Controlled Chaos Sessions 13, 14, 15

Session 13

I’m sitting in Jen’s office on the couch. 

“How was your week?”

“It was fine.”

Automatic response.  It wasn’t fine.  My week was weird.  Every week is weird.  And hard.  Recovery and therapy feels like paddling up stream in stormy weather with one arm tied behind my back. 

“What did you learn in the DBT group this week?”

“We’re talking about the Wise Mind; combining logic with emotion and the reasons we need to use both in order to make good decisions.”

“What did you learn?”

“Well, I thought because I don’t like to share my emotions or feelings that I would be logical.  But I really don’t make very logical decisions.  I make emotional decisions.  So, I don’t know.  It’s confusing.”

“There is a lot of information so just take it a little at a time.”

“We also talked about using skills in order to keep us from drinking or whatever self-destructive behavior each of us has.”

I was a little surprised to find the variety of destructive behaviors in our group.  I imagined a bunch of alcoholics, but there’s a girl who cuts herself, and a girl who can’t function because of her anxiety.  It’s not just anxiety like I see in my friends when a big event is coming up.  This person can hardly function without someone telling her what to do. 

“What kind of skills are you learning?”

“Well, my running falls under two different skill categories; ‘reducing vulnerability’ and ‘distraction’.  It reduces my vulnerability to rage and drinking, and I can use it as a distraction if I’m angry or have a craving.  In Dr. Nelson’s office I learned that it may also help reduce my obsessive thoughts.”

“That’s great.”

I think of my recovery meeting when someone asked, “How do you know if you’re an alcoholic if you can go a long time, even months without drinking?”  The response was that if you’re an alcoholic, even if you don’t drink, you’ll be obsessed with thoughts of drinking.  A regular drinker doesn’t obsess about whether they are an alcoholic or not.  It makes me think about my running.  Dr. Nelson said I don’t need to run more than 35 minutes in order to get the mental benefits from running.  After that I’m just wearing out my body or asking for an injury.  I made the mistake of telling Nancy about Dr. Nelson’s recommendation.  She’s been questioning me about my running ever since.  I know she doesn’t understand.  Her brain isn’t wired like mine.  My mind is like a motor that never stops.  It’s like a car without neutral.  There’s just forward and reverse and the gas pedal is stuck to the floor.  There’s no key to turn off.  I hit the brakes, but the tires just spin in place.  I can’t make it stop. 

In outpatient treatment, we were told that many alcoholics transfer their addiction from one thing to another.  At least running isn’t hurting anyone.  Maybe I spend time away from my family while I’m running, but I’m supposed to have some hobbies or things that make me feel good about myself.  JB and I fight about it sometimes because I stay out too long and he gets worried, but that’s not my problem.  He and Nancy are a lot alike.  I don’t know why I’m drawn to them.  They’re both so logical.  They don’t understand people like me.  I’m passionate and persistent and driven to push myself.  I just want to be somebody.  I don’t know why I let these guys have so much influence in my life.  I think I believe that they might be able to help me find the off switch to my brain. 

Jen switches the subject.

“Did you work on your list of things you can and can’t control?”

“Yes, I did.”

It feels like a great time to change the subject.  I rummage through my bag for my notebook.  I get out my list.  Jen looks at me with expectation.  I start reading.

“I can’t control what I did in the past.  I can control what I’m doing today.  I can’t control what JB says to me.  I can control how I react to it.  I can’t control my kids’ behavior.  I can control my own behavior.  I can’t control…”

I pause as my eyes glance over the next item.  I didn’t realize how much emotion this would bring up.  I take a deep breath.  I try to shove the images out of my mind from my journaling last night, but they are so strong.

“I can’t control what happened in my childhood.  I can control how I raise my own children.”

I’m silent, grasping mentally for something to hang on to.  A lump in my throat is the only thing between my stoicism and tears.  I’ve done a lot of journaling since I went to treatment, but last night was different.  Instead of putting my thoughts on paper, I was reading the story as my hands did the writing, like I was just an observer.

I’m sitting in my office.  The kids are in bed.  I’ve been wrestling with the unfairness of my childhood.  I’ve finally been able to share with Jen what my life was like, but I still don’t feel good.  I’m still mad.  I still feel like I can’t get over how unfair it is.  I still want someone to turn the clock back so we can do it over.  I still want my dad to come home after work and kiss my mom.  I still want to have dinner together at the table where we all sit and talk to each other.  I still want to have a bed time.  I still want to have chores and allowance and consequences.  I still want to be held when my heart hurts. 

