Elise survived her family by sheer grit. When her father was beating her, she reached down to a stubborn place inside and said to herself, “He won’t defeat me. I won’t cry. I won’t show pain.”
As an adult, Elise froze when she was in doubt, and nothing could move her out of it for as long as she remained unsure.
Since she was often not sure, she was often immobilized.
What would have happened if Akua, in her kitchen, had pushed Elise to decide then and there about the surgery or had insisted that she sign up for the recovery program? What if Akua had dialed the surgeon’s office and put Elise in a position where she’d have to schedule the surgery?
She’d have moved into the sequel to indecision—resistance. Push a misery addict too hard and the chances are she will do exactly the opposite of what is best for her. If Akua had forced Elise to schedule the surgery, she’d probably have cancelled it as soon as Akua was gone. (Notice that it’s far easier to stop a good thing than it is to start it.)
A new, more compelling incentive would take over—the absolute need to not be controlled. It would matter more to Elise to not be controlled than to lose the use of her hand.
Not all misery addicts were overcontrolled as children—some suffered from too little structure—but those who were have a fierce aversion to restriction, so much so that they must buck it even if the consequences will harm them.
Sanderson was fortunate to work at a job with flextime. As long as he worked his eight hours, he could start and stop whenever he wanted. He never abused this; in fact, he often gave the company extra minutes here and there. However, he was expected to meet report deadlines and to turn in paperwork at specific times. This he could not do.
He’d program his computer with alarms. He put notes to himself in his Palm Pilot. None of it worked. After he received some serious warnings, he created a predeadline with a buddy at which time he was to produce his reports. But even then, he always had something else to do first. He always had an excuse. His paperwork was still always late.
This behavior didn’t get him fired (although it could have), but it did cost him. His supervisors came to view him as resistant, insubordinate, disorganized, and not dedicated to his job. In fact, he loved his job. But his behavior gave an opposite impression.
Tonya kept trying to lose weight. After running the gamut of weight-loss programs and losing a total of three pounds, she finally found a binge-eating recovery group that revealed to her the true nature of the problem. There, she learned about the importance of always having breakfast and never skipping meals. With help she created a plan for herself and set up daily phone support with a group member. But within weeks she bailed out of her plan.
Tonya and Sanderson survived their families by constructing an inner barrier that made it possible to endure eighteen years of arbitrary, mean-spirited domination. As a result, they experienced nearly any kind of structure in adulthood as unbearable. Discipline felt like regimentation. Supervision felt like bossiness. To comply with authority felt like servitude.
This kind of problem can spread out so that any program or activity that requires consistency triggers rebellion. A daily exercise program, a routine for house maintenance, a school study schedule, or a wife’s request for a Friday date night can slip into that haunt that must be avoided, regardless of the cost.
Unfortunately, though, life is filled with routines—daily hygiene, meals, dental checkups, cleaning the aquarium, filling the bird feeder, changing the car oil, having annual physicals, taking vitamins and medications, and going to recovery meetings.
A misery addict’s paralysis is enhanced by this aversion to control. Any pressure, however well meant or kindly, will be resisted. If the pressure increases, at some level, most misery addicts will rebel. This creates a life that’s unmanageable.
This looks, from the outside, like the misery addict is choosing to be miserable. It’s more accurate to say that she cannot let herself feel trapped.
Let’s look at memory again. There are two kinds of memory: explicit and implicit. Explicit memory is what we use to store and retrieve facts. The multiplication tables, phone numbers, our past experiences, and a sense of self all involve explicit memory.
The encoding process of explicit memory goes through stages: short-term memory, working memory, and, eventually, long-term memory. Full encoding (consolidation into permanent memory) can take weeks, months, even years. The parts of the brain involved in encoding develop throughout childhood.1
Certain conditions must be met if facts are to be stored and used. For example, the person must be conscious. His attention must be directed and focused if something is to be remembered.
