Help, I've Fallen And I Won't Get Up!

Being magically stuck in a position where you won't move to get the help and get into recovery is a tough place to find yourself.

Transcript

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It's time again for Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jacques DeBruker, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. Back in the 90s, there was this great commercial where it was for a device that if a senior citizen fell down and they couldn't make it to the phone and they were stuck on the floor, they could get help by pushing a button on the little medallion that was hanging on the necklace. And they could then have a direct connection to EMS who could then assist them. And it was the tagline in the commercial was, help, I've fallen and I can't get up. And that was the call for action that that person had if they fell down. And those devices are still around today. They use them in nursing homes. They have senior citizens that use them in their homes. And it's an assist. It's an assist. It's a self-directed call for help if you can't get to the phone or you're paralyzed or you're just laying on the ground. You can't get help. And the thought came to me that it's a very similar kind of situation that can happen sometimes in addiction. Except instead of help, I've fallen and I can't get up, it's more like help, I've fallen and I won't get up. That's what I run into quite frequently. I've fallen and I won't get up. And it's the feigned helplessness. And what happens as a result of that is that the people that are observing it, the loved ones, they seem to buy into the idea that the person needs help, but they're unable to get up. And so it creates this situation where there's magical thinking on the part of the loved ones who see this person who's in need, who seemingly can't get up. But they don't realize that the addict is saying, I won't get up. Because if I get up, then I might have to actually change and engage in something that resembles recovery. And I'm not willing to do that. So help, I've fallen, and I won't get up is the result. So what I wanted to explore was the idea of not being able to get up versus won't get up. Because as addicts, you realize that if there's a way for you to facilitate or manipulate or change people around you to be able to engage in your addiction, you're going to do it. And then to proceed to do those things. It's a funny game that addiction plays with your brain. It turns it and twists it into thinking that it's going to somehow... I can continue doing what I'm doing. And the irony of the whole thing is you feel very uncomfortable doing what you're doing. It makes you sick. It's miserable. You're homeless or you're always hungry or strung out or jonesing for the next hit of whatever. Or in the case of some of the drugs, you're just sick all the time. Dope sick if you're not using and you want to. And that's your way of getting help. And it's a craziness, right? Because you engage in this insanity in the thinking. So you figure out pretty quickly that if you appear to be helpless, you appear to be in need, people will pay attention to that need rather than your usage. And it's a game you play with those around you. So the interesting thing is the brain tells you, hey, I want to get high. And this is the way to do it. And you can't overcome it. because you're not strong enough, so you need help, but you're refusing it. I do interventions for people, and it's a really tough road because you're trying to help the person, the family, get that individual into a recovery process. And the people that are the loved ones have been going crazy watching this person who seemingly can't get up And there's all kinds of excuses and reasons. They had bad luck. They had all these things happen. And they're looking at the addict. The thing they're missing is the real problem the addict has, which is nothing to do with the circumstance that they're in at this point. Maybe they've gotten into financial problems or they've gotten into relationship problems or whatever. But the actual cause of the addiction, I believe, is a traumatic experience that they can't handle. And so their way of handling it when they can't is to engage in usage. That's their remedy. So help me. I've fallen and I won't get up. If that's where you are, you're never ever going to get the help you need, but you're also going to make it so that the people who probably need to be listening to you are not going to listen to you because you have, you have become chicken little. You're running around screaming. The sky is falling because you're trying to distract everybody from your usage, but they're no longer listening. And then you become this kind of pathetic creature that's just existing to get high. So when we start to face the real problems in our lives, that's when we begin to really tackle our addiction and begin to go down the path of recovery. So if you're in a position where you feel like you've fallen and you won't get up, that's going to make it very difficult for people to want to help you. It's also going to make it very difficult for people to help you. And you get paralyzed in this position where you don't want the help, but you need the help. And you want the help, but you don't want the help. And it's a game. It's truly that. It's just