I read something in my recovery literature about stages of grief.  I always thought of grief as something that happens after someone dies.  It never occurred to me that I could grieve things other than death, like grieving the fact that I can never drink again.  Jen told me that I haven’t grieved the loss of my childhood and that I won’t be able to let it go until I go through all the stages.  I think I’m finally willing to try.  I’ve always resisted grief in the past because grief is sad, and I didn’t want to be sad.  I thought it was easier to stay angry, but being angry has taken up too much of my energy, and it causes me to be someone I don’t want to be.  The problem is I don’t know how to begin to grieve.  Maybe if I can picture in my head what it looks like to lose my childhood.  It’s always easier for me to understand a concept if I can visualize it.

I begin to write everything that comes to mind.  There’s a hill with one tree on top and a forest of trees below.  I’m walking up the hill.  The whole area is covered in a thick fog.  I’m dressed in green army clothes.  I have a gun slung over my back and a hard hat on my head.  As I walk up the hill I see that I’m on a battlefield.  It’s quiet.  The stillness is eerie.  Then I see them.  There are bodies lying all over the ground right where they fell during battle.  I begin walking toward the closest body.  Though death is everywhere, there is peace all around me, like I’m standing on holy ground. 

As I get closer to the body I’m surprised by its size.  I stop and stare as I realize it’s a child’s body.  My heart begins to ache at the thought of a child being killed in battle.  The child’s body is face down.  Long blond hair hints that it’s a girl.  And then I begin to put the pieces together.  I move closer to see her face.  I know who she is.  The tears come fast and fall down my cheeks. I try to catch my breath as I see that God has led me straight to my own battlefield.  The little girl is me and the battlefield is my childhood.   I kneel down beside her broken body.  I can’t hold back the enormous wave of emotion that is crashing down on me.  I pick her up in my arms and rock her back and forth, something I know she always wanted. 

I stop writing.  I curl up in a ball and sob.  It’s such uncontrolled sobbing that I finally run out of energy to cry.  I want to go to bed, but there is more to write.  I lay the body down on the ground and pick up a shovel nearby.  I start digging her grave.  With each shovel full of dirt I think of who this girl represents.  She was the little girl who wanted to be taken care of.  She was innocent and naïve and desperately wanted to be held and hugged and touched and comforted. She was the girl on the bus whose favorite hat was ruined.  She was the girl alone in the woods with questions left unanswered.  She was the girl in her bed hiding from the shouting and things breaking outside her bedroom door. As much as I want to change everything and save her from the pain, I can’t.  I can only grieve for her.  I pick her up and hold her again and cry some more.  Then I gently lay her body in the grave.  Her little body is so much smaller than I remember. Another figure appears and is walking toward the grave.  I know right away who it is.  Jesus stands at the graveside with me looking at the little body.  Tears run down his cheeks too.  We wait a moment.  Then I scoop a shovel full of dirt.  Reluctantly, I turn the handle of the shovel letting the dirt fall lightly into the hole.  Jesus picks up a shovel and we both work silently together.

There are several other bodies each one representing something lost.  One is the little girl who wanted to be beautiful for her dad.  She died to be the son she thought her dad wanted.  Another one is the girl who wanted a social life with friends and sleepovers.  She died to keep the secrets of her family and take care of her younger siblings.  Another is a girl with self-worth, a good student, pure and innocent.  She died when she was raped and covered her pain with her drinking.  I hold each little girl while Jesus stands beside me.  We don’t talk. He just waits with me and helps me dig the holes.  As we bury the last little body, I sense that He grieves their childhood even more than I do.  I’m exhausted now and covered in dirt and tears.  I lay down my shovel and sit against the tree.  Jesus sits next to me, and we sit quietly looking at all the dirt piles.  There’s nothing to say, only feel.

Jen is quiet.  She is good at sensing my emotions.  Maybe because I shut down when I get emotional.

“I did some journaling last night about my childhood.”

Jen is still quiet.  She’s listening and waiting.  I love how she waits.  She’s the only person who ever waits quietly for me to find the courage somewhere inside myself to talk.

“I understand things better when I can see a picture.  While I was journaling I could see a picture in my mind of my childhood.  I thought grief was just for when someone dies.  I guess I had to see some of my dreams actually die in order to feel sad about them.”

