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How To Talk To A Liar Who’s Been Caught

A reader who recently found the two posts I wrote on addicts as compulsive liars had a sad story to share. Her husband, a compulsive spender, gambler and drinker, lies to her all the time. He apparently sucks at it. She always finds out.

Mood music:

How, she asked me, does she deal with a person like this? She still loves him, and in many respects he’s still the great guy. But lies are a cancer on even the most tried and true relationships.

It’s a hard question for me to answer. For one thing, it’s self-serving of me to tell a person like you how to talk to a person like me. My instinct will naturally be to tell you to go easy on him and calmly talk it through. It is true that yelling at a liar won’t make him stop. In fact, it will probably compel him to lie even more, convinced that any shred of honesty will result in a verbal beating every time.

This part has been especially challenging for me over the years. I grew up in a family where there was constant yelling. Because of that, I react to yelling like one might react to gunshots. I instinctively avoid it at all costs, and that has led to lies.

But if your significant other is stealing money behind your back to buy drugs, a friendly, smiling reminder to him that grownups aren’t supposed to behave this way won’t work either. The liar will simply thank God that he got off the hook that time.

You just can’t win with a liar.

I lied all the time about all the binge eating and the money I spent on it. I’m guilty of the lie of omission when it comes to smoking. And in moments where I felt like I was in trouble, I lied about something without meaning to. The instinct just kicked in and a second later I was smacking myself in the head over it.

Here’s where there’s hope:

Lies tire a soul out. It weighs you down after awhile like big bags of sand on your shoulders. Guilt eats you alive. That’s how it’s been with me in the past.

If you’re like that and there are any shards of good within you, you eventually come clean because you want to. Remember that lying is part of two larger diseases: Addiction and mental illness. Nobody wants to be sick.

But while some who get sick wallow in it and make everyone around them miserable, others are decidedly more stoic about it and try to do the best they can with the odds they’re dealt.

I was a miserable sick man but eventually, through spiritual growth, I tried to become a more bearable sick man. That meant dealing with the roots (addiction and OCD) and the side effects (lying).

I still fall on my face. But I work it hard and seem to have gotten much better than I used to be.

I credit Erin for a lot of this. She could have either thrown me out or thrown up her arms and turned a blind eye to my self destruction. But somehow, she has found a middle ground in dealing with me. It hasn’t always been pretty. But we’ve had our victories along the way.

You want to know how to talk to a liar who’s been caught? You’re better off asking her than me.

pinocchio

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The Way Of The Broken Soul

I went to see “The Way” with Erin and saw a lot of myself in the characters. You’d see a lot of yourself, too.

Mood music:

The summary of the film is this (stolen from IMDb): Tom is an American doctor who goes to France following the death of his adult son, killed in the Pyrenees during a storm while walking The Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of St. James. Tom’s purpose is initially to retrieve his son’s body. However, in a combination of grief and homage to his son, Tom decides to journey on this path of pilgrims. While walking The Camino, Tom meets others from around the world, all broken and looking for greater meaning in their lives, and discovers the difference between the life we live and the life we choose.

I don’t identify with Tom as much as I do his walking companions, especially a Dutchman named Joost and an Irish writer named Jack.

Joost tells Tom he’s making the journey because he needs to lose some weight to fit into his suit for an upcoming wedding. Jack is on the journey because he thinks there might be a book in the experience, and he’s trying to break his writer’s block.

If you rolled these two guys into one, that would be something close to me.

Despite the official reason Joost is there, he proceeds to eat his way across Spain. For much of the movie, he’s comforting himself with food. Jack is a blowhard who likes to talk about living like a real pilgrim, living off the land for survival and such. But he uses his company-issued credit cards to enjoy all the comforts of the local culture.

At one point, after a lot of wine, Tom interrupts Jack’s latest verbal tirade, calling him a bore who thinks he’s better than everyone else because he’s writing a book. The truth is that for all his talk, Jack’s carrying a lot of spiritual pain. It reminded me of some of my own bluster and hypocrisy. But it also reminded me of the healing power of writing, and how important it is to me. Not that I needed the reminder.