a game. It's a game that you're playing. It's a game they're playing. And when everybody's playing the game, nothing happens. I run into it all the time. I run into it when the experience of having... no chance of getting that help. Or even when you're engaging in the help, when you've actually decided, okay, well, I guess I'll try to get up. And you don't get up fully. You get up partially. And then you start rejecting the help or you go to rehab and you just won't participate. You're not really there. You're there, but you're not there. And so for you, there's no there there. There's nothing for you because you're not accepting anything. So recovery doesn't happen. or you play with recovery. That's my favorite one. You get there and you tell them, Oh yeah, I'm using. And you, you start to admit a bit, but you're just voicing words. You're just saying words. You're not actually feeling feelings. You're not engaging in it. You're just robotically saying words. And I think about the people who live the lie. That's the other one. That's the other version of fake, fake sober, fake recovery. You're, You're not feeling it. But it's so weird because you can dissociate. You learned how to dissociate as a child, and you continue to practice that. And so when you're in the groups, you're kind of almost pantomiming what they're doing. It's like one of those circus acts where the person pretends like they're the other person in the audience. They're kind of pantomiming. They're mirroring what's going on, but they're not actually feeling it. And you're not a sociopath. You're not a psychopath. You have the capacity to feel feelings, and you are also able to feel other people's feelings. You're just not able to feel your own feelings. Now, not like a psychopath, because a psychopathy is that. It's the inability to feel feelings. This is a refusal to feel your feelings, because they're so overwhelming. So it's not a personality disorder that you suffer from. It's a survival technique. I can't really face the problems. So if you're laying there on the floor and you're saying, help, I've fallen and I won't get up. What's keeping you from getting up? What's keeping you from getting to that place? Exploring that idea that somehow you've created a reality for yourself where pain is the only thing that exists. That's why recovery takes so long. It's not something you just stop doing one day and just say, okay, everything's all better. Because it's not. You still have your feelings. And the feelings are the things that are really causing you those problems. So I've fallen and I won't get up. There's really not much you can do. There's not many places you can go. There's not much you can actually engage in in that process then if you won't get up. If you try to get up, And you stumble and you fumble and you don't quite make it. That's okay too. But it's in the attempt. So what do you do when you're stuck in that place? You're frozen. I have in the last two months, three months, I've treated people that are in that position of being stuck. It's that stuckness. And it's so funny because I can see them. standing right there in that threshold of stepping over into recovery. And you might stay in that threshold for a long time. You might stay in that place because you don't accept the change. You don't want the change. You won't accept the help. You don't believe that you can actually do it. You're afraid. You're afraid to face things that you have to face. There's a whole host of things that can happen. But you're just in that place where you just don't want to accept that help. breaking through that barrier, finding ways to actually test the waters of recovery. You know, if you get into an environment, and this is a really important part of it, getting into the environment where it's safe for you to actually get up, where you're not going to be attacked, ridiculed, criticized, condemned, dismissed for expressing the things that are the problem. That's the whole point of getting in the recovery community. Honestly, it's to be authentic, to be real. And so getting up requires you to actually be authentic and real and feel your feelings. I have worked with a lot of addicts who have spent years working on recovery. And maybe they've got 15, 20 years. And they begin to question their own sobriety, their own sanity, if you will. And they get to the place where they begin to question and they're feeling that tug of that addiction again. And they might pick up the phone. Those who have come in, they come in, they see me. They've been 15, 20, 25 years recovered. Interestingly, they show up in my office and I begin to explore with them their story. I ask them why they're coming and they're saying, I don't know. I just feel like I have more work to do. Okay, 20 years, huh? And you still have work. That means you probably didn't do the work in the first place. And so we start to explore things. And it's really fascinating. Happens more with guys than gals. So the males do this a little bit more often than the females. And I think that's probably because there's less time where they are willing to talk about the problems in their lives. Because women will, but men don't. So men kind of shun the idea of counseling, which is unfortunate. But they do. So what they do is they begin to tell their story and they tell me things that they