Implicit memory is already working at birth. It involves parts of the brain that do not require conscious processing, parts that are intact at birth and remain intact throughout life. Implicit memory works through mental models generated from the neural net. Instead of going through stages that can take weeks or months before a fact is in hard storage, implicit memory records our full experience, including our sensations, how we feel about them, and the markers that identify them. Remarkably, from birth, infants are able to generalize from experience and do so beyond the single mode of the experience. From feeling a nipple in their mouths in a darkened room, they can identify the familiar nipple in a visual multiple choice. They have generalized from touch to vision.2 Already, in early life, a baby’s brain has developed shorthand for recognition. Her brain is capable of recognizing what is familiar and of having a bias toward it.
In fact, she can anticipate what will come next based on previous experience and react in advance. Thus a baby can cry at the smell of the doctor’s office where he previously had a shot or be restless in church where he previously got too hungry.
Anticipating the future is a product of implicit memory. In contrast, planning for the future is a function of explicit memory.3
How often are we caught short by expectations? After an event, we realize it has failed or exceeded our expectations, but prior to an event, unless we are somehow stimulated to talk about it, we aren’t aware of our expectations. Expectations arise from anticipation, and anticipation is based on implicit memory.
This points out an essential difference between implicit and explicit memory. With explicit memory, we are aware that we are remembering. We can feel ourselves remembering. We are looking into our brains to get information.
With implicit memory, we have no sense of recollection. We have no subjective experience of remembrance. We are not aware that our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are being influenced by implicit memory because we do not feel ourselves remembering. Thus we are not conscious of the generalizations we are making or of how we are slotting current experience into pigeonholes formed by past experience.
It is implicit memory that creates the detrimental reflexes that mess up a misery addict’s life. But because he has no sensation of remembering, he does not know he’s being influenced. These behaviors and reactions feel natural and automatic, and the misery addict may sometimes be surprised if they are pointed out afterward because they can be so mechanical that the person is not even aware that he has acted. He may be particularly unaware of why he has acted.
Misery addicts get puzzled by their own behavior. Sanderson will be heading to a recovery meeting and end up at the software store. Tonya will be determined to order salad and end up with a burger and fries. Why? Because their behavior is overruled by a deeper impulse, one coming from a place deeper than consciousness.
When we realize that these impulses were formed during babyhood, it makes a little more sense that we can’t remember them. But it can be very disorienting when a self-destructive behavior sneaks up on us, especially when we’re intentionally trying to be conscious and keep ourselves from sabotaging ourselves.
The irony is that a misery addict who hates being controlled is, in fact, constantly being driven by implicit memory.
This is true for all of us, of course, but if our wires aren’t crossed, it’s not necessarily a problem. If things that are good for us seem positive and things harmful to us seem negative, we can navigate the world with some confidence.
For the misery addict, implicit memory colors her reaction to positive possibilities and choices. The things that are good for her have a bad feel. Thus her instinct tells her to follow the road that will not be best for her. Her bias is toward the familiar, and what is familiar is her system of survival.
Friends and family members may see a misery addict as wantonly self-destructive and may decide to bail out of the relationship. Sometimes the only sane choice for a friend or family member is to do so. A misery addict’s behavior can be self-destructive—and, even if it’s not deliberate, loved ones get tired of being helpless in the face of the misery addict’s dedication to a collision course. Sometimes, by the time he’s willing to go into recovery and treatment, he’s used up the people who cared about him the most.
Therapists may judge such a client as oppositional, and their commitment to the client may erode. (Ordinary therapy alone can’t fix this anyway, unless it’s a mild case. In most cases it must be coupled with recovery, and it must include certain other elements, which you’ll learn about soon.)
One spring day I was walking near my office when I noticed a little curly-headed girl walking in her play yard just as her father came around the corner of the house and through the gate. The child had a toy in her hand, and when she saw her father, she held the toy forward, as if offering it. In response, her father harshly barked a rejecting stream of words.
The child did an abrupt about-face, slumped, dropped the toy, and walked away from him, dejection writ throughout her small body.
Imagine the affect on her neural net, the immediate associations engraved in the indelible material of her brain. Imagine what she was learning to anticipate about men, about adults, about close relatives.
A new child absorbs the world at an astounding rate. These early models become her slant on life, her beliefs about the way relationships work.
Here is the dilemma for misery addicts: what do you do when the actions you need to take to save your life are the very actions that feel most life-threatening?