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Intimacy

I’ve Already Done My Work

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When I was a 9th-grade boy I got a summer job detasseling corn. Detasseling corn is removing the immature pollen—the tassel—from the tops of the corn and placing it on the ground. It is a form of pollination control, employed to cross-breed two varieties of corn. Every corn plant has both male and female parts. Removing the tassels from all the plants of one variety leaves the grain that is growing on those plants to be fertilized by the tassels of the other, resulting in a hybrid.

Today most of the tassels are removed by machine. However, when I was a kid it was done manually. Kids from my hometown would be hired and bussed to farms north of town. We worked all day detasseling and then bussed back home. If you were lucky you were able to ride on a detasseling machine which allowed you to pull the tassels off corn plants without having to walk through the rows of corn. It was much easier to ride than walk. When you walked the rows it was hot. Early in the morning corn plants gathered dew from the night before. If it rained the night before you would get soaking wet and the rows were a muddy mess.  The sunshine increased the humidity and it was suffocating.  

I never got a job on the machine. I always had to work with a crew of walkers. One guy on our crew named Chuck would always end his day by 9 am. Everyone else worked until 5 pm. Chuck would say “I’ve done my work, now it’s your turn.” He figured he had enough of detasseling and simply waited in the bus for everyone else to do their work. There were thousands of acres of corn that needed to be detasseled, but Chuck thought he had done his work. He was just waiting for the rest of us to do our work so he could go home. Sometimes he would impatiently prod us to hurry up so he could go home. Chuck believed that he had done his work!

As a therapist treating addiction, I hear this refrain all too often. I hear it from addicts who tell me they don’t need to do counseling or go to a 12-step group because they have “done all their work” even though they are mystified as to why they relapsed. I hear it from partners of addicts who don’t want to go to therapy or join a support group. They tell me they previously went to therapy and have done their work. Now their addict partner is the identified patient. It’s like they are waiting for Bozo Bill or Screwed Up Sally to get their act together and everything will be just fine! I wonder if they ever met Chuck from my detasseling days.

As a therapist, I approach treatment from a systemic point of view. Like the mobile over the baby’s crib, when you strike one butterfly, all the butterflies respond in movement. So it is in treating family dysfunction and addictive behavior. When one acts out there is a response by everyone in the family system and all need to be treated. 

Addictive families want to ignore the obvious and embrace the improbable. If Bozo Bill will just stop acting out, the rest of us in this family will be just fine! Even though his wife is depressed and acting out by binging on food and the kids are enmeshed with mom, getting high on drugs with their friends. 

A partner to a sex addict often thinks that the addict is the problem. The idea is to send the addict away and get him or her fixed with therapy. The partner is devastated by betrayal but doesn’t want to do therapy because the addict is the problem. Really? It’s sort of like a pedestrian being run over by a car while crossing the street.  Paramedics are rushed to the scene and pick up the driver and rush him to the emergency room because he doesn’t know how to drive and needs help! The partner has a broken heart and needs therapeutic care for healing, but argues they are fine.  It is common to hear a partner say “Just fix Bozo Bill. I  already did my work in the past!”

Don’t get caught becoming like my detasseling buddy Chuck. Here are some considerations for healing. 

1. The work of building healthy relationships never ends. There never is a time that addressing issues on your side of the street is over. That said, the work you will need to do is not about taking responsibility for your partner’s addiction or actions. That’s not about you. However, there is a need to gain support toward healing the painful aftermath and carnage created by your partner’s acting out. There is work to be done in addressing your contribution to intimacy problems in the relationship. You didn’t cause the addictive behavior, but you do make a contribution to intimacy distance. Focus on your self-care and your responses in the relationship. There’s always work to be done.

2. Don’t assign or become the “Identified Patient.” The relationship work that needs to be done requires work by both parties. There is no “Identified Patient.” It is like the analogy of the three legs to a stool. Two legs represent the two individuals’ issues and the third leg represents the couple’s issues. Without each issue being seriously addressed, the relationship will remain hobbled.

3. Sometimes when a partner in a relationship says they have done all their work, it is a way to avoid having to face the question of whether they want to be in the relationship at all. Many times partners focus on fixing the addict with recovery and therapy to avoid facing the decision to leave the relationship. When all the attention is placed on the addict in recovery, a partner sidesteps their own unhappiness and the fear of disrupting family dynamics with a separation or divorce.

4. It requires work to face painful decisions. Taking care of yourself in addiction and partnership requires making painful choices. Setting boundaries requires following through with consequences when a boundary is not honored. In order to have a secure relationship, you will need to let go of what you cannot control. This is always difficult. It engages recovery work. Surrender is never one and done. When your relationship is stuck in a painful, destructive place, there is always work to be done by both parties. When you truly have done all of your relational work, you will be at the end of your life. You will be dead. Don’t allow yourself to be disillusioned by my childhood buddy, Chuck. There’s always work for you to do in building a healthy relationship.

