Motherly Priorities

Posted on October 20, 2013 by recovgirl

I had dinner with my mother Friday night and wow, wow, wow do I have a LOT to write about!  She had asked me about some items that ended up at her house throughout various moves and I happened to be traveling in the same general area, so I decided to stop by to pick them up and stay for dinner.

Flipping back through some of my early posts, it looks like I haven’t actually told you the full story about how I ended up really getting started on this recovery journey.  The youngest of my 3 brothers was in a motorcycle accident in May of 2012.  This brother (N) lived with me and my husband for 3 years after leaving home.  We helped him get a job, his license (after teaching him how to drive), establish his credit and buy his first, second and maybe third car.  I generally like to think I’m the one who turned him into the fiscally responsible adult who was able to buy his first house at 22, just like his only sister.

Within an hour of finding out he was in the hospital, we had run home from our jobs, packed a few things and set out on the 14 hour drive to get to him.  And when I say we, I mean my husband, my rock, drove through the night while I alternated between dozing and crying (especially when I saw the evening news footage of N lying in the street and being moved into the ambulance).  We got to the hospital at the crack of dawn the next morning and even though visitation in the Trauma Intensive Care Unit was limited to 3 increments of 20 minutes at specified times throughout the day, the staff allowed us to sit with him for a few hours in the morning.

Our mother arrived in the afternoon, having stopped half way to spend the night at a cousin’s house and leaving there after a leisurely breakfast and walk.  When she got to town, she asked us to meet her somewhere closer to N’s house than the hospital (another 20 minutes away), because the air conditioning in her car was not working and she could not tolerate the heat for one more minute.  And of course this little fiasco made us late for the 20 minute visitation.  It didn’t take long for me to become indignant and probably a little hostile at her obvious lack of concern.  Even during visiting times, she would sit in the hallway in front of his room, talking on the phone, telling her “woe is me” tale about how bad his injuries are, but how this was one way to get her children together for Mother’s Day, which happened to be that weekend.

She got there Friday afternoon and left on Sunday, while I cancelled my scheduled 2 week vacation to Europe to stay with N instead.  We spent one week in Trauma, one week on a regular floor and a couple of days back at his house, at which point my mother suddenly reappeared.  I thought she had left while he was still in Trauma, because her job wouldn’t allow her the leave, or she couldn’t afford to take off unpaid (I’ve been in jobs like that), but as it turned out, when she came back claiming she had a “motherly need” to be there, that she had left because she had rehearsals and a concert the following weekend that she didn’t want to cancel (she’s a part time musician, because it doesn’t pay the bills, and according to her, I just don’t understand how it is with musicians and how you can’t just cancel a concert).

At the time, my righteous indignation was on N’s behalf, but I realized later that I was also very hurt by it, because this was a reminder to me that even in the hospital, when I might *need* my mother, I would not a priority to her.  I would not be important enough.  I was beside myself.  I would rant at poor N, who would shrug back at me from his hospital bed and ask why it made me so angry, because we already knew that’s how she is.  He was right, we did know that’s how she is, but none of us had ever been quite so near death.  It just seemed to me that certain situations ought to trump “that’s just how she is.”

Aaanyway, this story has several more examples, real jaw droppers, of us not being a priority to her, but they don’t contribute much more to the purpose of me telling you about it right now.  The bottom line is that I was so angry and (as it turned out later) hurt, that I just started feeling totally out of control.  I just couldn’t let it go and in addition to the raging wildfire of emotions that I tried to suffocate with food and other unhealthy behaviors, I spent a lot of time contemplating life and death.  I didn’t want to kill myself, but I frequently wished I didn’t have to live anymore, and that’s when I sought out my first therapist.

So, all of that said, when I went to visit my mother on Friday, she was telling me about how her relationship with her new husband’s 2o-something daughter (A) had taken a turn for the worse and she couldn’t understand why.  He has another daughter (B), who never cared much for my mother to begin with.  When he separated from his wife the daughters picked sides.  A picked her father and B picked her mother.  It’s a shame that kids, even grown ones, are put in this kind of situation.

Then she proceeded to tell me that her husband (C), who is also a musician, had a recording session one day.  He had rented a piano and paid another musician (I can’t recall what kind, maybe violin) to work with him and the session was supposed to end at 3.  Around 1:30 A was looking for her father urgently, because B was having emergency surgery and my mother asked her if it could wait until 3pm.  A told her no.  My mother said she could go to where he is recording to let him know, but the news might upset him and affect his playing, and consequently the recording.  Implying that he would continue to play, rather than dropping what he was doing to rush to his daughter’s bedside (which I assume was her expectation, as it would have been mine).

