For a while now, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the subjects of cognitive dysfunction and cognitive dissonance, as well as the connections between them, and how all of this relates to being on a boat. It’s going to take a little time to get around to the boat part, but perhaps some folks will be interested in the various bits.

This starts with an event from years ago, when a friend of mine used to go to a support group that was related to dealing with health issues and resulting cognitive dysfunction. Out of that group came the catchphrase “cog dys,” which generated sentences like, “Oh, are you experiencing cog dys too?” Nowadays, this friend no longer remembers the group, but the phrase has stayed with me, particularly as one or another form of cognitive dysfunction has been on my mind.

Meanwhile, with exactly the same shorthand as far as pronunciation, and with a minor spelling adjustment, one could have “cog dis,” for the term “cognitive dissonance.” In an example of cognitive dysfunction, in my more tired moments I have a hard time remembering which is which. Recently someone pointed out to me that they are in fact related. (Thank you, Lori!)

Cognitive dysfunction is pretty much what it sounds like: decreased or incorrect functioning of one’s thinking abilities.

Cognitive dissonance, on the other hand, is not so quick and simple to explain. “Cog dis” is the confusion resulting from a mismatch between stated reality and perceived reality, sometimes arising from simple lack of understanding, or from internally conflicting beliefs. It can also be intentionally constructed by individuals (or systems) that have a goal of keeping other people confused, and controlled. When actively perpetrated, and successful, those upon whom cognitive dissonance is foisted are likely to perceive themselves as cognitively dysfunctional. This is like a tongue twister for one’s brain, trying to keep track of all this.

An example of manipulation intended to create this kind of confusion is shown in the movie from the 1940s, “Gaslight,” from which we get the term “gaslighting.” In this movie, in an old house with gas fixtures for lighting, a man wants to convince a woman that she’s crazy, so that he can get away with having killed somebody, and get that person’s hidden jewels. (It’s a crazy and convoluted story.) He tells the woman that the lights are not flickering, though they are, and she clearly sees the flicker. Through a gradual, insistent process on the part of the man, the woman becomes ready to abandon her perception, and to accept the explanation that the man is presenting, which comes down to that she is crazy (cognitively dysfunctional) and therefore should be institutionalized so that he can carry on with finding the jewels. A friendly detective saves the day, validating for the woman that there is indeed flickering in the gas lights, and bonus, catching the creepy man.

I can’t even watch this movie; witnessing the intentional undermining of someone’s reality is too painful to bear. But the concept so clearly illustrated is enormously useful.

A real world example of gaslighting/setting up cognitive dissonance in order to control people would be all those situations where the differences between stated reality and practiced reality are at the same time glaringly and invisibly real. Feminism (with thanks to the writings of Andrea Dworkin, Mary Daly, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, and so many others) provides a specific example: we live in a culture where systematic abuse of women and children is practiced daily; the police/court system says that this is illegal, but many legislators, police officers, and judges (those who create and uphold the legal/cultural system) are perpetrators of this abuse themselves. The subtleties of the system reflect this dual reality.

The stated cultural values are that abuse of women and children – and vulnerable men – is wrong. However, a significant number of people, while explicitly stating that violence, sexual abuse, and everything on up to torture are wrong, are at the very same time allowing and/or participating in these terribly harmful practices.

It’s this kind of conflict between stated reality and experienced reality that can make a person feel really crazy. Or cognitively dysfunctional, unable to think, with one’s mind wrapped into a tangle on the unresolvable conflicts of perception.

So for the folks who are still reading this, wondering how this is ever going to relate to sailboats on water, thanks for sticking with it. It’s a wide-ranging process, this, working to explain the ongoing, daily interconnections between the unresolved past and the present, gradually making sense of both, in a whole, integrated picture.

For me, my time on the water has been an important, and very rich, part of this process of resolution. However, this year on the water was more challenging than last…

While I was sailing this season, my biggest struggle was with cognitive dysfunction, and it worried me quite a bit. At times my thinking was cloudy, and slow-moving. I was aware that when presented with a number of bits of information, I was not always processing them fully, nor putting them together thoroughly into a well-developed, full understanding of the situation at hand. This kind of diminished thinking ability is a normal result of fatigue, but just like before leaving home in the spring, on the boat it was coming up more than I felt like it should. In response, I increased my vigilance around safety issues and navigation, and kept observing, and thinking about, the overall situation. And I continued to sail, almost always by myself.