Recovery Conundrum When You Want What You Say You Don’t

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In 12-step meetings, I have listened to addicts reflect about times they adamantly proclaimed they never want to act out again, while secretly plotting how they would act out as soon as they got out of the meeting! Are these addicts insincere and crazy? Maybe, but for sure, they define the conundrum of cunning deceit that underlies addict behavior. It’s the double life. It’s the Jekyll and Hyde description that baffles those who love and care for the addict. 

It’s not all that difficult to comprehend. It is common to listen to people declare they are going to lose 10 pounds while they ask for a piece of delicious carrot cake. Do they really want to lose 10 pounds? Yes. But they also are powerless to the thought of carrot cake melting in their mouth. Take this dilemma and magnify it 10X and you gain insight about the powerful Catch-22 that exists with addictive behavior. 

How do addicts resolve the dilemma of wanting what they say they don’t want? 

1. Don’t bullshit yourself. Say it straight. When you are scheming to score, to get a hit, and plan to act out, tell on yourself. Make the disclosure raw and unedited. Put it on the table just as it is in your brain. If you made an inspirational statement about sobriety in a 12-step group and you are acting out even while in the group. Stop it with honest disclosure at that moment. I like to think of doing a 12-step MRI (Meaningful Revelation In Vivo). It’s the only way to nip in the bud what you say you don’t want.

2. Dialogue with the devil. Having a responsible conversation with your demons is a powerful way to manage addict-stinking thinking. Sit down with your sponsor or another addict in recovery. Let them be the devil or the voice of addictive craving. Tell them what your addictive rationale is saying about why it is OK to act out. Have them say it raw and rugged and argue with your sober thinking. Then practice being the mature responsible addict in recovery.  Be the assertive voice of sober reason. Each time the devil tells you why you need to act out, you respond with sober rationale and action until craving and urge dissipate and gives way to mature sober thoughts and behavior. It will move you to a more solid space and restore serenity.

3. Change the curse to a blessing. Don’t run from craving. Get out of the path of the whirlwind of illicit urge but don’t run from craving. Transform it into a blessing. Once you are out of harm’s way listen to the legitimate need that must be met in a healthy way. Be the mature adult that clarifies the need underneath the craving. Then parent yourself by reaching out to your relationship partner and others in recovery to meet the legitimate need. In this way, you transform the curse of addictive craving into the blessing of recovery intimacy.

Load up on recovery steroids. A play on words. Recovery steroids are a metaphor for affirmations. Most addicts don’t invest enough time working to change the way they think. What you think about expands. Hammering out deep belief statements is transformational. Practicing and meditating on these newly inspired beliefs will revolutionize the way you live. It infuses strength that enables you to work through powerful urges when you want what you say you don’t. Affirmations are an antibiotic to shameful mistaken beliefs. The more you steep yourself in affirmation the weaker the voice of addictive craving and mistaken belief. It requires ongoing daily conditioning.

Roommates? – Hello in There!

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Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more

She sits and stares through the back door screen

And all the news just repeats itself

Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen. 

— Lyrics from John Prine song “Hello in There”

It didn’t seem all that long ago. The passion was strong! The love so deep. He was crazy about her and she the same about him. Then he got this job with more pay and was destined to be on the road frequently. Before long she became pregnant with their first child. The baby came and there was less time for sex, for him, and time alone for the two of them. They grew apart. Then the roof fell in. She discovered he was having an illicit affair with a co-worker while traveling.  He moved out and it looked like they would divorce. They did some counseling and he decided to end the affair and tried to repair the damage at home and began counseling with his wife. Her heart was broken and full of resentment. She couldn’t get over his deceit and broken trust. They decided to stay together for their son’s sake.  

He spent several months sleeping in the guest bedroom. After knee surgery to repair a torn ACL, he moved back into the bedroom where she currently sleeps. He’s back on the road for his work and she doesn’t trust him further than she can throw him. She spends a lot of time with the friends she met at the workout club and keeping up with their son who is now 6 and involved with many extracurricular activities. She complains about operating a taxi service but it does keep her connected to her friends. These days he spends weekdays traveling for his work and she tries to visit her parents and family on the weekend. These days they both have resentment toward the other, sex is non-existent and they have become like ships passing in the night. Essentially, their passionate relationship has degenerated to only being roommates. 

This story is all too familiar with addict relationships that I work with. It happens to many different couples, not just addicts. How do relationship dynamics disintegrate so quickly?

1. Corroded commitment. Most committed relationships begin with high intensity. It’s easy to be excited about the other, and the desire for intimacy is at an all-time peak. Of course, when the spectacular wears thin, everyday life dulls the desire for emotional intimacy. Responsibility increases with the arrival of children and life evolves with new career vistas and the kids’ activities. There is less focus on relational commitment. Sexual intimacy decreases, differences that create conflict go unresolved, and cutting invective goes without apology. Slowly 2 people become roommates trying to get through the day.