A smile turns the corner of her mouth up slightly.  It’s all the confirmation I need that I’m alright.  I feel like I’m standing on the middle of a teeter-totter, trying to keep it balanced.  On the one side I’m still protecting myself, making sure I don’t get hurt again.  On the other side I’m working on finding and sharing my feelings and allowing myself to take off my protective covering.  The cool air of criticism and abandonment seems to blow every time I’m unprotected, so I cling tightly to my shell looking for any hint that I may be let down or hurt or disappointed.  But with Jen, I never feel that way.  She is so accepting.  I just can’t let go of my fear that somehow, some day she is going to disappoint me, too.

 

 

Session 14

I’m anxious to get to Jen’s office.  I had the worst dream of my life, and I can’t get it out of my mind. 

I’m in my van with my kids and two of their friends.  We go off a bridge and land in the water.  As the van starts to sink, I go into action.  Usually in my dreams everything is in slow motion, and the faster I need to go, the slower I feel my feet moving.  This time is different.  I’m thinking about what I have to do to get everyone out of the van, and it’s working.  The water rises quickly, but I’m unfastening seat belts and pushing kids out the side door just as fast.  By the last child, the van is almost entirely underwater, and I’m worried about getting him out in time to breathe.  I don’t fumble at all.  Everything I’m doing is quick and graceful.  The seat belt unlatches easily, and I grab the last child and swim out the door and to the surface.  Relief washes over me, as we all bob in the water.  I can’t believe we got out so fast.  And then I see him.  Andy is in the back seat looking out the window at me.  How did I miss him?  Only the back windows are visible above the water now.  I panic, but Andy doesn’t.  He looks calm, almost serene.  Water begins filling the back of the van where he is sitting.  It quickly rises over his chest to his head, past his mouth and within moments he is under.  His expression never changes.  As the back end of the van begins to go under, he raises his hand and waves to me.  He has a reassuring look on his face as if to tell me it’s ok, don’t worry.  He has accepted his fate.  The corners of his mouth turn up into the slightest smile.  He is saying goodbye.  And then the van is gone. 

I wake up panicked thinking I’ve lost my son.  I sit up in bed.  I’m crying.  I go to Andy’s room and open the door quietly.  I’m afraid to look.  Realistically, I know he’s going to be there, but my gut is telling me to be afraid.  I push the door open and peek my head inside.  His brown hair is sticking out from underneath the blankets.  I watch the blanket rise and fall with his breathing.  He’s fine.  It was just a dream.  I step inside so I can see his face.  He’s only eleven years old, but he seems older.  He seems more mature than that.  I’ve made him grow up too fast.  I know how he feels.  My parents did it to me, and I swore I wouldn’t do it to my kids!  I walk out of his room because I don’t want to wake him up.

I think I probably had the dream as a result of Andy’s play therapy.  I worry about him.  He’s been in play therapy for a few months now and sometimes we’re not sure if he’s getting any better.  It’s hard to tell.  For the most part, he seems normal.  In play therapy, he plays with action figures like he does at home.  Sometimes we wonder if it’s worth the money, but then his therapist explains to us what his playing means and it makes sense.  Our hope for him is renewed, and we continue to believe that this will help him deal with the issues he’s going through.  Last week during our parent meeting with Samantha, we told her how he’s been acting out at home and fighting more with his sister, Jenna.  We were surprised when she told us that was a great sign.  He wouldn’t fight with his sister if he didn’t feel comfortable with our parenting.  It’s amazing how difficult things make sense with the right perspective.

I get to Jen’s office right on time.  She invites me in and I sit on the couch.  I’m thinking about the dream again.  I can’t get it out of my mind.

“How are you?”

“I’m ok.”     

I say I’m ok, but I’m not even trying to hide the fact that I’m not ok.  Jen can tell something is up.

“What’s going on?”

I tell Jen about the dream.   I leave out some of the details so I don’t cry.

“When did you have this dream?”

“A couple of days ago.”

“And it’s still bothering you?”

“I’m worried about Andy.  He seems really depressed.”

“What does his therapist say?”

“She said during play therapy, he’d get worse before he gets better because he will have to move through his emotions, and that will be the hard part.”

“So, maybe he is working through that now.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“I’m sure that will be hard for you, too.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s probably what your dream is about.  It’s hard to watch your children go through pain.  But you are not losing him.  You are helping him heal.  I’m sure Samantha is watching his progress, but if you get worried about him let Samantha know how you feel.  You are a better judge of his emotions than anyone else.”