have never said before. And I'm like, wow, you're like 15, 20, 25 years in recovery and you never talked about this stuff with anybody? No. Not because they were ashamed or they were hiding purposely because they're trying to be deceptive, but simply because it was so painful that they felt like they couldn't go there. So they had use this dissociative technique to stay away from the things that were so painful. And then to support the idea that they were disconnecting from it and dissociating from it, they had to come up with a reason. And the reason was it didn't matter. Or I didn't realize that that was an issue. Or it was just what I went through. So they either dismiss, they minimize, or they eliminate the things that are very painful. Well, that's why you're an addict. That's how you got there. And they begin to explore it. And it's interesting how also they begin the journey and it usually takes about two years of talk therapy, involved weekly talk therapy for them to get through those things and finally start working to the point where they can feel at peace with the thing that they were so troubled by. And I see people like Tom Petty And I often wonder about Tom and I often wonder about Matthew Perry and the people like him who have these privileged lives, but yet they are very insulated and isolated from everybody. And they're surrounded by people who are dazzled by their fame or their name or their face and their body of work, but they don't see the person and they see the destruction, but they don't really don't care because that's, they want their favor. Johnny Depp perhaps is one of those as well. And it's difficult for them to seek that help. The people like us who are the normal everyday people that don't have fame or power or money or influence, it's perhaps a little bit easier for us to get to the place where we can engage in that helpful therapeutic process to get us there. Because that's actually what you need to do. You need to be able to engage in that. So if you've fallen down and you won't get up, You have to question why you're not getting up. Why are you refusing? Is it your arrogance that's driving your behavior to say, hey, you know what? I can make this happen if I just don't participate in any form of recovery. I can create emergencies that don't exist so that the people around me are running around solving problems that I'm creating, yet not looking like I created them. That is a very clever technique of manipulation. And if you are listening to this and you are not an addict but a family member, understand that's most likely what's actually happening. If you're an addict, understand that is a survival technique that you've engaged and employed to be able to get you to that place. Shame, embarrassment, upset, shame. the public face of my problems. We don't like dealing with those kinds of things, so we'll just keep it private. As a couple of my clients have said recently to me, you know, I just am so attached to the idea that I want revenge. I want vengeance for what happened to me that I can't even begin to conceive how you would forgive for something because don't they get away with it? And we've talked about this before in these podcasts where people have been traumatized, but then they're not willing to give up the anger and resentment they feel because they feel like that's disempowering to them. And then the result is the person who did whatever they did gets away with it. So I can't move that way towards forgiveness. So I'd rather live with the anger. And so I can't even conceive of that. That's why it takes a good couple of years of working through those issues to be able to get to that place where you can live with forgiveness, walk with forgiveness. So you can feel like you've actually been able to deal with what's going on and start to get through it, work through it. The other thing that happens is that the person has dissociated so much from from their trauma event or events or their traumatic childhood that they can't, it's like they're seeing it third person. They can't see themselves as being the person who was in that situation. So it's like it's an out of body third person view they have. And some of the times when I hear the descriptions that those people give of their traumatic childhoods, it is in third person. They use the word I first person, but then the rest of the description is kind of tailored more towards third person. They dissociate when they're telling me, and I can hear it in the word selection they have. Not that they're speaking in third person, but I can see based on their descriptions of the childhood event that they are experiencing it in third person, which means that they have truly disassociated with me. the traumatic event now if you're in that traumatic event mindset and you are dissociating to that level that it happened but it didn't happen to me and that's your coping mechanism some kind of cocoon of safety around you then there is just zero chance that you're going to be able to find a way to be able to reconnect with it easily and that's the power of talk therapy In recovery, it is necessary for you to be able to get to the point where you can work through your issues in the presence of another person where they're bearing witness and they're trained in how to walk you through it. And by therapist, I mean an actual