I like sailing alone for many reasons, but a big one is that I don’t have to worry so much about responsibility for anybody else ending up in a bad spot. If I make a catastrophic mistake, generally I am the only one who will suffer the consequences. It helps, in this, to sail a small boat, rather than a big one. You have to be really careful around kayaks and dinghies, but for the most part if there is an unfortunate meeting of boats including yours, most of the damage will be on your side, not theirs. And of course rocks are not the least bit worried about the boats that run into them. Not that I want any of this to happen at all, and I have continued to take enormous precautions to limit the possibilities, but if something serious were to go amiss, it would generally be just me, in this boat, with the really big problem.

This year’s round of sailing pushed the limits of my comfort zone for being out, as captain, even by myself, never mind with responsibility for others. If the cognitive dysfunction situation were to get much worse, I would have to seriously consider only going on the water with other sailors whose competence is both substantial, and reliable, and with the well-being of the boat in their hands, rather than mine. It would be time to refrain from sailing by myself for anything other than short jaunts, only going out alone during the generally shorter periods when I feel cognitively sharp and up to the task. As folks can likely imagine, this is not a happy thought!

With all these concerns stewing around, I’ve spent a good bit of time over the last few months thinking about cog dys, rolling the term around in my mind, and holding it up next to the identically pronounced cog dis. After the relationship between them was pointed out to me, I started thinking more about the ocean, and why, in the face of these issues, it has continued to be so important to me to go out and float around, on tiny protected bays as well as on those long open water runs that were also such a significant part of this past year’s boat time.

For me, the primary reason for going to sea is the blessed stillness, on a broad scale. There is no cognitive dissonance, alone at sea, unless you bring it there yourself. The reality with which you are presented has no underlying conflicting agenda. The tide comes and goes, the wind blows, the waves are fierce or gentle. One’s preparations are thorough, and effective, or maybe not so much. It’s very straightforward, and if there are mistakes, or there is lack of understanding, those failings can be approached directly, and hopefully improved upon. One might become confused, and that kind of disorientation is almost always uncomfortable, but you know that, somewhere in the array of information in front of you, there is indeed an explanation.

I did however have a situation that was, at the time, extremely hard to sort out, and was as a result quite disturbing, providing a lot to think about. This event was described in the post titled “Update,” from August 29, 2013, about passing near Cross Island off of Machias, Maine. The related bit starts about halfway down the post. (http://sailingauklet.com/2013/08/29/update/ )

In that situation, it was both confusing, and unnerving, trying to piece together the effects of the crazy, shifting current, the wind direction, and the options for progress. Fatigue-related cognitive dysfunction did not help, but in retrospect the larger problem was that “things did not add up.” For me, that sensation of things not adding up was deeply alarming.

It was a cosmic gift that it worked out to call my friends, that first time through, for reassurance and outside perspective, as well as for help in developing an appropriate plan. It was also a gift that I got to go back the following day (described in the second post on August 29, “Cutler and Beyond”) with conditions that clearly demonstrated what had been happening. The second visit was enlightening, not only improving my understanding of the currents and whatnot, but also helping with understanding my distress during the initial event.

As a survivor of severe gaslighting – an aspect of childhood abuse that keeps the perpetrators safe, and the survivor deeply confused for a very long time – it was alarming to not understand what the ocean, and the boat, were doing. This would, of course, probably be distressing for most everybody, regardless of personal history. Besides the specific boat considerations, as humans our brains are wired to feel discomfort at things that don’t make sense, making it more likely that problems/dangers will get our attention – and that’s a good thing! But for survivors of gaslighting, distress in that kind of “things don’t add up” situation is likely to be much more layered, with everything from only peripherally related mistrust and fear, to outright flashbacks, triggered by the feeling of disorientation.

