Discerning strategy and letting go
As I said in part 1 of this discussion, we are learning how to live in balance, in the gray area of life. We are learning that there are numbers 2 through 9 instead of just 1 and 10.
We need to learn to be emotionally honest with ourselves - and direct and honest with others - in a way that works for us. Having a healthy relationship with our self involves living according to value system that we resonate with - living with integrity.
We want to own our feelings and release them in a healthy way that works to help us have some balance in our life. We are learning how to stop giving power to the old wounds so that we do not behave in a manner which is harmful to us - the "I'll show you, I'll get me!" patterns of codependence.
That involves seeing ourselves and our lives as clearly and honestly as possible - and responding to other people and life events by making the best choices possible.
To be angry at your boss and be emotionally honest about that anger - could be dysfunctional to your well being. Could get you fired.
It is important to own that anger and release it in a healthy way - through talking a friend or in a twelve step meeting, through doing anger release work, etc. We also need to look at how we are setting ourselves up to generate that anger - take responsibility for our part in the situation. We do that by getting in touch with any victim perspective we are empowering (the "I have to go to work" victimization we are taught in our society - Empowerment and Victimization - the power of choice) and observing any childhood wounds that are involved so that we can focus on the real cause instead of just the presenting symptom.
We also want to own all of our choices, rather than just the 1 or 10 of being the poor self righteous victim or exploding in profanity and quitting. We can look at our choices 2 through 9, and decide upon the strategy that will work best for us. If we decide that we need to quit the job, we can choose to have another one lined up when we quit - choose the time that works best for self instead of reacting in a way that hurts our self.
We can learn to respond to situations with discernment that allows us to make choices about what is in our best interests. We can choose a strategy that is most likely to have an outcome that will work for us.
We need to let go of thinking we can control the outcome. We need to not allow our fear of the outcome to cause us to be emotionally dishonest with ourselves. But letting go of the outcome does not mean abrogating our responsibility as co-creators of our life. We have responsibility for the actions we choose to put in motion - and we want to be discerning and choose the best strategy possible to get us what we want - but ultimately we need to have faith that taking care of ourselves will lead us to someplace better. We need to surrender to whatever outcome the Universal Plan has next for us in our lesson plan of Spiritual growth and emotional healing.
Recovery keeps getting different
While we are in the process of learning how to be emotionally honest and emotionally responsible we will go through different stages of growth. And we will be in process for the rest of our lives - on progressively more advanced and usually subtler levels. This process is why we are here, it is not something we do and then get on with our lives. Growing, learning, healing, awakening to our True Spiritual nature so that we can integrate that Truth into our relationship with our selves and life - is what this adventure in body is all about.
When I first got into recovery I was told that "it keeps getting better." That has not been my emotional experience of recovery. As I talk about in my article about Loving and Nurturing self, the process of life involves falling apart, losing it, etc. - as we reach new levels of growth and have to surrender some of our old ego definitions. So, from a higher perspective, a Spiritual growth perspective - yes, it does keep progressing and getting better once we start making the shift of seeing life as a growth process. It sure doesn't feel that way however.
A couple of other things that I was told in early recovery have more closely matched my experience of the process. "More Will Be Revealed" and "it will keep getting different" are two expressions that have always been true for me. Every time a new layer of the onion gets peeled, a new octave gets reached - more is revealed on a deeper emotional level with a higher degree of honesty. That higher level changes my perspective of my self, of life, of the past, of other people -which changes my relationship to my issues. Surrendering my old ideas and old tapes does not just mean letting go of the programming from childhood - sometimes it means letting go of what I thought was truth 2 weeks ago.
We are a work in progress. There is no destination. We have different chapters to our story, different stages of our journey - but our relationships with everything keep evolving and changing.
That includes our relationship to our own emotions. In early recovery, when I was trying to get in touch with and own my feelings, I would often say "That makes me angry," or "That hurts," - not because I was actually feeling the feelings, but rather because I knew that it was appropriate to feel a feeling in that situation.
Later, as I got in touch with the emotional energy that was in my body, it would often explode out of me. So that I would say, "I feel angry" when I was really feeling, and expressing, rage.
It was progress for me to express that I was angry and actually feel the anger at the same time. Because of that, I often expressed that anger in ways that were out of balance and inappropriate. That was a stage of my growth process.
Getting in touch with the feelings eventually caused me to get in touch with my grief and rage. It was impossible for me to start owning my feelings without eventually owning the repressed feelings from my past. So there were times when my expression of feelings would be very out of proportion to the stimulus that was triggering those emotional releases. That is an inevitable part of the path.
One of my ways of trying to control the feelings was to be in my head trying to figure out what was happening and how to express it in a healthy way. In the process of pushing myself beyond the mental defenses of rationalizing, intellectualizing, analyzing, etc., it was impossible to be in balance and healthy in all of my expressions of emotion.
The more I did my grief and rage work, and changed the dysfunctional perspectives that were setting me up for emotional responses, the more emotionally balanced and responsible I could become. But it is a process that evolves over time.
It was progress in early recovery for me to start vocalizing feelings even though I wasn't actually feeling them. To say, "I am angry," to own my right to be angry - was a breakthrough.
It was progress to vocalize the feelings at the same time I was owning and feeling them - even though that caused me to overreact and explode at times. To say, "I am angry" while sounding angry and really feeling angry was a breakthrough.
It was progress to take responsibility for my feelings so that I could use the tools I had learned to feel and release the feelings in my own way, at my own time - so that at times, I wouldn't have to actually be angry when I was expressing those feelings to someone else. To say, "That caused me to feel angry" without actually being angry while I said it - was a breakthrough.