licensed therapist, somebody who is trained in trauma treatment. And that is somebody that is most likely not going to be cognitive behavioral therapist trained or Or if they're person-centered, they've been specifically trained in trauma. Trauma is a very different thing to treat. That's why it's hard to find a trauma-trained therapist. And even then, how do you know their skill level? You being able to allow yourself to be vulnerable and open in your feelings and have somebody guide you through that. And by guide, I mean actually as if they're taking their hands and putting them on your shoulders and moving you along rather than requiring you to just walk by yourself. So the idea of I've fallen and I won't get up. You won't get up because it's not safe. You won't get up because you've learned these manipulation techniques that help distract people who really do want to help you. You won't get up because if you get up, maybe you have to change. Maybe you have to do something that you fear. Maybe you have to face those fears. Maybe you have to do some really hard work on yourself. So, help, I've fallen and I won't get up. As the first word in there, help, I've fallen, I'm in need, I'm paralyzed. I'm unable to take action to recover, but I won't even try. So in counseling, what we do if we're trauma trained is we're helping somebody up. We're not helping them out. We're helping them up. We want to get them out of that stuck position and to be able to then begin to fully recover from their trauma. And let me redefine or define again, not redefine, like I'm making it up, but define again for you, what is recovery with trauma? It is not a process where you have the traumatic memory removed from your brain. That is not possible. The only way that's possible, I guess, if you have a stroke, you have a traumatic brain injury from a stroke or a fall or something, that's how you forget, but that's called a brain injury. It is not possible to forget. You can suppress, but that's not forgetting. That's just shoving into your unconscious mind or your subconscious, but that's not forgetting because it can come back up. It is rather the ability to withstand the memory without it causing you to be re-traumatized. And if you're using drugs and alcohol or anything else to distract yourself, behavioral, chemical, whatever, that is you at a point where you've been re-traumatized in that moment and you need to use to get rid of the thing that is painful to you. And it's very, very difficult, very, very challenging, and a process that requires you to engage in labeling appropriately, assigning correct responsibility for whatever happened, and then working through the process of forgiveness of self and other people. And again, that takes a long time. It's tiptoeing into it. It's not running headfirst because you're going to trip and fall and hit something. And then you're right back where you were. Help, I've fallen and I won't get up. And it's a zigzaggy path. Recovery is always a zigzag kind of, it's not a direct line. It's a zigzag. So you might have a little bit of usage here and there as you're moving along. Things get overwhelming. And so you re-engage in your coping mechanism. And that's okay. At least in my book, it's okay. I'm not giving permission, but I'm saying it's okay because it does happen. But that's part of the learning process. Experience is the teacher. And sometimes it's not the best, but it is the teacher. And so you've never been in a place where you've not used as a coping mechanism. You use something else. And it takes time. So be patient and be caring and have correct expectations of time and ability and find somebody that can truly help you. Don't waste time with a therapist who's not actually helping you because either they're not very competent or you're not connecting with them or they don't know how to do the thing you need to do, but they are competent, but just not in that particular specialty area. But get into therapy. And if you are in a country where it's hard to find therapists, there's an ability now to reach therapy online. You can do that. I have clients that I've helped in other countries and they need help. Everybody needs help. But find somebody that can help you and get the help so that you can stop saying, help, I've fallen and I won't get up. Or help, I've fallen and I can't get up. Say, hey, you know what? I'm trying to get up. It's hard, but I'm trying. Well, that's it for this episode of Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please give me a like and subscribe. And maybe you can reach out to me and let me know what you think of the podcast. You can reach me in different ways. You can connect through the hosting company that you're hosting site that you're using for this. And reach out to me and let me know what you think. And if you'd like to be on the podcast, please, you can be a guest on the podcast. Just, again, talk to me and let me know that you're interested. If you need help, you need real help. Not this help, entertainment help, but real help. Please go get it. Go to rehab. Go to a detox. Go to a hospital. Go to the emergency room. Do whatever you have to do. But for God's sake, please, get the help you need. So until next time, this is Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard, on the beach of success, of recovery, saying see ya.