The scene that really hit me hard, though, is one where Joost is in his hotel room, about to tear into the feast he’s ordered from room service.

He’s wearing an open bathrobe, staring at himself — and his bloated belly — in the mirror with disgust. He stares at the tray of food and goes to take the first bite, and it’s there that you see the shame and pain in his eyes. The truth eventually comes out that his wife won’t sleep with him anymore because he’s too fat. He wants to please her, but he can’t stop himself from eating and popping pills.

All my past binge eating, wine guzzling and obsessive pain pill popping came back to me, as clear and awful as if I had just done it all the day before. I really felt bad for Joost at that moment.

By film’s end, Jack seems to have had a spiritual re-awakening and Joost seems to accept who he is, saying he’s just going to buy a new suit.

The recovered binge eater in me wasn’t particularly satisfied with that outcome, but it’s clear by film’s end that each of the characters came a long way in mending their broken souls.

For most of my life I’ve been an avid walker. As a kid I walked the full length of Revere Beach every day. In my 20s and 30s, I’d go out almost daily and take long walks. For all my recovery from addiction, the walking is something I haven’t gotten back into as much as I should. This movie has me rethinking that one. It reminded me that I walked for a spiritual lift as much as it was for weight control. In fact, a lot of my walking life was done in the midst of binge eating.

I’ve been able to control my weight in recent years without all the walking. But I think I need to get back to the walking anyway.

A good walk can help me set my mind and soul right. It doesn’t have to be a walk across Spain.

In fact, I’d much rather walk Revere Beach or the hilly terrain where I live now.

The Way Poster
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People Who Die And The Mid-Lifers They Leave Behind

As we walked into the funeral home for the wake of our old friend Al Marley, Mary Anastasio stopped, looked at me and said, “We’re adults now.”

That’s how it is when you hit middle age. Your parents’ generation starts dying at an accelerated pace. Then comes the crisis that isn’t really a crisis if you stop and think about it.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/9mcloY9BlOU

A lot of my contemporaries are starting to go through the mid-life crisis as a result. Several friends are suddenly getting tattoos and body piercings. Their Facebook pages are full of Youtube links to all the videos the MTV generation grew up on.

I also see friends getting their old bands back together and going in the studio to record new music. One friend just started learning to play the banjo, and he says it’s a difficult instrument to play. I told him to watch the movie “Deliverance” and he’d be an expert player by film’s end.

I’ve been getting in on the act, too. At the start of the year I bought a pair of black leather boots with studs. When Erin took her first look at them, she noted that they were “very heavy metal.”

I haven’t gotten any tattoos, though. I can’t afford them, and with all the hair on my arms you wouldn’t be able to see them anyway. Besides, tattooing has become a fad again, and I never do things while it’s popular. Maybe in five years I’ll shave my arms and tattoo them.

You could say I’m living out my mid-life crisis by listening to a lot of heavy metal from the 1980s, but that probably wouldn’t be accurate. I never stopped listening to that music.

I actually think a mid-life crisis can be a good thing.

As we get older and life gets tougher, with parents getting sick and dying and the challenges of parenthood growing more complex and exasperating as our children hit their tween and teen years, it’s easy to forget how much we need our inner child. When we forget to act young, the usual trials eat us alive.

So if you want a tattoo, get one. If you want to start playing the guitar you put away 15 years ago, do it.

Some will make fun of you for having a mid-life crisis. But you’re really just rediscovering how to have a little fun.

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Four Brenner Men = Trouble

Saturday afternoon illustrated how significantly my family dynamic has changed — and how much some things remain the same. I took Dad on errands, pushing him around in his wheelchair; Sean and Duncan in tow.

The four of us Brenner guys together for an afternoon is a lot like Godzilla running around Tokyo. The difference is that our chaos is usually unintended. Godzilla repeatedly destroyed Tokyo on purpose.

It’s harder taking Dad around in his current, post-stroke condition. But it’s nice having control of the car. Dad behind the wheel was always a nightmare. I drive more slowly than he did, though my driving is clumsy in other ways.

