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A few years ago, I had a student in one of my classes who entered treatment for an eating disorder. The plan was for her to do her final project on that experience. However, when she got out, she emailed me and said that it was such a singular experience that she really wouldn’t know where or how to begin.
I share that story because that’s how I’ve been feeling about this blog lately. I have so many ideas or so many things to say that I don’t know exactly where to begin.
It’s possible I have been overthinking it.
So, in an effort not to overthink, I’m just going to jump in. Every night before bed, I do a bit of reading from the Al-Anon literature. Sometimes I read and get some understanding. Other times, I read and something punches me in the gut or hits me so hard that I have to stop and take notice.
Last night, I had the latter experience while reading April 6th’s entry from Hope for Today (pg. 97):
I always used sarcastic humor to protect myself from the inevitable alcoholic attacks in my home. I became a master at the art of bludgeoning people with bitter words and shredding them with scorn. I thought this his my pain and showed people they couldn’t hurt me. [...] my sarcastic nature wasn’t my true nature after all; it was a defense I developed to survive my alcoholic environment.
This passage struck me for a couple of reasons:
- I am a very sarcastic person. I once considered giving up sarcasm for Lent and thought that I’d have to cut out my tongue to do it.
- A friend who I hadn’t seen for a long while and I caught up, and he said, “I see you’re just as sarcastic as ever.” But the thing was that, at that moment, I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic. I wasn’t even aware I was doing it.
That’s when I knew I had a problem with sarcasm. I never really identified why I might be so sarcastic (other than people being stupid, I guess), but reading that it might be a defense mechanism born from the environment I was raised in makes so much sense. I was talking to someone not long ago who said she identifies with Chandler Bing (from Friends) so much because she always joked around or made glib comments so as not to talk about her childhood just like Chandler, and, dude, I AM CHANDLER BING. I never even made that connection until she said it, and we all know Chandler’s childhood was not very pleasant for lots of reasons, so it makes total sense now that he’s one of the TV characters I relate to the most.
I also remember once, in therapy, the therapist noting that whenever I talked about my emotions I joked about them. Honestly, I still can’t really talk about feeling my feelings with putting air quotes around it. You know, I guess I have to “feel my feelings” punctuated with an eyeroll. I’m getting better at not doing that, though. Mostly because now I want to feel my feelings whereas before they were just an annoyance to be dealt with.
So, yes. Sarcasm, the defense mechanism. And all this time I thought I was just being clever.
