I have been working all weekend. When I work, I get headaches, because for the last fifteen years I have been unable to work without also hearing in my mind my father’s voice, speaking in loud tones to me about how I should work. If I am to work at all, I must work through the noise. This weekend I have been able to work through it, and that is a good thing. Often enough the headaches get so bad that it does not matter whether I try to work or not, since progress will not be made either way.
I am only somewhat successful in my career, and only marginally happy in it. My father sometimes says that this is because I have not taken his advice. Sometimes he says it is because I have been discriminated against. The thing about his advice, though, is that it is standard advice, the advice everyone already knows. It is not as though I do not know it. But some of it, although standard, is not correct, and some of it, though correct, does not cover everything. And yes, I may have been discriminated against, but the image of his voice, drinking, growing, threatening, glowering, diminishing, scaring, unceasing, do it this way, do it this way, I am right, he said, and I am telling you, he said, has disabled me far more than has any other form of discrimination.
I know my father is ostensibly more successful than I am, but I cannot follow his example because as he achieved this success he was, or claimed to be, so unhappy. And he never recommended that we imitate him. And no, I am not making excuses here. I am certainly not blaming my father. If anyone is to blame, it is the therapeutic industry which told me I had to think about him more, and give his voice more power, because to have gone through what I had gone through, and to have come out relatively unscathed, was not possible, and must be a form of denial, and my success and happiness were a sham, and I needed to look more deeply into my soul and discover the defects which must be there. But I am not complaining. To the contrary, I am saying that this weekend I worked through the headache, and that has been a good thing.
A note on this text: this piece is not about dishonoring the family, as my Christian detractor claims. It is about therapeutic abuse and the evils of Al-Anon, which in many respects resembles, in my humble opinion, a demonic cult. Perhaps my Christian detractor is using and abusing in her own life. That would explain why she was so offended by this post. All readers remember, this is my thinking space, which you read by your own choice and at your own risk.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Everyone has answers for us. Noise everywhere we turn. Like a streetfair that will not end, or a demolition site that follows you around the country, or a channel of static begging to be Your Song.
I’m glad you were able to work through the headache.
PZ: Gracias Nezua and yes – noise everywhere, for everyone – and just because one has noise, does not mean one does not have the right to be and work, and that is a truth I got virtually beaten out of me by misguided ‘therapy’, and which I want to reacquire – and so it is good to hear you say it, out of the blue like that. “Channel of static begging to be Your Song,” great phrase.
This is a new post in the same place.
I really feel you on the overdose of paradigm, ala therapy. I,too, have a lot to say on it. I have some experience with similar adventures/encampments/ingestions.
Some things labeled “help” do harm. In the end, it is I who must know which is which.
+ Yes, I keep revising this post and a few others, because basically, this site exists to revise me: from zero, radically, from the ground up, close to the bone, no fluff, or at least, that’s the idea.
+ “Overdose of paradigm,” good phrase. “Ingestion,” good word – “encampment” is interesting, too.
+ I was thinking of having a post on why I run a publicly viewable, yet anonymous weblog: it’s an in-between space, helps separate the wheat of my thoughts from the chaff.
+ Many of those who “help”, are actually Nazguls. They sow pain and doubt, and then enjoy watching these grow.
+ And I just had an illumination on this: everyone is proud of one of my more marginal students because, although her record is not very good, it is amazingly good considering what she overcame. I haven’t had the same things to overcome as this student, and I’ve had more backing than she has had. However, my Nazgul believed that my achievements were not something to be proud of, but to be ashamed of: they “must be” the result of “denial”, not of overcoming. PROVE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH BY FAILING IN LIFE was the message here.
+ Another central point he had to make was that one should not trust one’s own judgment, because this was “controlling”–one should, instead, let circumstances take over for one. I was never able to figure this out. I’m sure he didn’t mean I should stop driving defensively, or just pray for the groceries to get bought. If one is expected to exercise judgment in matters such as these, why not about larger matters–especially in my case, since my judgment is quite good? STOP TRUSTING YOURSELF, AND STOP MAKING DECISIONS FOR YOURSELF was the message here.
+ His third cluster of really important points was, YOU SHOULD NOT THINK and YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE FUN. It was very disconcerting to him that I was enjoying my life, even though I had had problems in the past. This to him, coupled with my ability to think straight, meant that I had committed the cardinal sin of NOT FEELING. Feeling, meant feeling sad, getting angry, brooding over the past, and generally suffering. Not to be doing this, and to be HAVING FUN, and THINKING STRAIGHT, was NOT HEALTHY for anyone who had ever had any problems, because it was DENIAL.
+ And “denial” seems to be a cardinal sin in all of this, and so accusations of “denial” are the Nazguls’ big, manipulative tool. They can always accuse you of it, to make you try to sing their song.
+ I could make a similar critique of Al-Anon, which I do still attend sometimes. They have some points, but I often find them dangerously cultish and fundamentalist. Some of them are terribly self-deprecating, and others are terribly smug, and in general, it seems unhealthy. Actually: these undertakings all seem sort of sadomasochistic to me. I’d rather just go to the beach.
“Encampment” for the 8 times I lived in settings where one is injected with vitamin K and paradigm.
And it is perfectly clear to me why one would write publicly and anonymously.
People tell us about their own reality when they judge us. And that’s about it.
Those encampments do not sound enjoyable at all.
Yes–tell us about their own reality–in retrospect it is entirely clear. I wish I had figured that out at a younger age, and before I listened to certain people.
Word.