You're Doing it Wrong

You're Doing it Wrong

 

This topic has been on my mind a lot lately.  It has been churning in my head because I have had many different examples of this crop up in my life lately and in the lives of those close to me so I feel compelled to write about it.

I have written in “Waves” about how feelings are not facts.  Now I want to talk about what to do with negative emotions like guilt, shame, remorse and regret.  These are heavy hitters and they carry a lot of weight. 

What are they for?  I would say that these are here to teach.  If I do something that makes me feel guilty or brings me to feel shame it doesn’t feel good.  I used to use those feelings like whips and self-flagellate, repeatedly and often.  I beat myself frequently for things I had recently done and things I had done years ago.  I would cradle these feelings close to my heart in fear and self-loathing and the more I did it the worse I felt and the more I hated myself.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I am ashamed of what I have done, I am a bad person, I am destined to do it again because I am such a bad person and then low and behold I would do the thing again and again and again.

 I was doing it wrong.  Some people with tell you that negative feelings are useless and should be avoided at all cost.  I would tell you that negative emotions like these heavy hitting four, are warnings.  They are devices of learning.

If I now do something that makes me feel ashamed or something that makes me feel guilty, I examine the act closely.  I look it over from all angles.  I see the lesson contained therein and recognize my errors and the gravity of the situation.  I take responsibility for my actions and make amends if necessary, apologize and make it right.  I then put those feelings down and walk away from them.  I don’t carry them with me into the next day or experience.

In the past few months I made an error in judgment that was foolish and could have been potentially dangerous to myself.  I had reached out to a friend before doing so and she had rightly been worried.  I felt guilt and did all the self-examination described above for a day or so.  I did apologize to her for worrying her.  Through the course of our conversations though it became apparent that she felt the need to point out my lack of judgment a number of times even after we had put the issue to bed.  I finally had to say, “I think you are expecting me to still feel guilty about this and I don’t.”  I did not say this to be arrogant by any means and what I said came from a place of love, but I needed stick up for myself on that front.  I explained that I had learned from the experience and that I no longer live with regrets as they serve no other purpose than to weight me down spiritually.  I know she was taken aback by this but for so many years I abused myself with negative self-talk that I refuse to do so any longer.

I have seen examples of people “doing it wrong” a lot lately.  At work, a co-worker made an error.  She discovered the problem, put a best practice in place to ensure it does not happen again and sent an e-mail explaining the situation.  She took full responsibility and made an effort to rectify the situation as best she could.  She beat herself up all day, but I would say to her now it’s time to let it go and move on.

I have a friend in the program who recently relapsed.  He is feeling so broken and dejected right now and all I say to him is learn from this.  Accept that it happened and take responsibility.  Reach out for help and put the shame behind you so you can move forward.  If you don’t put the shame down you are going to remain sick.

So many of us hang onto guilt, shame, remorse and regret and it does no one any good.  Shame holds back so many people from seeking help, from seeking recovery, from seeking advice and counsel.  Hanging onto these emotions will keep you in sickness and struggle.

So for those negative emotions.  Learn from them as they are internal warnings that a mistake in judgment has been made.  But once you have received the warning and taken responsibility, turn the alarm off and get on with your day.  If you are hanging onto to these emotions you are simply doing it wrong.

Jenga

Jenga

 

 

A therapist of mine used the word metanoia to describe recovery.  I had never heard the word before and went home and looked it up.  It is a Greek word that means changing one’s mind.  In psychology Carl Jung used it to “indicate a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict be melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form.”  That was taken from Wikipedia.  Think in terms of recovery, breakdown and mid-life crisis.

I know for me, I did have to completely unravel in order to get better.  All pre-conceived notions about myself, the world around me, institutions like motherhood and marriage had to be scrapped and I had to start over again with a fresh set of eyes.  I keep thinking of the stacking game “Jenga”.  I feel as though my life had gotten too elevated, too big and was resting on an unsteady foundation.  Drinking was the block I removed that caused the whole tower to crumble.

I love that I can be so less judgmental now.  I feel as though that fresh set of eyes has me seeing the world with all the colors turned up high.  I am not saying I am never judgmental, but certainly I am so much less so than ever before.  I see people more for who they are and not their religion, their color, their class. 

