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.

Still thinkin'

So I guess we can consider the blog reactivated, yes? Why no posts in so long? Life has been very full.  Between the stresses of work, my service in the program, my work with sponsees, hangtime with friends, my music endeavors, and making sure to take time to care for myself . . . well, you get the picture.

This is not to say that I’ve stopping thinking about the Disease. How can I not?  Aside from the work I do to stay strong in my own Recovery, I’m still surrounded by the Disease in my everyday life. These days, it’s the behaviors which are so part and parcel of our spiritual malady that are my main challenges. Not in myself so much (thank god), but in others.

First and foremost, though, I have to own up to my own shit, which means remembering that, yeah, it’s totally true that the program teaches us not to take others’ inventory. And I need to remember, too, that the things we see in others that we don’t like are all-too-often the characteristics we don’t like about ourselves. 

So having said that, I guess all that I’m about to write about could just as easily be viewed as insight into the character defects of my own that I work on and try to change and not practice any longer. Who knows? Maybe the very fact that I work so hard not to practice these things is one of the reasons they bother me so much in others. Or maybe I just continue to have crazy fucked up people in my life, like everyone else.

Regardless, I've been needing to write on some themes of the Disease that I have been thinking about lately, the first being...

Finger pointing

How many of us are familiar with the thinking that it’s always someone else’s fault? I can’t tell you how many times and for how many years I blamed the rest of the world for everything that was wrong in my life. It was always something someone else had done to me, some external reason for why I was miserable and my life a disaster. It was never my fault—are you kidding? I was the victim! It was all about what was done TO me. I was convinced that the Fates were at war with me—personally. 

I look back on that thinking and shake my head at how self-centered it is. Being (mostly) on the other side of that now, and understanding that type thinking, what it is and where it comes from, is interesting to say the least. I can see it in myself when it happens now, and I can recognize it in others, too. That’s both a blessing and a curse, because even though I might think I know what’s really going on with someone else—that they made a mistake and don’t want to admit it, or are covering up for some greater incompetence, or just flat-out don’t want to take responsibility for themselves—it’s not my job to shake my finger at them. In fact, my job is to do the exact opposite, to avoid taking others’ inventory and try to not be judgmental.

My friends in the program are people I depend on to call me on my bullshit, and vice-versa. We have an understanding about what it means to work the program, to try and correct our mistakes and change the way we live, and we need each other’s help to do it. Outside the rooms, our job is to let go and let others live their own lives their own way. We can take responsibility for what we’ve done wrong, the times we’ve slacked off in our own responsibilities, but we can’t make others do the same.

“Perfection”

Sometimes I wonder if the most bitter pill in life to swallow is a deep disappointment. It’s like that moment when you realize your dad isn’t a superhero. Or when someone you thought was a genius makes a truly moronic comment. It seems so strange; we walk through molestation, poverty, death, and more. Yet there’s nothing quite like that feeling when you realize someone or something isn’t perfect--and that someone can be ourselves.

When that moment happens, there’s an innocence that dies. A hope gets dashed. Where we once held a belief in something as ironclad, we now see it in a colder, more realistic light. Our disenchantment can be mild, or it can be bitter as bile.

A lot of addicts I know (myself included) hold ourselves to impossible standards. We expect ourselves to be perfect. We expect others to be perfect, too. We expect situations, even life itself, to be perfect. And when it isn’t, oh are we ever bitter about it. In the rooms of Recovery, we say this: expectations are pre-meditated resentments.

I was thinking today about a situation I was involved in. A member at my home group was having some behavior problems (not unfamiliar for 12-step rooms). This member regularly talked far longer than the allotted time and had a very bad habit of interrupting other members during their shares. The member was talked to outside of meetings, asked multiple times to shape up and show respect to others in the meeting. The behavior didn’t improve, and the member ended up leaving the group after being told that their bullshit would no longer be tolerated.

