Making Space

I've been away for a bit...but this blog has been on my mind. I think there might be enough disconnected thoughts of blog posts floating around that perhaps I will have a little flurry of posts in the next several days.

I've had a difficult week this week. A lot of my codie thinking and habits have been triggered by life circumstances and people who probably don't have my best interests at heart. I've been thinking a lot about trust, and how to rebuild trust after it has been broken.

I learned a new (to me) term this week: "gaslighting", which is basically subterfuge and redirection designed to make another person feel crazy so they believe the lie the "gaslighter" is trying to pull off. That happened to me a lot, as my SA husband tried to keep his activites from being discovered. This kind of thing has a lasting effect on a person, because you end up doubting yourself and most insidiously, your instinct. It was my very instincts that were targeted by this behavior, so that now what was once one of my strongest tools is constantly subjected to doubt.

I started suspecting my husband of relapsing. Rather than call a program friend or even just stop long enough to remember that his program, including his sobriety, is his business, I spiralled into crazy thinking. I began to think that I would never be able to trust him--or anyone--again.

Finally, I started to see that his program and his sobriety are his business. I have to count on his own investment in his recovery to prevent relapse, or to enable him to recover from a relapse if one happened. Once I could see that, I realized that what I wanted most was for him to be able to tell me if he slipped or relapsed, but that I had made it impossible for him to do that, through a series of ultimatums and insinuations that any slip would be the end of the relationship. There was no room in our relationship for that kind of honesty, and therefore no basis to rebuild trust. It's not just me that needs to be able to trust him; he has to rebuild his trust in me, too, to be able to share something like that with me. If I am not a safe place for him to share his struggles without risking our marriage, where is the trust?

I do understand that for many people, relapse is a part of recovery. I don't like that, but I do understand it's true. That certainly doesn't mean that it is inevitable for my husband or for anyone in particular. But I have to be prepared for the fact that it could happen, and the only way to minimize the damage is for us to be able to talk about it and for him to feel that it doesn't spell doom to our marriage. If he feels that there is no space for a conversation like that to happen, not only does resentment build up, but if a relapse does occur there is that much more reason for it to be a big one, rather than a small slip. After all, if it's going to mean the end of the relationship anyway, why not "do it right?"

If it does happen, what he does next is his to decide, and is a subject between him and his sponsor, and probably our therapist. I hope at some point along the way he would feel comfortable sharing it with me, if I didn't know already. But none of that is up to me. All I can do is try to create the possibility for understanding and trust between us, without closing off any possible avenues to communication and growth.

I feel a lot better that I was able to finally get this, and share it with him. I've behaved poorly up until this point, and have suffered for it, as I think he has too. I have a lot to learn still, but I'm grateful to be in the position to learn it.

The Root of Happiness

Pema Chodron, in her brilliant little book, "The Places That Scare You," talks about the four limitless qualities, which are loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Here is how she introduces them:

It's up to us. We can spend our lives cultivating our resentments and cravings or we can explore the path of the warrior--nurturing open-mindedness and courage. Most of us keep strengthening our negative habits and therefore sow the seeds of our own suffering. The bodhichitta practices, however, are ways for us to sow the seeds of well-being. Particularly powerful are the aspiration practices of the four limitless qualities--loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
~p. 51, The Places That Scare You

In four chapters, she describes meditations that explore and expand these qualities in ourselves towards all people. The first one, which I have actually tried, focuses on happiness. It is based on the following chant:

May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May we not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
May we dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and prejudice.

This meditation has seven parts. Basically, you first focus on yourself: May I enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. Then you focus on the same thing for someone very close to you--your mate, your closest friend, etc. Then you expand that thought to someone you feel fondly about, but are not terribly close to. Then you expand that thought to someone you feel neutrally about--the mailman, or the barista you order your coffee from. Eventually you focus this thought on someone you dislike or who annoys you. Then you try to keep all of these people in your thoughts and expand your wish for all of these people, and for all beings everywhere, to enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. The idea is to practice feeling the same expansive wish for joy for all people, and ultimately to realize that the idea that we are separate from any other beings is an illusion. Why shouldn't we wish for every being to experience happiness? Even the ones we dislike.