Dustin Hoffman did an interview about his role in “Tootsie”.  He talks about how he saw himself on screen during the make-up tests before the start of the movie and said to the make-up artists, can you make me beautiful.  They essentially told him that they had gotten him to look as good as possible.  He talks about going home and weeping and telling his wife he knew now that he had to make the movie and when she asked him why he explained that he knew he was interesting as a woman.  But he realized that he would never have talked to her because she did not fulfill a societal norm of beauty.  He at that point realized that there were too many interesting women that he had ignored because he had been brainwashed to believe women should look a certain way.

I am so glad that my “Jenga” tower crumbled.  In the process of re-building I have lost my arrogance.  I have lost my old perspective of what people should and should not be.  I sometimes sit in twelve-step meetings and feel like weeping myself because the room is filled with so many good people I would never have deigned to speak to before.  Now I love them all and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Waves

                  Waves

 

 

I can remember counselors in rehab telling me that “feelings are not facts.”  I can remember them telling me that and I can also remember wanting to punch them in the face when they said it.  In my mind they could not possibly have experienced the depths of feelings that I had and if they had, they would not be saying anything quite that trite and cliché.

I spent a great deal of time in my previous life experience, identifying with my emotions.  I became those feelings.  When I was sad, I wallowed in the depths of despair and clung to the familiarity of the weight of it.  It was almost as though if I let go I would lose myself.  I think I had lived so long in that sort of depressed state that I was afraid that if I let it go, I would no longer know who I was.

I see that with others I speak with who are still in rehab or still living in their sickness even if they are no longer drinking.  It is as though they have their talons sunk so deep into the flesh of their emotions that they see no way of setting themselves free.

Through the process of being introduced to mindfulness, meditation and some other Eastern philosophies as well as learning more about religion and spirituality, my perspective on emotions began to change. 

I can remember our marriage counselor encouraging me to no longer identify with my feelings.  He suggested acknowledging them and experiencing them but then letting them go.  The image he used was that of a balloon floating by.  He was saying that our emotions were like these balloons floating by and for ones that were unpleasant you could imagine that in your mind you are pushing them along gently with a leaf.  To some this will sound hokey and it did to me at first, but I understand it better now.  Now I have feelings and they are transient.  All of them, good and bad.  I am never always going to be sad, and I am never always going to be happy.  I am just going to be, and in the course of simply being, I will be visited by various emotions and feelings.

This same marriage counselor also encouraged me to say things like, “I have sadness” or “I am experiencing sadness” rather than to say “I am sad”.  I thought that was pretty stupid at first but I use this inwardly now.  When I have feelings I could do without, I take a moment and say to myself, “I have anxiety about this” or “I have sadness about this” because when I phrase it that way in my head it makes it something that is in passing, something that is not going to stay.  You know what?  It works every time.

Feelings to me are like waves.  They come toward me and wash over me in varying degrees of intensity. Some of them are so strong that they knock me down.  A few years ago, when I got knocked down by a wave of emotion, I would simply lay there in the surf and wait to drown.  Then I learned to stand back up again because that wave had passed.  Now I stand back up again, face the surf and recognize that even though some of the waves are strong, the surf still holds beauty and I look forward to seeing what the next wave will bring.

 

 

Paradoxical Living

Paradoxical Living

 

 

I was asked to speak at a meeting the other night about step 2.  “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”  This step is a stumbling block for so many people because many of us struggle with religion and concepts of God.  It certainly was that for me for so long – thankfully it is not an issue any longer.

In the process of speaking about how I came to find a higher power, it struck me that my life is full of powerful paradoxes now.  In fact much about recovery is paradoxical.  So many of the things I cherish in my life now are things I would never have even considered in my previous existence.

I wrote before about how there is freedom in discipline.  That if I am disciplined about where I place my car keys when I get home, remembering to put them in the same spot each time, then I will be free to leave and drive anytime I like because I will know where they are.  If I am disciplined about charging my phone, then I will be free to make a call or send a text whenever I want.  If you are disciplined about exercise then you are free to enjoy life with more energy.