2. Corrosive trust.  Signs of broken trust begin early in a relationship. White lies to avoid conflict, insecurity around money, family, friends, and flirtation can accumulate like a thousand cuts to trust in a relationship. Often, the relationship collapses with the discovery of infidelity, betrayal around money, or a position taken around an in-law that threatens a partner.

3. Clogged arteries in communication. At some point, the only way relationships in trouble know how to communicate is to fight or play avoidance games. Long gone is the desire to build an environment that says “I care about you”. Unfair fighting and circular conversation mires communication patterns that promote distance that destroys the possibility of connection. 

Solution:

1. Clean up your conduct. When you are not true to your heart, you won’t be connected to your partner in a meaningful way. So if you’re an addict, commit to getting sober and work a program that enhances sobriety and serenity. If you are full of resentment and treat your partner with deceit and disrespect, clean it up. Sounds simple and is, but it’s not easy. Your attitude and behavior are what keep you stuck with intimacy-disabling behaviors. Changing your attitude and behavior toward your partner is the one thing that will help you deepen connection or will enlighten you if the relationship needs to end.

2. Re-connect by being real. Humility and vulnerability are the soft spot in human relationships that creates connection. Hard black-and-white statements that condemn or judge your partner will widen the gap between you. Being real is the answer to re-connect. Many partners in a relationship think their partner expects something they are not — more muscle, more macho, more sex, or more money. Yet, it has been proven that healthy relationships flourish when two people choose to be vulnerable and share openly with each other no matter the circumstances.

3. Be curious about your partner. It is common for partners in a relationship to presume that the other knows how they think, what’s important, what they don’t like, and how to be there for them emotionally. Yet, this is seldom true. It is critical to be curious about your partner. Curious about what makes them happy and what triggers frustration and disappointment. When commitment in a relationship begins to wane, so does curiosity. You make judgmental statements and conclusions without being curious about why your partner did what they did or even understanding what was said. The lack of curiosity fuels frustration, breaks connection, and accelerates complacency in a committed relationship.

4. Create and maintain a clear conduit for communication. An effective line of communication is like the carotid artery to the brain. When it becomes clogged, the life and health of the relationship is at risk. This includes establishing skills and ways to download everyday experiences and emotional expression within the relationship. It embraces conflict resolution skills. It recognizes circular fruitless arguments and shifts from them by invoking purposeful speaking and listening skills. Partners agree to commit to a fight-fair contract designed to preserve dignity and respect toward each other. 

At times I hear struggling couples minimize using the aforementioned tools. Of course, there are many ways to cultivate and maintain intimate connections. That said, couples who sincerely invest in the principles toward solution build a strong foundation for intimacy and fulfill a relationship destined to be more than just roommates.

New Days From Old Family Scripts

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Family scripts and experiences are carved in stone. Recovery requires a significant long-term effort to disconnect the emotional wiring that sabotages relational intimacy caused by family dysfunction. Many of us have turned inward unable to connect to others. At the time, it was a necessary choice in order to survive the lack of safe, loving, and consistent care from our primary caregivers. For many, mom and dad were good people who did some lousy parenting. They did the best they could most of the time. It just wasn’t enough. As a result, many of us learned to numb ourselves from the myriad of unhealthy childhood experiences to protect ourselves from disintegration and pain. 

Today our relationships become conflictual and difficult. We recreate past disappointments and losses that were experienced from family past. We become compulsive. We are driven from boredom by a compulsive desire for more excitement. We seek ways not to think or feel. We think that if we control situations and people around us, we will not be so likely to get hurt or be alone. So our truth becomes black and white, driven by thoughts we would like to avoid. Many of us deny reality. We want others to do our research for truth. We tell ourselves that the realities that surround us are not actual. It’s all fake news. Addicts have done this their entire lives. It’s an illusion that we embrace to numb the out-of-control and over-control cycles that create more and more chaos. We learn to compartmentalize so that we see these weaknesses in others to avoid the impact of our own past experiences in our family of origin.

Here are a few recovery reflections from old family scripts.

1. Grieving unmet needs is important to accepting what is. There is a desire for others in our family of origin to embrace the newfound awareness and truth that is discovered in recovery. But, they don’t! In many cases, your insights are ignored and not even acknowledged. For a season, much of your energy is spent trying to help your family of origin to see what you have uncovered. Grieving takes time. You will need to let go and accept that your loved ones will likely never see what you know. Acceptance is not compromise. Rather, it leads to separating yourself from your truth. Without grieving you will fight your family and fight yourself trying to get them to understand. Acceptance leads to embracing whatever relationship you can engage with your family of origin. It always means letting go of what does not exist but you wish it did.

