Honesty with others
We need to strive for emotional honesty with our self and for our self - because being honest with ourselves is what works best to help us see our self and life most clearly. It is the most Loving thing to do for ourselves.
It is also important for us to learn to practice discernment in relationship to how honest we are with other people. It is almost always the best policy, the strategy that works best in the long run, to be direct and honest with others. That does not necessarily mean emotionally honest. And it does not necessarily mean we need to tell them the whole truth, be honest on all levels.
While I was writing this article I took a break to go for a walk by the ocean. On that walk, my Higher Power presented me with a perfect example of the point I am making here.
I ran into someone I know from AA and had not seen for a couple of months. This is a person that I like and I am happy to see when I run into her. She has around thirty years of sobriety. But she is not involved in the emotional healing, in codependence recovery. She knows I have a book out, and asks me about it when we see each other - but I would never expect her to read it.
The AA community in the small town that I live in has a very high percentage of people with long term sobriety. Many of them are people who retired here from Los Angeles or Fresno and other places. They are old time AA people who are so black and white in their thinking that they get upset if someone mentions drugs in an Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Needless to say, they do not think that codependence has any place in their lives or their meetings. I can share in these meetings using AA language and people will tell me how much they get from my sharing - but if I use the C word (codependence) I can almost hear the snap of the minds closing around the room.
As a result I do not go to a lot of AA meetings here. Inevitably, I walk away from a meeting here feeling sad about the level of emotional dishonesty I observe - or sometimes angry about rigid, judgmental statements or behavior. My main meeting here in town - besides a CoDA meeting that I started and am secretary for - is a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in which it is OK to talk about anything and the people laugh a lot.
So, I ran into this woman from AA on my walk, and she said to me, "I haven't seen you around for awhile." This is AA language for "Why haven't I seen you at any meetings?" And coming from many people in Alcoholics Anonymous carries more than a hint of accusation in it.
I told her that I was doing a lot of phone counseling and the appointments were often in the evenings. I mentioned that the NA meeting was the one I made it to most often. I said that I had been meaning to make it to the Friday night meeting - and I have, and will, one of these days.
I answered her honestly without telling the whole truth or being emotionally honest. There was no reason to share my feelings about the meetings that she attends - because she had not asked for my opinion. People in AA have the same uncanny ability that my family members and many other people out there in the world have - they have a way of avoiding asking direct questions whose answers might make them uncomfortable. I have learned that part of having good boundaries for me includes not offering opinions to, or being emotionally honest with, people who do not want to hear it.
That AA person falls into the category of what I call a "friendly acquaintance." Someone who I am glad to see, feel some affection for, feel a bond to as a fellow recovering alcoholic - but someone who will probably never be a real friend. If she were ever to come to me and ask for my advice or opinion - I would happily share with her. The chances are that will never happen.
I have found it important to have boundaries in terms of how I view other people. If I have one or two people in my life that I feel that I can truly communicate with and be emotionally honest with on all levels, that is an incredible abundance. For much of my recovery I have not had anyone who fell into that category. That is sad, but it is a reality that I have needed to accept. As I have said elsewhere, an important part of empowerment is seeing reality as it is and making the best of it - rather than putting energy into wishing it was different. If I get caught up in wishing it were different, in the "what if"s and "if only"s, then I am empowering a victim perspective which can lead to self pity. (Grieving, owning the sadness, is very different from self pity which - as I mention above -is an emotional state based upon limiting victim beliefs.)
It has been very helpful to me, to accept that people are where they are at - and that it is OK. I have learned to let go of my old pattern of sacrificing myself in the now for the potential of the future. Often I can see who a person really is, and understand their potential - which on my deepest level of honesty usually means their potential to be an asset in my life - but need to accept that they are perfectly where they are supposed to be in their process. I need to accept that, in order not to buy into the illusion that they are doing something to me - that I am the victim of the pace of their process, of their inability to be who I want them to be now.
This was especially important in terms of letting go of expecting my family of origin to change. They are not who I want them to be, they don't understand me and can't see me. It isn't personal - they are just dancing with their wounds and following their path. It is not for me to judge someone else's path. Letting go - especially in terms of doing the inner child grieving about letting go of the myth of family - and accepting, was a necessary component in being able to have a friendly, superficial relationship with my family today. Superficial is what they are capable of - I needed to accept that and make the best of the situation.