As awful as it sounds, I kind of like pushing him around in his wheelchair. He’s always been there for us, and this is something I can do for him. Sure, he’d rather be walking. We’d all rather see him walking. But recovery is an unpredictable thing, and for now I feel like I can talk to him about the deep stuff and show him things in a way that was tougher when he was mobile and hard to pin down.

I took him to a jewelry store in Malden so he could get his watch fixed and see an old friend (the store owner, who hired me a couple times in the 1980s to stand outside his shop in a Santa Claus suit on Christmas Eve, waving to passers by). I took him to fill and later pick up his multiple prescriptions. I took him to Target and his office, though I refused to let him upstairs. We went to the old neighborhood, the Point of Pines, so the kids could run around on the beach and blow off steam. While they ran around, I wheeled dad past houses of old friends. He took us for dinner at the Porthole restaurant in Lynn. I had to cut up and mash his veggies, just like he did for me when I was a little kid.

As trapped in his body as he is right now, Dad showed in a lot of ways that he’s still the same guy he’s always been, including the loose cannon part.

As we stood at a Malden crosswalk waiting to go to the other side of the street, a car was coming. The driver showed no signs of slowing down to stop for us, so Dad flipped him off. The driver screeched to a halt and, as we crossed, I waved a sheepish thank you to the guy behind the wheel. The guy smiled and waved, clearly amused that a crotchety old guy in a wheelchair just flipped him off.

In the jewelry store the first thing he said to his old friend was that he was packing on the pounds. Dad is always quick to point out to someone that they’re getting fat, oblivious to his own past problems with weight-control.

At the office, he barked orders and asked questions of his employees as if he’d never left. They were just happy to see him out and about.

Everyone knows how Dad can get. But no one seems to mind. He’s done so much for so many people that most know where his heart is at. If anything, his antics are usually a source of amusement. Sean and Duncan, both of whom are at an age where bathroom humor is present and growing, eat it all up, chuckling at their grandfather’s antics as if they were watching “Despicable Me” for the hundredth time.

They accept their grandfather as he is. They study him in fascination, and they don’t pass judgement the way we adults tend to do.

By the time we dropped Dad off we were wiped out. But we were grateful, too, because there’s something special about the Brenner men striking out on their own for a few hours of trouble.

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Duncan And I Need A Trail Of Post-It Notes To Get Through The Day

Things are rough in the Brenner household lately. Duncan’s ADHD is running hot, and so is my OCD. The resulting FUBARs are probably entertaining to the outsider, but it’s quite possible that Erin and Sean are ready to kill us.

The back-to-school grind is great in that the kids needed to get back to their routine. But by the time Duncan gets home he’s fried. Not good when there’s homework to do. He can’t focus, and we need to stand over him so he’ll do the homework. When I’m in OCD mode that’s not easy, because all I can think of are the chores that need to get done.

Duncan has also developed something of a persecution complex. If Sean or one of the neighborhood kids don’t want to do what he wants to do, they’re out to get him as far as he’s concerned. With other kids in general, he’ll inevitably find something to get indignant about.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. Nothing awful, just the everyday challenges of life. The problem here is that I go into a zone where I can’t hear what people are telling me and I leave things lying around the house.

I wouldn’t describe these things as bad. It’s just stuff Duncan and I need to keep working on. We’re both still a lot better than we were a couple years ago.

I am starting to think the two of us would benefit from a trail of post-it notes. When I start going into a chore frenzy, a few well-placed post-it notes telling me to focus back on Duncan might do the trick. For Duncan, a trail of notes reminding him to change his clothes, do his homework and stop punching his brother might work.

Or not.

When I lose patience with Duncan, four words ring in my head: “You of all people.”

I of all people should be patient with Duncan. I was a problem child on a much deeper, darker magnitude than him. He’s a good boy. I should be a lot calmer when he has his meltdowns and gets uncooperative. Because I’ve been in his shoes. And yet I’m not patient with him at all.

I’ll just have to keep working hard at it.