Myself, I make a habit of studying quite a bit, about the ocean and boats, and how they can both be expected to behave, as an antidote to this entire issue. It’s calming, in the face of all that human confusion, to rely on the usually straightforward physics of interacting with ocean conditions; it’s really why I go sailing. But you do need your brain working, in order to sort it all out.

Which brings me back to where we started, with the connection between cognitive dysfunction and cognitive dissonance. In my inner work, I have been deep in a process of unraveling the gaslighting (cognitively dissonant) aspects of my old history. In the end, it comes as no surprise that the process of trying to understand the cognitive dissonance of that time has sometimes made tangled spaghetti of my ability to follow a direct thought, including here in the present. Sailing gives me the gift of having important reasons to perceive the cognitive dysfunction, to evaluate my mental capacities, and to make decisions that are appropriate in light of those observations. Further, it provides extra motivation for understanding the source of the problem.

If I wasn’t trying to go sailing, these issues wouldn’t matter so much. Cognitive dysfunction comes and goes, and if I am simply at home sorting out household or community projects, periods of reduced thinking ability are frustrating, but all that’s lost is some time and efficiency. That muddied brain is uncomfortable, but really, so what. By going to sea, that muddied brain becomes a serious liability; it is not to be ignored. And since I care so much about going to sea, I am motivated to look at the entire situation, and the connections.

The sea is utterly comforting in its total lack of cognitive dissonance. At the same time, it is stark in its uncompromising reflection of cognitive dysfunction. It’s a delicate balancing act: if one goes to sea for a respite from the struggle with cognitive dissonance, but suffers from cognitive dysfunction as a result of that struggle with dissonance, will clarity come back in time to avoid sinking the boat! Or is it important to go to sea precisely in order to perceive this struggle, as a piece of the path toward moving through it.

As has probably already occurred to some readers, it’s also altogether possible that my personal experience of cognitive dysfunction is, more than anything, related to health issues, and resulting shifts in abilities. But it doesn’t feel that way. What it feels like, in fact, is that the source of this difficulty with thinking is entirely grounded in the problems of cognitive dissonance. It is, however, a legitimate question.

Oddly enough, in the process of writing this paper, and so specifically naming cognitive dissonance, my thinking has become clearer than I have experienced in a long time. This would, indeed, be consistent with the theory that gaslighting scrambles people’s brains – and that the more one can name, and extricate oneself from, long-term gaslighting, the more room one has for one’s thinking to clear. For now, I’m open to the possibilities. Regardless of how it is achieved, consistently clear thinking would be a delight, both at home and on the water.

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Acknowledgments:

This essay has benefited from careful reading and feedback, on earlier drafts, by Dave Zeiger, Anke Wagner, Judy Schultz, and Lori Lorenz. Many thanks to each of you!

Further, I would like to acknowledge the teaching and mentoring that I have received from Lori Lorenz, who has contributed enormously to my understanding of trauma and recovery (as well as to my process of recovery itself). Specifically in this essay, my grasp of the concept of gaslighting, and of the mechanics of human response to “things that don’t add up,” is a direct result of conversations between Lori and myself. More on Lori’s work can be found at http://www.eftandtrauma.com

Any and all goof-ups that remain in this writing are of course my own!

This post was written in July. Since then there has been some editing, and checking in with this friend about revisions to get things right. I’m happy to say that the overall situation has lately been looking like a much longer-term process!

Birch Island, in July

A dear, dear friend of mine has had a progressive, seriously disabling illness for all the years that we’ve known each other, now nearing 20. From walking with some difficulty, and scooting up stairs backwards, things have moved to significant adaptive equipment, and various complications. Not too long ago she said to me that, although in some ways things are getting better, she can also feel her systems gradually shutting down. She is in her 50s, formerly a Buddhist with a dedicated spiritual practice, and now someone who says of herself that she “just tries to be awake.” She said to me that she is welcoming the opportunity to stay present through this experience of her body closing down, simply noticing what is happening, and embracing joy. Approaching dying with consciousness and a sense of well-being.

The second time that we talked about this, I could feel that her groundedness had deepened further, and her sense of peace about both the process and the prospect was strong, and centered. I, on the other hand, while listening gently on the phone, was later bereft, filled with grief at the loss to come. Wondering how I will go forward here on the planet, without her steady, supportive presence.

