I Quit!

"I quit." It's not like I haven't fantasized about saying these words for years. I have daydreamed about free time and not being the person who shows up when someone overdoses. I admit, I have had those thoughts. But my core values kept tripping me up. I said many years ago that if I chose to walk the path of recovery with others, the one thing I would not do is quit on them. So, I reasoned, quitting is not a thing I can choose.

I was wrong.

I have quit. Not my job, because I love the work. But my breakdown has taught me that there were several things I absolutely did need to quit. None of them had anything to do with my job; they had everything to do with how I thought about my work.

In recovery, I know how easy it is to toggle between two extremes of thought. "I gotta stop using now" versus "I cannot and will not be able to stop using ever." This same extreme way of thinking happens to all of us. There are moments when we assess our goals in extreme ways. "I can do this and you cannot stop me!" versus "I can't do it, I give up, everything is terrible!"

Here are some examples of the dilemma of deciding whether to proceed or quit: Do we want to work on this marriage or get divorced? Should I change jobs or hang in and hope things improve? Should I get sober or try to manage my drinking better? Should I quit school, transfer, or slog onward?

How do we handle the stress associated with competing values? People love to win, but when does the effort outweigh the potential benefits of the continued effort? Of course, we can make a list of pros and cons, long term versus short term benefits and try to be logical.

But many times, our body, brain and heart have more knowledge than we can find on a spreadsheet. Stay tuned.

Accidents Happen

I, like my friend, and maybe like you, have grown up worrying about the reaction of other people to my choices. I have feared several things: disapproval, conflict, hurt feelings...but especially I have feared finding out that I might be wrong or bad. These things - wrong and bad - are kind of measurable. And the facts are in at my age - I'm not bad. I do some things poorly because I'm not Wonder Woman, but I am not bad. Most people are not bad even though many of us are afraid of being bad. Truly bad people NEVER think they are bad - so, if you worry about being bad - you can rest assured you are ok.

Now - being wrong is a different kettle of fish. We are all wrong a lot of the time. This is how we learn. My granddaughter confessed a wrongdoing recently to her Pops and me. We answered in unison, "Accidents happen." She replied, "I know you sillies." I hope we keep reminding our grandchildren in a million little ways that being wrong is human and brings opportunities that being right cannot provide.

We also want to teach them that decent humans understand that it is unreasonable to expect people to get along 100% of the time - again, a lesson I was slow arriving at. People with healthy skills are not afraid of conflict, arguments, or getting hurt. They accept these experiences as part and parcel of the human condition.

Healthy people do not need to care about or agree upon the exact same things. They care about the people they love - whether or not their views align, their hobbies mesh or they pull for the same sports teams. If different opinions causes a rift in the relationship that cannot be bridged, then the relationship may be built on the shaky foundation of the stuff Brené Brown calls, "shared enemy". More on that tomorrow.

Re-Train Your Brain!

I have a friend who is not as old as I am but old enough to make up her own mind about everything. She can drink or not, smoke or not, work or not, marry or stay single, be sexually active or celibate. These are her choices. But she struggles to make choices because every time she makes a decision her mother gives her grief. Nothing she does is quite right. She's either selfish or not taking good care of herself. She is either too frugal or a spendthrift. The feedback, contrary and inconsistent, would be funny if my friend did not care so much about her mother's approval.

My friend has a boundary problem. I'm thinking about buying her a hoola hoop and suggesting she learn how to wear it as a shield against her mother's intrusion. It's easy to poke at the mom and blame her for my friend's distress, but that violates my core value of taking responsibility for every single part of life.

My friend shares this value but she is struggling to practice it. So is it a value for her? Yes, I believe it is and I have seen her over the years develop good skills with others. But her mom might just be her final test in taking responsibility for her life. All of it. Including learning to reject, let go of, activity resist HER REACTION to her mother's words.

Yes, that's it I think. She cannot control her mother but she can learn how to practice new ways of responding. Her brain, lazy as all brains can be, prefers that my friend respond with despair just like she always did when faced with so much negativity as a child. She will have to try all sorts of new tricks of the trade to re-train her brain to stop caring so darn much about her mother's opinions.

This is hard work. It will be learned clumsily over time, so long as she practices. She's practicing and I'm excited to hear, over time, how it works for her. This I know - if she figures this out, she will be able to be more loving to herself and maybe even her mom. That's a big win from my perspective.

A Lesson of Self-Awareness

At Northstar Community, we often talk about our core values as preferable ways to guide us in decision-making. If I value recovery, which I do, I try to support recovery work. MY recovery work. Families say they find this helpful. A friend of mine discovered that he was paying for his son to visit a psychiatrist who was prescribing a stimulant for his adult son's ADHD diagnosis. Dad was very upset because this particular stimulant has been highly addictive to his son in the past and led to lots of negative outcomes. Plus, there had never been a diagnosis of ADHD in his son's medical history. Dad thought he was being a recovery ally by helping his son deal with his mental health issues by paying for treatment but now Dad feels like a sucker who is paying for his son's addictive drug of choice. What's Dad to do? He's been OBSESSED with fixing his son for so very long but lately he's wondering if his efforts are actually hurting his boy.

Dad is anxious and panicky. He wants to call the doctor and give him "a piece of his mind". He wants to yell at his son and ask him, "What the heck are you doing?" But neither of these seem very recovery-friendly. Using his core values (recovery-ally, compassion and kindness) Dad decides that he needs to stop paying for the psychiatrist in order to be kind to himself. He makes an amend to his son about getting up in his business by having access to his medical records and explains that he will no longer be able to pay the psychiatrist's bills that exceed insurance costs (Dad does pay for the insurance premiums because he does not want coverage to lapse) because it is not good for Dad's recovery. No judgment of the doc or the adult son. Just a simple, direct, clear and apologetic communication about a change Dad needs to make in order to apply his core values to himself and others.

I appreciate the way Dad is continuing to learn and apply his core values. He's even chosen to shift the priority of his core values and add "self-care" to the top of his list. He is going to use that money he has been spending each month on his 40 year old son's psychiatrist visits to fund his own self-improvement project by hiring a personal trainer and improving his fitness.

Stop and Smell the Roses

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

From yesterday, on the importance of avoiding complacency:  Over time, we actively pursue new areas and skill sets, but we don't stop the pursuit [of recovery].  Remaining alert means that we can acknowledge progress as long as we acknowledge that we must also continue the work.  

Ultimately, this is the gift of recovery.  As sobriety from the area of our unmanageability requires less focus, then our capacity to focus on other areas increases.  We are free, in other words, to address smaller problems with how we are living our lives.

There is no issue too small to address.  Whatever issues we have at a moment in time are the issues worth addressing.  At the end of the day, we are the lives we lead.  Our lives are the compilation of the choices we’ve made, the character we’ve developed, etc.  

If we simply relax and take our hands off the wheel, well, I wonder…are we living?

2021 Scott’s thoughts:

I think this last question is a good one. For the most part, it is important, at least to me, to live actively. To always try to create the kind of life I want within the confines life throws at me (which are sometimes very harsh and difficult to deal with). 

However, I would also suggest it’s okay, at times, to relax. To enjoy the moment’s where we have found peace. And, conversely, in moments where life is tremendously difficult it may also be important to relax for a few minutes, and not make big decisions, and not try to change everything at once just because the present moment is such a challenge.

So- let’s be diligent about becoming the kind of people we want to be. Let’s also give ourselves permission to stop and smell the roses.