"Permission To Be Selfish"

So... is 12-steps a selfish program or a program where we learn to be less selfish? Both. Stay with me on this.

My Social Psychology class is right after my Statistics class and it is full. Full, as in, not enough chairs to go around, people stitting in the aisles, standing against the walls. It'll thin out as the semester goes on, but for now there's always a rush to find a seat. Today, I found myself standing until someone pointed out a chair with a backpack in it across the room. I walked over and moved the backpack. A woman in the chair next to me tried to stop me, tell me that someone was already sitting there--a girl (a comment to which my Issues of Diverse Populations professor would have replied, 'what difference does that make?'). I just said, "yeah--me," and sat down. The girl whose backpack it was ended up being late back to class, but was in time to hear the professor remind everyone that the class is crowded and that just putting your backpack in a chair doesn't necessarily save you a seat.

As all this was going on, in my mind I thought of something I'd been working on with my therapist--being more selfish. We talked about it in general, but also specifically in areas like relationships. If you settle, all you get is what you settle for. Or, as a friend of mine likes to say, "settle for the best." Maybe it would have been more 'gentlemanly' of me to allow the girl her seat. Or maybe she and I both have the same worth and value as individual people, and I was there and she wasn't.

Those of us (like myself) who have issues with codependence have a hard time being selfish. It's more commonly phrased like this: we have difficulty or don't know how to say, "No." It's probably the one thing I spent more time on than any other in my therapy sessions. For me, this issue really comes to the forefront when I'm in a romantic relationship. And I get why, too. It's a fear thing. Fear of rejection, fear of loss. It's heavy, emotionally, because it triggers all those experiences from childhood of not getting the love I needed from family, friends, etc. Something my therapist said to me is that I'll know I'm making progress when I hear someone else (specifically, someone else who suffers from these codependence issues) tell me I'm being selfish.

It took me a while to get my head wrapped around this idea, but it has started happening. The key for my understanding this good kind of selfishness has been the idea of being selfish enough to work the 12-step program. To decide, within myself, that I am worth it. I am not a waste of skin, I am a human being and my life has value. I am worth getting better, being happy and healthy. I do deserve for good things to happen to me and to have good people in my life. It's about believing in myself. It's also about deciding I'm important and that I matter.

There is a lot of Helping that goes on in the 12-step rooms. Taking service positions is a way to help ensure the meetings continue so that those who still suffer have a place to go. The Twelfth step itself--sponsorship--is about guiding someone new through the steps. But all of those things are not means unto themselves, they are means to an end. We help others with a very specific purpose--it helps us to stay sober. We have to decide that our sobriety, our Recovery, is worth it enough to us to do the things suggested to us. We have to decide that we are worth it.

The 12 steps are full of self-examining tools. I think it might even be the original self-help program. Focusing on others helps to take us out of ourselves, to get us out of a rut, or off the pity-pot. But we can end up focusing too much attention on others and neglecting our own spiritual health. We learn to take care of ourselves so that we can be available to truly be of service to others. If we spend all our thoughts and emotions on helping other people, so much so that we become ill or hurt or even relapse, what good have we really done? How can we take someone to the hospital if we're already there, checked into the Intensive Care Unit? How can we help someone to back away from their suicide plans if we've landed ourselves in our own padded cell?

The program is both a selfish and a selfless one. We learn to take care of ourselves so that we can be available to help others. We learn to love ourselves so that we can truly love others. We help other addicts to stay sober because it helps us to stay sober.

Be selfish.