Similarly, there is liberation in limitation for me.  I am limited in that I can’t drink alcohol, but through that limitation, I am free to live an extraordinary life now.  Through this non-drinking limitation I have gained so much.  I have learned to love myself, I have learned to live in the truth, I have learned to learn from mistakes and let them go.  I have independence and pride and can look the world in the eye.  I no longer have regrets and my future stretches out before me and the possibilities are endless.

There is strength in vulnerability.  The more I open up to others the stronger I feel.  When I admit that I struggle, I get some of the richest connections with others and in turn that strengthens my recovery.  St. Paul talks about that in Corinthians 12:9-10.  I love this passage, particularly, “for when I am weak, then I am strong.”  It has certainly been the case for me.  I had to be brought to my knees before I could stand tall.

I don’t think I truly started getting better and thriving until I made a decision to let go.  It makes me think of the Carrie Underwood song, “Jesus, Take the Wheel”.  It is so counter-intuitive for me to do so but the road I was travelling only became passable and smooth when I let go of the wheel and let my higher power steer.  Now, the road has made turns I would not necessarily have chosen, but the journey has been amazing so far and I can’t wait to see where it leads me next.

Lastly, I had to literally become a lie before I could learn to seek the truth.  I used to lie without thought – it was automatic.  I lied about big things, I lied about small things, I lied to others and I lied to myself.  Now when and if I tell I lie, (I still do from time to time because I am human) it physically hurts me.  I feel sick to my stomach and I fess up fast because I don’t like that feeling.  I have read the children’s book “The Big Fat Enormous Lie” to my kids and in the story the little boy tells a lie and throughout the day the lie becomes larger and uglier and follows him around until he tells the truth.  That is how it feels to me now.

Paradoxical living suits me just fine now.

Perspective and Choice

Perspective and Choice

 

 

I have come to believe that so much of what makes for a mentally healthy outlook is down to perspective and choice.  So much of how we see things and how we deal with things affects our lives – it can really make or break us.

Take the trials that we face.  You can look at a trial and tell yourself it is unfair and wallow in anger and bitterness about it, or you can look at it as a lesson.  It is a choice to change your perspective.  For example, after I came out of my first rehab I signed up to voluntarily be monitored by random urine tests.  I did this for a year.  I had to call into a phone number every week day morning and I would find out if I had been called for a test that day.  It was an inconvenience, but it was a check and balance for me and a way to allay some of Frank’s fears.  The year of monitoring ended and then I relapsed and went back to rehab.

I again signed up for the volunteer monitoring program but for an even more intense level of monitoring.  While in rehab I had admitted that I had cheated the test the last time I went because I knew I would not pass and just wanted to keep drinking for a few more days before I got caught – because at that point I knew I would.  This is the depth you fall to in addictive thinking.

In any case, since I admitted this in rehab, I was to be monitored for a year by random urine tests each week and once every two months by a blood test that can look back over the past three months to see if you have used.  Not only that, but now the random urine tests would be observed.  I can’t tell you just how humbling it is to have to pee in front of someone once, let alone every week for a year.  I could have been very bitter about this but I made a choice to learn from it.  I made a choice to carry myself with dignity.

I was fortunate in that the woman at the lab who had to accompany me and observe me during the tests each week was a consummate professional and one of the most respectful and most kind women I have met.  She did not judge and treated me with the dignity I was attempting to harness.  I appreciated her treatment of me so much, that at Christmas time I baked her some goodies and wrote her a card.  Nothing like thanking someone for watching you pee for a year!  Perspective and choice personified…

I look back on the hardest time of my life, that being the birth, life and death of Liam, and I know that perspective and choice brought Frank and I both through that biggest of trials with bottomless grace. 

I did not have the easiest of childhoods, as so many of us have not, and did not have the best role model in a mother being that she was so mentally ill and so utterly untreated.  When I got pregnant with Liam, I was secretly terrified that I would not be a good mother.  I was afraid that I would harm them emotionally and frankly that I would simply not know what to do.  The moment that he was born something shifted in me and my heart expanded exponentially.  I could not imagine anything that I would not do to make him better, to keep him safe, to hold him close, to care and love him with all my being and I knew instantly that I could be a mother, that I could be a good mother and I was capable of doing all that I needed to in order to care for him.  I am not saying that it was easy, because it wasn’t, and I am not saying that I did not have doubts and fears, but I knew.  Liam taught me that and perhaps God taught me that, I am an unsure.  What I am sure of still to this day, is that I am a good mother when I am not in active addiction.