She was telling me this very matter of factually, truly and sincerely not understanding why this would have affected her relationship with his daughter.  Meanwhile, I was sitting there as shocked and appalled as I had been when I found out she had left her son’s hospital bedside for a concert.  At this moment, I had an amazing revelation.  She didn’t not pick N, a child of hers, because we, her children, are not good enough, or worthy of being cared for.  It is simply that she believes music, her passion, is more important than everything else.  EVERYTHING.  That might not be what I want, or what society expects her to choose, but it’s who she is.

And THEN, since I had some separation from the situation, I was able to tell her without blame or accusation or defensiveness (which is how it went when I confronted her about it on N’s behalf) that it’s OK for her to have these priorities, but she has to understand that from the perspective of a child, it is hard to accept not being prioritized by a parent.  Especially in a time of crisis.  I gave her choices after N’s accident as an example and explained that this feeling of rejection is what had upset me at that time.  She has a right to decide what’s most important for her, but she can’t be surprised or offended when people are hurt by those choices and don’t want to be in a familial relationship with someone who puts music before family.

As much as I’ve always felt she OUGHT to know these things, this conversation revealed that it had never actually occurred to her.  It did seem like she heard me and it felt really good for me to be able to get that off my chest without any anger, or blame, or hurt, or vengeance.  Just facts.  Assertive and authentic.  She still didn’t take responsibility or apologize, but it was a good first step.

This wasn’t the only big revelation of the night, but this post is long enough, so stay tuned for more to come.

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Butterfly Lessons (recovery metaphor)

Posted on October 18, 2013 by recovgirl

Earlier this week, when I was talking to CB about the sandpaper, she told me a beautiful (and tragic) story about butterflies.

After caterpillars have spent the requisite amount time wrapped up in their cocoons and are ready to emerge into the world as a lovely butterfly, it takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, strain, pain and agony for the butterfly to get out of the cocoon.  After several hours of watching the butterfly struggle in his bonds, you think “I can help you out of there, little friend” and you cut a bigger hole for the butterfly to get through.  Compared to another butterfly, one that went through the suffering of breaking free, he might look as beautiful, but there is one key difference.  The butterfly who was cut from his cocoon and did not struggle to break free on his own, is unable to fly.  He will never be able to fly.  The struggle was necessary to develop enough strength in the wings and without it, he is just a shell of what he is meant to be.

I think the idea here is pretty clear.  Sometimes the struggle is exactly what we need in order to unlock/earn the life we are meant to have.  I sometimes envy the people who have never had to struggle, but maybe those people will also never fly.  At least not in the same way.  I can’t presume to know what they have endured in their lives and maybe we ALL have our own struggles to overcome to earn our strong wings, but either way there is no easy way out.  You can’t just have somebody hand you a pair of scissors to free yourself from the bonds.  You have to lean into the pain and work through it if you ever want to fly.

Of course I wanted to share this brilliant insight with all of you right away, but I also wanted to credit the original source, like I did with the fisherman story.  I’m not even sure I found the original author, but an adaptation of the story was posted on Paulo Coelho’s blog and was attributed to a submission by Sonaira D’Avila.

The gist is the same, but it does look like CB took a few liberties with the details.  To be fair, we were almost out of time, so maybe it’s just the short version.  In other versions of this story, the butterfly who was cut from his cocoon has crumpled wings and a shrunken body to drag around for the rest of his life.  I’m not a scientist, so I don’t know whether either of these outcomes is quite true, but either way, we understand that the struggle is what gives him the strength to do what he is meant to do.  No matter how you slice it, this feels like an incredibly important lesson to remember in times of trial.

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Diet is a four letter word Part 2 – Stigma

Posted on October 14, 2013 by recovgirl

Stigma:

The Merriam-Webster definition of stigma is:

a set of negative and often unfair beliefs that a society or group of people have a bout something

The archaic definition is “a scar left by a hot iron” and “a mark of shame or discredit” is listed next.  Don’t you love it when you can see how the archaic term morphed into its current use?  Maybe that’s just me.  Anyway, enough of the nerderie.  It’s just, these thoughts and feelings are SO HARD to put into words…

“Negative, unfair beliefs”:

I don’t remember anything else I learned at age 5 (Diet Part 1), but somehow I learned all the way down to my bones that it’s never about how you feel or what you think, it’s about how others perceive you. I started to believe the negative, unfair lies: that I was not good enough, that there was something wrong with me and that I had to be fixed.

