Attacks on Traditional Masculinity

Over the last few weeks, people have been exploding over the new APA guidelines for treating boys and men. At the cornerstone of their vitriol is the idea that the "Ideology of Traditional Masculinity" is somehow at fault for many of our modern ills. They seem to think that our idea of masculinity is "natural" and that somehow it hasn't been controlled or evolved over time.

It is my opinion that "traditional masculinity" is, in fact, the masculinity of the 20th Century. The usage of the word ideology is not hyperbole but is used advisedly in this context. It is an ideal vision of manliness which was fabricated through the use of mass media and propaganda. The decisions that went into its formation were conscious on some level, and we've suffered the unforeseen consequences.

Of course, if you happen to be a man who has grown up to believe that all men must be competitive, aggressive, stoic, and dominant, you're also not prone to self-reflection. This is the kind of person who will argue a position long after it's been proven that he is wrong. He cannot accept that kind of threat to his dominance. Yet this has been trained into him, and he is continually fearful of losing social position. The words "I stand corrected" are not allowed in his vocabulary. As such, no words can possibly reach him. I write for those who are not so set in their ways, or who are looking for reasons why and how we got here.

British General Staff General Routine Order 2384 of June 1917 stated that "in no circumstances whatever will the expression "shell shock" be used verbally or be recorded in any regimental or other casualty report, or any hospital or other medical document." You see, "shell shock" could not be a diagnosis. The nervous individual was obviously too weak for combat in the first place. This was not a wound on the psyche, but rather a sign of personal weakness which was intolerable in a fighting man.

The white feather movement further shamed individuals who were not of the "appropriate type," basically any man of fighting age who was not currently in France dying in a trench. The two combined created the foundations for our ideal Manly Man, out fighting Gerry across the channel.

In Germany, they treated such "weak men" with electro-shock therapy rather than simply shaming them out of the military and leaving them without pension or support.

World War II was very much an extension of World War I, being the direct result of the Treaty of Versailles. By then we had developed film and radio beyond simple news reporting and were telling stories to the masses... stories about manly men, unshakable men, strong, competitive, unflappable, stoic, aggressive, sexually virile men. They showed the population a manly ideal, a man that always won out against incredible odds, and always, always, got the girl at the end of the story. This was not just story-telling and entertainment, they were inspiring young men to become war material.

As WWII wound down and the Cold War wound up, our ability to tell these stories became more robust. War films and Westerns remained popular giving rise to manly icons such as Justus Barnes, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood. Action films maintained the theme well beyond and into the present day with manly men like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, and Mel Gibson. Each one depicting a type of masculinity far removed from the Renaissance Men of previous centuries. The ideal of the gentleman was replaced with the new ideal of the pugnacious, uncompromising action hero.

This ideology was especially attractive to men returning from war to discover that women had taken over their factory jobs. Media again worked to put them back in their place as home-makers, while technology stole from them any value that had been placed on home-making as a pursuit. Automatic washers, vaccuum cleaners, cookers, etc... meant that the full-time job of keeping a household was eroded freeing up "women's work" to the point that men no longer valued the efforts involved. No longer was beating the carpets a full day's work, just a quick go around with the Hoover and it's done!

Full-time education of children further opened up their day, and so when women started looking for meaningful employment, men had to crack down. After all, they were being told by movies and television what a REAL MAN was all about, and that didn't include letting his wife work. That would question his prowess as a breadwinner!

Feminism erupted, demanding equal rights, equal treatment, equal respect, and to be equally valued. If women get equal respect, then what kind of trophy is the man supposed to get at the end of his heroic narrative? If you work hard enough to be the manly man depicted on the screen, then you deserve to be rewarded with the beautiful woman, right? Not an independent person with their own ideas, goals, thoughts, and employment.

We're in the midst of a major backlash where some of us realize that the ideology of twentieth-century masculinity is the result of political propaganda (remember that if a filmmaker deviated from the standard narrative McCarthy would brand them a Communist). We've outgrown that dark time in our history, but the narratives remain. We continue to tell the same old stories without teaching enough media literacy to analyze them within their historical context.