After his death we went to a grief support group for parents who have had miscarriages, still births and infant deaths.  So many of the parents there were angry about the death of their babies, and understandably so.  I was fortunate enough to feel so differently.  I was grateful, so very grateful that I got to meet Liam, hold him, love him and be his mother.  I was, in fact, honored to hold him as he died.  I could have been angry, I could have lashed out and I could have strayed away from other babies in my grief, but I didn’t and neither did Frank.  Perspective and choice.

During this latest trial: the separation and divorce that Frank and I have been going through and are still going through, I could easily harbor resentment and bewail any injustices that I might perceive.  I could easily curl into a ball and wallow in sadness and distress, but I choose not to.  I choose to accept the situation, allow myself to feel sadness but to look at this as the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another.  I am only 42, I am still young and there is so much of life ahead of me and so much I want to learn and explore.  There is so much to be grateful for and so many people that care.  I have sadness but I also have joy and I choose to allow that to balance my life.  You can either learn from trials or you can let them bury you.  Perspective and choice.

Denial and Defensiveness

 

Denial and Defensiveness

 

 

I had the opportunity to go back to Caron Treatment Centers on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  The counselor that treated me on the relapse unit and I have kept in touch and I have been back a couple of times to speak so it was natural to spend the day in service.

I came a bit early and waited in the patient lounge for the counselor to finish with some phone calls.  The patients had been in a lecture and drifted into the lounge all clamoring for coffee.  Most rehab centers drastically cut down on caffeine and sugar for the patients and this tends to send people into immature desperation.  I introduced myself to people there as they came in and they were curious to figure out who I was and why I was there.  I mentioned the counselor that I was there to meet and one woman asked if I was going to be a part of their 10 am group session and I told her I thought I was.

During that time, one of the assistant counselors came in and I recognized him from my stay previously.  He looked at me and I said hello and that I remembered him.  He said, “I thought I recognized you.  Where is your luggage hun?”  He thought I was back after another relapse.  I laughed and said that I was most definitely going to be able to leave at the end of the day!

I had the opportunity to observe the patients interact.  One woman was busy managing everyone else as though she were a cruise director rather than a patient.  Her denial was so deep.  It seemed easier for her to direct others and orchestrate rather than be inside her own head where she needed to be doing some serious thinking.

Another few patients were so young it broke my heart.  As younger patients do, they seemed more interested in flirting than in getting better.  They are in a different stage of life than the older patients.  They still think they are invincible, where the older patients are more desperate and more resigned to their fate for the most part.

My counselor came to get me at about 9:45 am and we de-briefed in her office before group.  The idea was for me to share my story and experiences with recovery in a casual fashion, allowing for questions as I went along.  We went into the group room where there were about 18 patients sitting in a circle.  I sat among them and was introduced.

I started with a timeline of struggles that I had had from childhood through alcoholism and relapse.  I talked about being molested and growing up with an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother.  I talked about meeting Frank and how he had from the beginning been a major part of my focus.  I talked about infertility and Frank’s cancer along with Liam’s dramatic birth, his subsequent diseases and ultimate death.  I went on to talk about further infertility and then the birth of both Dermot and Wren.  I talked about gastric bypass surgery and my rapid decline into full-blown alcoholism.  It talked about my first rehab and release to studying to be a certified addiction counselor as well as my relapse and entrance into Caron.  I spoke of my struggles after Caron in moving to the recovery house and the apartment.  I talked about the problems Frank and I had had in trying to reconcile and our ultimate decision to divorce.  I talked about my spiritual journey and the depths that my addiction has brought me down to, the things I did that I can no longer fathom.

There was a lot to say and I held nothing back.  I was rocked by some of their questions and saddened by the grip that addiction still had on their thinking. 