The harder I tried lose weight, the more I seemed to gain it, but I still BELIEVED!  I believed in the diets.  I believed diets WORK, if you just tried hard enough.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that creating a calorie deficit, or burning fat (or muscle, really) by starving your system of easier-to-burn carbohydrates, doesn’t lead to weightloss.  It does.  If that’s your requirement for determining that diets work, then yes.  What doesn’t work  is DIETING.

See, I believed it was ME and I was so ashamed, not only that I was fat to begin with, but that I was unable to muster the self discipline to succeed at dieting.  I still feel like this sometimes.  Like a fraud.  I want people to believe I’m smart, dedicated, passionate and capable, but (due to the stigma) my appearance is such a contradiction to that, how could I ever expect someone to believe it?

I have always been so afraid that admitting I have a problem with food would confirm all of the negative, unfair things I believe about myself, and worse, would expose those flaws to the world.  It sounds so silly, but I was afraid my wonderful husband would eventually realize how deeply flawed I am and would leave me, if this “secret” got out.  So, I buried it deep, deep down and kept it “stuffed” away behind plenty of food.  I almost never told anyone when I was undertaking yet another diet attempt, because I was already anticipating failure and certainly didn’t want to be accountable to others for how unsuccessful I would end up being.  But every. single. time. I believed it was me.  I just wasn’t doing it right.  I wasn’t trying hard enough.  I didn’t want it badly enough.

Reality:

The truth is, there is plenty of research to support the fact that dieting, in the long run, may actually lead to weight GAIN.  The linked article suggests two thirds of dieters gain back all the weight and more in four to five years.  I’ve actually seen estimates as high as 95%.  But despite all of this research, weight stigma is rampant.

Consider this research article, for example, that states even after weightloss “Women […] view former overweight girls in a negative light – continuing to see them as undisciplined, emotionally unstable and even unhygienic.”  Or this fascinating read that talks about the horrifying perception some doctors and nurses have of obese patients.  Or my own recent experience that I should be losing 10 pounds by the next appointment, which led me to reschedule follow up blood-work more than once.

Why does it matter?

With all of this stigma, failure really just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  When you receive this message hundreds of times a day, it is easy to lose sight of the real issue.  After 25 years of clinging to the next, better diet, it’s SO HARD to trust your body, to love and take care of yourself, to trust in the recovery process.

I’ve been struggling with putting the pieces together.  Particularly, the food piece just didn’t want to fit into the puzzle.  I travel a lot for my job and frequently find myself on flights during breakfast and/or dinner time and in meetings all the time in between and I’ve been so worried about the stigma of the fat chick bringing snacks for herself, or worrying about what the other people think about what I am putting on my plate during lunch, that I end up going without food all day, working hard to drown out the hunger signals.

When I talked about this in group, one of my favorite counselors was questioning my decision not to carry snacks and said “Why do you care more about what they think, than doing what’s best for you and your recovery?”  It’s an interesting juxtaposition for me, because I’m stuck somewhere between “what will they think” and “screw them, they don’t know my situation, who cares what they think?” But the stigma has been running my life for 25+ years and even though I am starting to see the flaws in this line of thinking, it’s going to take a lot of work and practice to unravel the last two dozen years.

So today, I remind myself that I am not alone in this struggle and that I don’t have to believe everything I hear or think and I certainly don’t have to care about what others think more than I care about what *I* think!

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Diet is a four letter word

Posted on October 11, 2013 by recovgirl

I have so much to say about this, I’m going to have to break it up into a few posts, but here goes…

Part 1: How did I get here?

I was 5 years old when my mother first introduced me to the concept of “diet” with calorie counting.  I didn’t really think much about it at the time… I actually thought it would be fun.  I mean, my mother had gotten a fancy book with charts and graphs and numbers and crisp white pages for filling stuff in.  She got it just for me (I have 3 brothers, so getting something just for me was not an every day kind of thing) and it was something we were going to do together (my mother was not the most affectionate of mothers, so that was no small thing either).

I didn’t notice the difference at the time, but looking back now, I recognize this as the time I started to doubt my worth.  When I look at pictures from before that time, I see a carefree, spirited, hopeful, inspired, beautiful little girl who had no idea she wasn’t ABSOLUTELY PERFECT.  A sweet, trusting little soul who didn’t know her mother’s love was conditional.  With the right amount of love and encouragement, that little girl would have turned into a real stunner.  Confident and free.

Alas, that’s not the life that was meant for me.  Instead, food became the enemy.  “Bad” was outlawed and eating in general, even “good” food, was frowned upon (except when it came to finishing whatever was put on your plate at family dinner), so I started eating in secret.  I snuck food to my room, raided my mom’s secret baking stash of chocolate chips and semi sweet baking chocolate, and spent pretty much every penny of allowance and later money I earned babysitting or doing other jobs on candy.  I had this oversized coat and I would load the giant pockets with candy on my way to school in the morning and sneak it into my mouth throughout the school day.