Then a funny thing happened. I on the boat, she called me on the cell phone. I knew it was her because the caller ID showed her number, but when I said hello there was no answer. The phone had not hung up, and the screen showed as if there was a call in progress. But no sound on my end. After a few moments of saying that I couldn’t hear her and that I was wondering if she could hear me, I hung up, and a few moments after that she called me back, this time with a regular connection, saying that she could hear me in the previous call, even though I was hearing nothing. Later I thought that oh, this is the universe telling me how this communication thing works. Somebody crosses over, leaving this physical time on the planet, and it’s not so easy to hear them. But they are hearing you just fine. I thought about this, but my friend and I didn’t talk about it, and then over the next couple of weeks we had phone calls that went through with no problem.

The day before yesterday (end of July) she called me again, while I was sailing, and again there was no sound, but the caller ID showed that it was her. So I spoke to her, saying that I couldn’t hear her but I was thinking that she probably could hear me, and then explaining that I was sailing into a harbor at that very moment and thought that it would take me about a half an hour to get anchored and be able to call her back. Anchoring accomplished, and a couple of other delaying events (lobster dinner – thank you Reilly!) and I called my friend back. Indeed she had heard everything that I had said on the silent (on my end) telephone.

This experience with the telephone has not happened with anybody else in all the many phone calls I have received over this almost 2 months of sailing. In my grieving, by myself, about my friend approaching dying, I had asked “how will I know where to find you?” And later I had, in fact, told her that I was struggling with this question. And then the universe said here, let me show you. It’s as simple as this: You can’t hear me, but I can hear you.

This is why I go sailing – to hear the most important of messages.

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November 29, 2013 – In all the time on the water, this year and last over a total of 11 months, with that same phone, this is the only time that I received calls that went through in this way.

I’m not too good with riding in cars – bumps, vibration, noise – and I quit driving over 10 years ago because of changes in my reflexes related to health issues. You know you shouldn’t be driving when, just like the low-tech test for elderly folks’ driving, you start hearing more and more horns honking whenever you happen to be the one behind the wheel. There’s a lot of speed in cars, and very small movements of the steering wheel or the accelerator have very large, and very quick, effects. You want both muscle control and eye/hand coordination that’s up to the task, and if you don’t have that, it’s really better not to drive.

The nice thing about boats, at least the slow-moving kind (flatwater kayaks, canoes, single hull displacement sailboats, among others), is that the issues that can make car-driving such a hazard pretty much go away when you bring the speed down to an average of 3 knots. And even better, in an ordinary (non-racing) sailing situation everybody is keeping a respectful distance! At four boat lengths, a variation of a foot or two will matter not at all. Never mind that sailing on almost any available water is so much more fun than being out somewhere on a highway.

Beyond the driving issues, sailboats, for me, get around the problems of riding in cars. Almost always sailboat motion is “more rounded.” The bumps land with a certain amount of give, and there is more variation in the strain that one’s body is asked to accommodate. If one has the good sense to stay in port during terrible weather, a lot of bashing around can be avoided. Vibration and noise arrive with the motor – and with some patience and willingness to refine sailing skills, the motor can be avoided too.

Last year I was at a dock for a couple of days that was mainly inhabited by relatively large cruising motorboats, probably averaging about 40 feet and more. It was nice July weather, and I ended up overhearing quite a few conversations. One young man was visiting his (motorboat) friends, explaining that his sailboat was for sale. With the kind of preparation that let’s you know that somebody is about to say something that they think is really funny, he said, “sailboats are good for fun, but motorboats are transportation.” This was in Onset, by the west entrance to the Cape Cod Canal, and I had gotten there from the Connecticut River… sailing. They were three boats away, and I didn’t say anything. But he did me a favor, bringing up that word. It really clarified for me exactly what I’ve been doing in this boat, and in each of the previous others, since cars and driving became such a problem. Each of these boats has been, in fact, accessible transportation!

It’s a pleasure to cover so much ground by water. It’s even more of a pleasure to cover any ground at all. And it’s an outright miracle that the two things go together. I couldn’t be more pleased.