I’m not sure I’m a better judge or maybe I would have noticed what kind of damage I was doing all these years.  Maybe I would have seen the reflection of my anger and unpredictable behavior in his eyes.  I think about Andy’s eyes.  Jenna’s eyes are huge and beautiful, but Andy’s are deep and full of secrets.  He internalizes everything around him and keeps it there to think and ponder and solve.  Everything I throw at Jenna and Johnny, they throw back at me, but Andy accepts it and owns it and tries to do something with it.  Whether it’s his personality or that he’s the first born, he seems to have taken on all of my problems.  If I can’t handle them at the age of 34, I can only imagine how he is trying to deal with them at eleven.  I guess that’s what the twitching is about.

“Are you still running every day?”

“Most days.”

“Is that helping with your emotions?”

“Sometimes.”

“How come?”

“Sometimes I run and I feel great.  Other times I run and it makes me madder than when I started.”

“Why do you think you get mad?”

“It feels like sometimes I can’t go fast enough or far enough, so I feel like a loser.”

“How far is enough?”

I think about it.  It’s like my thirst for alcohol.  There is never enough to quench the thirst.  The more I take, the more I want.  Maybe Nancy’s right.  Maybe I’ve just traded addictions.  I hate it when she’s right. 

“It’s really never enough.”

Jen’s eyes soften.  I didn’t know they could get any softer.

“Let’s go into the play room.”

Jen stands up and I follow her.  I love the play room.  We haven’t been in there in a while and I feel calmer just thinking about it.   I can’t call it fun, because it’s still hard to talk about what we’re doing in there, but at least it’s easier to process when we’re moving around and using toys and objects.  We walk through the waiting room and into the play room.

“Why don’t you choose some objects from the wall to put in the sand tray that represent how you feel when you run?”

I go to the wall.  It’s easier this time than the first day we were here.  I don’t feel the pressure.  I think about running.  I pick up a skinny female figure.  Then I grab some fences.  I look around at all the other toys and decide I have enough.  I line up the fences the long way through the sand tray so there’s a lane down the center.  I put the skinny female doll in the middle between the fences on the lane. 

“You didn’t choose much.”

“No.  Nothing else seems right.”

“So, what do the fences represent?”

I have to think.  I’m not sure why I grabbed them exactly.  I just felt like they were the right thing to grab. 

“I don’t know.”

“Fences usually represent boundaries.  Running can be healthy for you if you’re running for your health.  If you can never go far enough, maybe you aren’t doing it for your health.  Can you think of another reason you run?”

I look at the wood trim on the floor along the baseboard.  I follow it with my eyes to the corner. 

“I’m competitive.  I like to win.”

“Do you run races?”

“No.”

“So, what are you trying to win?”

“I don’t know.  I like to run alone.”

“Why do you think you like to run alone?”

I think about the few times I’ve run with a friend or neighbor.  I feel my body tense. 

“When I run with other people it’s not relaxing at all.  I feel really tense and anxious.”

“Why do you think you feel that way?”

I look at the floor again searching the corner of the room for an answer or an escape from these questions.

“I feel like I have to keep up with them or be faster than them.  I’m always worried about our pace.  I’m worried I’m slowing them down.”

My stomach sinks.  Running might not make me happy, but I don’t want anyone telling me what to do.  I already gave up drinking.  I’m not giving up running.

“What do you think would be a reasonable boundary for your running?”

“When I saw Dr. Nelson, he had said that running 35 minutes is enough to release dopamine, which is what I need.” 

“What do you think about sticking with 35 minutes?”

“It makes me feel anxious.”

“Would you be willing to try?”

I breathe in deep.  I look at the wall.  I feel confined.  I feel the need to run out of the room again.  I hate this.  But I don’t feel like I have any choice.  I don’t feel like I’ve had choices for years.

“I guess so.”

“It might help you find some of the balance you need in your life.”

I hate the word balance.  I’ve heard it a million times.  When I think of that word it reminds me of a Bible verse I read once about God liking people that are hot or cold, but the luke-warm people he spits out.  Balance sounds luke-warm to me.  There’s no passion in balance.  Without passion, there’s boredom and hopelessness and depression.  I feel like this guy I saw on the T.V. show, Ripley’s Believe it or Not.  This tall, skinny man crawled into this tiny little box by twisting and turning his legs and arms all over the place.  He climbed into the box at the beginning of the show and stayed there until the end of the show.  I was getting claustrophobic just watching him.  I feel like that now.  Like everyone is trying to fit me into a box and shut the lid.  I can’t do it!  I’m suffocating just thinking about it.