I found after practicing this meditation that it stayed with me for quite a while. I saw people out in the world that I didn't know, and thought that thought: May he enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. One of the people I dislike that I meditated about was a doctor I work with, and when I saw him at work I thought: may he enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. The thought actually made me happier; instead of seeing him and feeling surly or irritated, I felt more expansive and less separated by my dislike or resentment.

The root of happiness, as I see it, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha taught that suffering is caused by attachment, which is characterized by clinging. I think this is one of those deceptively simple teachings that one can learn about one's entire life. How simple, just stop clinging! Stop clinging to our ideas of ourselves and others, to our desires, our cravings for objects and endless affirmation from others and our hurts and pains that we nurture. This last one has particularly been on my mind, for I have been clinging to the ways that I have been wronged by my SA husband. I am trying to understand why I would cling to those resentments and hurts. After all, it only serves to increase my own suffering, and then I reflect that back on him, which doesn't make him feel very good.

I think I cling to these injuries because I am afraid that if I forget, and if he forgets, then it will happen again. I will become complacent, he will think I am spineless, and the cycle will continue until I finally leave. I guess that is the pattern I have known, so it makes sense that I would assume it will continue like that. But as I said, the clinging only increases my own suffering, and it doesn't prevent any of those things. I cannot control what anyone else does--not my husband, not my family, not even my cat. And nursing these wounds increases the feeling that I am special in that I am the only one who has ever been hurt like this--and that I am purely a victim, that I have never done any harm to anyone else. It increases that illusion of separateness from others, when in reality we are much more interconnected than our illusions suggest. (It will likely become a little harder to keep up that illusion of being purely a victim after I have done my inventory of character defects, and later have to make amends.)

I don't know exactly how to stop clinging to my little wounds, but I think this kind of meditation exercise can help. It is no small thing to learn how to stop clinging, how to release ourselves from our attachments. It is the very nature of our human minds to grasp for these things. But this is the goal if we hope to release ourselves from the endless cycle of human suffering. I don't actually know if I'll ever be released from the endless cycle of human suffering, but maybe I can reduce my own suffering and that of others a little bit while I am here, by learning to stop clinging to the perceived slights and very real injuries that have occured in the past, and practice expansive loving-kindness towards others. It certainly can't hurt to try.

As It Is

It's been an interesting week for my program. My husband had to serve his week of jail time as part of his sentence for the DUI/accident. We live 400 miles away from the scene of the crime, as it were, so he had to travel there to go to jail. All told, he was gone about 9 days.

I didn't know what was going on with him when he was there. It turned out he was unable to call me because they didn't allow calls to cell phones, and we don't have a land line. I knew that he would have called me if he could, so the lack of phone calls from him indicated to me that he wasn't allowed to call. Still, without the reassurance of his voice telling me he was okay, I had to work hard not to worry. That doesn't come easy to me.

About all I could do was tell myself, "I'm not in control." It did help. I was very busy with school during that time, even had a class over the weekend, so there wasn't too much down time to really get into a good codie worry fest. And when I did have time, I was able to enjoy it. It has been a long time since I regularly had private time to relax, so I went for hikes and runs, went out with friends, and read. Sometimes the thought crept in that my husband wasn't having nearly as relaxing a time, and I would worry again. "I'm not in control."

I've been reading a book called "The 12-Step Buddhist" by Darren Littlejohn. I've gotten to the part on Step 1 where he describes meditating on "as it is." We have to learn to accept everything--life, people, situations, our thoughts--as it is. It isn't just addicts and codependents--everybody is in some degree of denial of things as they are. We all think we can change other people or change the future, but all we have is the present moment. Failure to accept others and ourselves as we are simply perpetuates our own suffering and denies us the lessons of the present moment. As a program friend recently said to me, "You are exactly where you need to be right now."

"As it is" has become a useful mantra for me. It helps calm me and reminds me that I am not in control of very much at all--really just my own actions. Especially when I spin out of control about the future, afraid that things in my life are inevitably going to go in a direction that I fear, saying this to myself helps remind me to stay in the present and realize I can't control others or the future.

