The End Of The World As We Know It

There are days when I just want to die.

Funny thing, this week has been stressful.  Aside from an interview to keep my job (and maybe get promoted), my two daughters are on anti-biotics and my Dad has had blood pressure of 215/107 and a pulse of 130.  Medication has brought all that under control. (Ok, not the job interview...) But still I am heading overseas, and there's been a few other things.  Whatever. Enough.

In the past few weeks I awoke in the middle of the night, short of breath.  I have weak knees occasionally and am generally tense.  I know the right exercises for breathing and cognitive reframing, and every day this week maybe three things have fallen away from my plate and life has become good again. Life is that much better, then. Except for one thing.

She sent me a text on Monday.

This blog is about Wolpe. It is about systematic desensitisation and the heirarchical behavioural therapy which can help everyone on the planet to a more contented life. This blog is about the things we need to do to achieve our own mental wellbeing.  And it is about how miserable I am every damned day I draw breath and walk the earth. Because that is important, and it isn't enough to be merely happy.

So let's start with Wolpe. Wolpe made a name for himself early in Behaviourism by doing nasty things to cats.  There's no shame in that: Skinner himself was known for his anti-felinism. You might almost say that being kind to pussies is distinctly un-psychological. Except that is a stupid thing to say.  Irrelevant, too.  Follow the link and make your own mind up about your furballing cousins.  I have other subjects to cover.

This being a blog, I don't need to be clinically accurate. So I will quickly tell you what I think you should know.  Wolpe discovered that Freud's teachings didn't help much. (Well, yeah. The technology has now moved on. Freud was a great leap forward but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Past Freud. Keep going. Go on.  You know you want to.)  Wolpe discovered that though exposure to a negative stimulus one becomes inured to it. Stick with the program and you get braver, in short.

Ok, so to make this blog even vaguely interesting I have made a commitment to personal disclosure. Hence the assumed name. Not interested in being both honest AND indentifiable, troops. James Monroe was a wonderful fellah but he isn't blogging any more.  Never did. Devoted husband and a great president tho. Check him out on Wikipedia. He's the nicest boke I have ever impersonated.

Let us assume that a blog requires some actual research, a commitment to a point, some vulnerability and personal disclosure. You may begin to see my pattern as this entry unfolds. If not, sip your warm milk and nutmeg and enjoy the story.  We're going to cure a phobia of heights and whinge about how much I love Julieanne. Sorry, no smell of polish on a piano this time.

Wolpe invented a thing called the SUDS. It is the subjective units of distress scale. Basically, it means that you think about how much something disturbs you on a scale of one to one hundred. Bloody useful in the psychological world, and here's why: your adrenal gland is only good for so long.  There comes a point where your responses are no longer chemical, and are more psychological.  In short, you can reach a point where you're only scared because you think you are scared.

Ok so let us contemplate the idea of someone being scared of heights.  They won't go up a ladder, wouldn't think of climbing a kids' playground structure, and woe betide anyone who suggests a foot bridge or cliff view or one of those span crossings which wave in the breeze. Nup. No, sir. Not for this little black duck.

My last blog was about people who have a mental disorder, and those who might have one but are never diagnosed.  The idea was to suggest that half the population is in danger of such a diagnosis some time in their lives, and the other half really ought not to be too complacent about it either.  That is to say, we all have a closet we fear opening. We all have the potential for mental illness.  We all have a ladder we choose not to climb just yet. We all have an anxiety which we are not currently facing.

Ok, so let us imagine that anxiety is heights.  Wolpe's heirarchical exposure therapy is based upon the idea of systematic desensitisation. If you choose the thing you are most scared of, then list four things which are progressively less scary, then you can simply work you way through the list from least to highest and... wow... you're cured!

But it isn't that simple.  Except that it is.

Later on in this blog I will be talking about Steven C Hayes. His time is not yet come on this entry, and I don't want to show my hand too soon, but in essence he has come up with a brilliant way to describe a problem that I must admit I have: cognitive fusion.  I'll use heights to illustrate it so you can see Julieanne for what she is...

Let's start with the ladder. Stepping on the bottom rung won't kill us, will it?  But for some people it is the thin edge of the wedge. It begins a slippery slope. We must not step on the bottom rung because we will begin to feel anxious, and we will be started on a process which ends with danger.

Systematic desensitisation is like any other psychological concept: people think psychology takes away the pain, but in fact good psychology raises the tolerance of pain to where it ought to have been earlier. So confronting a fear of heghts doesn't remove fear: it restructures the fear of heights in line with what ought to be properly and reasonably feared. Like a swaying single span bridge.

So let us press-gang our little black duck onto the bottom rung of the ladder. I have actually been paid to do this.  The person stands there for about 40 minutes.  Initially their anxiety is through the roof - SUDS sits at about 90 per cent and they're too petrified to move. I usually play music and dance till they thaw out. A good day at the office.  I don't even have to torture a cat. We call it quits after an hour when their SUDS has dropped to about 50. At this point you may fairly argue I have lightly torured a duck. But it was for the duck's own good.

The next week we go to a play ground. Over an hour the little black duck will step onto a monkey bars frame.  Then calm down. Then climb higher. 90% becomes 70% becomes 60% becomes 50%.  Once swinging about on a monkey bar is reasonably easy, we go home.  Did I mention I get paid for this?  I DO swing on the bars, at least. Leadership role and stuff. I earn my money, all right. The duck's homework is to go romp about on the (now not at all scary) ladder.