There’s a thing that happens in boats, that has really caught my attention. You get out onto the water, and suddenly an enormous number of total strangers care about your well-being. I am fascinated by this, and am studying.

The basics are pretty simple: you do your very best to stay out of trouble, taking care with everything from knowledge to equipment to weather, tides and currents. Your judgment develops with each passing experience, whether it goes well or not quite so much. And all the time, people on the water are looking out for each other. It’s even in the law – the requirement that if a boater is able to provide assistance to another boater in distress without placing her/himself at risk, one is legally bound to do so.

There are all manner of safety equipment and distress signals carried on board: radios, EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons), flares, flashing lights, distress flags, dye markers, signal mirrors, and more. Items strapped to lifejackets, and the lifejackets themselves. If you float longer, there’s a better chance that somebody (including yourself) will be able to fish you out of the water.

I carry most of these items, but I draw the line at the EPIRB. This is because I question whether I am willing to set off a signal like that. Not put to the test, I think that if I get myself into trouble, I should get myself out. And even more importantly, I should not invite other people into trouble in order to solve a problem I made for myself. Though I do have a satellite phone and GPS, so the door is not entirely closed. And I am very aware that even thinking about this as a question is a luxury of sailing alone.

On the broader plane, there are so many too many people on the planet presently, with the Earth utterly overburdened by our expanding presence, and our incredibly extravagant use of resources. So although I like it here, and it would, I know, be personally sad to the people with whom I am connected, one more person leaving the planet, honestly, does not seem worthy of ships and helicopters and enormous effort and materials just to stave off (postpone) that end. Never mind that in other situations the powers that be are actively trying to do people in, for one reason or another (thinking drones in Pakistan, for example.) The question is: why does going to sea suddenly make one person’s well-being so incredibly valuable, and important?

This is the voice of an abuse survivor. Total strangers talk with me intently, obviously caring about the outcome, encouraging me to be safe and well, in this time on the water. It is perfectly clear to me that if the boat were sinking they would instantly come to my aid. And that’s a good feeling, but it leaves me asking: what about before? Child in the hands of people who should not be so entrusted. Why is it that suddenly, you go out on a boat, and everybody cares. They will move mountains in order to rescue one little person who has, even stupidly, with poor planning, preparation, or judgment, gotten themselves into trouble. But on land, children, people with poor health, all those who have “fallen through the cracks,” are so terribly, terribly on their own.

I lived for many years, as a child, at the bottom of one of those cracks, and then it happened again, as an adult, as a result of combinations of poor health, finances, and a learning curve for dealing with life changes that was beyond my capabilities at the time. They were long, long emergencies, which I guess is exactly the problem. Eventually things changed, probably in both cases because of aging and developing maturity, and now here I am, sailing the salt water. But I look at those emergencies, and I look at people on the water so quick to respond, and I ponder. Child inside asking, “where were you then?” And even more important, in this present, “what about the children now?”

So this is the big question: how is it that our society is so carefully, and effectively, structured for ocean rescue, while in so many settings people live or die, suffer, unaided.

But before I rush to judgment, thinking about family members, neighbors, who hesitate to intervene, to perceive, officials who don’t understand what’s happening, or worse, are part of the problem, I have to look directly at myself.

Nowadays, I am blessed with the resource of a comfortable amount of cash. Abundant enough that if I’m careful, and pay attention, I can do pretty much whatever I want (fortunately I have no interest in fancy cars, fancier houses, or quite a few other things that could make a decent amount of cash look small.) Anyway, I have more than enough. And here’s the tricky part: not everybody does.

So how do I address the long emergencies of so many people I know. Not to mention the broader community on the planet. What happens to relationships when you “simply” share. What happens when you don’t. I have tried this so many ways, and the gift from this terrible question has been understanding my past. And coming to some kind of answer about the question of ocean rescue.

I think that ocean rescue is so well set up because it’s easy. The resources aren’t easy, and the tasks aren’t easy. But it’s immediate, it’s anonymous, and it doesn’t last. If I died tomorrow I could leave money to 10 different people, perhaps helping. Or perhaps not helping, which is another one of the ironies of money, and of attempts at help in general. But if I’m living, and offering that help, it is endlessly complicated. And nowadays, I am much slower to do it, for those reasons.