In terms of friends, there are going to be people in my life, who I can share certain things with - but not other things. Some people that I can relate to on certain levels, or about certain issues. To expect that I can be emotionally honest with everyone in my life in a way that works (is safe, is heard, is understood) is an insane expectation in such a dysfunctional society with relatively so few people actually doing the healing work.
(I want to make a point here also, that when I say "safe" in terms of being emotionally honest, I am talking about what will work best. In earlier recovery, when I was still giving a lot of power to the old wounds and old tapes, it could feel devastating to me to have someone judge and shame me. Then safe referred to danger, to people who would judge and shame me. It also meant people who would try to fix me. Trying to fix someone else is not support, it is codependence. When someone starts trying to rescue me it imparts a judgment on where I am at - it means they are not comfortable so they are going to try to change me to make themselves comfortable. This is tied into the what I was speaking of above about offering advice or opinions to someone who hasn't asked. It can be a form of abuse.
As I have gotten healthier in recovery, with more capacity to be balanced and see life with some clarity - other people and life events have less power to effect me. The more I am grounded in the Spiritual belief system I have integrated into my internal process, and have done my inner child healing - the less power any of my old buttons hold. The better I have become at letting go, the shorter the periods of time have become that I am giving others the power to rock my emotional boat. The term safe for me transformed into meaning something more like: safe from wasting time and energy trying to communicate with someone who can not hear. To get into an argument, a power struggle over right and wrong, with someone who doesn't speak my language is dysfunctional - is actually, pretty silly.
Of course, romantic relationships are much more complicated. I will be posting an article about emotional honesty and responsibility in romantic relationships in June.)
Pay Attention
The primary purpose and most important reason for me to share my feelings with anyone is because I need to do it for me - to take care of me. In order to be emotionally healthy I need to express and release my feelings - but that does not mean that I have to necessarily express those feelings to the person involved. The farther along I get in recovery, the more I have the tools and resources I need to do my healing internally where it really matters, the less need I have to share my feelings with people who can't hear me.
The secondary purpose of being emotionally honest with another person is to develop emotional intimacy with that person. If the other person is not capable of emotional honesty, then I am setting myself up - empowering expectations that are not realistic.
Of course, when we first meet someone we do not have any data to base a discerning decision upon. We gather data by paying attention. The more we heal, the more ability we have to be in the moment and pay attention. People give us signs and signals about themselves right from our first contact with them. The most Loving thing we can do for ourselves, the most functional behavior, is to be present and pay attention.
So, we observe. We pay attention not just to what they are saying, but also to their body language, their eye contact, the feelings we get in our gut while interacting with them.
As I state in the quote above, we are never going to meet someone who doesn't have some red flags. Everyone we meet is going to be someone who is a teacher of some kind. By paying attention, it is possible to choose rather we want to explore our connection to them further or rather this is a opportunity to set a boundary with ourselves about where to expend our time and energy.
If we discern that we do not feel comfortable with seeing this person again, we can be direct and honest with them - without necessarily being emotionally honest.
We do not have to say, for example: You scare me because it appears that you are not really hearing what I am saying to you, that you are unable to be conscious and present. (This would almost certainly engender a defensive reaction from the other person and lead to more time and energy expended)
We do not have to lie to them either: I am so busy this week. Maybe later in the month. (This sets us up to keep putting them off.)
We can say something like: Sorry, but I am very busy these days and just do not have time to hang out.
So, we tell a little fib by saying we are sorry when we probably aren't - and we do not tell the whole truth which is: I choose not to hang out with someone unless I see the possibility of a healthy relationship with them, or sense a strong connection that I feel a need to explore.
And then we do not have to explain. We do not have to explain ourselves to anyone unless we choose to. We have a right to make choices without having to justify them or defend ourselves.
This is, of course, one of those places where it is important to be able to recognize that any guilt feelings that might arise, and cause us to feel we have to explain, are most likely unhealthy guilt - codependent reactions to being programmed to feel responsible for other people's feelings.
There are many people out there whose codependent defense system falls into what I describe in my book as bulldozers. The will push and push and push. They will demand explanations.
