When Misery is Company: Ending Self-Sabotage & Misery Addiction

February 13, 2008

Chapter 1

When Misery Is Company: Ending Self-Sabotage and Misery Addiction

by Anne Katherine, M.A., C.M.H.C., C.E.D.T.

http://www.enotalone.com/article/4237.html

Book Description

Why does happiness always seem to elude certain people? And why,

when these same people seem to be on the cusp of achieving

happiness, do they sabotage themselves?

This is the first book about addiction to misery, a common but

subtle problem that keeps many people from responding to counseling

or therapy, healing from old hurts, and experiencing fulfillment and

joy. For people who are addicted to misery, happiness itself is

frightening and threatening. As a result, every joy must be

equalized by a setback. Too much success must be balanced by

failure.

People who are addicted to misery try to protect themselves against

feeling bad by not feeling too good. For them, happiness itself

triggers a pattern of decisions and behaviors that leads to

emotional pain — pain that is comforting in its familiarity. Because

of the subtlety and contradictions of an addiction to misery, many

talented therapists and counselors may not recognize it and those

who have it often unable to see through it.

When Misery is Company not only explains the problem, it offers a

practical, step-by-step program for overcoming it—and living a life

of joy and fulfillment.

Chapter 1

Can This Book Really Help?

Carrie left me a message. " I'm scared. My new office was finished

yesterday, so I moved into it today. It's really beautiful, with a

view of the ships' canal. My new boss likes me a lot. This morning

she asked me to join some of the managers at an informal dinner at

her home tonight. I accepted and got directions.

" I hadn't eaten breakfast and then I worked through lunch. After

work, I went into the ladies' room and looked at myself and I

thought, How could anyone believe in me? I'm gross looking. My

clothes are all wrong.

" So I putzed around, arranging my office, and lost track of the time

and left fifteen minutes late. And then I got stuck behind a school

bus. So I got to her place thirty minutes late. And then I saw the

house she lives in. It's huge. It's elegant. What was I doing there?

" And all the cars were there already. Nobody was still arriving. I

sat outside for an hour and I couldn't make myself go in. So I

finally just left. I went to a restaurant and ate about three meals.

Then I came home.

" I'm not good enough for this kind of job. I was afraid I would do

some stupid thing if I went inside and that everyone would hate me.

And that she'd think she made a big mistake hiring me. "

I closed my eyes as I heard this because I could see the series of

actions and nonactions that became a cascade of self-sabotage for

Carrie. I could tell she wasn't seeing how her failure to show up

would come across to her boss. In the state she was in, she couldn't

imagine what would be happening inside the house—her boss and the

managers waiting for her, delaying dinner, wondering and worrying,

then waiting for an explanatory phone call. She'd gotten lost in a

tunnel in her head and saw everything from inside out.

At first it seemed to me that the trigger—the first event that

started her slide—was seeing herself in the ladies' room mirror. But

her anxiety had been brewing before that. Her fancy new office

scared her. Her boss's appreciation scared her. Even her own

thoughts scared her—what if she couldn't measure up? The invitation

to be a member of the inner circle may have been the final straw.

So much bounty so soon in her new job led her to fear that she might

not rise to others' expectations. This fear caused her to see

herself as unattractive when she looked in the mirror.

Carrie had already put herself in danger of not thinking clearly by

skipping breakfast and lunch. Then she made a series of decisions—

or, rather, failed to make decisions—that could have led to a better

outcome. She putzed instead of thinking about how to get ready,

didn't set an alarm in order to get out of the office on time, and

didn't call a therapy group member to get help with her anxiety and

decisions. By not acting in an effective way, she allowed the

internal avalanche to build.

By the time she was sitting outside her boss's elegant home, she was

in too deep. She had been swallowed by her anxiety and couldn't

think clearly enough to figure out how to ring the doorbell and go

inside. Her world had gotten very small; at that moment it consisted

entirely of her fears and that big, imposing house. Eventually I

realized that I had my eye on the wrong thing too. I wanted Carrie

to keep that job and the support of her boss. I wanted her to

succeed in her profession and have enough money to allay her

financial worries. I wanted very much for her to not rack up another

failure. I wanted her to be happy. Many years of being a therapist

had honed my ability to work effectively with people. But in

Carrie's case I was operating under a wrong assumption. I believed

she wanted to be happy.

I was missing the paradox. For some people, happiness is upsetting.

For them, every joy must be equalized by a setback. Too much success

must be balanced by failure.

Comfort in Misery

We are creatures of survival. We were biologically designed,

engineered, and programmed to survive, more or less, at all costs.

Yet survival can carry many faces. If, for whatever reason, misery

seems necessary for our survival, we'll choose misery.

Simplified, the logic goes like this:

Something good happened to me. I was happy. Then this horrible thing

followed or came from the same place or person that made me happy. I

was nearly crushed by my grief. This means that happiness leads to

crushing grief. Therefore, if I avoid happiness, I'll protect myself

from grief.

Different people might substitute other words for happy, such as

safe, joyful, free, or honored. Or they might use other words for

grief, such as fear, disappointment, shame, or disaster. For

example, I felt so special as they sang " Happy Birthday " to me. Then

my father slapped me out of the chair, and I nearly died from shame.

So if I can avoid being honored, I'll protect myself from shame.

In all of these cases, the internal logic is the same: people try to

protect themselves against feeling bad by not feeling too good.

Triggered by Joy

A triggering event is one that sets off an inevitable chain

reaction. To trigger all the dominoes to fall, tip the first domino.

To trigger yeast to grow, add water and sugar.

Abstinent, recovering food addicts can get triggered by one cookie.

It may take an hour or a week for the relapse to take hold, but the

trigger is the first bite. From then on, for most sugar addicts, the

slide into relapse is inevitable.