We need to realize that it is not the nature of man to be aggressive, stoic, and dominant. Men's Rights Advocates point to the mighty lion or other animals, not realizing that in the pride, the male is kept for breeding and everything is actually done by the females. From horses to wolves it is the head female who runs the show, not the male. Men compare themselves to "alphas" and "top dogs" but fail to realize that the top dog in a pack is a bitch.

This template for masculinity has been taught to us through society and the media. During the process of individuation, we repress those traits which we're told are inappropriate to our sex. In men, we repress what society tells us is "too feminine" and so create the Anima. In women, they repress anything that is considered too masculine into the Animus. It is entirely a question of nurture, not nature. Certainly, testosterone plays a role, but so does civilization and society.

At school, I had a rival. Not someone I hated, no someone I fought against. Instead, we worked to out-do one another. There was no prize to be won, except that we made each other into better students. That's a spirit of competition we don't teach in the modern era. It's either backstabbing, dog-eat-dog, or we give everyone a medal for showing up on game day. Both have contributed to failures in our technology, our politics, and our social growth.

Aggressive, unethical competition results in the destruction of superior products through subterfuge and ad hominem attacks. 40 years after the advent of the x86 architecture, we're still working on x86-based computers. We're using inferior software in part because of anti-competition tactics, theft, and targeted destruction of companies by the "winning" corporations. Our current processor instruction sets are merely extensions of the 80386 processor design, with true 64-bit processors disappearing from the landscape, most people not even aware that they existed.

When I was growing up, I watched a SPACESHIP land in Florida. An actual spaceship, that had been to space, and back, more than once! Now we rely on a ship designed in the 1960s which is launched and retrieved (it crashes into the desert) in Khazikstan.

Our concept of expertise is thrown out the window because modern masculinity will not allow an individual to admit to being wrong. Somehow a man is lessened as a person if he says "you know what, you actually know more about this than I do, I'll have to revise my position." It can't be done! Just watch congress trying to navigate Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Internet policies, or National Security. They know they have no idea what they're talking about, but they can't admit that without surrendering their dominance.

Let us look back at Jung's ideal individual. Every person is both Masculine and Feminine, and it is only through integrating the Anima/Animus, or integrating both Masculine and Feminine traits into the personality, that one becomes whole and healthy. Anything else is simply broken, and our society and culture, and future generations, will continue to pay the price.

My New Normal

Over the last several weeks I have encountered a new experience when it comes to traumatic triggers. Certain words and images illicit an automatic response over which I have no control or agency.
The reaction is one of letting out a shout, trying to get away from whatever the trigger was, rolling into a ball, and becoming non-responsive (with or without crying). Once this is happened I have to try and find my way back to the now. I'm told this is a type of flashback and as far as my amygdala is concerned I have returned to a time 21 years ago.

As one can imagine this is very stressful not only for myself but also for those around me. Perhaps the worst part is that I have no control over this reaction. It is entirely involuntary and is just as intense whether I see an image or hear word related to certain medical equipment and procedures.

Not having any control over the situation, in fact not even knowing that it has happened until after the fact, is possibly the most terrifying aspect of the entire experience.

How do you deal with that complete loss of personal agency, how do you face the fact there is a thing that is so ubiquitous and yet causes a bypass of your Executive Function, your very power as an individual and leaves you crying in a heap, unable to control the situation, unable to control the loss of who you are in a moment? How has this become my new normal, taking away my ability to socialize, to watch television, to engage in the world around me for fear of suddenly losing that personal agency by encountering a trigger over which I have no control?

My primary care practitioner has told me that this is actually quite normal. He's ex-military and says that he knows people who seem fine for 10 or 15 years and then suddenly everything unravels. Somehow hitting the anniversary date at the 20th year caused everything to go downhill, and this is considered "normal."

The reason that post-traumatic stress becomes post-traumatic stress disorder is that there is no reestablishment of Safety and Security immediately after the traumatic event has taken place. By some estimates as many as 20% of people who have long hospital stays suffer from some kind of iatrogenic PTSD. And yet hospitals still refuse to let people who are staying keep their loved ones with them, their support structures with them, but send them away. They force the individual to lie in a dark room alone, in an environment for which we are not equipped to cope. We lie there hooked to whatever, machines or medicines or what have you, and there's nobody there to hold our hand and there's nobody there to make us feel safe and loved and wanted and alive.

Then, as a culture, we ignore the aftermath, the broken individuals who get through this ordeal. We care only for the mechanical functions of life and not the living of it beyond those parameters.

And all we can say is, this is your new normal.

Sex, Occultism, and Abuse

There has been a lot of talk about sex, abuse, and occult/neo-pagan traditions of late. I've been asking questions of people about how we can justify certain practices in a post #MeToo environment. As a culture, we now realize that sexual consent can only be valid between people on equal footing. Power imbalance makes it impossible to consent freely and without coercion.

Can we, with good conscience continue to support traditions that require individuals to participate skyclad? Can we honestly say that the 5-fold and 8-fold kisses are not a breach of body autonomy, especially when these things are considered requirements of the initiatory process?

I don't think so. Even if you tell someone that the 5-fold kiss is going to happen and that they're required to be naked for their initiation, you're still saying that "you can't be a member of our club/community/tradition unless you get naked and let me kiss your bits." That's simply unacceptable. Such things cannot be a requirement of membership.

Now, I'm not a prude. I have no problem being naked, and I don't have a problem with other people being naked. My problem is that it's a required, non-negotiable part of the ritual. Not just the initiation, but all inner-court rituals of traditional Wicca.

Now some people say "just don't join those traditions." OK, then stop claiming that you're traditions are the only true lineage and that everyone else is bullshit. BTW based traditions basically claim a copyright on Wiccan authenticity and in order to be part of that, to be accepted as genuine by the community, you'd better get naked and let a "legitimate" HP/HPS kiss you in intimate places. Do you see the coercive nature of this yet? If you say "no, I'm not comfortable with this" then you're rejected from the "one true way" and can go join one of those "lesser" or "less pure" traditions.

Not only does this fail to respect an individual's body autonomy, but it also ignores the very real possibility that you're stomping on someone's trauma.

When I was 18 I was bedded by a high priestess seven years my elder. I recently asked someone whether that person was a known sexual predator and, surprise, they said she was. More and more we hear about predation in the Wiccan and Neo-Pagan communities. Individuals can argue that their conquests consented, but never ask themselves "was I in a position of power at the time?" They never question the freedom of that consent or whether it was in question at the time.

Some argue that the Charge of the Goddess demands nudity, yet we know that this charge has its roots in Thelema as interpreted by Gardner. It lacks the authenticity to claim antiquity, and yet is treated as sacrosanct by many traditions and covens. It also contradicts itself. A sign that you are truly free cannot be coerced from you. You cannot enforce nudity as a prerequisite for access to your mysteries and community and claim that it's actually a sign of personal freedom.

Does the word "Gaslighting" mean anything to you?

There is much in Wicca and British Neo-Paganism that I like. I feel that the Hermetic traditions of the Golden Dawn and BOTA badly need more of the devotional Love principle than they currently encompass. Equally, I feel that modern Wicca lacks much in the Wisdom/Knowledge and Power principles. Yet we cannot simply trade the Lodge for the Circle or vice-versa. We need to draw what we need from the various tributaries to forge something new.

The Golden Dawn tradition was not built from the mind of a single person, nor did it evolve in a vacuum. The men and women of that original order came from a variety of traditions, the founders were all initiates elsewhere, and they pooled their resources. In the last 120+ years, many authors and adepts have added to and modified the tradition in wonderful ways.

Yet what we know of Wicca comes down to one or two individuals, and most people are simply copying that in one way or another. Gardner is seen as a kind of god or saint, and the traditions lean precariously close to cults of personality. The very idea that we dispense with required nudity in the circle has been met with strong opposition, some even claiming "then it wouldn't be Wicca!"

Well, maybe it's time for not-Wicca to dominate because, in my opinion, it's unconscionable to maintain outdated and coercive attitudes towards the sexual expression of its members. We need new covens that respect the individual members rather than demand they be put on display to be targeted by abusers and predators. This is no longer acceptable behaviour. Nudity as an option? Yes, that leaves it up to the individual to choose. As a necessity? No, absolutely not.

Trauma and Autonomy

Lately, a new symptom has arisen where certain medical terms, images, etc... will trigger a total loss of autonomy. Involuntary action as a response to stimuli is very disempowering.

In Occultism we talk often about the separation of the Conscious and Subconscious minds. We're a composite creature made up of body, mind, spirit, etc... The Guph, the Nephesh, the Ruach, the Nashama, the Yekhida, are all separate parts of what makes us, us.

So where does trauma come in? It seems to me, from my reading and my experiences, that it might actually be a wound in the Guph. The autonomic nervous system reacts first, and only later does it fill in a report to the conscious mind. The amygdala triggers the Vagus Nerve and responds, cutting off and protecting the conscious mind (medial frontal cortex) in order to keep us safe.

This is great if we're touching a hot stove, or encountering a tiger, or stepping on a pin, but not so great when that system has been wired to something that isn't actually all that dangerous.

My hope is, though, that this is a wound of the Nephesh, existing in our astral and subconscious existence. Part of our mind is still trapped in the moments of trauma, and part of us has been trained to respond to stimuli as a dire threat. If this is part of the Nephesh, then it's more likely to be repairable, though brain plasticity does last longer than we ever thought possible. It's not true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, it just takes longer.

I'm also wondering whether Simple PTSD and Complex PTSD are different processes. With Complex PTSD we have learned something through repeated exposure as opposed to Simple PTSD which happens in a single moment of experience. In our Occult tradition, we often train the mind and brain in various ways. Meditation, ritual, recitation, and memorization all act to alter or program the mental pathways and functions of our subconscious mind and brain. Every martial artist who has had the experience of reacting first and thinking second knows how deeply ingrained the forms can become through repeated practice.

The key seems to be in finding ways to reprocess trauma. EMDR uses eye movement to trigger the dream reprocessing circuitry of the brain so traumatic memories can be reprocessed into historical artefacts that are part of your life narrative, and not something your brain thinks is still happening.

When these triggers hit I have the very real sensation of being shoved out of the way. My conscious mind is pushed aside because the brain's primary goal is self-preservation and cognition could take too much time. It's quite frightening to experience that loss of autonomy, even though it's only for a second or so.

It can be very difficult to rebalance oneself after such an experience, especially if they seem to keep happening. Some triggers appear to be far more ubiquitous than I'd ever realized.

I'm not yet sure how to approach this yet since I can't even get near the triggers in thought or word or deed without being shoved out of the way by the sub-c. Although it is fascinating to actually feel that system work, to have that visceral experience of consciousness being a separate entity from the rest of the body, it's also quite frightening and extremely frustrating at the same time.

Trauma Frustrations

Basically, since the PTSD became unlocked it's hijacked my whole life. I spend most of my time avoiding myself rather than actually living. It's bullshit, and I keep thinking there must be some way to just "not let it control me."

Then I have a bad night with night terrors keeping up the neighbours.

Or an involentary reaction in public to an otherwise innocuous word or anecdote.

It's amazing how difficult it is to even discribe what happens to someone who hasn't experienced it first-hand. Although I understand the mechanism and can talk about the Thalimus sending signals to the Amygdala which reacts independantly of the Medial Frontal Cortex, it lacks the sheer helplessness the MFC feels in being left out of the conversation. It fails to explain the sudden sensation of being switched off and removed from the decision-making process.

I remember watching Forest Gump in the theater with an older friend, a military vetran. Although I sympathized with him as he sank into his seat, gripping the armrests while THX-SurroundSound tracer bullets screamed around the screen, I didn't truly understand. Considering the date, I'm not sure anyone understood exept a fellow vet.

We understand so much more than we did back then. We have much for which to thank Dr. VanDerKolk and General Dallaire.

The kids today (what am I, old?) talk about "trigger warnings" and triggering subjects. I think it's often bullshit. Yes, some things might make me uncomfortable, but an actual trigger is a singular experience, and not one I would wish on anybody.

For example, discussions about spousal abuse are uncomfortable reminders of my past. I don't like them, but I realize that's part of my experience, and maybe I can contribute something valuable to the conversation. Yes, my BP goes up, heart-rate, etc... but I'm not "triggered."

On the other hand certain specific words, actions, sensations result in immediate physiological reactions. They instantly engage my Fight/Flight/Freeze Amygdala alarm responses. My mid- and hind-brains see no difference between that trigger and the sound of a tiger in the brush six feet away.

In an uncomfortable situation "I" am still in control. In a truly triggered situation "I" am just a passenger as millions of years of self-preservation instincts take over.

Sometimes the former is damned hard, but I mostly feel my own autonomy, and that's important. When triggered I don't blame anyone. I don't get angry. I accept that people wander on to psychological land-mines, and those psychic scars are mine, not theirs.

I can't imagine being in a classroom and outright banning entire areas of discussion because of my illness. That takes away from everyone's ability to learn. I might make a note of known triggers to my prof, but I'm not going to ban whole areas of inquery.

Equally, I'm not going to take courses that are likely to contain triggering content.

A student with legitimate PTSD needs to be in therapy. In the case of simple, single event PTSD we have real treatment options.

Tales of Trauma IV: Opening Doors

One of the biggest problems I've run into is finding access to really valuable tools for coping with trauma. Even accessing or uncovering trauma can be nearly impossible without the "right" kind of therapist. I keep getting told "oh, we don't know how to do that here," or "I want to study that, but we don't have time."

Recently I was working on an inner landscape. Inner visualization is something I've explored most of my life, and as an Occultist, I highly recommend working with inner visualization. It's not terribly difficult. If you've ever read The Magician's Nephew (the prequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) you'll be familiar with Aslan's "singing" the world into existence. In a similar fashion, many years ago, I began with a blank slate, built a beach on the ocean, a house, mountains, forests, temples, etc... and populated it with people, archetypes, and characters from books.

In the language of Jung, I gave form to the inner Parts of my personality and psychology. By interacting with these Parts I have often been able to communicate with my own subconscious in a way not unlike "talking" to Tarot Keys.

What's interesting is that these parts also seem to have fallen into the roles described in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS). IFS teaches that there are certain personalities, certain Parts, that act as Managers, and these Managers can help protect the conscious mind from traumatic events. We know from fMRI studies that accessing traumatic memories is really re-living those memories, rather than recalling them. By accessing these memories we can re-traumatize ourselves (which is why MDMA is being used in trauma therapy).

A few weeks ago I went back to my old neighbourhood. I haven't been there in about 25 years, and it's been a constant source of personal pain, for I never got to say goodbye. The experience was intense and strange. Nothing was the same. They'd heavily modified my old house, the nearby school is empty and covered in graffiti, and the creekbed where I used to play has become overgrown and unloved. It was as though the Spiritus Loci had fled.

The entire experience was like walking in a dream or watching some post-apocalyptic film. I even found an old friend of mine who is back living in the house next to my old home. They're also not what I remember. No longer is my childhood friend full of promise and excited about technology, hacking computer games for fun, but she's a bitter, wrung-out, racist, and petty person, so far from what I recall. It was painful.

I was able to find some large stones from the river, itself but a trickle, no deeper than my ankle, and I was able to finally leave because I wanted to leave. It was left behind, and it took a while to process.

After that, one of the primary denizens of my inner landscape changed their personality. They were suddenly deferential, polite, subservient. So I asked them about trauma, I asked about the places where my trauma has been stored. I've been depressed lately, and rather than deal with psychiatric drugs, I'd rather find ways to integrate the traumas that are at the root of the problem.

I was taken to a dungeon and told that behind each great wooden door is a trauma. The row doors disappeared into the darkness. So I thought I'd try to open one.

I want to share this for two reasons. The first is that I had no idea what to expect, and perhaps, dear reader, you will fare somewhat better than I if you make the attempt. The second is to talk about the methods I tried to employ, and why they were difficult.

A few months back I tried to deal with one of my primary trauma memories. It's the memory of an assault that often dominates my thinking for weeks on end. I've found diary entries from a decade ago where I've been stuck fighting that same assault in dreams, or struggling through the day when nothing can distract me.

Using visualization techniques I tried to re-frame the experience, to move outside of the "first person" perspective and re-process the memory. Rather than being helpless (I was a child, he was not) I entered the scene as the "me" of today and rescued the "me" of back then from the attacker. While doing this I kept moving my eyes back and forth emulating the EMDR eye movements.

After having done this a couple of times I can honestly say that memory is NOT as intense as it once was. I no longer feel utterly trapped or helpless, and if I start to, I can re-play the "new" memory and "fix" it in place with eye movements. Perhaps that alone deserves its own blog post.

Feeling somewhat confident in this experience, I thought I'd be fine to open a door. It was more intense than that.

Behind that door, I found more than one trauma, all of them sexual, some of them were things I haven't thought about in a very long time, but remain strangely relevant to my day to day experience. Some of them were things I "know happened" but only in a detached sort of way. Like knowing the Battle of Agincourt happened, but have no real experience to connect with the knowledge.

Three experiences, three moments in time, three traumatic experiences, and all of them extremely intense. I've never felt my vagus nerve convulse before. It wasn't just the tightening of the chest that one might associate with a trauma response or anxiety, but waves of clenching and vibrating. I was doubled over, pulled into a near fetal position. With each one I tried to reframe the memory, I tried to activate the eye movements, but the vagus nerve would clench and dance and I couldn't concentrate. It was like trying to stop a firehose with a marble.

It was awful. The realizations that it forced me to make, equally as terrible. Although I'd thought about how #MeToo is about people in positions of power taking sexual advantage of people over whom they have power, and how it technically might apply to myself, it wasn't until this "relived" experience that I felt forced to accept the truth of what happened to me in that context.

Perhaps uncovering the memories and reprocessing the memories have to happen at different times. You can't mop up the soda while the bottle is still erupting. You have to wait until it's done before you can deal with the mess it leaves behind. Similarly, the explosion that came from these memories being properly revealed had to be ridden out before I can try to tackle them from a re-processing perspective.

I have not yet tried to open any more doors. I want to try to work through these memories first. The memories were forceful and intense, each memory leading to the next, and it was an act of will that stopped the cascade. One door intentionally opened either opened two more, or there's more than one trauma behind each door.

What's interesting is that, after that experience, I'm already feeling better than I have for a while. I still want to try to "save myself" and re-frame the narrative of these memories. I want to understand them, see how they've shaped me, and take back my power from them. I'm just somewhat surprised that I've had any relief from the simple experience of accessing them, remembering, reliving, and re-experiencing them.

There's no real "textbook" on trauma. Every person responds differently, and the nature of a traumatic memory, and what counts as trauma to the individual is irrelevant to the rest of the world. One person is destroyed by something that another person hardly notices. Even when another person is involved, it has more to do with how your amygdala responds than any intent on their part. Certainly, 2/3 of these traumas were due to the actions of someone who should have known better, but the first one I encountered was more accident than assault.

I found one more thing that needs to be said, and perhaps it comes back to Megan Devine's concept of "bearing witness" to pain. I found that I HAVE to talk about my traumatic experiences. Some memories I've had, and suffered with, for a very long time without expressing them properly. I've found it very important to tell people, especially people close to you, about your traumas. It's important that they understand they are not expected to "fix" anything. They are not expected to pity or try to bolster your self-esteem. All I wanted, all I needed, was to have others bear witness.

When someone says "I hear you" or "I can see that you are in pain," or something along these lines, the emergency system responds in an interesting way. The mirror neurons fire, and somehow one feels so much less alone. Bearing witness to pain, to trauma, to fear, to whatever, and articulating it is perhaps the best thing anyone can do to help work through these things.

It's like working on some powerful piece of magic. You don't talk about it, you don't post the talismans online, or blog, brag, or whatever part-way through. You have to "Keep Silent" in order to build up the forces with which you are working. Talking about it, not keeping silent, disperses the force you've so carefully built up over time. This is simply the opposite use of that maxim. When a memory, trauma, etc... has power over you, that power grows the longer you keep silent, and only by "speaking its name aloud" do you take its power away and give yourself power over that particular "demon."

I may move these posts to a new blog, I think I have, and will have, a lot to say about this particular journey, and I hope that it can be of help to others. Also, a good Records Manager knows that once you have five records of a specific type in a general folder they need to be put in a specific folder of their own.

in LVX

Tales of Trauma III: Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain? Bollocks!

I've been reading a number of books lately, some good, some bad. One of the healthcare professionals with whom I've recently met lent me a book called Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain (Sandra M. LeFort, Lisa Webster, Kate Lorig, Halsted Holman, et al... Bull Publishing Company, 2015). Besides the terrible writing style, the book is overly condescending. You can simply "choose" to live a happier, healthier life regardless of your chronic pain condition. It also assumes that your chronic pain is idiopathic, which, of course, mine isn't. They go on at great lengths about how "the healing has already happened, now the pain is all in your mind." Bullshit!

First of all, there are so many conditions where there is no physical healing. If the bones are rotting, or the cartilage has worn off of your joints and the bones are grinding together, if something is growing inside of you that shouldn't be, if you have Cancer or Chrones, etc...  then you are NOT in a position of having the healing completed.

It also assumes that there is only ONE way to heal, and that's physical healing. On page 15 they use the example of David:

David developed chronic hip and leg pain after a car accident. He has had four surgeries but still is in pain 15 years later.

OK, so as far as they're concerned David has "healed." There is no longer anything wrong with his leg and hip, but they continue to cause him pain. Yet at no point do they address that both surgery and car accidents cause trauma to the limbic system. Nobody considers that this chronic pain could be the result of unresolved PTSD.

The book does talk about the central nervous system's alarm system which is the basis of receiving pain signals. They talk about pain gates being stuck open, but they never consider WHY. Pain is traumatizing, and the body remembers. Even after surgery, the limbic system knows something is not right in his leg. It is also possible that the memory of that accident is "stuck" in the brain. This is how trauma works, for that part of the brain, time does not move. It is stuck in a moment of pain, and there's nothing you can do to talk yourself out of it. You need to treat the trauma.

On page 14 they talk about Fred and Joyce, both with chronic back pain. They use this as an example of how a great attitude can fix anything. Joyce is SO well adjusted that it's nauseating, while Fred is an asshole. On one hand, they don't talk about what Joyce is FEELING, only what she's DOING. On the other hand, they don't talk about Fred's internal processes either.

Fred is likely grieving. He took early retirement and sits on the couch all day. There is no indication as to what that means. They lack any sense of meaning or cognition of events. "Just get out there and make the best of it!"

But for a man to have to leave his work is a deathblow. I remember well that moment that I was told I wouldn't be going back to work. My surgeon looked at me with compassion and said: "That's not how this works, I'm sorry." What a thing to say to a 27-year-old, let alone telling a 55-year-old Fred that you're done here. We're talking about a man who has likely spent decades defining himself by his work, and now that's been taken away from him. There's no thought given to what that means.

In our society men are defined by our ability to work. When men meet for the first time they almost invariably ask "what do you do?" What they mean is "where do you work, and what do you do there." It's a subtle game of competition because we are not just defined by our employment, but it also determines our social value to others. I cannot erase from my mind the look on people's faces when I admit that I'm disabled. Suddenly you're a drain on the system, a leech, worthless, unworthy of attention. The book has nothing to say about this.

It also misses the point of the things we do, or don't do. Men are expected to be physically active, and often pain conditions are invisible. My prostheses are internal, covered in skin, so you can't see them, or the broken muscles, or the rotting bones, so why am I not helping move the cases of pop for the club picnic or helping put up the shed in the community garden? They don't know that I have a seven-pound lifting limit with the GOOD arm. We have to carry that, and there's no consideration of it in this book.

We also give up the things we used to love. I used to be involved in a number of martial arts, but it eventually became too painful to even maintain a peripheral relationship to my favourite past-time: heavy weapons SCA combat. I tried helping with tournaments and being involved in training, but there comes a point where the desire to throw on the gear and pick up a stick—knowing it is impossible—hurts too much. In time I lost all contact with my friends in that world. I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't even listen to them talk about the thing I loved so much, that was now beyond my reach.

When I see this example of Fred, I see someone who is grieving. I see it in my friends who have chronic pain. I see it in their eyes when they look at something that reminds them of the person they've had to leave behind. Chronic illness and disability are no different from a death, except that the reminder of everything you've lost looks back at you in the mirror every day.

In her book It's OK that you're not OK,(Sounds True, 2017) Megan Devine says that most of what we talk about in terms of grief is bullshit. She's right. What we get from our supposed support group, whether it's a death, disability, or chronic illness, are bullshit platitudes, blame, and condescension. I've had people say "but what have you learned from it" and "what must you have done to deserve that?" I've heard so many things and each one of them makes me feel angry.

What we need, when coming to disability and pain, is love and acceptance. We don't need your words of "encouragement" or anything else. What we need is to feel that we still have value in this world when everything by which we defined ourselves has been stripped away. Even the diagnosis and onset of chronic illness can be a traumatic experience. The brain tries to protect us from the news that our old life is over, and now we have to figure out everything again from scratch. Is it any wonder that we get "stuck?"

The entirety of the book on Chronic Pain basically says:

You may never know why you're suffering, but suck it up and try to make the best of it. Here is some shitty advice from people who have never been where you are but who know better than you what you should be doing and how to make the rest of us feel better about the terrifying possibility that we could be next.

I have found more value in every page of Megan Devine's It's OK that You're not OK and Bessel Van Der Kolk's book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Penguin, Random House, 2014) than anything I've found in Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain. I think the difference is their experience.

Doctor Bessel Van Der Kolk is a psychiatrist, a research scientist, and an expert in trauma. He comes from a place of having healed his own traumas, growing up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. He's spent 40 something years studying trauma, putting people into fMRI machines to see how trauma works in the brain and developing tools to access those areas to reintegrate traumatic memories and heal the whole person.

Megan Devine, a trained psychotherapist, quit her private practice the day she saw her husband swept away by a river and failed to rescue him. (In fact, if the dog hadn't rescued her, she wouldn't have survived either.) Since then she's worked with thousands of grieving people, and her book is the result of this research into what works, and what doesn't, from a professionally trained perspective.

Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Pain is written by eight different authors, has an average sentence length of about 10 to 12 words, and reads more like a scolding than a supportive guide towards healthy equilibrium. It's condescending, simplistic, and in my opinion, utterly ignores the reality of what people with chronic pain conditions are experiencing. I honestly think that it's a workbook for people who want to feel proactive about someone else's pain so that they can feel better about themselves. I wrote many years ago about how people try to distance themselves from your disability experience. They need to feel that it can be fixed, or repaired in some way so that it's not terrifying for them to think "shit, that could be me." They always know that they would handle things better, they'd cope, they'd have a great attitude. It's self-protecting behaviour, and it's utterly useless to us.

...as is, I think, this book.