Of course all of this sneaking around came with a big ole dose of shame and as my weight increased, so did the torment in school… and at home.  I knew that my weight was the problem, but I had become obsessed with the forbidden food and the comfort it gave me.  Or maybe the it was the act of rebellion that comforted me.  I don’t know.  In any event, I couldn’t give it up at that point.  There has been some research about dieting demands from parents causing eating disorders, but it took another 20 years before I knew to call it that.

I took some test for hypoglycemia at age 11 and was consequently taken off sugar. At age 12 my parents took me out of school for 6 weeks to send me to fat camp on some island in the North Sea.  My mother told all her friends the hilarious story about how devastated I was when I couldn’t find a big enough dress for confirmation at 13.  My grandfather told me at age 14 that I probably only thought about dieting whenever I wasn’t eating.  At 15 I was sneaking Herbalife, because I was so embarrassed, particularly about the amount of money I had spent on this sham.  At 16 one of my friends became bulimic and I tried desperately to be like her, but vomiting wasn’t in the stars for me either.

That is also the year I decided to leave home.  I couldn’t take the shame of the failure I perceived in myself, and the anger… so much anger (of course there was more to it than just my weight problem, maybe more about that later) and started a new life 4000 miles away as a live in nanny.  But you can’t run away from emptiness in your soul and fullness in your body anymore than you can run from your heart or an arm.

The next 10 years after that are a blur of dozens of diets and thousands of dollars spent on LA Weightloss, WeightWatchers, Jenny Craig, Phentermine, Meridia, Michael Thurmond’s 6 week body makeover, personal trainers, Slim Fast, Juice Fast, Alli, supplements, an exercise bike, treadmill, elliptical, two attempts to get my insurance to pay for a gastric bypass… the list goes on.  I must have lost and gained 1000 pounds that decade, but in the end, my public dieter was no match for my private binger.

Coming up next: Part 2, The Stigma and why I felt the only way to deal with this struggle was alone.  So alone, in fact, that I didn’t even tell my HUSBAND, who adores me and supports me unconditionally, that I was entering a program for eating disorders until the night of my first group, when I had to explain where I was going to be for the next 3 hours.

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Avoiding the doctor

Posted on October 9, 2013 by recovgirl

Before starting the intensive outpatient program for eating disorders, I had to get clearance from a doctor.  Basically a physical.  Unsurprisingly, due to my weight, my bill of health was not exactly clean.

I explained that I had been learning about eating disorders and was getting the physical, so I could start a program.  I told him how I was starting to understand why no diet I’ve been on (and trust me, there have been MANY) has ever worked long term and that I need to get through the feelings piece before I will be able to lose weight without failing at another diet.  The doctor seemed to understand and support my decision and reasoning, but when the blood-work paper showed up in the mail, his instructions still said “lose 10 pounds by next appointment.”

When I first started the program, I figured all I needed to do was to deal with a couple of  feelings, deep-seated though they may be, and the eating will normalize and the weight will fall off.  Just like that.  Easy peasy.  Well not totally easy, because feeling the feelings is hard, but since it wasn’t really about the food, I didn’t have to worry about the food.  Of course it turned out pretty quickly that the ED did not want to just vacate years and years of running my life, just because I got in touch with some feelings.  And sometimes, depending on how raw the reopened wounds were, the eating got worse.  I’m trying to think of an appropriate comparison…  maybe just go back and read the story about the log.  Basically starting treatment is like jumping into the rapids.  You cling to the log even more than you ever have before, but as you work on it you are more and more able to let go.

Anyway, the appointment date rolled around and despite my tremendous emotional advances, I had not made any progress physically.  So, I rescheduled.  I gave myself enough time to seriously work on my food and easily lose the 10 pounds.  But like every other time that I set some time/weight goal for myself, time passed, but the pounds stood still (if I was lucky… sometimes the pounds moved in the opposite direction).

My rescheduled appointment is tomorrow.  I started freaking out 2 weeks ago, because even on an extreme fad diet, which I never actually dismissed as an option, 2 weeks is not quite enough time to drop 10 pounds.  Nevermind the fact that even considering this flies in the face of all the work I have done to get over unhealthy, ineffective dieting (more about that later this week, that’s one of the unfinished posts that were leading to multitasking the other day).