2. Learn to internally regulate your feelings. Allow the emotional pain from your family of origin to surface.  For me, it was like trying to hold down powerful springs that were essentially painful experiences. There was a pattern of behavioral experience that included religion, fast-paced living, and addiction that served as a cocktail for numbing out what I did not want to face or feel. The reality of painful past experiences was the springs that kept pushing back against my stubborn will, which tried to avoid the experiences I feared to face. Finally, I wore out and all of the springs started popping up all over the place. I was unable to control them. Internally, I fell apart. This was the place I began to learn to regulate my feelings. It required that I surrender to trying to control what was uncontrollable. Internal regulation included facing what was real about my parents and childhood.  Until this happened I relied upon life skills that led to intimacy disability.

3. Reconstruct your beliefs about relational fulfillment. How you do relationships will change as you reconstruct your fundamental beliefs about yourself and the world around you. Detaching from your family of origin is often necessary to realize that you are worthwhile. Others see that you are an unrepeatable miracle of God. Give yourself permission to take it in. There was a time in my life that I enjoyed the connection and friendship of others but I craved the acceptance and connection that I did not have from my family of origin. I desperately wanted their smile of approval. Like wolf pups hovering around the carcass of their dead mother hoping for milk, I hovered seeking the approval and acceptance that would never come from my family of origin. I learned to let go and move on. You must too. Learn to believe that who you are is valued. Rebuild your mistaken beliefs into affirmations that help you realize your destiny of connection, value, and relational intimacy. This reality is a result of accepting your being just the way you are. 

    For many of us, it takes a lifetime to unravel the family scripts that were carved in stone. Those who take the journey and stay the course, discover the secret of their own brilliance and genuinely rejoice in being an unrepeatable miracle of the universe.

    Wounds That Boomerang and How to Stop the Re-Enactment

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    “If you bring out what is inside you,

    what is inside you will save you.

    If you fail to bring out what is inside you, 

    what is inside you will destroy you.”

    The Gnostic Gospels

    I have experienced this truth over and again as a therapist treating sex offender behavior. The question has always been why would anyone sexually abuse another, whether adult or child? The answer is always found in a desperate need for control, and re-enactment of being wounded, dominated, and helpless at a vulnerable time in life toward someone else. 

    A common scenario is that one guy marries a woman who has a young female child. The intimacy-disabledness in his previous relationship was never addressed and worked out. So he brings that forward into this new relationship where he has become a step-parent. He repeats the same intimacy disability in that he feels one down to his partner, cannot connect at a deeper level, can’t please his partner sexually or be pleased himself, avoids conflict and only knows to dominate or be dominated by his partner. 

    Things don’t work out. But, he does feel a special kinship to the stepdaughter. With her, he feels empowered, helps her with homework, becomes her confidante, and engages her in physical horseplay. To his spouse, this is everything that her previous partner would not do. 

    So she is devastated when she finds out that her new partner has been molesting her daughter, watching her undress, etc. In shock, she wonders where did this come from?

    He is also fearful, wishing he had never gone down this path. Now forced to do therapy he uncovers unresolved neglect/abandonment and no one to meet his needs as a child. He traces the lack of control he experienced as a child to his inability to be empowered in an adult relationship. He acts out his insecurity through attempts to meet his needs with a child through domination and control.

    Does everybody compensate for childhood needs in their adult life in this destructive way? Of course not! However, none of us got through our childhood unscathed. If we do not face and address our own childhood pain of being broken we will relive the break in some form of re-enactment later in life!

    The various ways of re-enacting are numerous. Whether pain and suffering have a proper place in our lives or whether we become cornered and trapped in the pain and suffering depends on an individual’s efforts to integrate the painful experience into life experience which later becomes a source of wisdom.  It has been my experience in treating trauma that what is not integrated is repeated. It is repeated through compulsions (addictions of all types) and all kinds of controlling behaviors that create intimacy disability. Not every person who has been sexually or physically abused sexually offends another. Yet for sure, everyone who has been abused in childhood will re-enact that abuse in some way as they go through the stages of life, if not addressed. There are many ways to act out the hurt and pain in hidden ways that are subconscious to the individual and acceptable to the culture. Behaviors such as workaholism, male machismo, being a social “player” and perfectionism are all examples of facades that hide many types of abuse manifested in early childhood. 

    Consider the following:

    1. Face, feel, and accept: Stopping the cycle of re-enacting painful experiences requires that you access the courage to face what is. Most of us won’t do this until the pain of not facing reality is greater than the pain of embracing truth. You will need to declare a personal jihad face to your own demons. To do so means that you must experience the feelings that have been creating discomfort. Leaning into the feelings is the only way to get through them and accept the reality of what is. Short of that you will tend to seek revenge to avoid facing your own shortcomings. Rather than distract yourself with schemes to get back at others who have hurt you, face your demons and find the acceptance that will create a sense of connection with others. 

    2. Integrate or disintegrate:  When you are not willing to look at your part of a problem in relationship, you re-enact ways that you have been controlled as a child into a use of power to control others in your adult life. You may bully with intimidation, act like a victim, or shut down and sulk. All of these and many other strategies represent ways that you disintegrate trust and connection in adult relationships.