Some were parents like me and concerned their significant others would react as Frank had and ask them not to return home straight away.  I told them that even though I did not see it at the time, the act of not allowing me home at the start ended up being such a huge gift.  I explained that it allowed me time to figure out who I really was and the space to work on myself and my recovery.  They didn’t seem to get it

Some other parents were curious about the custody arrangement that Frank and I have right now.  I explained that we have 50-50 custody but that I had made a decision to have the kids remain with Frank during the week so that they have a home base where they feel safe and from where they did not have to shuttle back and forth so much.  I explained that I would go over a few nights a week and we would trade off weekends and that we still plan to do some things together as a family.  One man asked me why I wasn’t enforcing my right to have them half the time.  I explained that just because I have the right to have them with me 50% of the time, it didn’t mean it was the right thing to do.  I told them that I had to face the fact that throughout all of my comings and goings with addiction since late 2011, Frank has been their constant.  He and his home have been their stability and there is no way I am going to take that away from them.  They didn’t seem to get it.

A couple of them pointed out that I had stood by Frank when he had cancer and wasn’t I resentful that Frank had not stood by me in my addiction.  I explained that yes they are both diseases but they are vastly different in their natures.  No matter how you cut it, addiction hurts those around you, it destroys trust and really can’t be compared in that fashion to cancer.  I also pointed out that it wasn’t as though Frank had left me homeless and starving on the street.  I pointed out that he had brought me to Caron and he had paid for me to go to the recovery house and that he had supported me until I got on my feet.  They didn’t seem to get it.

Then I was rocked by two patients.  They were hung up on my not being allowed to go home.  They couldn’t seem to understand why Frank would not trust me initially.  I explained again that I had driven the kids while I was drunk.  Their response was to say, “So what?”  I was astounded.  The counselor was astounded as well and minced no words in calling one woman on it.  The woman got very defensive and told the counselor she would not be spoken to like that.  I said to her, “What do you mean, “So what?”  I lost a child.  I held my son in my arms as he died.  I know what it is like to grieve for a child and so does Frank, and then I put our two subsequent children in terrible danger.  I could have killed them.  I could have killed Frank’s kids!”  I tried to explain that Frank had done what my parents should have done when I was a kid.  He protected his kids from danger and I had to come and accept the fact that, at the time, I was that danger.  I tried to explain that they were going to have to come to grips with the fact that they are that danger in their families’ lives.  They didn’t seem to get it.

After the session was over, one man came over and asked me how I talk to my kids about addiction.  I told him that I tell them the truth and that I felt I owed that to them.  He has a son who is 9 and he feels that to talk to his son about his cocaine addiction would scare his son.  I looked him in the eye and told him that his son was not stupid.  His son has seen him at his worst and likely has already been scared.  His son is in a genetic pool that makes is more likely that he himself will become addicted to some substance or another and is therefore in more need than most children of knowledge and education.  His son is in need of open communication.  I suggested gently that perhaps he wasn’t really trying to protect his son, but rather protect himself from having to admit to his child that he was sick.

I left grateful that I am no longer in denial of what is happening in my life.  I left being able to measure just how far I have come in the nearly two years since I entered the facility.  I left hoping that just one of the patients that I had spoken to will remember what I said at some point along their journey to recovery. Their defensiveness and denial are going to keep them sick.  If they don’t learn to accept facts as they are and not look away from the reality of their situation, they are in serious trouble.  I hope for them to have the opportunity to live free of shame and guilt and look the world in the eye.  Bu they won’t be able to do that until they walk through their own fire.

The Long Goodbye

 

The Long Goodbye

 

 

We tried.  We really did.  We went to marriage counseling for four long years and we have lived apart for nearly two.  We finally came to the hardest decision and are going to get divorced.

Neither one of us really wanted this, but we both know it was the right thing to do.  Do we still love each other?  Absolutely.  You don’t create three gorgeous human beings together and stop loving each other.  But the love we have for one another is so very different that it used to be.  We have known each other for 27 years, have been together for 20 and married for 14, but it just isn’t the same anymore and I think we both want to be happy and don’t want to be the cause of any more pain for each other.  I want happiness for us both and I think we recognize that that may not be possible being married – we are simply better at being friends.