I’ve considered cancelling/rescheduling the appointment AGAIN, but that would just create another self imposed deadline to get to a weight related goal, that would cause more anxiety as that date moves closer, so I have decided to stop avoiding the doctor.  I have been working on my assertive communication skills for months and if I feel like he is shaming or lecturing me, I will tell him that I HAVE made progress, even if it is not showing up on the scale right now.  And I will tell him that:

When he pressures and shames me about my weight

I feel like he does not understand eating disorders and is not allowing me to give this approach a fair chance

And what I need from him is to do the follow up physical, record the progress or lack thereof and schedule another appointment.

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The sandpaper that shapes us

Posted on October 8, 2013 by recovgirl

Several months ago, an eternity in recovery time, I wrote about finding it difficult to let go of anger and resentment towards the people I felt had treated me unfairly in life.  I’ve come a very VERY long way since then, but occasionally I still question and doubt and backslide.

One of the things I’ve learned from the internet since the dawn of Pinterest is that there is an ancient Japanese art, Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi, of repairing broken pottery with gold, making the pottery more beautiful and more valuable because it had been broken.

This sounds great in theory.  It says that there is no shame in being broken and it can result in making us better, more valuable, more beautiful once repaired.  But one of the things we talk about a lot in groups is that we are not actually “broken.”  We are not “damaged.”  We are struggling with an illness, but we are and have always been good enough to be just the way we are.  And we should be able to be happy in our bodies without having to wait until we have been “repaired.”  So as much as it is meant to be a beautiful message, I rejected it.

But earlier today one of my dearest, most supportive, truest friends (I could go on and on) posted the below comment in response to that Unrequested Forgiveness post and it was so profound to me that I wanted to share it.  Even though I may have known these things on some level, seeing it put so eloquently gave me a new perspective.  A new hope that there is meaning in everything.  EVERYTHING.  Even the things that don’t feel good in the moment.  Or maybe ESPECIALLY those things (case and point: sandpaper).  And that the purpose of this struggle will reveal itself when the time is right.

Well, when you achieve the self-love thing (or perhaps you already have) you may share my sentiment that everything – good and bad – has occurred to shape you into the awesome person you are today. You are stronger, you are wiser, you are a greater help to others. And that couldn’t have happened without those who God/the universe put in your path as the sandpaper that has shaped you. And who are we to be angry at God/the universe for the tools sent to shape us? And who are we to be angry at the tools that others lacked to shape them into better, less hurtful people? If I know that there are others who I can now proudly and happily help with divorce, or abuse, I can’t at the same time hold my abuser responsible for my pain or my recovery. If I do, what help will I be to other victims? What positivity can I honestly share if I’m busy grasping on to negative and angry feelings? If you’ve been abused, God has allowed it for a reason. And some of that reason is for you to understand and help other victims. And the rest of that reason is for you to understand and discourage abusers from abusing others in the future. But NONE of that reason is because God wants to punish your heart for the rest of your life by filling you with resentment. It’s an affront to the universe that is working to make you a beautiful blessing to others. You simply can’t carry angry baggage and God’s blessings at the same time. So getting to drop those burden bags and pick up blessing boxes becomes a joy!

UPDATE:  After talking to one of my fellow recovering girls about the difference between these two metaphors, I felt compelled to add the following:

For me, the difference between the gold and the sandpaper is that you start out whole either way, but with the kintsugi you are then broken and if/when you are repaired, the gold holding the cracks together will make you more valuable/beautiful.

With the sandpaper, you start out as a whole piece of wood in a given form.  This form is functional and whole and beautiful in its own unique way.  Then the sandpaper of life is applied and the piece of wood takes on a new, smooth, intentional shape that has a specific purpose or ability.  Some people get sanded and shaped more than others and some people never have the privilege at all, but whether you believe in God, or the universe, or destiny, or some other greater power, the point is that there is purpose and meaning in the sanding.

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Multitasking your life away

Posted on October 7, 2013 by recovgirl

One of the things I used to appreciate greatly was the ability to multitask.  Doing two things in the time it would normally take you to do one seemed like a total no-brainer.  I even read an article similar to this one that talked about how children who were raised bilingually (more about that personal revelation some other time) are better able to switch between tasks (ie multitask).  I was totally convinced of my multitasking prowess.

But as I am learning about paying attention, being present, feeling the feelings and all the other recovery clichés,  I am starting to figure out that the “no brain” part might be more literal than I had anticipated.  Some time ago, I saw this startling statistic in a presentation about communicating with millennials:

It basically states that if we did all our currently simultaneous tasks consecutively, we would need an extra 6 hours in the day to get them all done! (No wonder I’m so exhausted!)  The problem is that our brains can’t actually engage in 2 things at a time, so in reality we did not gain 6 hours of productivity, but wasted 6 hours of mindless activity, distracting us from the task our brain is actually trying to work on.  Not to mention the fact that you lose focus each time you switch from one task to another.  It’s just really disturbing.