The Gifts

Most 12 Step groups have several readings that form a large portion of every meeting. There are preambles, statements of problems, welcomes to newcomers, and of course the reading of the 12 and 12. S-Anon is no different. There are about 6 or 7 standard readings that are "suggested" by S-Anon International, and the two groups I attend read them all.

It sounds repetitive to the newcomer, but hearing these readings every week really provides a touchstone for each week, and I always seem to get something new out of at least one of the readings. In my groups (we have basically the same members at both groups) we get almost childishly excited about our last reading, "The Gifts of the S-Anon Program." It seems to be everyone's favorite.

Gifts of the S-Anon Program

When we approach the process of recovery with honesty, open-mindedness and willingness to apply the principles of the Twelve Steps to our lives, we will soon begin to see the rewards. We will become able to surrender our self-defeating behavior. We will find that we have strength and insight to make good choices for ourselves. Our ability to act positively on behalf of our health, families, jobs and bank accounts will amaze us. We will find that others are doing things for themselves which we thought we had to do for them. Our ability to give and receive love will expand tremendously, and we will become increasingly available for loving relationships with others. We will recover the feeling of joy. We will become more honest with ourselves and experience a new comfort in our intimate relationships. We will feel the security that arises from true fellowship with others in the program, knowing that we are loved and accepted just as we are. Feelings of failure and inadequacy will be replaced by self-confidence and independence of spirit. We will no longer expect other people to provide us with an identity or a sense of self-worth. We will find the courage to be true to ourselves. We will know peace of mind and feel a stronger connection with the Higher Power of our understanding, and our Hope will turn to faith that God is really working in our lives, as we explore the wonders of serenity, dignity, and emotional growth.

These are powerful promises. They are an affirmation, and hopefully a self-fulfilling prophesy. We WILL surrender our self-defeating behavior. We WILL have strength and insight to be able to make good choices for ourselves. All it takes is honesty, open-mindedness and willingness to apply the principles. When I was first coming into the program five months ago, I clung to these promises.

It really helps when we no longer feel so alone in our problems. In the beginning I felt like there was no one I could talk to who understood the situation I was in. I felt a lot of shame for wanting to stay in my marriage because I thought others would view me as weak or dependent if I remained in the relationship despite everything that had happened. Now I realize that staying and working on my own recovery, and supporting my husband as he works on his, takes more strength than most people understand, and it was the fellowship of others who had been through this same fire that helped me see this. Having the open-mindedness to see this situation as something more than just a series of wrongs that were done to me, but rather a pattern of shame-based behavior that both of us had a part in, and both of us could learn from and work through, didn't come naturally, but really as a gift of applying myself to my own recovery.

I have heard other women in my meetings say that their husbands' addictions were a gift to them, and I can see this in my own life now. Without the reality of my husband's addictions staring me in the face, I would not have confronted the parts of my own life and my own behavior that need attention. I could easily have walked away and chalked this all up to Ways That I Have Been Wronged, but that would have denied my own opportunity for growth. Without my own recovery, I would have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire, continuing my own pattern of relationships with addicts, until eventually one of them might have destroyed me. Fortunately, I ended up with one who is strong enough to face his own recovery with grace and honesty, and this inspires me to face my own.

We will become more honest with ourselves and experience a new comfort in our intimate relationships...no longer using sex to medicate or cover up the problems in my relationship, or using physical intimacy to avoid looking at the lack of true intimacy and honesty that I couldn't face was really there.

We will no longer expect other people to provide us with an identity or a sense of self-worth...learning to be comfortable with my partner's emotions, allowing him to be sad or depressed without immediately feeling it must be something that I did. I am still working on this one. It is still hard for me not to mirror my husband's moods, which means that if I want to be happy, he has to be happy too. This is neither realistic nor fair to him. And although I always prided myself on not needing to be in a relationship to have an identity, I can't deny that being my husband's wife became a big part of my identity. That's okay to an extent, but I think that can easily morph into my requiring him to be a certain way and fulfill certain expectations of mine in order for my identity to remain intact, which isn't so healthy.