Now, certainly anyone who’s been in 12-step rooms for any length of time knows that we can’t expect them to be perfect sanctuaries of peace and tranquility; they aren’t. They won’t ever be. Learning that they aren’t, seeing our fellows, our sponsor ‘fall from grace’ is difficult to walk through and a rough patch on the path to long-term Recovery.

But I wonder, too, about that member who walked out. They weren’t told to leave, but I wonder if there wasn’t an expectation there that the room was supposed to be perfect for them, the perfect place where they could say whatever they wanted and just talk and talk and talk. The fact that it was an unreasonable expectation doesn’t really matter. I imagine the bitterness that member felt had a very bad taste. Having reality intrude, get in our face, it seems to do it in the rudest way sometimes.

I try to remember that I’m not perfect. One of the best gifts Recovery has given me is the knowledge that not only do I not have to be perfect, but that I couldn’t be if I tried. Perfection isn’t possible. We are human. We are flawed. We make mistakes. It happens. In my better moments, I even find a way to laugh at myself and take joy in merely being human. In my worse moments, I am my own worst critic.

There is no such thing as perfect. Beating up on ourselves for not being perfect is a waste of time. Or worse, a form of denial because if we’re blaming ourselves for not being perfect, then we’ve forgotten a basic truth of our existence--that we are human. The same could be said of blaming life, situations, or circumstances for not being perfect. They aren’t; they won’t ever be. And that’s okay!

And of course, if it’s unjust to blame ourselves for not being perfect, it is truly unjust for us to blame others for not being perfect themselves.

“Thanks”

Uh-oh. The last time I blogged was on Veteran’s day. Today is Thanksgiving. I’m in serious danger of becoming the holiday blogger! I wonder if that’s anything like being an Easter/Christmas catholic?

It is thanksgiving day here, a day for being with family, feasting, being grateful, and praising god for a holiday that isn’t full of buying shiny plastic shit for people who don’t need it because otherwise they’ll think you don’t love them. For the first time in a couple of weeks, I had time and desire to hit up my favorite coffee shop. But, alas, on my way there, the streets were covered with roadblocks, police cars with red and blue lights piercing the wet air, and runners. Lots of runners. Gotta admire them for getting out there in the rain, though. I ended up at another local coffee shop and am now enjoying the quiet room. It feels good to write.

Last night I was over at my folks’ house to prep Thanksgiving dinner for this afternoon. They’re both injured right now and not getting any younger. My sister had the brilliant idea for the two of us to take care of dinner this year. Our family actually does Lasagna for dinner instead of the traditional turkey. So I spent last evening putting that together under mom’s direction, a desert, and then we made a couple pumpkin pies. We actually had a good time. It’s a far cry from the days when I wasn’t communicating with my family at all.

It’d be pretty obvious to say here on my Recovery blog that today I’m grateful for my Recovery, but there’s no denying the truth of that statement. Everything about my life today, I owe to the success I’ve had in working the program. There’s the things that are easily seen, like my job, my relationship with my family, the improvements in my personal relationships with others.

But there are other benefits which aren’t visible that are even more amazing to me. Things like the peace of mind I feel, the reservoir of calm that emanates from my very being now, and the confidence I have in myself. It’s things like the ability to not take things personally, not let others’ insanity affect me, to have good boundaries and be secure in myself and the knowledge that I am okay for who I am just as I am. These are the kinds of things most people rarely find, regardless of whether they’re in the program or not.

So this is my thanks for today--thanks for a new life, for being one of the lucky ones who is surviving this deadly disease, and who had the willingness to discover that it really is true: people really can change.

“Freed From Insanity”

That was the title for one of this week’s “Just For Today”. I saw it pop up in my email and it was almost as if an entire blog entry appeared before my eyes, fully formed in my mind, waiting to be written. And then, of course, several days went by while I did that whole life thing.

Today is a holiday and I’ve got the day off from work. There’s laundry to do, music to be made, and I’m starting it all off at my favorite coffee shop. Now that I’ve turned my attention back to the blog, I find myself thinking, “oh that’s right, I was going to write about THAT! Gosh, I had all kinds of good things to say about that... what was I going to say???” Oh well. This former stoner’s unreliable memory will just have to be accepted as I move forward. Because the topic is a good one, regardless of what I might have been going to say before.