Because he’s a beautiful kid, and he deserves that from me.

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Entourage Disease

Entourage Disease: A disease where the sufferer surrounds him or herself with people as a shield against painful encounters.

Mood music:

The sufferer will show up in a hospital room, at a family party or a funeral surrounded by up to six people. Usually the number is about three. If it’s a hospital visit and the room is really small, the sufferer will be brave and only come in with one hanger on.

There are drugs to mitigate the pain, particularly alcohol, food and drugs. But they all have side effects and usually are not worth the trouble.

As with any disease, there is collateral damage. The family of a cancer patient, for example, may experience pain from watching their loved one suffer.

The third party suffering with entourage disease is usually a feeling of claustrophobia and the discomfort that comes from a lack of personal space. The people who comprise the sufferer’s entourage have a special talent for getting in the personal zone of everyone else in the room.

The ultimate cure for this disease is self confidence, forgiveness and faith.

Unfortunately, those things can be hard to come by.

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Paranoia Was My Destroyer

There’s a particularly insidious side of my OCD that I have to fight hard to contain, because it’s the thing most likely to destroy me. This is a story about paranoia.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/_WJ6FbcWYRU

Let’s start with a definition from Wikipedia:

Paranoia is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself.

Anxiety and fear once played a major role in how my OCD manifested itself. I would become so full of fear about people, places and things that I would see conspiracies against me around every corner.

My time as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune is a perfect example.

Working the night shift and then waking up after only a couple hours of sleep each night to spend time with the children eroded my sanity to the point where I was absolutely convinced that the day staff was conspiring against me.

I’d sit at home working the scenarios over and over in my head. I was certain that anything that went wrong with the morning deadline cycle would be blamed on me because of something I may or may not have done the night before. That turned into a constant feeling that a conspiracy was afoot to get me fired.

I would think about it day and night, ruining God knows how many precious moments with my wife and kids. I was right there with them at home or on family vacations. But mentally I was somewhere far away and dark.

Going further back to my late teens and early 20s, I would grow obsessed about what people thought of me: how I looked, how I talked and walked. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about something I took as a certainty: that people were talking about me behind my back, making fun of my mannerisms.

My mind would spin and spin until I was too much of a wreck to do anything but sleep.

I haven’t suffered with this stuff nearly as much in recent years because of all the work I’ve done to get my OCD under control. I’ve faced a lot of fears and killed them in the process. That has made me far less anxious, which in turn has made me far less paranoid.

But once in awhile, especially if my sleep is off, some of it will nudge its way back into my head. Not fear or anxiety, but a nagging feeling that somewhere people are talking about me, complaining about something I may have said or did.

I have to be on constant alert for those moments. You could say I have to be paranoid of the paranoia.

I’ve found some valuable weapons in the fight against this demon:

–I try most nights to be in bed as soon as the kids are in bed, so I can read or just fall asleep. When I get enough sleep, a lot of the wreckage in my head is cleared out.

–I hang on tight to a diet devoid of flour and sugar. The main reason is to control a binge-eating disorder. But as a pleasant byproduct, the absence of these things from my body has also had a clarifying effect.

–I’m always working at prayer. I don’t do it nearly as much as I should, but when I do, God finds a way to set my mind at ease.

–I make time to talk to fellow addicts and mental illness sufferers because when I help them sort out their emotions, I have less time to drown in my own mental juices. Besides, a lot of people do the same for me and giving it back is the least I can do. This is a double-edged sword though, because when you let enough people vent their emotions on you, the load can get heavy indeed.

–I have regular visits with my therapist, though I often suck at remembering when my appointments are.

What I’ve just mapped out isn’t perfect. Sometimes it’s very easy not to do the things I know I should do. In fact, that’s happened more in recent months.

But it’s like any kind of self improvement. You don’t have to perfect everything all at once. You can take baby steps and get to where you need to be.

The paranoia, like one’s addictions, will always be doing push-ups in the parking lot.

Sometimes, it will sneak up behind you and kick your ass.