We will find the courage to be true to ourselves...again, something that I thought I was good at before. Over time I slowly allowed this to erode, as I denied my own intuitive sense that something was wrong. The more excuses I found myself making for my husband's addictive behavior, and the more excuses I made for my own codependent behavior, the less integrity I had, which creates a lot of shame and allows the behavior to continue.

I am fortunate to already be experiencing the gifts of recovery in my life, although mine is just beginning.

Anicca: Impermanence

According to the Buddhist tradition, all phenomena other than Nirvana are marked by three characteristics, sometimes referred to as the Dharma seals: impermanence, suffering, and impersonality. (Swiped from Wikipedia.)

All things in this life are impermanent. Our health, our stuff, the fact that we are alive at all: all impermanent. Clinging to our belief that things are permanent leads to suffering, according to the Buddha. But this is not a bad thing, or a good thing. It's just the way it is, and it's an idea that makes sense without having to be a Buddhist or be anything in particular. Our feelings are impermanent, and this is something I forget all the time. When I am mired in self-pity, or sadness, or anxiety, I forget that this is a feeling and that feelings pass, usually much more quickly than I ever expected. Good feelings pass, too. After all, that is part of what makes happiness and joy so sweet, the fact that we do not always have these emotions with us. Their fleeting nature and their impermanence are what make them such a treasure.

When I first began to learn of my husband's sex addiction, I fell into grief. I mourned the loss of my idea of our marriage. I had an idea that I was the only person my husband would ever do certain things with, that he would not have desires except for me, that he would not do things that could hurt me so deeply. Once I had to release these beliefs, I thought that I would not be able to remain in a marriage in which those things were not true. Yet our marriage is in a constant state of becoming, as are we as people. Thankfully my blinders of denial and self-delusion were removed, and when that happened I learned that I can survive the loss of my carefully tended dreams. Losing those dreams didn't mean that my husband did not love me, nor did it mean that I was not worth having the love and the goodness of the universe in my life. It did help to teach me that everything does change. We cannot step into the same river twice, as the saying goes.

The idea of impermanence helps me moment-to-moment as well. Knowing that our feelings are fleeting and ephemeral makes it easier to spend time feeling them. Doing all of the destructive things we have done to keep from feeling them only prolongs our suffering, and does not protect us from them anyway. It compounds our misery rather than allowing us to escape it. Our current situation is not the most comfortable: we are both unemployed, I am racking up thousands of dollars of debt each semester, our apartment life drives me crazy sometimes, our family relationships are not what we would like them to be. But things will not always be this way. And of course, our life right now isn't exactly miserable, either. There is plenty of joy to be found in each day, even if on the surface I don't have the things in place that I think would make me more content.

Knowing that nothing in life is permanent is knowing that we have capacity for change. In fact, change is imperative. We can try to direct this change toward good, or we can allow it to go in the most comfortable direction, which we will often have to deal with later on. If the painful parts of life were permanent, where would hope be?

Good Books

Thanks for the comments and encouragement. I have noticed last night and tonight that my eating has been less problematic. I guess being more aware and thinking about this issue has improved things, but I know in the long run I have a lot of work to do in this area. I'm sure I'll be sharing more about this as my recovery progresses, as I think food and eating are going to play a big part.

I finished the book--America Anonymous by Benoit Denizet-Lewis--tonight, and I loved it. It is very compelling, easy to read, thought-provoking and touching. One thing I especially liked about the book was the attention to addictions that many of us are less familiar with, like gambling and compulsive shoplifting, as well as the "old familiars", and how all the different stories emphasize that addiction is essentially the same no matter what the substance or behavior.

While I'm at it, I recently finished Susan Cheever's "Desire" which is about her own struggles with sex and love addiction and what she learned from research about it. It is somewhere between a memoir and a conversation about sex addiction. One fascinating chapter outlines all the evidence for Bill W. being a sex addict after achieving sobriety from alcohol (Susan Cheever wrote a definitive biography about Bill W. called "My Name Is Bill" some years ago, but did not include the things she uncovered about his compulsive sexuality in the book). In other chapters she talks about her father's addictions (her father was the well-known author John Cheever). I enjoyed this book as well, but a lot of Amazon.com reviewers seemed to have difficulty with the fact that you can't really classify this book as research or scientific or personal memoir. That's what made it compelling to me, but consider this fair warning.