See how things spiral around? Vocalizing a feeling without feeling it - was in early recovery a symptom of my level of emotional dishonesty. While as my recovery advanced, vocalizing a feeling without feeling it at that moment - could be a symptom of emotional balance.
The energy of those two examples, was however, very different. Prior to having owned my rage, saying I was angry without feeling it did not carry much power. After having done grief and rage work, and having owned the power that comes from owning my feelings, when I told someone that some behavior of theirs had made me angry, they heard me much more clearly. By owning my feelings, I was owning and respecting myself. The more I own and respect myself, the more clearly I can communicate. Now when I set a boundary, I can usually do it firmly from a place of power and strength that lets the other person know that I will defend that boundary. I can communicate strength without ever sounding angry.
Once we start to become grounded in the powerful energy of our True Self, once we start respecting ourselves and Knowing that we have rights, then we start to be capable of communicating from a place of power that does not require raising our voice to be heard. The more we are centered and balanced in Truth, the more we are able to perceive the gray area where we can own our side of the street and hold other people responsible for theirs, the more we can communicate in a manner which maximizes the possibility of being seen and heard. (Of course, we are powerless over others and need to be willing to let go of the outcome, so there is no guarantee about how the other will react/respond. Accept the things we cannot change - change the things we can, take responsibility for ourselves and our side of the street.)
Progress not Perfection
It is important to look at our process from the perspective of the progress we have made rather than trying to do it perfectly. In making progress we have to breakthrough to new ways of doing things. We need to explore new territory and give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves in whatever way is necessary. That sometimes involves swinging to the other extreme so that we end up having to make amends for how we expressed ourselves. It is important to celebrate our progress and not shame and judge ourselves for any mess that the way we breakthrough may entail.
An example of the point I am trying to make here, is the story of a client I worked with some years ago. This person was a social worker who was very good at doing her job. In the role she was playing at work she could be fierce and have strong boundaries. In her personal life however, she had no permission to have any boundaries at all because of her childhood wounds. My homework assignment for her was to tell someone to F___ off. I chose something so harsh because it was so out of character for her. She was appalled and horrified at the thought of saying something like that to someone. It was not even conceivable to her because it was so contrary to the self definition she had adapted in childhood.
One of the reasons that I give people assignments is to expand their consciousness, to give them permission to act in ways they would never consider. It took her about 3 months before she completed the assignment - and when she did, she said it to the biggest cop in town at a professional gathering. She was horrified that she had done it. I was very excited for her and heaped congratulations on her. The point was, she had stood up for herself spontaneously. I told her that she could go back and make amends for how she expressed herself - but that it was a wonderful breakthrough that she had defended herself.
That particular expression may be one that she will never in her life use again - and it certainly is not an example of the way in which we are learning to communicate. The breakthrough was that she had started to respect herself enough to be willing to go to any length to defend herself. She spontaneously set a boundary and communicated that another persons behavior was not acceptable to her.
The more we heal our core relationship with ourselves, the more we start to respect and Love ourselves, the more we start automatically and spontaneously owning our right to speak up and set boundaries. Often when we are breaking out of the old patterns, jumping out of the old ruts, we will swing to the other extreme. That doesn't mean we are going to stay there. It means we are doing a paradigm shift in our relationship with self and others. It means we have broken through to a different way of doing things.
In recovery, our experience of life keeps getting different.
When I talk about ways that we use to go unconscious - like workaholism, or exercise, or food, or whatever - I am not saying that you should be ashamed if you are doing some of these things.
We cannot go from unconscious to conscious overnight! This healing is a long gradual process. We all still need to go unconscious sometimes. Recovery is a dance that celebrates progress, not one that achieves perfection.
A significant breakthrough in my personal process came when I was able to recognize, and give myself credit for, the progress that I had made - when I realized that a pint of Haagen-daz was lasting me three days instead of being gone within twenty minutes of when I bought it.
That was a very big breakthrough for me, to be able to give myself credit for the progress instead of judging and shaming myself for not being perfect, for still feeling like I needed the nurturing of ice cream.
We had to learn to go unconscious in order to survive! Thank God for alcohol or television or romance novels. Thank God for ice cream!
We need to stop judging ourselves - that means allowing ourselves to do whatever it takes, whatever works. There are times when we need to go unconscious. There are times when we need to stuff our feelings in the moment. There are times when it is not safe to be vulnerable and emotionally honest.
This Recovery process is a gradual transition from using our old tool box to using the new tools. The old tools - the ways we used to go unconscious so we could survive - are not "bad" or "wrong." They were life savers - without them we would be either dead or mass murderers, or dead mass murderers.
We adopted the old tools because they were the best choices that were available to us at the time. We adopted them in response to intuitive impulses that were right on. Those impulses were "protect myself, nurture myself." It is the nature of the defense system that is Codependence that the ways we learned to protect and nurture ourselves are self-abusive in the long run.
So we need to stop shaming ourselves for the behaviors that we adopted to protect and nurture ourselves, at the same time that we are transitioning to behaviors that are less self-abusive.
Notice that I say less self-abusive. We are talking progress, not perfection here.
If you have an image of what completely healthy behavior is, and you will not allow yourself to accept and Love yourself until you get there, then you are setting conditions under which you decide when you will become Lovable. You are still buying into a concept of conditional love and by extension, the concept of a Higher Power that is conditionally loving. You are still trying to earn, and become worthy of not only self-Love, but also God's Love. That small child inside of you is still trying to earn your parents' Love and validation.
That is a natural, normal thing for humans beings on this Codependent planet. Try not to judge and beat yourself up for it. Try to observe it and say, "Oh, isn't it sad that I am still doing that? I think I will try to learn some ways that I can change it."