What happens in your brain, which is actually pretty cool, is that you/it fill(s) in the pieces you/it missed while focusing on the other task.  I’m sure you’ve seen some of those word puzzles floating around the internet that show how your brain is able to put the pieces together, but if you haven’t, here’s a link: http://www.livescience.com/18392-reading-jumbled-words.html

As if that wasn’t fascinating enough, this is where habits and motor skills come into the equation.  For example, you are able to walk and whistle a tune at the same time, because your body is trained to walk without having to think about it.  This is the beauty of habits and repetition.  Incidentally, this is also why you think you can drive (motor-skill) and talk on the phone (brain activity) at the same time,  except that driving situations may come up requiring your brain, which may be unavailable due to the phone conversation, which is what causes distracted driving accidents.

If you think this is interesting, I would HIGHLY recommend reading Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habit, it was a recovery game changer for me, to realize that we do certain things automatically, even if they are despised bad habits, because it is too hard for our brain to have to think about every single activity.  It’s basically a survival skill.  But bringing these subconscious actions into the conscious foreground (paying attention, being curious, practicing and repeating more positive habits) does make it possible to replace the old (bad) habits with new (good) ones.

ANYWAY, what I was saying is that I started noticing more and more that I was missing information and wasn’t able to fill it in properly when I was multitasking.  For example, I’d be browsing the internet while listening to a conference call.  When I’m just scrolling and listening everything is fine, but as soon as I read a sentence in front of my eyes, I miss the words that are being said on the call.  It’s just like a black hole.  One second you hear it, the next second it is a minute later and you haven’t heard a word that was said.  It happens all the time with my husband.  He’ll be telling me something, about something… and a commercial will come on that I want to hear.  I listen to the words on the TV for one second and I’ve already missed the entire gist of what my husband was trying to tell me.  Not to mention he is frustrated, because he does not have my undivided attention.  (I don’t want to go on too long, because it’s already late, but I didn’t miss how this is exactly what happens with food.  It isn’t enough, because I didn’t actually experience eating it, because I was too busy using my brain for something else.)

The reason I’m bringing all this up tonight is that I have two posts in drafts that I REALLY want to get written and posted, but whenever I start writing about one, I start thinking about the other and formulating those thoughts into some kind of structure.  Then I switch, but as I blankly stare at a different page, I just start thinking back to the first.  The bottom line is that I think I need to give some attention to becoming more one track minded.  Doing one thing at a time (as lame as that might sound or feel at first) and focus fully on my tasks.  In everything.  Work.  Food.  Relationships.  Everything.

A really smart, intuitive friend of mine once said “If you try to catch two rabbits at once, they’ll both get away.”  So obvious, yet so deeply insightful.

 

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Successful does not equal happy

Posted on September 29, 2013 by recovgirl

I was raised to believe in accomplishment.  Success was supposed to be tantamount to life itself.  I sincerely believed that if I was successful, I would be happy, but I have recently started realizing that I’ve actually been missing out on “happy” because I was so focused on “successful.”  After watching the movie”Happy” (or maybe a little before that) I started questioning the purpose of what I do in my professional life and whether it will actually ever lead to happiness.

After relocating with my job back in March, the joy I used to think the job brought me had been replaced with constant doubt, despair and general unhappiness.  When I talked about this feeling of hopelessness in group, one of the other girls asked what it was that I had loved about my job before moving and as I tried to verbalize those feelings I realized that the things I had enjoyed didn’t have that much to do with the job itself.  In my previous position, there were more opportunities for human connection.  Talking to people, putting a smile on a strangers face with a giveaway and relationships I had developed with coworkers, partners and clients.  I also felt like I was more in control of my work, which made me feel like I was successful.  In retrospect, this wasn’t actually making me happy, but it filled the success requirement that was needed to get to happy… someday.  It sounds a little convoluted in writing, but I felt content, because I thought I was headed in the right direction.  I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

It started bothering me, in the grand scheme of things, that I am not leaving the world in a better place than I found it.  I don’t have a legacy.  A handful of people will make more money, the more successful I am at what I do, but anybody can do that for them, so I am completely replaceable.  The entire purpose of the service industry I support, is to make it easier for misguided people like myself to spend more time climbing this imaginary ladder towards some promise of happiness, rather than wasting precious time on mundane daily tasks like preparing a meal.  It’s the American Dream, really, but as I start peeling back the layers, I’m wondering why.  Have we just not realized that this promise of future happiness is a lie?

