Still Thinkin', Part 2

Continuing on with my thoughts on some of the behaviors and attitudes so common to those who suffer from the Disease…

Misery

“Miserable people will always try to get others to join them in their misery; someone else’s bad day (or life) doesn’t have to become yours, too.”

I wrote that quote the other day and shared it around with some friends. A lot of people could relate to it. I look at the whole subject as a two-headed monster; those of us with the Disease know misery, but we also have seriously poor boundaries, which lead us to take on other people’s misery in addition to our own.

When we’re miserable, we spread that misery to everyone nearby. It can be the way we snap back or bite someone’s head off when all they did was as a simple question. It can be general negativity, throwing our attitude around. Maybe we carry a dark cloud. Maybe we’re just bitter. We think we can’t help it, and we tell ourselves that it doesn’t affect other people. 

But it does. We are not alone in this world. How we act and react to others and to the world around us does affect the others in our lives. Misery can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. Maybe we’re convinced no one could like or love us or want to be around us. If someone does the unthinkable and tries to do one or the other, we push them away. Then, when they decide they’ve had enough of our bullshit, we think to ourselves with self-righteous satisfaction about how right we are.

We certainly don’t admit the truth—that it’s our own behavior keeping others away, or that we feel inside that we’re unlovable and can’t bear the thought of showing our true, wounded selves and giving others the chance to know and love us.

The other side of the coin, and something I think can be especially difficult for those of us in Recovery, is taking on other people’s misery, letting their attitudes affect us. We talk about this in the program all the time. In some ways, 12-steps is one huge stress-reduction program based around stringent boundaries training. Why else would we pray at every meeting for the ‘wisdom to know the difference’ between the things we can and can’t control?

But we are addicts, and we walk into the rooms with deeply ingrained patterns in our lives, patterns based on unhealthy relationships and coping strategies. Some of us (like myself) learned that we are responsible for other people’s feelings. We’re not. Some of us were taught that if someone is suffering, it’s our job to rescue and save them. It’s not. 

When we begin receiving the gifts of discovering a new way of life, we want to share those gifts with others. Sometimes we try to make others feel better because we hate seeing them suffer; sometimes we do it because we are still suffering ourselves and focusing on others allows us to escape from ourselves. That can be a good thing. But it can be a trap, too. 

We need to pay attention and make sure we aren’t giving advice where it hasn’t been asked for; we need to watch out to make sure we aren’t imposing our ideas of how another should live their life. And we really need to pay attention and make sure we aren’t trying to control someone else’s feelings. Other people get to feel how they feel, even if what they feel is misery.

We can change our attitudes, address our own misery. We can help others to feel better when they ask for help. And we can keep our own boundaries strong and makes sure that we ourselves are not dragged down into the mud with those people who insist on remaining miserable. I know for myself, one of the hardest boundaries for me to keep strong is allowing other people to have their misery. I see them suffering, I want to help, and I want them to ‘wake up’ and realize how much easier their lives would be if they simply let go.

Then I remember that my real motivation is that I don’t want them to be miserable so that I don’t have to deal with their shit. And once I’m there, then I’m back in line with the Honesty a spiritual way of living demands, and I can let go.