My steps four and five of the twelve step program used for mental health.

 Here is a step four of mine, 'we took a fearless and moral inventory of ourselves', and step five of 'we admitted our defects of character to ourselves, another person and our higher power'.

Here are my defects:-

Sardonic: bitterly mocking or cynical.

Obstreperous: unruly, turbulent and noisy.

Self-absorbed: absorption in oneself.

Obsequious: servile, fawning, sickeningly polite.

Self-assertive: confident or aggressive.

Opprobrious: very scornful, abusive.

Self-centred: everything has to centre around my needs.

Obtuse: dull-witted.

Self-seeking: primarily concerned with my own journey through life.

Ostentatious: showing off, in my case with physical abilities and education or knowledge.

 

Self-obsessed: primarily concerned with my own role in life and its accompanying insights.

Oculogyric crisis: a dystonic reaction to anti-emetics, in my experience, Maxalon, Stelazine, Olanzapine, and cannabis. Characterised by upward deviation of the eyes.

Side effects / sight: damage to the parietal cortex on the right side of the brain by the use of anti-emetics, in my case, Maxalon, Stelazine, Olanzapine  and cannabis. This can produce a kind of blindsight in the left field of view. Some aspects of the part of space that is ignored are still processed, but there is still blindsight in the form of seeing without seeing by not being able to register the full amount of information. This is called visual neglect.

Ontological: continually rationalising existence, being, becoming or reality. Soul searching that borders on obsessive compulsive disorder. Continually looking for answers or insights relating to my state of mind. Lao Tzu said "Desiring one will only see the manifestations, desireless one will see the mystery" 

 Samizdat: clandestine publication of banned literature, in my case, letters and emails.

An insight that I have developed through this process of listing my own character defects, and liabilities, and then confessing them can be described as follows: I have gone from being opprobrious which means being very scornful and abusive, to obsequious, meaning fawning or servile in conduct. Similarly I have gone from being obtuse, which means dull-witted, to being self-obsessed, and self-seeking, seeking meaning in the experiences that I have. The conclusion that I have drawn from this is that I have gone from one extreme in behaviour to the other extreme at the other end of the pole. To me this dipole means I can have a polarised personality with "mood swings", and like a dipole which is charged at both ends, I can hold a charge which attracts certain situations or scenarios.

Letting go of control.

In the CBT Handbook by Pamela Myles and Roz Shafran the following analogy by Professor Paul Sakovskis of Bath university is mentioned:
A new worker at a building site is given a job to hold up a wall a few bricks high and a few bricks wide. The worker does this but at lunch time he has needs of food and wanting to use the toilet. The boss insists that he stays at his post and the job is important, and that he is doing a good job. At end of the day the worker is tired and has a need for sleep, but again the boss states that he remains at his post and that he is doing an important job.
Using this analogy as an example it illustrates the worker needs to take a risk or a chance of letting go to see that the wall will not collapse. This analogy parallels my situation of having unwanted and intrusive thoughts which resulted from a puncture wood after a night of drinking in a night club. Afterwards I did not feel safe with my anger and experienced an alienation of the expressive. I have been opposing my environment ever since in an attempt to retain control of situations to keep danger away from me and those that are close. I was keeping a projection of danger in abeyance. I have identified the thought or belief that causes the problem to persist, that after the assault I believed that life was unfair and unjust, and I always played the vitim card. A contributory factor was I lost job after job in rapid succession due as a consequence of the fear reaction of PTSD that was later assessed by CBT.
Like the worker I needed to let go to see that the wall would not fall down. I thought by letting go my worst fears would come true so I let go of one aspect of my life space rather than testing my worst thoughts with bigger risks attached.
This behavioural experiment consisted of dropping a safety behaviour and then seeing what happened and possibly disconfirming a belief that something bad would happen after a previous bad experience.
The serenity prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
courage to change the the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference

helps me to let go of some the control.Letting go of control is about step three and letting go and asking for God's will.
'When it comes to control, recovery is a balance between letting it happen and making it happen' (REF: Hazelden step three).
Letting it happen is dropping a safety behaviour, or dropping my gaurd with only a part of my problem to see a chink  of light in the armour of my ego.