Ocean rescue, it seems to me, is so successful because it deals with the other side of the same issue. So many of us so intensely want to help, in so many situations. But in so many situations the action of help is utterly fraught, and leads to outcomes that do not necessarily inspire doing it again. On a boat on the water, “helping” is so much simpler. People are free to care, and they embrace that freedom, with intensity, and with commitment. They rescue small boats, they rescue small people – and big ones. Nobody asks questions when somebody is floating in their life jacket, and nobody hesitates. They pull them out of the water. It’s the same dynamic as a land emergency – fire, traffic accident, some natural disasters – but on a boat, in the everyday non-emergency, this care for other people’s well-being seems to be more routinely expressed, in that intent look, and wishes for staying safe.

So now the challenge is this: how do we translate that enormous triumph of spirit, that unconstrained caring, to our everyday lives, once again on solid ground. How do we translate “helping” into a community standard, so that falling through societal cracks elicits the same response as somebody on the ocean tumbling out of a boat. I’m continuing to study…

Deep down, I don’t really believe in the possibility of change. This can get you into trouble, given the everyday evidence by which we are all surrounded, that change is the one aspect of life that one can really count on. Regardless, knowing that does not come naturally to me.

Sailing is fantastic, because it’s all about change, and adapting, and changing again. For someone who doesn’t believe in change – whose mind simply does not wrap around the concept – sailing is a marvelous, ultimately neutral affirmation of the possibility of change, moment to moment, week to week, and endlessly on, if one so chooses.

Some explanation is in order: how does one become a person who simply does not “get” change?

It takes big stuff. Or Stuff – the same sort of thing that would inspire going off in a small boat on a big ocean. And the Stuff is indeed big. I am a survivor, of severe childhood trauma/abuse. There are those who would say that this did not happen, and I am not here to argue the point, one way or the other. We all remember, and don’t remember, and survive, in the best way that we can come up with at the time. Regardless of who says what, this experience informs my entire being, from day-to-day life, to the long cycles of decades. It has become a teacher, though it’s a rough road.

My friend Dave, of triloboats.com, wrote a great article about some sailing that he and Anke and I did together (“The Able Bodied Sea-Person — Expanding the Notion” in the magazine Messing about in Boats, January 2013). While we were talking about this article, before he wrote it, he said something that stayed with me. I was saying that I don’t think that physical abilities, or limitations thereof, should be central to the story of me going sailing. To which he gently replied “that is the story.” This in the context that we are both pretty bored by “sailing travelogues.” (If you’re in this blog for sailing travelogues, it would be best to go back to the smugmug photos linked in the entry “previous trips”…)

Anyway, that was last October, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I don’t think that the physical limitations are the story, and what I do think actually is the story. Which is this: I go sailing because I am a survivor of horrific abuse, and sailing makes sense to me. The challenges, the difficulties, the moments of joy, the meeting one’s physical limits, and sitting in that place of strain, by choice. The power of the sea (this has been said so many times that it’s utterly trite – but it’s still true) – the way that the tides and the currents come and go, predictably, and the wind comes and goes, much more on its own personal schedule, with the waves following. Ease, and difficulty, and risk, the need for constant vigilance, the blessed solitude. The loneliness. The fear. It’s all there, and it is my privilege to have the opportunity to spend time with it. This is why I go sailing. I sit with my fear, in the presence of a force that is vastly, overwhelmingly greater than myself, and completely, utterly not malevolent. Whoever said “the cruel sea” didn’t know cruelty – one can come to terrible grief on the sea, but it won’t be because anybody was mean. That’s the point.

I’m likely to come back to the various connections – I like sailing, and boat building, and boat tinkering, enormously because they so appeal to my techie, engineering nature. But that deep draw, that keeps me coming back over and over through fairly substantial obstacles, is bigger than the techie fun, and bigger than the lovely sparkle on the water. I keep coming back because it’s real, and because it sustains me, and because it provides a container, and a structure, for the biggest of big questions.