Sometimes the actual relapsing behaviour (the drink, the drugs, or the behaviour around sex, romance, food, or work) is invisible, trivial, or ostensibly reasonable. But the signs are there, if you’re looking for them. Here are some of them. They can also ‘infect’ the surrounding people, whose thinking and behaviour can start to mimic those of the relapser.
- Lying
- Deception
- Scheming
- Secretiveness
- Evasiveness
- Elusiveness
- Disappearance
- Avoidance
- Drip-feeding disclosures
- Shifting stories / narratives
- Timelines not stacking up
- Gaps in time
- Ordinary activities taking a long time
- Distractedness
- Loss of perspective
- Fixation on trivial matters
- Inability to prioritise
- Inability to organise effectively
- Inconsistency
- Unreliability
- Dropping the ball a lot
- Self-absorption
- Zero interest in others
- Guilt / shame / self-loathing
- Projection of those into others
- Reduced awareness of others and impact on them
- Ingratiation, fawning, sycophancy
- Exaggerated self-flagellation
- Theatrical embarrassment
- Sarcastic admissions of the truth
- Conspiratorial narratives
- 360° grievance
- Disrupted day-and-night rhythm
- Disordered diet
- Reduced or absent physical self-care
- Falling asleep in strange places at strange times
- Dribbling, altered breathing, other physiological anomalies
- Lower companions
- Normalisation of the abnormal
- Rationalisation
- Justification
- Explanation
- Defensiveness
- Case-building
- Expression of good intentions
- Expressing unintentionality of consequences
- Grey-washing reality (reframing the past darkly)
- Whitewashing self
- Resistance to reasonable input or requests
- Touchiness / irritability
- Attacking boundary-setters
- Stepping over or moving lines drawn in the sand
- Dissociation: not recognising the magnitude of what is happening
- Socially inappropriate behaviour
- Minimisation of the magnitude and effects of behaviour
- Deception
- Scheming
- Secretiveness
- Evasiveness
- Elusiveness
- Disappearance
- Avoidance
- Drip-feeding disclosures
- Shifting stories / narratives
- Timelines not stacking up
- Gaps in time
- Ordinary activities taking a long time
- Distractedness
- Loss of perspective
- Fixation on trivial matters
- Inability to prioritise
- Inability to organise effectively
- Inconsistency
- Unreliability
- Dropping the ball a lot
- Self-absorption
- Zero interest in others
- Guilt / shame / self-loathing
- Projection of those into others
- Reduced awareness of others and impact on them
- Ingratiation, fawning, sycophancy
- Exaggerated self-flagellation
- Theatrical embarrassment
- Sarcastic admissions of the truth
- Conspiratorial narratives
- 360° grievance
- Disrupted day-and-night rhythm
- Disordered diet
- Reduced or absent physical self-care
- Falling asleep in strange places at strange times
- Dribbling, altered breathing, other physiological anomalies
- Lower companions
- Normalisation of the abnormal
- Rationalisation
- Justification
- Explanation
- Defensiveness
- Case-building
- Expression of good intentions
- Expressing unintentionality of consequences
- Grey-washing reality (reframing the past darkly)
- Whitewashing self
- Resistance to reasonable input or requests
- Touchiness / irritability
- Attacking boundary-setters
- Stepping over or moving lines drawn in the sand
- Dissociation: not recognising the magnitude of what is happening
- Socially inappropriate behaviour
- Minimisation of the magnitude and effects of behaviour
We could increase this list ad infinitum.