So you get the deal, then. Progressively, each milestone makes the previous ones less scary. Eventually we're there on a (perhaps dangerous) swaying bridge, slowly walking across. We mustn't rush it 'cos the adrenal gland wins when you run. A good crossing, a good anything, takes 40 minutes.  I get tired of saying "And what is your SUDS now?", but hey, I'm getting paid for it. And by now we are actually matching a fear of heights to a dangerous situation and I am in fact watching for real dangers and genuinely keeping my client safe. And by now they're technically cured.

So cognitive fusion is the inability to choose. It is when one 'couldn't possibly' make it up a ladder, or across a monkey bars. It is when the cognition, or thoughts, are fused or welded to a single option.  A person couldn't possibly think of anything else. there is not other way to contemplate being.

I love Julieanne and I always will. She is the only one for me.

To overcome cognitive fusion, you think of five things you need to do and then you do them progressively. Slowly. To rush a thing you fear to do is to 'flood', or just get through it by running across the bridge with your eyes shut. Your adrenal gland will get you across the bridge but that doesn't help you to conquer your fears.

Ok, so you must be starting to twig by now. I couldn't be with Julieanne, and I was desperately in love with her. Every day was a living hell and I couldn't bear to be away from her.  I wanted to text her, to phone her, to be with her so badly.  But it was just delaying the inevitable realisaton that I can't be with her. It was holding out hope cruelly to a woman who deserved better. I had to get over her.

Five things. Coffee with someone else. Call her Tonia. Cook Tonia a meal. Go places. Develop a bond through shared conversations and experiences. A trip to Daylesford together.

Get to the six month mark. Surely, eventually, I'll forget Julieanne and I will develop feelings for this new person which are just as strong.  All it takes is time.

And there's a sense in which that is true. If what you want is to drop your fear of heights, then you can cast that fear aside by working through a heirarchy.  And to get through a broken heart, you can apply the same approach. If you really want to.

Except there are days when I just want to die.

Just as my new partner reached a moment when she asked herself (and me) why we wouldn't think about maybe, one day, moving in together, I got an email from Julieanne. She needed my help. She had no-one else to turn to. She would appreciate it if I could help her with a document, but she'd understand if I couldn't do it and if her contact wasn't welcome. And like that.

I helped her with the document and I sent her away. There's nothing else I could do.  My kids still live here.  I still can't leave them.  I still can't offer her hope. And there's this new guy on the scene there in Wollongong who maybe will make her happy.

But then I looked at my new partner and saw her as more than a ladder. Tonia was the most wonderful woman I have ever been with.  Funny, friendly, caring and decent. I genuinely cared about her, and had thought our feelings woould mutually develop. One email and I realised the truth. And that wasn't fair to Tonia. She deserved someone who loved her. And every damned day I think about Julieanne.  Not because I want to.  Not because I will ever be with her. Just because that is who I am. Forty-five percent of the population have some kind of disorder at some point in their lives.  Maybe my disorder is called love.  Sometimes cognitive fusion is a part of who we are. Sometimes our pain defines us. Sometimes it is better to be alone than to pretend.  Sometimes our chosen therapy is just another expression of our disorder. Some days I just want to die.

So I broke up with a woman who was a wonderful, friendly, caring woman. Tonia agreed. She had always sensed there was someone else somewhere back there who distracted me from truly looking at her. She was, to the end, a decent woman who understood where I was at. And I was at the top of my heirarchy. I can live my life without Julieanne, and I don't need to run off and be with someone else to distract me.

Perhaps I used Tonia. I actually firmly believe that we all, always, use each other. If someone is not useful to you, why would you want them at all? Anyway it was only when I reached a point where I could live alone that I didn't need her anymore. Makes sense, yeah?

Mark Twain said he lost the beauty of the river when he came to see it with the pilot's eye. So beware, my fellow contentment-seekers. What you seek will make you different from who you are now. Shaw said that when you have learned something, that means you have also lost something.

You're not content.  We are biologically built to be anxious. You can identify that anxiety source through brutal honesty, and by setting yourself a heirarchy and working through the scale using the SUDS approach, you will come to cope with your stimulus and be able to tolerate it. Except that you will start to see it in terms of a score from one to a hundred, and the fearful beauty it held for you will fade to grey. That's what cures are like.

I can live on my own.  I can be without Julieanne. Not because she doesn't matter, but because I can tolerate the pain.  I have developed that strength. I have overcome my cognitive fusion to that extent.  I have choice.

She sent me a text on Monday.

She had the date wrong, she thought I was flying out to Boston on Tuesday just gone. I called her and explained, and I wished her well and I heard how she is getting along ok and she is coping with her kids and her job and all those things which cause her grief. And I said thanks for thinking of me, and I had to go now, and like that. And I ended the call.

There are days when I just want to die.

Next Tuesday I'm getting on a plane to the US and maybe it will fall out of the sky. I love my daughters and I love my Dad. I treasure my family and friends. My last fleeting thought if I die on this trip will be relief that I am about to stop aching for Julieanne every time I wake up and just before I go to sleep. I'll be pleased to stop plodding forward through a grey world where I understand the rules and I know how to exist. There's a sense in which I'll greet any plane crash with relief.  I even rejected the option to fly QANTAS.

But the truth is I expect to return from the States two weeks from now. I won't be meeting my death any time soon. And that is the best thing for everyone. Even me. The real path to a contented life is the process of being able to tolerate pain.

On the days you want to die, take a breath, and go on.

It is what life is about.