You do not owe them an explanation. With bulldozers it is often necessary to get down right rude with them before they will hear us. Anyone who pushes against a boundary we set is obviously someone that we may want to choose not to be around. If someone gets pushy, then we can say something like: "I don't want to see you again because you don't respect the boundary that I just set."
Confrontations
Many of us, of course, have a real terror of conflict - either because we have inner children who are terrified of someone else's anger, and/or because we are programmed to feel responsible for other people's feelings and have great fear of hurting others.
What is important is to start being honest with ourselves. To say you didn't want to tell the other person the truth because it would hurt their feelings is codependent. The truth is we didn't want to tell them because we wanted to protect ourselves from feeling codependently responsible for hurting their feelings. It is not about them - it is about us.
To avoid setting boundaries because we are afraid of the other persons anger, is a set up to be a doormat and a victim. It is deadly to our own self respect. It usually means we are reacting out of an inner child wound. As children we had to learn to not have boundaries in order to survive. As adults, it is our responsibility to our self and to our inner children to start setting boundaries in order to become empowered in our life.
As I stated in my article on setting personal boundaries, we not only need to set them, we need to be willing to defend them. Defending our right to set boundaries means knowing we do not have to justify or explain. The chances are the other person will react defensively, take our boundary personally, and push for an explanation. We do not owe them an explanation. One of the reasons we learned to fear confrontations, was because of how unpleasant power struggles over who is right and who is wrong can be. Defending our right to set boundaries, means learning (a gradual, stumbling process) to stand up for ourselves and say: “No! I do not have to explain myself to you.” (This of course, also applies to our feelings. We do not have to justify how we feel to anyone.)
People come into our lives to help us learn about ourselves. The people who will feel hurt when we say no to them, are people who are helping us get in touch with dysfunctional beliefs about being responsible for other people's feelings. They are helping us get in touch with some inner child wounds, and practice letting go of unhealthy guilt.
People who are bulldozers, whose anger we are afraid of, are teachers that force us to learn to stand up for ourselves. Without them we would never have to learn how to set and defend boundaries.
These types of confrontations are opportunities for growth. The more we grow the more we have a choice to avoid these confrontations by being honest with ourselves so that we can employ the strategy that works best. What works best - to help us keep from expending our time and energy on people that we choose not to invest our self in - is to set a boundary and be direct up front.
It takes a great deal of courage in recovery to start standing up for ourselves. To start saying no straight out instead of making excuses and vague promises that we do not intend to keep. Learning to be more honest in our interactions is a process that we evolve through - not something to judge ourselves about.
Sometimes we go through stages where we need to come from a pretty black and white extreme. As I said, we go through stages in the growth process.
I had very powerful patterns of avoiding conflict. Those arose out of the traumatic effect my fathers raging had on me, and the emotional incest from my mother that caused me to feel responsible for the feelings of others.
I had a great ability to intellectually rationalize away the need to stand up for myself. There were always multiple reasons I could come up with to rationalize why the other person was acting that way - or why it wouldn't do any good to stand up for myself. The first instance was masked as unhealthy codependent "compassion" - which wasn't really about them at all, but was about protecting me. And the second was about manipulation - about what strategy would best protect me, get me what I wanted.
There was a stage in my process where I had to let go of trying to figure it out intellectually, let go of strategy, let go of trying to be discerning - and just make the first priority stopping the emotional and verbal abuse. I needed to make protecting myself the first priority. That meant that I shared my feelings anytime someone said something to me that felt abusive. That meant that I reacted out of unresolved grief and anger from the past in my reactions to people. That often meant I had to go back and make amends later.
It was an important phase in my process. I went from having no honest boundaries - to throwing up boundaries and spewing my feelings everywhere with everyone - and then was able to move through that stage to a point where I had more choices.
It may be dysfunctional to share your feelings with your boss or a parent - but it might be a necessary part of owning yourself to do just that. The more we heal the more discernment we can practice in where, when, and to whom we are emotionally honest.
As I have stated elsewhere, we need to own our feelings and set boundaries as a way of Loving ourselves, being a friend to our self - not to obtain a certain outcome. When we set boundaries, we let go of the outcome.
Which doesn't mean that we do not want the outcome - it means that we choose to take care of ourselves and take a risk that the outcome will not be what we want. It is very important to take risks in recovery. The purpose of getting emotionally honest with ourselves and owning our responsibilities is so that we can make better choices about the risks we choose to take.