We talk a lot in meetings about the insanity of the Disease. We’ve gone to all kinds of insane lengths to get drunk or to get loaded. We do all kinds of crazy things when we are intoxicated. But there is so much more to the insanity of the Disease than just how we relate to substances. The way we live our very lives is insane. We have poor boundaries at best; our personal lives are the shambles; we do things that affect others without any regard for them. We don’t think of other people; we are all too often incapable of doing so. We are stuck in our own little worlds, thinking that smallness to be the entire universe. And when reality intrudes, reminds us that there is a much larger world out there beyond what our limited perspectives are capable of perceiving, we react wildly. Violently. We don’t like it when the bubble of our denial is pierced.

As I’ve worked the program and found what I’ve found through doing so, I don’t really see myself as being ‘restored’ to sanity. If I were, that would somehow imply that at some point in my life I had been sane. Looking back, even before I first picked up, I can see the insanity of my behavior and my thinking. Now, being where I am, I can still feel those impulses in my brain. From time to time, they still get out, still run my life. Thank god for the tenth step. Because I still have everything in me that I walked into the rooms with.

As we go about our lives, we will encounter countless others who don’t live their lives by the spiritual principles we strive to live by. Sometimes they are active addicts, sometimes severe codependents, sometimes they’re just assholes. Sometimes, they’re none of the above, and simply don’t behave the way we wish they would. An ongoing struggle for me is boundaries. I meet people who are like I was, and I have to continually remind myself that I’m not responsible for them. I’m not responsible for their lives, their problems, I’m only responsible for me.

Some people get confused when I say things like that. They talk about that quote posted in so many rooms: “I am responsible.” And I explain to them as gently as I can how that means when someone asks for help, that’s when I help them. Because trying to help someone who doesn’t want it, who hasn’t shown the willingness to let themselves be helped, that leads straight to my going back to being insane. Because if I do that, then I’m not accepting the things I can’t change. When someone asks for help, that’s the key. It’s why I don’t tell people I’m going to sponsor them; I wait for them to ask me.

Some days it really breaks my heart to see others stuck in the insanity of their lives. So often, they live that way because they think they have to. I want to help them see that they don’t have to, that there is another way. But even those feelings are judgmental, because it’s not up to me to decide what is right or wrong for others. It’s up to them to decide if they want to be free or not. Because some people don’t! Some people would much rather stay with the insanity they know than try living differently. No matter how much they might hate it, they’ll stay stuck because it’s easier, more familiar. All I can really do is remember my boundaries, help them if they want help, and not take on responsibility that isn’t mine. And I can be grateful for my own freedom.

And I am. I am so grateful to have been freed, so grateful to not have to do all that anymore.

“Still Codependent, Too”

It’s been a while since I ranted & raved about codependence here in this space. A program friend of mine has recently realized that he’s got some work to do in this department so it’s been on my mind lately. He’s already looked at his issues there a little, and I had a good book to loan him. Ha. I have more than a few books on the subject :)

If you’re not familiar with the term and are wondering what the heck this codependence thing is, there are a lot of ways to describe it. Some people call it the Disease without the substance addiction piece. Some people call it being addicted to or dependent on people instead of a substance. I tend to think of it as the ways of thinking, communicating, and behaving that we learn by being around people with the Disease (or people who are codependent themselves).

A lot of us with the Disease have codependence issues, and many of us end up going to the rooms of Al-Anon or ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) to sort them out. If doing the 12-steps for our addiction is college, then working on our codependence is like graduate study. A lot people suggest not working on codependence until we’ve completed our steps. And yeah, there’s a point to be made there, but it isn’t that we have to wait to work on this--it’s to finish your steps!