It seems, recently the internet (and the universe in general) has had a way of delivering the message I need until I’m actually ready to hear it.  A few days ago, one of my most favorite websites/Facebook pages, Humans of New York (which is the epitome of human connection), posted this picture, which describes my situation to a T:

When I was 20, I made a plan to get a good job and be secure. Now I’m 35 and I need a plan to be happy.

The second story the internet delivered on the subject really hits the nail on the head about that promise.  It’s a story about enough.  Realizing what you are working towards might be the same as what you already have.  I am going to paraphrase, but here is a link to a more literal translation and some commentary of the original story by Heinrich Böll.

Anecdote about the lowering of productivity (roughly translated, original title: Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral)

In a small fishing village on the western coast of Europe a smartly-dressed, enterprising tourist has stopped to take pictures of an idyllic scene involving the beautiful sea and sky, a black fishing boat and a sleeping fisherman in a red cap.  Woken by the sound of the camera clicks, the fisherman and tourist engage in conversation.

The tourist, who had heard that the weather is favorable for fishing, cannot understand why the shabbily dressed fisherman refuses to take advantage of the opportunity.  The fisherman explains that he has already been out to sea and has caught enough for the next several days.

The concerned tourist explains that if the fisherman stays out longer, to catch more fish, he would be able to buy a motor for his boat and with the increase in productivity would be able to buy a second and third boat over the next year or two.  The tourist continues that, one day, the fisherman could build a cold storage plant, a pickling factory, restaurants, and eventually export directly without a middleman and so on.

“What then?” asks the fisherman.

The tourist, who is so excited about his marvelous plan and saddened to the depth of his heart that the fisherman is not understanding this amazing opportunity, says “Then, you may relax here in the harbor with your mind at ease, doze in the sunshine and look out on the magnificent sea.”

“But that’s what I’m doing now,” says the fisherman.

The tourist walked away lost in thought.  He used to think he worked, so that, one day, he would not need to work anymore and could enjoy the results of his working years.  Suddenly the pity he had felt for the fisherman in shabby clothes was replaced with a little envy.

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Happiness is a choice

Posted on September 28, 2013 by recovgirl

Several weeks ago, when I was having a particularly rough time with work/life/my thoughts, I told CB (my therapist) how I sometimes feel about life.  She gave me a homework assignment to watch the movie Happy.  In the movie we meet one guy who shows his shack of a house that gets wet inside when it rains and he says “but it’s a good house” and he is happy.  We also meet a woman in Denmark, who lives in a housing community where people share tasks, take care of each other and are generally happier than people who are just out for themselves.

I’ve made some progress since first seeing the movie, but my first reaction was to get even more unhappy, because these people who have so little are able to be so happy and I have a dry house and all the food, clothing and stuff I need want and I still can’t muster the same level of enthusiasm and zest for life.  I felt like there were societal differences that enable these people to live simpler, happier lives and our society has gone way too far down a different path that we can never get back on track.

There is a guy in the movie who leaves his life of capitalism behind to go work in Mother Teresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying and my go-to reaction was to think the only way to be happy (black and white thinking distortion) is to walk away from everything and dedicate my life to charity.  Since that’s not as easy as it sounds, I thought happiness would never be possible/available for me.

When I talked about how the movie had made me feel in group, one of the other girls who had seen it said that to her it wasn’t about the individual situations, but about connection.  The reason the people in the movie are so happy is because they feel connected to and supported by the people around them.  Of course I also told CB and of course she gave me the sideways look and said “you know that’s not what that movie is about.”  She said it’s about daily choices these people make, to be happy about the things/connections they have, rather than focusing on their living/working conditions.

I don’t know if the awareness is being driven by an actual happiness movement, or whether this generation is naturally starting to let go of the years of distortions, or whether I just happen to have a particularly large number of friends who are going through recovery and awakening, but over the last few months my Facebook news feed has been overrun with messages about happiness as a choice, positivity, introspection, kindness, feeling the feelings, living in the moment and gratitude.  One of those posts was this video:

The big story here is gratitude, but I also recognize the connection piece, both of which are central themes in Happy.  I cried at that video, because the stories touched me, but also because my mind tried to cheat me again.  The first two people I thought of have died, so again, my mind said it’s nice for these people to have the opportunity, but I can never make that same connection.  I had to reframe that thought, because this video only provides one example of expressing gratitude.  It doesn’t have to be that intense, or once in a lifetime.  There are lots of things and people I have to be grateful about and I’m going to start making a point of telling them.