I think you could argue that we have seen an awful lot in our marriage.  We have dealt with my traumatic past, infertility, Frank’s cancer, Liam’s heart and lung disease and ultimate death, more infertility and my addiction and perhaps it was all just too much.  I know every family has a lot to deal with but it proved for us to be just too much.

Frank will always be a part of my life.  We will always be friends, perhaps best friends.  He knows me better than anyone else.  We have Dermot and Wren to raise together and I know we are going to be a team and do the best job possible.  We will be parents together and if we are lucky, we will be grand-parents together.

After Thanksgiving we went away for the weekend and talked until we couldn’t talk anymore.  We cried and we mourned the end of our story as we thought it would be written.  We came home and started the process of moving forward.  We even sat on the fence for a while, but ultimately I started looking for a house to buy.  I have found one and if all goes well I will move in at the end of January.  It is a house big enough for the kids to each have their own space, but small enough for me to afford and maintain on my salary.

I didn’t want for Frank to have to sell the house he and the kids have been living in to divide assets exactly down the middle.  Moving the kids away from the house they have come to know as home and where they feel safe and secure with their grandparents right across the street is just not something I can stomach.  It is a hard sacrifice, but one I was more than willing to make.  The house they are in will remain their home base during the week.  They will not have to move back and forth while they are in school.  I will be there some of the nights of the week to help with homework and have family dinners just like I have been and we will switch back and forth on weekends. There will be Mommy days and Daddy days and days we spend altogether. Frank in turn has made sure that I am financially set with an IRA that I can build upon.

As soon as I began to accept in my heart and my head that we were ending our marriage, I made a decision that we could have the best divorce ever.  There is no reason we have to make this harder for one another or for the kids.  There has been no fighting.  No raised voices and no intentionally harsh words. We are setting an example for the kids that you can navigate a difficult time with grace and dignity.  We are simply loving each other through it.

This single most difficult part of this was sitting down to tell Dermot and Wren about the decision we had made.  We wanted to wait until after Christmas to tell them, and we wanted to tell all the adults in their life first so they could be a support to the kids once they were told.  We talked to the child psychologist they had seen when I went back to rehab in 2014 and asked his advice on how to go about the task and I dreaded talking to them but I have to say it went as well as we could have wished.

I would need to be the one to break the news because from the start we had told them that Mommy wouldn’t be coming home until she was better and we didn’t want them to think that I was still sick.  I also didn’t want them to perceive that this was something that their dad was doing to me.  In point of fact I was the one to verbalize what we both knew needed to happen and ask for a divorce.  So I opened by telling them that I had bought a house but that daddy and I were no longer going to come together and live in the same house.  I told them that in fact we were getting divorced.  Dermot got off my lap and went across the room and faced us.  He said, “I am a little sad and a little confused, but mostly I am excited to see Mommy’s new house!”  I told them a bit about it and mentioned my ace-in-the-hole – the fact that my new house comes with a hot tub on the back patio!  I had arranged for the realtor to open the house for us that afternoon so we could show the kids.  They asked us questions about the house and seemed excited to be going over.

Wren was processing all this quietly from Frank’s lap when Dermot said, “But I don’t like the word divorce.”  We asked him why and he told us that when people are getting divorced it usually it means your parents are mad at each other.  I said, “Dermot does it look like Daddy and I are mad at each other?”  He admitted that it didn’t and I told him that divorce was just a word and that I thought we could have the best divorce ever.  He then excitedly exclaimed, “Maybe we could have a divorce party!  Like in Mommy’s hot tub!”  Well… why not?  God, I love that kid.

We took them over to see the house and they ran through the whole place in delight to the amazement of all the adults and I have never been so relieved in my life.  I am not so naïve as to think that there won’t be scars, there will be.  This will become a part of the story of their lives and it is a chapter they didn’t ask for, nor did they want.  But we can love them through it just as we are loving each other through it.

So where does that leave me?  It leaves me in a curious place. I am standing in the gloaming, watching this dusk come on in sadness and grief for a life I thought I would be living and letting it go.  I am resting before the dawn of a new day with tears in my eyes, crying not from sadness but from the knowledge that I am going to be okay and indeed knowing that I am going to be happy.

And you know what?  In the end, it wasn’t about the booze.