But if you kick its ass more than it kicks yours, you’ll be winning the war.

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They Say You Shouldn’t Go To Bed Angry

When Erin and I were still engaged, we did the two-day marriage course that the Catholic Church makes you take before you can get married (Pre-Cana). We got this priceless advice early on: “Never go to bed angry with each other.”

We’ve worked hard in 13 years of marriage to follow that advice. When we argue, as any married couple does, we always try to work out our differences and make up before going to bed.

It has worked pretty well, though most still-madly-in-love couples will still tell you the angry to bed, angry to rise part still happens.

We all get self righteous and even a little pissed at the inconvenience of being disagreed with. It’s part of being human.

Today my younger brother Brian married the love of his life, Sharane. During a brief but beautiful ceremony, the man who officiated over the vows gave that same advice we heard all those years ago:

“Never go to bed angry.”

It’s not always easy advice to follow. But trying to follow it has served me and Erin well.

May it serve the newlyweds well, too.

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A Relapse Isn’t The End Of The World

When a person relapses back into addictive behavior, it seems like the end of the world. Everything they’ve worked for is in ashes, and they embrace their old demon with reckless abandon.

It shouldn’t have to be that way.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1JKiRbc7uA6B9QrO3I1zZH]

I’m thinking hard about this because I came close to a relapse recently, and a friend now finds himself in a full, free-falling backslide.

A lot of people have a hard time seeing compulsive binge eating as an addiction on par with alcohol and heroin. But it’s just as effective at destroying a man’s life and health as those other things. And since you still need to eat to survive, there’s a lot of fear around this type of relapse, because it seems to suck us in deeper more quickly.

Anyway, this post isn’t meant to convince the skeptics. It’s directed specifically at those who have relapsed to their addictions, whatever the substance. It’s the same message to be had in today’s mood music, from the Sixx A.M. “Heroin Diaries” soundtrack:

You know that accidents can happen

It’s OK, we all fall off the wagon sometimes

It’s not your whole life

It’s only one day

You haven’t thrown everything away.

The best thing to do is accept the relapse and start over. But when the feeling of failure overwhelms you, it’s easier said than done. The point was brought home to me the other day when talking to my friend who relapsed.

He noted that this is his third relapse, and that he wasn’t sure if he could return to the halls of Overeater’s Anonymous. He correctly noted that there are some people in the program who look at relapse cases as pariahs. Most people will embrace you and try to help you regain your footing. But the ones who look at you like an exploded zit can be overwhelming and keep you from going back.

Shame takes on a lot of insidious forms for the relapsed soul.

Talking to this fellow makes me realize just how lucky I was this time. I came to the brink and started getting sloppy. But I pulled myself back before falling off the cliff and going on a binge. A lot of good people aren’t so fortunate.

I really feel for my friend. He’s stuck down the hole and doesn’t know if he can ever find his way back out. He says he’s knee deep in the food and won’t leave his house because he’s putting on weight so fast that he doesn’t want to be seen.

That is one of the shittiest things about compulsive binge-eating: You can’t hide it because your behavior is obvious in the fast weight gain. This disease hangs off our belly like a sack of shit. And when it keeps you from leaving your house, you are in a very bad place. I know, because I spent a lot of years avoiding people because I didn’t want them to see the mess I’d become.

Hell, in my journey to a near-relapse, I didn’t gain weight but still felt bloated and didn’t want to be around people.

In the week since I realized how far to the edge I’d come, I’ve tightened the bolts on my program considerably. I’m starting to feel better, and I’m close to having a new OA sponsor. Like I said, I was lucky this time.

But I feel a little anger toward some of the people in this program for making my friend feel so ashamed. We’re supposed to help each other up when someone falls, not treat this like some powder puff popularity club where the folks with long term recovery are rock starts and the fallen are zeroes.

I shouldn’t feel the anger, though, because that kind of behavior is just another part of this disease. None of us were playing with a full deck to begin with, and even in recovery, it can be hard not to be an asshole.

But as I told my friend: “Fuck them. It’s not about what they think. It’s about what you do to get better.”