Stuffing Feelings

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to my own potentially addictive behaviors, such as overeating. I am especially noticing how I eat (in the evenings mostly) to relieve stress, how I feel anxious prior to eating, how I get hungry "for" certain comfort foods (as opposed to just being hungry) etc. This isn't a new concept to me, but I am seeing it with fresh eyes this time. All of this has had me wondering if I need to look into some more intensive "treatment" for potentially addictive overeating behaviors--perhaps OA? But OA scares me a little, I have to admit.

I should probably mention that I have always had issues with food and weight. In brief, I struggled with eating disorders in my teen years, and as an adult gained weight steadily until I was obese. In the last few years I have lost a lot of weight, and am now very close to where I want my weight to be. Some of this (the weight loss) was probably an indirect attempt to again control my husband. Most of it was a continuation of the struggle I have had my whole life. My parents both have an unhealthy food addiction: my father is a compulsive overeater, my mother a lifelong anorexic and bulemic. My mother may also be a sex and/or love addict. These things are why my family acted and looked from the inside like an alcoholic home, although no one in my family was drinking. Food addiction was something I never really believed in before I began my recovery and started to wonder why my family acted the way it did when there was no obvious "substance" abuse in sight. Now I understand a little better how it becomes addictive, in a similar way that sex can be an addiction.

I've been reading a new book lately called America Anonymous by Benoit Denizet-Lewis. It came out a few months ago, and in this book the author follows eight addicts along their recovery through 12 step groups, and other recovery modalities. The addicts include a grandmother who is a crack addict, an elderly man who is an alcoholic, a bodybuilder addicted to meth and steroids (and the discussion of the possibility of chemical dependency on steroids is interesting), a compulsive shoplifter, a sex addict, a food addict, a heroin addict, and an addiction counselor in recovery for multiple substances and for gambling. The author himself is a recovering sex addict.

The author spends a lot of time with each of the addicts in question, and interviews many addiction experts. He assembles a fascinating portrait of addiction and recovery from multiple perspectives. Today I was reading about the food addict and was really struck by a passage in which the food addict discusses using food to escape emotions and how it relates to spirituality. What struck me was that what the speakers described could be considered an addiction in itself, or it can also be seen as a part of codependent behavior. In our S-Anon readings using food to manage our emotions is specifically mentioned as part of "the problem." I guess it was just the first time that it really struck me how this is all a part of the same process, and how much codependence really is not only a response to living with addiction but is very similar to addiction itself--and often it really IS addiction, to another person or relationship. I like it when pieces start to fit together in my mind.

Food addicts are familiar with the idea of eating to avoid experiencing feelings--they get a brief "high" from the actual eating, then they may feel full and sick for a while, but even that feeling allows them to avoid whatever emotions they were avoiding in the first place. I can certainly relate to both of those things. But as a codependent, I also learned to avoid feeling my own feelings, because they upset other people, because they made me seem "weak", because it was easier to focus on other people than myself. Anything I could do to help make the feelings disappear so I didn't experience so much dissonance was helpful. Certainly as co-addicts, many of us use weight gain and weight loss as (mostly unconscious) ways of controlling our sex addicts, and misuse of food helps control our own emotions and control our sex addict at the same time. Like many of the coping mechanisms we learned, they may have helped us at one time, but eventually they become more harmful to us than the original problem was, and we have to learn to let them go. Food addiction versus using food as part of codependence or co-addiction: are they any different from each other?

Anyway, tonight, rather than being overwhelmed that I have this whole other "problem" that I have to find a "solution" for, I can find a little peace in the thought that it is part of the same problem that I am already working my recovery for, and maybe, just maybe, it will get better as my recovery progresses. I hope my thought on this makes some sense to someone. It's a little jumbled yet in my brain, but it feels like an important emotional realization, even if the intellectual knowledge was there all along. Sometimes my brain just doesn't communicate correctly to the rest of me...