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Being Human and Causing Pain

Posted on September 21, 2013 by recovgirl

To quote Lauryn Hill (who was quoting Bob Marley), “I got so much things to say right now.”  I think I have about 15 blog posts in drafts at this moment, with headlines and maybe a sentence or two, and so much things left to say.  The topics are all connected somehow, but if I put them all in a single post, it will go on forever and I may not ever have anything more to say when it’s done (the 5 of you who know me in real life know there’s a fat chance of THAT ever happening, but I’m permitting myself some artistic license here).

My issue du jour, or more accurately of the week, is unintentionally hurting the people I care about.  My instinct/distortion is/was that people who love each other, aren’t supposed to hurt each other.  Ever.  Intentionally or not.  And the internet is apparently packed with people who agree; it took all of 10 seconds to find a dozen statements like these:

Love quotes

 

I am terrified that these statements are true.  That you can never go back.  That people will never forget or forgive the pain you caused and will love you less or forget they ever loved you in the first place.  But more than that, I’m afraid of causing harm.  If I can’t keep myself from hurting people, maybe it would be safer for them not to get close to me in the first place.  Before this all gets too cerebral, let me back up a little…

As far back as I can remember, I have been motivated by the desire, the need, to be liked.  I figured out pretty quickly that being funny/making jokes is, or at least seemed to be, fairly reliable in accomplishing that goal.  As I got older and more cynical, I also got more snarky and sarcastic, which people seemed to respond to even better.  However, when you mix that kind of knee jerk sarcasm and snark with an unhealthy lack of impulse control (as determined by a doctor), this sometimes results in severe foot in mouth disease and saying stupid things that hurt people’s feelings.

I thought I had done this after group a couple of months ago, because something thoughtless had slipped out of my mouth on my way out the door and when I thought about the reaction I would have had and how the other person might have felt, I barely managed to forgive myself enough to go back to group the next day.  I wanted to get as far away as possible from having to face what I felt I had done.  I did go back the next day and it turned out that I was the only one who had thought twice about my words.  I learned about not being responsible for other peoples’ feelings and the safety of being part of a group that has a baseline of love, care and understanding.

I’m not sure if I got a false sense of security from that situation, but I certainly didn’t apply the lesson my future actions.  I didn’t learn to think before I speak, nor did I learn to not take responsibility for the feelings/reactions of others or to forgive myself… for anything, really.  So, this week, when I once again said something without considering the consequences, I immediately defaulted back to distortions: “I say shitty things, therefore I am a shitty person” and “I can’t be trusted not to hurt people” and “good/kind people don’t say insensitive, hurtful things.”  We talked about it immediately in group and I was able to explain the innocent intentions behind my words.  We left in a really good place, but I simply couldn’t let go of the shame, guilt, disappointment in myself and panic that it would still affect the relationship with that person.  Did she really believe I hadn’t meant to be hurtful?  How could she trust me not to hurt her again?

Let me be totally clear.  The other group member did not give me any reason to believe this would be the case.  It is still a loving, caring, understanding environment and we truly left with the best possible feelings (benefit of the lessons we’d learned as a group and being in a mutual state of having to get everything out on the table), but my own thoughts are so unforgiving.  I’d like to believe that I am a good person, but I just find it so hard to accept that genuine kindness can coexist with thoughtless hurtfulness in this way.

This was all an extremely long set up for what I learned in individual therapy a few days later.  And when I say “learned” I mean “heard and am deciding whether it can/should be believed.”  My therapist (let’s call her CZ) said that it is completely impossible to be in a human relationship and never hurt the other person.  The important part is not whether you hurt someone (because you will, because it’s part of being human), but what you do afterwards.  She said that repairing the relationship after these experiences makes them stronger, deepens intimacy, and ultimately makes them more valuable.

She tried using fights within a marriage as an example, but it just so happens that my husband and I have never fought.  About anything.  Because of my possibly unrealistic belief that if you really care about someone, nothing is so important that it is worth hurting them.  If you truly love and care for them, you should be able to respectfully discuss and compromise without fighting.  Incidentally, I recognize as I am writing this, that our group discussion (before my comment) contrasted with this theory of mine.  I gained a whole new perspective.  I realized for the first time ever that somebody who loves me might be hurt by my bad treatment/care of myself.  This is probably a post for another time.

The bottom line is that making mistakes is human.  I don’t generally like to believe this, but it seems to be a well established and accepted fact among wiser men than me.  So as much as I feel like I should have learned from all the previous hurts of my life and should be able to avoid causing pain, I need to accept that I am only human.  It seems silly to say that I need to forgive myself for being human, but I was raised to believe that I should be able to do better than merely human, so letting this go is actually a big deal for me.  Lastly, and maybe most importantly, I need to trust the relationships I have developed and the kind and forgiving hearts of the people I care about.

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