    Integration incorporates past experience with present encounters and helps to create a different future. Integration involves recognizing how past abuse impacts present response. It includes redirecting shame carried to the caregiver who gave it to you in the first place and to the hurtful behavior you engaged in the here and now. Once you have stalked the shame to its source and redirected it to behavior, instead of self, you will be better able to integrate the wounding experience with a grounding of self-empowerment. Every time you face your own pain and brokenness you interrupt the need to re-enact old destructive behaviors in the here and now. When you don’t, you repeat the suffering and pass it on to others. 

    Facing and cleaning the wounds from the past will integrate your life experience with others and strengthen the bonds between you and the world around you. Ultimately, what you refuse to face inwardly will get acted outwardly into the world around you. It will require courage for you to address your historic pain.

    Dating Protocol Considerations to Avoid Painful Past Patterns

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    According to the most recent data from the American Psychological Association, the divorce rate in the United States is around 40-50% for first marriages. As you might guess it is higher for second marriages and on up from there. You would think with those kinds of repeat numbers, you would slow the process down so that you don’t repeat the second time around the agony you experienced the first time. But, it doesn’t work that way. 

    The relief of getting away from the agony of a relationship that hurts and the need to fill the emptiness of being alone, and without the intrigue of a romantic relationship, overpowers perspective and contemplative consideration. Add to all of that the rush of oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine that comes with the honeymoon feeling of a new relationship, and you have a cocktail kick that blows past rational thought and deliberation. It all contributes to why the likelihood of failure in a second marriage is higher than the first. 

    Analytically, we can figure it all out. Yet, even after enlightenment we go against what we know and plunge down the same rabbit hole we just escaped. 

    Why is this? There are many reasons. People carry with them old tapes of mistaken beliefs learned from their family of origin that create relationship sabotage. Why consider something that might spoil the fantasy relationship I think I can have in the here and now? Many people choose to run from what hurts and never want to stop and scrub the wounds that come from betrayal and various forms of intimacy disability. All this makes sense. It’s just that doing the same thing you have always ever done, doesn’t work toward healing a broken heart that comes from a dysfunctional relationship. 

    So, here are some considerations to think about regarding relationship healing, before engaging the next exclusive romantic relational experience.

    1. Take some time to catch your breath. You have been running so hard to fix the hurt of the old relationship in ways that did not work, or you are running as hard as you can to get away from the relational pain. Take a time out and catch your breath. Relationships in distress or pursuit burn a lot of emotional BTUs. How much time do you take? One size doesn’t fit all. Some people need 6 months; others need a year. The time you need is unique to you. After you have calmed the chaos, the amount of time you need to heal before engaging in a serious new relationship will vary. The point is to catch your breath before rushing ahead. 

    2. You will need time to grieve. How much time? Again, it varies. The rule of thumb is that you will need more time than you are thinking about right now! You will need time to grieve what used to be and no longer is. You will need to grieve what never was that you hoped would have been. You will need to grieve the reality of what is. It’s hard to engage in grieving when the oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine are rushing through your veins with someone new. Most of us don’t know how to grieve deeply. We cry, feel empty, might get drunk, and on we go to the next relationship. But, there’s the need to go deep and feel the hurt of the sadness of what will never be again. Relationship ties undone with family, the loss of the good times, the hurt of the pain, and the impact on others (kids particularly, friends, relatives, etc) all must be embraced experientially before moving on to something new in a serious relationship. The truth is that you will need to create space in your life to grieve and let go of what used to be periodically for the rest of your life. It isn’t meant to grovel in the pain of an old relationship. Yet, recognizing painful experiences in past relationships and letting go is a part of the pattern of being an adult. The time it takes you to sufficiently grieve will vary and you will be wise to consult with counsel and to live in consultation with support people. 

    3. Learn to be with yourself. When you end a relationship there is an empty spot. There is a great temptation to fill it in with another relationship, work, travel, and a lot of other activities. Our culture provides so much stimulation that you can just go from one high to the next. But, you won’t heal yourself that way or know who you really are by doing a blitz on stimulants that come from dating and other activities. Embrace the winter of your life and learn from it.

    4. Unravel the patterns that sabotage intimacy. If you don’t you will keep doing it and likely blame the other party for your relationship unfulfillment. Some people can date and unravel this self-sabotage behavior at the same time through counseling and group support. Most of us cannot. If you have never been in a riptide current at the beach, you would be wise to stop swimming and learn from those who have experienced and managed the riptide. Ignoring this suggestion is how many people drown in the next relationship doing the same things as before. Unraveling your self-sabotage pattern that contributes to relational failure is difficult. You will need to address unresolved family of origin issues that contribute to the way you do relationships today. Soren Kierkegaard was right when he wrote “Life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. To move forward and not self-sabotage you will need to look backward and understand what brought you to where you are today. On the other hand, it’s easier to blame your past partner and keep truckin’ wondering why you keep hooking up with partners who hurt you.

