Reflections of Recovery
by: Dannie Kay
Pattern: Avoid emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy as a way to maintain distance.
My life in recovery sometimes feels like I am waking up from a bad dream, and that bad dream was my old life. Some things I have to accept I will have to work to change; that change isn't coming overnight. Some things I have done have lasting effects, some of which are now burdens for my children.
It's clear to me to see how emotionally unavailable I was to my children. When I think about it, I feel sorry for their inner child that wanted so much to be connected to their mother. Now, recovery "me" is slightly strange. They have grown and gotten used to the person I was in the past, so I have one child who is still dying for attention and one child who has figured out how to live without it. But despite their coping mechanisms, here I am. This new lady of the house is present, can hold a conversation, share her feelings in moderation, and can now listen and meet their needs.
My child, the "self-sufficient" one, had been mildly sick and never thought to tell me. When it came up in conversation, and I did something about it, I could see she was slightly shocked. How many times prior had I left her to deal with this on her own? It wasn't serious, but I wanted her to know she could be a child, and that I was now capable of solving problems she was too young to solve.
With my son, the one "dying for attention", I set boundaries. Yes, I wasn't the most present, but no one gets to shame me about it, including him. I meet his needs as I see fit as a functioning, healthy adult. Anything else, especially manipulation and guilt trips, I don't tolerate. Unfortunately, he will have to learn moderation as difficult as it seems for him. I didn't teach him moderation when he was young, and all I can do is model it now and hope he learns from me. Whether he does or not, I trust that he is capable of finding his way, just as I was able to find mine. While I can't completely fix the damage that I have done, I can love and support him now. The boundaries protect our relationship; my presence and love nourish it.
Emotionally "unavailable" was safe for me, so there's really no need to beat up on myself. I was honestly doing the best that I could. However, I have now chosen to give my children the gift of a fully present mom. May the negative coping mechanisms they attained from living with me be reduced as I get healthier. That's all I can hope for, and I can trust that the Universe has us.
CoDA Slogan: What Someone Else Thinks of me is None of my Business
There's a codependent trait I'm noticing in myself lately. So quick background: I just finished my steps and have decided to try and navigate the world of healthy dating.
Back to the story… the codependent characteristic that keeps popping up is the need for the other person to validate me. I want to ask this person how he feels about me. What is he thinking? My recovery won't let me ask him, because what he thinks about me is none of my business.
Now, of course, there is some gray there. I think wanting some validation from a love interest is healthy, but what I really want from him is for him to tell me things are OK so I can feel OK. There is something that is off within me in our dealings, and I want him to settle this "offness" for me. With my recovery, I’m learning to look within myself and find the "offness". What about this situation is causing me uneasiness?
I don't want to answer it here because part of why I'm sharing this is to have you examine your own off-ness and the need for others to make you/me feel OK. I also don't know the answer, but I'm sure that with more time with myself and my higher power, the answer will come to me.
Denial Pattern: Minimize, Alter, or Deny how I Truly Feel
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As I practice acknowledging and communicating how I truly feel, fear keeps coming up. I can see the fear coming from my childhood: that if I express how I truly feel, it is up for debate, and, as a child, when this pattern developed, I was wrong, and my parents were right. There was never a safe way for me to say that I didn't like something or that something hurt me. As a child, I was taught that I was not allowed to have feelings. It was not a child's place to feel. So now here I am as an adult, terrified to communicate what feels true for me. It's the resistance that I am afraid of. Someone is telling me it's not true, and they will be right, because I am definitely wrong. My recovery is about pushing past this, though. Moving from my denial pattern into my recovery behavior.
It feels like these three parts to me:
1. Acknowledging to myself how I feel. In this case, I’m not happy with the way I am being treated, and I want to be treated better, and the better being whatever it looks like to me.
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2. Communicating this to the person. This step feels fundamental because without it, I will ruminate. There will be a continuous conversation, or several, in which I play out what I will say and what the other person will say, as if I know their truth. They don't know mine yet, and I don't know theirs until the conversation takes place out of my head.
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3. Respecting that how I feel is valid, still, and that this person's response is none of my business. Knowing that my truth is my business and that no comments like "You're just making a big deal," "Here you go again," or "Why do you have to make things so complicated" are going to change that.
This is the art of letting go. My job is to be authentic to myself and share this where I choose; my higher power's job is to manage the outcome. Will this person respect it and our relationship continue, or will they not, causing me to make more decisions? I don't have the answer, but I can still practice my recovery by magnifying, validating, and expressing how I truly feel.
Denial Pattern: Think we can take care of ourselves without any help from others
I think one of the most common coping mechanisms in codependents is thinking that we can take care of ourselves without the help of others. John Bradshaw, in his book Healing the Shame that Binds You, discusses how unavailable dysfunctional families are when they are needed most.
I can imagine a small child looking to their parents for their needs to be met, only for the parents never to meet them. The child will learn that they can only rely on themselves to meet their needs, because they are the only ones who have been meeting them. Also, who we choose to be around in life has to reinforce how we think about ourselves until far enough into recovery. This can lead to having friends around who are not very responsive to you and cannot support you. The recovery comes from being able to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy people.
Even though we are in recovery and will need to learn to accept help from others, we need to keep in mind that our families and current friends might not be those people. The same people who were not able to meet your needs as a child might not be able to meet them now. That doesn't mean you don't deserve to have your needs met. There are healthy people who can help along the way.
For me, there was discomfort in asking people for help. I was scared that I would be shut down or shamed for needing help. I was thoroughly taught that I needed to do things myself. One of the first times I asked for help was when I asked my sponsor to sponsor me. I needed help, and I knew it wasn't her job to try to convince me to work with her; it was my job to humbly ask her for help.
One of the things that has been true for me in CoDA is learning to practice new, healthy behaviors. I had to keep becoming aware of when I needed help and ask people. I had to let some people offer me help and then accept it. As with all new behaviors, it feels weird at first, but I have been practicing for long enough to know that I possess this new healthy skill.