In my mind, the definitive book on the subject is still Melody Beattie’s “Codependent No More”--especially if you haven’t done any step work or have never been to a 12-step room. For those of us who have finished our steps (or are working on them), it’s still a great book. A short sample:

“Communication is not mystical. The words we speak reflect who we are: what we think, judge, feel, value, honor, love, hate, fear, desire, hope for, believe in, and commit to. If we think we’re inappropriate to life our communication will reflect this: We will judge others as having all the answers; feel angry, hurt, scared, guilty, needy, and controlled by other people. We will desire to control others, value pleasing others at any cost, and fear disapproval and abandonment. We will hope for everything but believe we deserve and will get nothing unless we force things to happen, and remain committed to being responsible for other people’s feelings and behavior. We’re congested with negative feelings and thoughts.

“No wonder we have communication problems.”

--from Chapter 17, ‘Communication’

I first read ‘Co- No More’ when I was at the very beginning of my Recovery journey. In fact, it’s no stretch to say that this book WAS the start of my Recovery journey. It was as I got into it, attempted to start putting the ideas in Beattie’s book into practice that I discovered I was putting the cart before the horse; I had to deal with my addiction first before I could address these issues.

A number of people who have the Disease in their life (friends who are addicts, parents who are alcoholics, etc.) have found a lot of help from this book. Many of them find their way into the rooms of Al-Anon so that they can get help putting these ideas into practice. As it is with those of us who learn how to deal with life without getting loaded, people who suffer from codependence need to learn a whole other way of dealing with life, themselves, with others.

The ways we learn to be in the world don’t happen by accident. We adapt to our situations. If we’ve learned to function in a codependent way, it’s because it is what we had to learn to do in order to survive. Making the change, learning to do something different, is difficult, difficult stuff. A lot of times, we can’t find the willingness to follow through on it unless we’ve reached some kind of bottom and admitted to ourselves that we can’t do it the same old way anymore.

We can learn a different way. Like our Disease, codependence is something we must continue to work on, but change is possible. If we want it. If we work for it.

“The Joy Of Living”

We’ve had a few windy days here and I’ve been seeing something I’ve seen before that never ceases to amaze me: the way the wind whips across grass in waves. It’s an impressive sight, those ripples. So fluid, so natural, and yet so unnatural at the same time. Those tiny green blades, acting in concert as if they were an ocean surface. I have one of those ‘appreciate the little things’ moments every time I see it.

As crazy as life can get, with its ups and downs, its occasional total upheavals, and the random period of uninterrupted peace, I’ve found the old wisdom about the little things being the most important to be so true. Nature is a big one for me. I’ve always been a fan, and when I got clean & sober, I didn’t know if I would still enjoy it as much. Then I saw a sunset behind the mountains for the first time, stone cold sober, and was amazed at how its beauty was every bit as intense and wondrous.

There are some more mundane little things that are really enjoyable for me, too. Like paying my bills on time, not having to stress about creditors and collectors hounding me over the phone. For some bizarre reason, I really like cleaning my apartment, too. I’m not a neat freak, I just like having a clean place to come home to. As an introverted guy, my home is where I tend to recharge at, my retreat and safe haven from the world. Not that others aren’t welcome in it, of course! Simply that most of the time it’s just me there and my mind is more at peace with an orderly home.

The thing the cleaning, the bills, is they’re the normal humdrum stuff of day-to-day living. And I remember all too well a time when I didn’t do any of this. I remember, too, how hard I had to fight, the boundaries I had to establish, in order to learn how to take care of myself and have others in my life stop treating me as a near-invalid who had to have everything taken care of for him.

Sure, it’s true that as an active drug addict I wasn’t very capable at caring for myself. And even that affliction aside, my life skills were sub-par to none. So these days I carry a lot of private pride at being someone who takes care of his responsibilities, who takes care of himself. A small part of that is thoughts about those from my past who never thought I could, but mostly it’s the satisfaction of showing myself that I can.

That’s a big part of my joy in Recovery--being responsible, being a functioning member of society. For so long, my daily life was nothing more than a miserable existence. Now, instead of merely existing, I’m truly living.