your fate if you find yourself in one? Can you promote health and recovery…and actually, eventually, find a place of well-being there?
During the time I was engaged in my doctoral research, and anticipating using the addictive organization model as a theoretical framework for my dissertation, I corresponded briefly with Anne Wilson Schaef, the model’s developer. I had been tremendously impressed with her “organization as addict” metaphor and asked about any thoughts she might have regarding “coping with” or “recovery in” such an organization. She said that her plans were to write a follow-up book to The Addictive Organization (1988) and outline her ideas there. As far as I’ve been able to determine, though, she never produced that book…I can only hope it’s not because she thinks that recovery is impossible!
Now, given that it took an entire 232 pages to outline the many dimensions of an addictive organization, I suppose it would be reasonable to assume that any discussion of recovery in one would take at least as much space. However, coping with an addictive organization has been much on my mind lately, and I thought I might get started (here) on developing some salient points regarding this topic.
Although there are several dimensions of an addictive organization, certainly near the top of the list of characteristics (and among the most applicable to individual addicts) are the descriptors of denial, dishonesty and control. So, in this brief essay, let’s begin with just these three.
Denial means that the organizational problems are not openly acknowledged, or at least not accepted as “real” by those most able to address the dysfunction: the leadership. For issues to be worked on, they need to be identified, they need to be named. Statements such as “this is just the way things are” or “this is as good as it gets” or “we may have a few small problems here, but certainly not big ones” – when everyone really knows differently – is a sure sign of organizational denial.
Dishonesty is another key characteristic of an addictive organization. Like individuals who are addicted to substances or processes, those caught up in such an unhealthy organization exhibit their dishonesty on three levels: by lying to themselves, to those around them, and to the world at large. Believing that one can effectively impression-manage (e.g., the media) and “put up a good front” to those outside the organization, for example, are a couple of obvious manifestations of organizational dishonesty.
[I was once told, in private, by a college president, “I tell lies to everyone every day. There’s no other way to do this job.” While a striking example of personal honesty, the underlying message is one that reflects normal life in an addictive system.]
Finally, there is the element of control. This more accurately might be labeled the illusion of control, though, as it is, of course, ultimately impossible to control anything. However, the addictive organization harbors the notion that it is possible to control. When likened to a dysfunctional family that revolves around an individual addicted member, Schaef (p. 66) describes this symptom as “[t]he family tries to control the addict; the addict’s behavior is controlling the family; the co-dependent spouse is trying to avoid being controlled; and everyone is going crazy.” Further, Schaef notes (p. 66), that “whenever a system is operating on the illusion of control, it is an addictive system by definition.”
I believe that it’s possible to begin the grasp the severity of life in an addictive organization by simply (and quite briefly, as I’ve done above) understanding just these three characteristics. The questions that naturally arise include: What is there to do? How do I cope? How do I survive? How can I continue to show up every day, when this is what I always find?
I suppose that any discussion of “recovery” in a system defined as “addictive” would naturally include, at some point, a 12-step model; let me leave that discussion for another day, though. I would like to begin with countering the three points above by suggesting strategies that lie on the opposite ends of our behavioral continuum.
If the characteristics of denial and dishonesty are taken together (considering that denial is essentially a lie to one’s self), then a position contrary to that is honesty. Similarly, when the element of control is considered, an alternative could be termed surrender. So, I pose the question, what if I approached life in an addictive system with a personal stance of honesty and surrender?
When I consider this question, I am reminded of the Four-Fold Way orientation developed by anthropologist Angeles Arrien. Quoting directly and liberally from the description of this model on her website, I believe it is evident how such a philosophical and behavioral stance might successfully contend with the illness of an addictive system. The four elements are:
Be Present. The way of the Leader is to show up. Being present allows us to access the human resources of power, presence, and communication. We express this through appropriate action, good timing, and clear communication.
Pay Attention. The way of the Healer is to pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Paying attention opens us to the human resources of love, gratitude, acknowledgment, and validation. We express this through our attitudes and actions that maintain personal health and support the welfare of our environment.
Tell The Truth. (Honesty) The way of the Creative Problem Solver is to tell the truth without blame or judgment. Truthfulness, authenticity, and integrity are keys to developing our vision and intuition. We express this through personal creativity, goals, plans, and our ability to bring our life dreams and visions into the world.
Be Open To Outcome. (Surrender) The way of the Teacher (or Counselor) is to be unattached to outcome. Openness and non-attachment help us recover the human resources of wisdom and objectivity. We express this through our constructive communication and informational skills.