    5. Sex is always an issue: If you are stuck in the juggernaut of sexual addiction, sex has become an organizing principle of your life. Any reason is a good reason to be sexual. Most likely your behavior is about objectifying another person. Objectification is a way of using another person to get your needs met without dignity and respect or consideration of others. Non-addicted people can objectify as well. If you use another person’s space to meet your needs without proper scrutiny of that individual’s needs then you are objectifying that person. Some people say no sex for 6 months or 1 year after a breakup! Maybe so or maybe not! It makes sense to discipline your tendency to accelerate physical connection so that with moderate speed you are better able to distinguish the difference between intensity of feeling and true intimacy. All too often with oxytocin, adrenaline, and dopamine in control, people thicken the plot to an unhealthy relationship by mistaking intensity for intimacy. In this equation, addicts can’t get enough of what they don’t need and many non addicts adopt an unspoken mentality that my half plus your half will make us a whole! On the contrary, you take what is and make it less because the other person cannot supply your basic need for self-care, so 1/2 + 1/2 = 1/4, not a whole. 

    6. Don’t forget the impact on other key relationships: This doesn’t mean you don’t date. It just means that you don’t date lacking sensitivity to the community of people who provide support and who respect and love you. This includes careful considerations about dating others who were once romantically involved with your friends, family, or workmates. Most companies have policies that govern romantic relationships at work. However, not all are the same and many people try to bend the rules to engage in romance. It’s important to be careful and considerate in comprehending the consequences of romance in these situational dynamics. Children need to be carefully considered. Bringing a new person in and out of their lives can be very destructive to them without thoughtful consideration of their care. Each of these impacts requires consultation and accountability with people who are in your support group. 

    We are all designed to experience connection with others. How we engage romance requires thoughtful preparation and consideration so that the charm that wells up within does not become harm that hurts others.

    Chaos and the Big Sleep

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    “Everybody is somebody—but on any given day there is somebody who feels like nobody. At the end of the day, the question is “Does anybody care enough to walk alongside the one who feels like nobody long enough to help them feel that they are somebody again.” —KW

    You can’t change the way you grew up. Mary Main, a professor at UCal-Berkeley suggests that people learn to engage in a cohesive coherent narrative of their life. What I think this suggests is that if you are an addict it is important to not just look back and identify all the acting out you have ever done. But dig in and look at the relationships with people in your life that connect to why you do what you do and who you are. It’s sort of like making sense of the chaos and learning to connect with yourself in this endeavor.

    Chaos makes this hard to do. People who grew up with crazy chaos often carry a little crazy with them their entire lives. Chaos puts to sleep the awareness of living life through healthy alternatives. The way you survived is what you replicate later in life. Your habits for survival are tattooed on your bones.

    Therapy teaches you to talk about your chaos. You can learn a lot intellectually about what happened—the abandonment, the disorganized attachment, and all the systemic dynamics about your dysfunctional past. But most of us who grew up in craziness will die with some of it still inside. Sometimes I wonder if this is why I will die an addict.

    I, like many addicts, grew up in an environment that was so dysfunctionally complicated that it is exhausting just to talk about it, and I have been talking about it for years. Every abuse headline is connected to subheadings that guaranteed crazy living for mere survival. It’s been said that addicts learn to embrace the improbable and ignore the obvious. Is there any other way for an addict to survive a complicated abusive past? The web of instability is so complex that to endure required that you fall asleep to healthy behavioral options and live in a trance-like state to what is real.

    For example, I grew up in a large family. The ubiquitous presence of sexual abuse impacted our family in every dimension. There was sexual abuse perpetrated by pastors and leaders at our church. There was sexual abuse that was pervasive in our family. The church I grew up in was a cult. There was patriarchal domination of men toward women in our home and church. In a cult, church life and home life environment become one. You must develop the capacity to fall asleep to the reality of what surrounds you just to survive. When I shared my sexual abuse by the pastor of our church to responsible leaders, they concluded that my parents who had attended the church for 40 years were troublemakers and shunned them for 3 months. You would have thought that victims treated in this way would sever relationships and find another church to attend. My parents didn’t. They went to sleep about the reality of what happened to their children and to themselves. Once, many years later I asked my mom about the church shunning her and my dad regarding the sexual abuse and she responded that it never happened. Of course, it never happened when you fall asleep to reality.

    My parents fell asleep to the injustices that intruded their lives because they were overwhelmed with the history of abuses that took place in their own family of origin. If you don’t face and address injustice, the only way to survive is to fall asleep to the realities of abuse and domination that penetrate you and the people you love.

    My parents ignored what was going on in their family by singing gospel songs like “When We All Get to Heaven” or “Victory In Jesus” in order to ignore the hell on earth that had pervaded every aspect of their lives. How is this so different than the way our society ignores the lies and deceit proffered by politicians, religious leaders, and cultural icons about what is real? Rather than sifting, sorting, and researching truth, most of us choose a media service to do our thinking and fall asleep to the incongruence of our own hypocrisy and those who lead us.

