touch with it temporarily. My husband’s diagnosis and treatment had given me some relief by showing that at least not all of this awfulness had been on me. That was good to know. But for a while, I lost touch with my insanity. Now that I knew he had been insane, I felt quite sane.
Thank heavens I continued to go to my meetings, because it wasn’t long before my insanity was back. In my periodic journal I wrote:
“I feel depressed . . . a feeling of dread . . . a feeling that I have been/am doing something very wrong.”
“I am consumed by my disease. I am anxious and depressed and my thinking is obsessive. . . . I am trying to lay low and hang with my higher power. Every which way I turn my thoughts are catastrophic.”
My husband’s being in recovery was vital, but it did not cure my insecurities, abandonment fears, or anxieties. It did not result in excellent communication between us, in improvement in our ability to work together, or in comfort with intimacy. All of those energy-sapping difficulties were still there. And this time we each had identified people and resources we could use to help us. My twelve-step program became a major influence for me.
In one of my twelve-step meetings a member said, “My therapist does not like for me to come to these meetings. He says they brainwash you. But you know, I think my brain needed washing.” Yes, my brain needed washing as well. The ways I thought about my self and relationships and how to get what I thought I wanted all needed remaking. I needed to learn to think about me and not the other so much. I needed to learn when I was forcing solutions and to stop this. I needed to learn what I could and could not control. I needed to learn that insanity was continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results. I needed to cultivate my spirituality. And the rethinking goes on and on.
In fact, the body of this book describes in detail what I have learned from this program and from my experiences as I have tried to apply this program, as Step Twelve suggests, “in all my affairs.” I have been on this path for twenty-two years. I have had the help of many excellent members from my twelve-step fellowship, an incredible sponsor, and several good and knowing friends outside the program. They have offered me inspiring thoughts that have helped to guide me to new places:
“One person drinks and the rest of us go crazy.”
“I abandon my self.”
“Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions.”
“What I need to know will come to my attention without any effort on my part.”
“We keep the focus on ourselves and not the alcoholic.”
“The evidence that my higher power is going before me is so strong.”
I also had the wonderful help of a therapist and mentor who has a deep and experienced understanding of these issues of losing your self to another. She offered me insight after insight about my self and ways to find and keep my self. My journal is full of concise, to-the-point statements she offered me to help with this rethinking:
“You have not succeeded in pleasing him so far. You are not going to please him. So please you.”
“Just act like a person would. You don’t have to get permission.”
“Find the truth in whatever ways you can.”
“Letting go is scary as hell because it involves a leap of faith.”
And I have learned so much by my work with my clients. It was their questions to me about how to handle some of these same feelings and issues that pushed me to think through the details of this work even more thoroughly and methodically and to in fact create the first draft of what is now this book.
“I felt like I gave my self away.”
The following people are fictionalized characters based on real clients with whom I have worked. The real clients are aware that they have been fictionalized and have read and approved the characters based on them. This fictionalization is intended not only to protect the confidentiality of the clients but also to protect the confidentiality of others in their stories. The essence of their issues remains accurate and clear.
Elizabeth
It is 1992. I’m working in my private practice office with Elizabeth. She is a beautiful woman of fifty-five years. She holds a doctorate degree in social work and is the director of a social services agency serving a relatively large region in our area. She is highly respected for her competence, sincerity, and reliability. She is articulate and bright and very sad. She has come to me for relationship problems. On this particular day in November we are talking about her relationship with her husband of thirty years.
Elizabeth describes a deteriorating relationship with her husband for the last five years and even more so over the last two years. “Nothing I say is right.” “I never know how he’s going to react.” “He needs to defy me, to fight with me.” “I feel attacked.”
I have inquired about his alcohol use. She reports some incidents of abuse of alcohol but is unclear about whether there is enough evidence of alcoholism.
Elizabeth is today particularly hooked by wanting to help her husband solve his problems. She is a very good problem-solver. Resourceful and creative, Elizabeth often uses these talents in constructive and desirable ways in her personal and professional life. But in her relationship with her husband, this just isn’t working out so well.
Elizabeth says that her husband comes to her complaining about problems with his real estate business. She listens and then tries to offer what might “fix” this situation. She believes that he has come to her for this. But no. When she tries to “help,” he rejects her offerings in a wide assortment of ways, all of which lead to conflict between them that sometimes gets mean, loud, and hurtful. They have been hurt, saddened, and lost by this repeating cycle of entanglement.
Today we are looking at ways to break that cycle, things Elizabeth could do differently to interrupt this deadly pattern. Yes, deadly. Though Elizabeth is not suicidal, she is quite despondent and discouraged. And though she says she would not kill her self, she does have thoughts of wishing she was dead. We know that untreated addiction can result in death or insanity. We need to acknowledge that untreated entanglements can result in the same tragic ends.
So we start to talk about emotionally backing off when these “help me/don’t help me” arguments start. We start to talk about listening and detachment. Elizabeth says to me, “Detachment is very hard for me. . . . How would you do that?”
How would you do that? How do you detach? I am struck by this basic question. I know some answers to it, thankfully, because I have been doing my own work in and out of my twelve-step program. It is both an easy and a difficult question to answer. I know that Al-Anon has given me some excellent ideas of what detachment is and when to do it. So have some of the books I have read, especially
