by Tom Tomaszewski | Feb 15, 2025 | ALIENATION
One of the hardest things about living with, working with, or staying attached to someone with a severe dependency problem is reckoning with the gap between their rational self and their utterly wrecked self.
I’ve heard so many people in early recovery explain, with impeccable logic, why they need to keep spending time with someone who still uses enough drugs to drop an elephant — or why they still frequent the same bars that have been the graveyards of their dignity.
It’s easy to get drawn in. Their reasoning will always sound convincing — until you remember that, not long ago, this same person was drinking to blackout, nodding off at the wheel, maybe even while driving a train.
This seemingly rational person is also, I’m afraid, a bomb of chaos waiting to go off.
But give it time. The shift comes when they start sounding less sure, less rigid, less self-righteous. When they say things they regret and truly regret them. When they pause, reconsider, hesitate. And, at times, when they are still resolute, clear, full of enthusiasm.
That’s normal. That’s good. Just give it time.
Which brings us to politics.
People who are very good at sounding fiercely ‘right’ — aggressively correct — should never be left in charge of anything, let alone a nation. When people talk about ‘the right,’ they usually mean a political stance, not a deeply troubled, divided state of mind — the one behind I AM RIGHT. But maybe they should. A mind like that doesn’t unite. It carves us into factions, whips us into certainty, turns doubt into weakness and opposition into enemies.
We’d better look out.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Jan 30, 2025 | ALIENATION, Be Somebody Else, HESITATION
Worrying is necessary. Every group needs someone who knows how to worry, someone prone to anxiety who tends to experience life as if its continually undecided, on the verge of veering off-track (or worse). Avoidance – that too. All groups need somebody who’s a studied avoider.
Worriers and avoiders have to be valued (they need it) and … then they tend to worry less and stay involved. If they aren’t they tend to become frantically anxious or go missing.Ignore these people at your peril. Dismiss their worries or their second thoughts and watch as a crisis unfolds.
Life is about discovering how to live together. Attachment theory avoids this.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Aug 16, 2024 | ALIENATION, HELPLESSNESS
In situations where you believe you will be treated badly look for an ally. Ideally that person will be someone who might be less easy for your abuser to do down. Someone who might be hard for that person to describe and denigrate in terms they would apply to you. If trouble happens, see if they can point it out. Then you can back them up if you like.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Jun 20, 2024 | ALIENATION
Try changing the signal you put out into the world. If you limit yourself, always making sure you take the minimum of what’s on offer, and this somehow makes you feel safe – take more. People who know you and worry about the way you restrict your life (maybe not friends who do things the same way as you) are unintentionally confirming the feeling you have that something unsafe is going on. Their anxiety suggests uncertainty or risk. Your predicted restrictive behaviour seems like the right one: the way to remain safe when there’s a threat around. Fear surrounds you.
If you ask for more then you might find those same people relax and give you more encouragement, or joy. At first this feels very weird and wrong. After a time, however, you may start to feel safe. The atmosphere around you corroborates this. There’s no threat.
Life is really not this simple. But it’s worth a try.
by Tom Tomaszewski | Jun 3, 2024 | ALIENATION, HESITATION
As I’ve written elsewhere, individualism is a particular problem. There has always been a group of people attached to anybody who calls themselves an individual: the artists who we admire, the leaders who we follow, or whoever. If you really want to succeed in your life; if you want to thrive, you must not overlook the social.
Frank O’Hara might never have published Lunch Poems if Lawrence Ferlinghetti hadn’t gone on asking him about lunch. Lou Reed’s Perfect Day was perhaps more Mick Ronson and David Bowie than Lou Reed. Donald Trump is a paean to everybody who has ever wanted to be an individual. And so on.
by Tom Tomaszewski | May 22, 2024 | ALIENATION, FRUSTRATION
Dreams are very handy things. I often have a lot of them when I start thinking intensely about something. Don’t ignore them, don’t try to interpret them, just see where they take you as if they are a kind of a taxi. (more…)