    For those who choose to no longer ignore the emperor who wears no clothes, waking up takes commitment to truth and honesty. It also takes time. The effort to wake up requires that you stop doing what keeps you asleep. It’s no wonder you are sleepy if you keep taking sleeping pills.

    You will need to stop your own crazy thinking like trying to do more to keep from being less. Slowing this locomotive down is no small task.

    You will have to address your mistaken beliefs that exist and have created blocks to intimacy with yourself and others. Mistaken beliefs have been tattooed in your heart as a way of surviving the craziness of your childhood. When you do more and have more it is difficult to accept less and think you are more. Material gain is like booze. There’s nothing wrong with either one as long as you respect that both can make you drunk. Driving your life drunk is scary whether you are intoxicated with booze or the disease of more.

    The only way to stop the chaos is to wake up from the big sleep. Nothing changes until it is real. When craziness is complex, waking up means to slow life to examine the inconsistencies, face your hypocrisy, and address your incongruence.

    People talk about making America great again. Yet, if everybody, who knew somebody who felt like a nobody, was willing to walk alongside to wake them up from the chaos and craziness, maybe that would hold promise to a great future for the first time. Together, we can be somebody once again.

    Self Empowerment — Making Things Enough

    by

    READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

    Addicts in recovery often struggle with knowing how to meet their needs in healthy ways. As a child, many developmental needs were left unmet because parents who never had their needs met when they were young and vulnerable failed to meet their children’s needs. They pass along the same dysfunctional patterns they learned from their parents. This is one way dysfunctional patterns of behavior are intergenerationally transferred. 

    As a child, they learn to compensate in order to survive. They become very good at improvising—doing what pleases their parents and gets their attention. They learn to do and perform because the value of being is de-emphasized. Children learn to do anything to avoid neglect and abandonment which are terrifying experiences. This is when a child loses a sense of identity. Children mistakenly believe that whatever they do to get noticed is who they are. So they lose themselves in family roles (hero, scapegoat, lost child, etc) or in taking care of others. Sometimes they act out with negative behavior or through personal accomplishments to get attention. They hope to be noticed by caregivers. The result is that they are never able to do enough outside behavior to fill the empty space inside. That is when they create a cocktail of life experience to avoid the feelings of neglect and abandonment. 

    The mistaken beliefs that come with abandonment are, I am not worthy, not enough, or don’t measure up to matter to those you most want to be noticed by. So they learn to numb out and avoid the extreme emotional pain and fear associated with neglect and abandonment. Addiction doesn’t take away the pain but it does give what it promises. It is like a warm blanket on a cold night that offers temporary relief and escape from the harsh reality of a world full of winter experiences. 

    Every addict must stop the run-away train going down the track in order to get at the root cause of their destructive behavior. They learn to identify and express their feelings, which they were disconnected from in addiction. They have to be taught how to recognize needs represented in personal affect. They must learn how to assert meeting the needs housed within the emotions expressed. This journey requires education and a lot of practice. Ultimately, they must face their fears of neglect and abandonment. Most people are afraid to express what they feel or need because they fear they will be abandoned. As children, they have been abandoned emotionally, physically, or both. They learn to avoid this fear by the thoughts they embrace and the things they do. They compartmentalize what happened or did not happen as children. They protect those who have abandoned them with staunch family loyalty. They forgive prematurely, minimize results, and deny the impact of abandonment. They do everything possible to avoid facing the fear of abandonment. They learn to regulate themselves emotionally by trying to regulate everyone around them.

    In my book, Dare to Be Average—Finding Your Brilliance in the Commonplace, I told the story about a little boy who loved PBJ (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). He would go to the pantry, take the jar of peanut butter, and spread it on his bread. Then he would slap the jelly and peanut butter together and enjoy his PBJ. When there was daylight at the bottom of the jar of peanut butter, he would pitch it in the trash and reach for a new jar. All was good until one day there was no backup jar in the pantry. So with disappointment, he resigned to do without. As he walked away, his father noticed and asked him to come back to the kitchen. He took the jar of peanut butter that was thrown in the trash, made sure there was no gunk on it, and then scraped the sides of the jar which provided for 1/2” thick of peanut butter rather than the normal 1” thickness. He then noted to his son that he was willing to go without when he could take what was and spread it around and make it enough. 

    This story points to a skill set that many addicts fail to incorporate in their recovery program. When faced with the fear of abandonment in a relationship, they panic. Some insist that their partner fix the fear. They focus on their partner’s shortcomings. This is a subtle way to make the partner the identified problem. 

    Others run from the relationship through an approved replacement addiction like work etc. Many refuse to face their fear of abandonment and resolve the pain. They look outside themselves to medicate their fear. If not through acting out with their drug of choice, they utilize schemes of manipulation and overcontrol impression management or a myriad of caretaking strategies to avoid facing their fear of abandonment. They perceive their relationships through the view of a terrorized disempowered child. Consequently, they look for others to fix what they can only fix from within themselves. It renders them ineffective to take what is in a relationship and do their part to make it enough. Paralyzed in neediness, addicts look to others outside to fix their fear of abandonment.

    Managing the fear of abandonment requires empowering an adult perspective in the following areas:

    1. Recognizing your fear. In reactivity, we can cover our fear of abandonment by focusing on the injustice behavior of a partner. Since we cannot fix our partner when he or she complains or is unhappy, we become defensive and become embroiled in a circular argument trying to fix the blame. What gets lost in the skirmish around who is at fault is the reality that you fear abandonment from your partner at some level.

    2. Address the childhood fear of abandonment. This requires taking time to identify ways that you were abandoned in childhood. You will need to dismantle family loyalty by taking your parents off the pedestal in order to perceive the ways you were abandoned. You will know you have your parents on a pedestal by the feelings of guilt you experience when you speak to the times they abandoned you physically, emotionally, or both. You will need to grieve for the young impressionable part of you that was abandoned. In your grief work, you will need to move the energy of what you feared from your parents to the issue of abandonment. You will then need to transfer this energy to the empowered adult self to provide the safety you need in the here and now. This is not a one-and-done life experience. Rather, it is an adult skill set that must be honed and practiced throughout life.

    3. Make amends when you fail to empower the adult. Insight does not create perfection. You will backslide into giving the reins to the child within to negotiate decisions that require an adult mindset with your partner. When you recognize this to be true, take a deep breath, step back, gather yourself, and make amends. Then request a do-over. Practice will not make perfect. Yet, the combination of practice and a willingness to make amends will provide the incremental progress necessary to grow intimacy and reduce the fear of abandonment. 

    Don’t forget the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Always remember that as the adult in charge, you will have the power to take what is in a relationship spread it around, and make it enough. You do not have to be dominated by the fear of abandonment. 

    Things We Need to Talk About But Don’t Touch

    by

    READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

    “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” —T.S. Eliot

    This is true about recovery. It is such a repetitive cyclical experience in so many ways. There are many portals to explore and understand about addictive behavior. Open one door and it seems to lead to the next. You learned how to end your addictive behavior and stop the out-of-control train going down the track. Desperation opened the door to a belief in a Higher Power that restored you to sanity. Yet, stubborn willfulness blocked the decision to turn your will over to the care of that Higher Power. It brought you back to where you started with your addictive mindset dominating your behavior, and you repeated the same experience as before. Each time you repeat, the pattern becomes an opportunity to know yourself for the first time. 

    The recovery experience invites you to talk about things that you don’t touch. There are secrets. You are invited to open your deepest darkest hidden experience and expose it to the light of day. You are encouraged to get emotionally naked about reality, often in the presence of people you don’t know that well or for that long. 

    The exploration doesn’t stop with the addictive behavior. The challenge is to explore all of our behaviors and our relationships. Some 12-step groups insist that you only relate to one identified addiction during your time to share. I have always found this limiting. Recovery is pervasive in its journey of research and examination. It requires that you turn over every stone and inquire, with curiosity, pathways you have not explored. Many in recovery choose not to open doors about intimacy and relationships. They limit their 12-step journey to remaining sober from their addiction. They know a lot about staying sober and less about intimacy and building relationships. 

    Addicts talk about things with their sponsors and others but often don’t open their hearts to their partners. They become good about sharing vulnerability with those who are distant. They give good advice about how to be emotionally open but remain closed and distant at home. There is so much that needs to be talked about that is never touched at home. 

    Feelings like stress, anxiety, and fear build on the inside. An addict becomes lonely and seeks escape from discomfort. H/She sits with a craving to escape through their drug of choice. It is powerful because it works for a while. The pain is so great and the relief is so powerful. 

    Your partner also has anxiety, stress, fear, and loneliness building within. They also want to escape. It could be through their addiction. It often takes the form of a cocktail of other experiences like busyness, electronic games, children’s activities, running errands, or exercise. The emptiness in the relationship builds as both partners avoid what needs to be talked about but is never touched. 

    An addict may talk about the experience in a 12-step community. Yet, if it is never discussed with your partner, the 12-step group becomes a lifelong partner of triangulation. You can avoid opening your heart to the partner you should be talking with by sharing instead with a third party. The void between you and that person grows as you lament to your 12-step group. This becomes particularly sad when that person is your romantic partner. 

    To stop the fantasy about your addiction you need to tell on yourself to your partner who, in turn,  needs to talk to you about how they try to escape from their discomfort. When partners do this with each other, the void between them shrinks and the feelings of discomfort give way to the richness of emotional intimacy.  No third-party relationship has ever been able to replace the richness of intimacy that is created when you touch what needs to be shared with your partner about the truth of who you are. Each time you talk about what you don’t want to touch in a relationship you will arrive where you began and know the place for the first time. 

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