For some of us, happiness itself can be a trigger, a trigger that

makes a slide into misery equally inevitable. In Carrie's case, she

was triggered by a symbol of success, her boss's appreciation and an

invitation into the inner circle. These were positive, exciting

possibilities, and Carrie recognized them as such. But that

recognition caused a surge of anxiety for Carrie, and she ended up

handling that anxiety by behaving in a way that made her unhappy—and

made others unhappy with her.

Ensuring Misery

On the surface, Brian's pattern seemed quite different. Though he

hated hospitals, he worked as an orderly. He had a quick wit and an

intelligent mind but stopped attending his advanced training program

at the community college even though the course was interesting, his

instructor was good, and the program could have led to a better job

with more money.

He lived in a dank, bare studio apartment that he hadn't made

comfortable. He dated women he did not love or even like. Nothing in

life entranced him. He plodded from requirement to requirement

without being engaged.

He seemed to have an instinct for making choices that would keep him

at that same dutiful, empty level of existence. If he needed to turn

left to take the only available parking space, he'd turn right.

When a coworker lovingly teased him, Brian took offense and chewed

her out so harshly that the coworker, who had been taking some first

steps toward an offer of friendship, decided not to pursue it.

Brian was so afraid of happiness that he made sure he was always

miserable.

Brian and Carrie lead very different lives. Brian's life is

colorless and dark. Carrie is successful, and she has reason to be

happy. But both keep making choices that maintain them at a

carefully calibrated level of existence—beneath bliss and above

despair.

A Larger Addiction

Sugar made Stephanie fearful and listless. If she took a bite of a

doughnut or two swigs of cola, within forty-eight hours she would be

eating sugary foods addictively. Her whole focus would switch to her

next bite—where, when, and how she'd get a new stash of sugar and

eat it. She would be distracted from work and her relationships.

When she abstained from sugar, Stephanie was clearheaded, made

positive choices, and felt good. All aspects of her life improved.

Through concentrated attention and effort, she stayed abstinent from

sugar for seven months. Then she sent me an e-mail: " I lost my

abstinence. "

My heart groaned. I knew what would happen next. She was headed for

a downhill slide in which she would binge on sugar more and more and

feel ever worse about herself. Her abstinence had been hard-won. It

would not be easily regained.

Was she just a typical addict, I wondered, with the typical

propensity for relapse? Or was something larger going on?

Among addicts of any stripe—alcoholics, drug addicts, food addicts,

compulsive workers—some achieve a level of recovery in which their

lives gradually improve and become more fulfilling. And there are

others who relapse again and again.

In some cases, the addiction has too firm a hold. The addict

seemingly cannot become reconciled to a life without his addiction.

But there's another category of people who relapse. These are the

people who are triggered by recovery itself. They are also the

people who we helping professionals have failed to help.

Recovery brings clarity, friendships, and joy. It draws people into

union with life. Serendipity shows up, again and again.

For some addicts, this is too much of a good thing.

Why? Because a bigger addiction, a more powerful and more subtle

addiction, is pulling the strings—an addiction to misery.

It's a subtle addiction that has many faces, but the common thread

is this: when things go too well or the person feels too good, she

sabotages herself in order to return to the more comfortable or

familiar state of misery, unhappiness, or grayness. In some cases,

the mere possibility that things might go well or that good feelings

might arise is enough to trigger behavior that brings back the

misery.

Brian nips joy in the bud. Carrie hacks at it after it's been

growing a while. Stephanie lets her food addiction pull her back

under. The experiences of these three people look different, but the

bottom line is the same. Not one of them realizes that they are

sabotaging themselves. They don't wake up in the morning, stretch,

and say, " Life is getting too wonderful. I think I'll spoil it

today. "

Instead, at some point they cross a critical line that causes

anxiety or fear or unease to build. This transition is difficult for

them (and, usually, anyone else) to notice. But once that line is

crossed, they move into behavior that attempts to discharge the

anxiety.

Yet, because they are focused on getting rid of their painful

feelings, they don't perceive the other consequences of their

behavior. The good things or feelings that were present become

altered as a result. And with the removal of those good things,

their anxiety diminishes. Even if the loss of what was good is

upsetting, that condition is more bearable than their former anxiety.

For some of us, feeling too good for too long (or even feeling good

at all) is scary. Achievement creates anxiety. Intimacy leads to

fear. Happiness produces discomfort. Pleasure causes pain. The

solution to this dilemma: what feels good has to be stopped.

I call this an addiction to misery. For some people, it might be

more appropriate to talk about an addiction to victimization, or

unhappiness, or failure, or being failed by others.

This book provides an introduction to this problem and a practical

program for climbing out of it.

How This Book Can Help

This book is for people who suspect they suffer from an addiction to

misery but don't know how they got there or what to do about it.

It's also for the families and loved ones of these people, who have

been puzzled by the destructive choices they've watched their

friends, partners, or family members make.

An addiction to misery is a particularly pernicious and difficult

problem because it operates behind the scenes like a puppeteer

behind a curtain. It can manifest in so many guises that the larger

pattern can be easy to miss. Maybe you have read books on

codependency or related recovery issues, yet you didn't find

solutions for yourself. This could be the reason: a larger, hidden

issue was actually going on that was influencing you.

It is not unsolvable. The program in this book offers a path to

emancipation and a way to expose and neutralize the configuration of

events that imprinted the problem in the first place.

I've watched and exulted as my own clients have used this program to

protect or improve their jobs, restore their health, find intimacy,

and collapse in unfettered, uproarious laughter and delight.

This is a book of solutions and of hope. It's a way to empower

yourself to step beyond the invisible web that has held you captive.

It's a doorway into a fuller existence.

Welcome.

February 13, 2008

, " Misty L. Trepke "

<mistytrepke wrote: