Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Category: Responsibility
Shame and Sociopathy
Posted on March 7, 2013 in Attitudes Guilt Mental Illness Personality Disorders Responsibility Therapy
There exists a class of life coaches and therapists who urge us to get rid of our self-condemnations. The way to mental health, they insist, is to become a sociopath who feels no remorse for what he has done. In the course of my life, I have done wicked things. Much of it was done while in the thrall of my disorder. I have never physically hurt others since my early teenaged days, but I have put a serious fright into a few. I do not want to repeat these. My healthy shame is a signpost to the past: “Do not go back there.” And I heed it.
Bipolar Disorder and Accountability
Posted on February 23, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Responsibility
I offer my illness as explanation not excuse.
You Never Can Keep a Friend
Posted on April 10, 2010 in Disappointment Reflections Responsibility
After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.
Emily Dickinson
I find the ease with which some people slough off accountability sociopathic: say you have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication. My practice is to get to the heart of the matter. If it is because I misread or misspoke, I quickly acknowledge it. I don’t stand on lies to myself or to others. My question for the world is how can others not admit mistakes of this order? These things happen and, at least, for me are easy to forgive and drop. Unless….
Here is where the sociopath takes off its trench coat and shows its ugly bones. Suppose I have responded exactly to what was said by a stranger. Suppose that person gave me no clue at first that he/she meant the opposite, but called me “stupid”. “Wait;” it could have been said at first. “What did you think I said?” Suppose someone else comes into the picture and castigates you for misreading the other person? So you quote exactly what was said, adding now that you’re willing to leave it at a misspeaking. “This kind of thing happens,” you state. “Let’s leave it there.”
You honestly want to stop the argument, but Third Party wants you to apologize for misreading what the other person said. But that’s not what happened.” You read all too well what was said. And you’re willing to leave it. Is this other person saying “Oh, I didn’t mean that!”? No. Third party directs the eyes of the room upon you. This clever ventrilloquist causes all the mouths all to say that you should be the one to apologize. The argument will not die the quiet death it deserves.
And this hurts precisely because you believe that we should be accountable for what we do and nothing more. You lose friends over it and it is written off to your stubbornness — maybe, in my case, your mental illness. It’s hard to undo because you naturally question yourself and what you do. “Am I missing something?” And on darker note, the sociopath in you makes a suggestion: maybe it is because you showed weakness by admitting your own faults in the past.
Fortunately, you ignore the sociopath. But you are still left with sadness: why do the rules of the world apply to you in this one way and to others in another? You may decide in the end that these are friends not worth having, but you keep hearing the voice of your mother saying “You never could keep a friend.” And so you have to fight the urge to let your grief step all over you.
No Assassin
Posted on March 10, 2010 in Compassion Responsibility Stigma Violence
It’s very easy to stop talking about what is happening to you when you feel you have an audience with allegedly normal minds watching you. I don’t feel safe around the so-called “normal” because if you mention the flashbacks you have been having or a voice that shouted once in your ear, they put a gun in your hand and have you shooting down schoolchildren. Never mind that those who use alcohol and drugs are much more likely to commit violent crimes, it’s the mentally ill who get all the press. When was the last time you read that the accused had consumed half a bottle of Wild Turkey or a six pack of beer before he set out on a murderous rampage? The so-called sane have their own delusions which play any time they are in the presence of one who experiences mental illness. You can go through 22 years of marriage without a single act of violence or threat against your wife or any other person, yet the phrase “bipolar disorder” will incriminate you without any other facts.
The worst, of course, are those who suck in the world views of horror movies and video games. Follow this with those who won’t face their own symptoms — the drunks and the drug addicts. They make me hate the world at times, but I am no assassin. The universe does that work in its own good time. I am committed to not harming others. Like 97% of the mentally ill, this is a watch cry for me.
This Could Be Someone You Didn’t Know
Posted on December 30, 2007 in Compassion Responsibility
Designate drivers. Or stay at home.
Steal this graphic if you wish. Right-click to save.
Thanks to Gay Bipolar Guy.
The Best We Could?
Posted on December 18, 2006 in Responsibility
I’ve been hearing the phrase “I did the best I could” too much lately. I can accept it from someone in deep depression who just can’t pull his mind together to rise from the bed or read a book, but it is too often the province of those who have adopted a personality disorder and just don’t want to change. There’s another claim that I find more acceptable. That is to state “I didn’t know how to do better”. If this is delivered in honesty, then there is an opportunity for self education and self improvement.
Even in the deepest depression, we can reach just a little bit higher. We shouldn’t allow the dime store thinking of some Twelve Steppers (most of whom have not searchingly and fearlessly completed the Fourth and Fifth Steps) to lead us away from accountability. This is especially true for those who go to support groups for the purpose of remaining the same person that they are. The rest of us should deny them complicity in surrendering to their illness. If they persist, then we are in our rights to just turn our backs on them.
And for us, we should make every effort to look for that next higher crevice, and move our hands and our feet by it to a higher place.
The Barroom
Posted on December 4, 2006 in Relationships Responsibility
The worst fights I have watched in my time concern who gets to be the victim.
You Must Fight
Posted on November 24, 2006 in Responsibility
One price of contention is that it is hard to conduct a fearless and searching self-examination. Perhaps that is part of the aim of those who attack.
At the beginning of the Bhaghavad Gita — that section of the epic Mahabharata which has been turned into a holy book — the rebel leader Arjuna finds himself looking over the ranks of soldiers arrayed on the field of battle and feeling sick because of the carnage which is about to occur. He expresses this to the Blessed Lord, Krishna, who says “You must fight.” What follows is a long exposition on the order of things, especially the caste system.
Lately, I’ve been told by others that I do not fight for myself enough. Which means that I don’t hang around when someone is lambasting me and slandering me. When I find myself making angry exchanges, I attempt first to redirect the conversation to the purpose. And if that purpose proves to be boiling me in wordy oil, I leave. I do not have to listen to libel and I do not have to submit to torture.
I, like Arjuna, might have felt the same pain. I have found myself on the field of battle, pressed forward by a sense of obligation to press on. And it did not make me feel well to do so. There are times, it is true, that you must fight, but not for every slight or every misstep on the part of others. My recent score on this has been mixed: I have to say that I have fought when I should not have fought but, also, I have walked away when a disagreement proved too calamitous for my health.
I do not think, like some do, that growth results from not thinking about your mistakes. Sometimes we need to be hard on ourselves. I’ve seen many people remain stuck in a happy land where they are free to keep making the same mistakes, retain the same insensitivities as before, online as well as off. I don’t want to be like that.
The question one might ask is if Arjuna had been accompanied by the Buddha or Jesus or Hillel, would his companion have told him to fight? It is doubtful. We as a civilization claim to be built on the words of Christ and of Hillel, yet there’s still a barroom mentality: a drunk attacks you and you must, some say, bring out the switchblade.
Resist, I say. Stand on the facts. Be honest in your dealings but do not fight. This is not an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is being free to believe and to investigate, to stand by your thoughts and profit from your discoveries. No blood need be shed, no reputations ruined for this. Die Gedanken sind frei.
The Limit
Posted on July 11, 2006 in DBSA Support Groups and Conferences Responsibility Therapy
Some tell me that I should become a therapist. I say that I can’t because to do so would entail my losing the comradery I have with my fellow bipolars. I know of one bipolar who is being educated in a therapy profession. It worries me that this person will soon be in the position of a therapist in a support group with me. Will her point of view be held up above others just because she is a therapist? What can I do about that?
The Hot Wire
Posted on April 26, 2006 in Mania Responsibility
What the fuck do people see about mania?