 

Session 15

I’m almost to Jen’s office.  I drive past the Harley Dealership.  I really shouldn’t be driving this way anymore, because the temptation to buy a motorcycle and run away is almost as strong as the temptation to drink.  I was justifying my reasons for escaping until my friend, Ann set me straight.  I’ve known Ann as long as I’ve known Nancy.  If Nancy is a mentor, parent figure in my life, Ann feels like a big sister.  Ann is six-feet tall, and strikingly beautiful, which can be intimidating when she’s not smiling.  My first memory of Ann was three years ago when I was standing in a room of 30 women for a Bible study.  I was about to perform a skit.  My hands were shaking, and I thought I was going to throw up.  Ann was part of the Women’s Ministry team which I had newly joined.  She was sitting in the second row and just before I started my presentation she gave me a huge, reassuring smile.  I felt a surge of confidence and performed my skit flawlessly.  I continued helping out with the Bible study, and Ann and I became good friends.  She was fun to work with because her administrative, structured-style provided a great sounding board for my creative, unstructured ideas.  After I got out of treatment I realized I had three different kinds of friends.  There were friends who I didn’t talk to very much after treatment.  There were friends who helped our family by bringing a meal, helping me clean or watching my kids.  And then there were the friends who I leaned on.  Ann was one of the friends I leaned on.  She sat on the phone with me for hours when my depression was at its worst.  Often there was nothing to say so she just sat quietly on the other end of the line letting me know she was there.  She did more than her share of driving me to my outpatient meetings, and she even bought my kids’ school supplies while I was in the hospital, and JB was too shocked to function well.

I wrote Ann an e-mail about some of my frustration with recovery hoping to get some sympathy.  

I am frustrated with all this work I am doing.  I never feel like I’m getting anywhere.  I just want a list of things I need to do to get out of this nightmare and return to normal life, but there doesn’t seem to be a list, just endless amounts of emotional hurdles.   I’m tired of trying to stop running after my 35 minutes are up.  I’m tired of trying to tell JB how I FEEL about everything.  And I’m tired of driving back and forth to DBT group to meditate and practice being non-judgmental with myself and learning how to accept all the crap that has gone on in my life.  What if I don’t want to accept it?!  What if I think people should be held accountable for their mistakes?!  I’ve been working on this stuff for so long.  I’m sick of it!  And why do I have to do all the work?  Why didn’t my parents do it right in the first place?  JB isn’t perfect.  Why doesn’t he work on something for a while?  I am just one decision away from trading in my minivan for a Harley and riding off into the sunset.

One of the reasons I love Ann is because of her brutal honesty as she proved in her reply e-mail.

If you don’t want to hear an honest answer to your statements, then don’t continue to read this e-mail.  If I was there right now, I’d slap you.  Look how far you’ve come!  Remember why you’re doing this?  Your kids need you.  Your husband needs you.  Driving off on a Harley is selfish.  You are not a quitter, and I’m not willing to stand by while you throw it all away!

I stare at the computer screen.  I feel like I’ve just been run over by a truck. 

As I walk into Jen’s office, Ann’s words are imbedded in my mind and rather than feel sorry for myself, I feel a new resolve to keep working toward being the mom I need to be.  It doesn’t always feel good, but it’s nice to have friends that kick me in the butt when I need it. 

Jen’s office is warm, as usual.  Not just warm as in temperature.  The colors are warm.  The light is warm.  The chairs are warm.  Jen’s eyes are warm.  They are so warm I want to climb inside them and sleep.  I want to be little again.  I don’t want to be an adult.  I don’t want to be married.  I don’t want to have kids.  I’m a failure, and I should have thought of that before I tried to create a life around me full of relationships that I was going to ruin.  I don’t know why society hasn’t made some kind of testing process before allowing people to be parents.  Why would God do this to us?  Why would He build us to need relationships, and then leave us to hurt each other? 

Jen is sitting in her chair. 

“So, how are you?”

She says it with enthusiasm.  She has a lot of energy, but some days she has more energy than others.  This is one of those energetic days.  It’s annoying.

“I’m fine.”

“What did you work on this week?”

I don’t have to think long because I’m so irritable I can’t sit still. 

“Running.”

“Were you able to keep the running within your boundaries?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I usually run this 5-mile loop.  In order to stick to 35 minutes, I had to stop at 17 ½ minutes and turn around.  I felt like I was giving up by turning back instead of running my 5-mile route.”

“Why do you think you feel that way?”

“It’s like if I stop early, I’m quitting.  If I quit, I’m a quitter.  If I’m a quitter, I’m a loser.”

We’re both quiet.  I’m done talking.  I think she’s waiting for me to go on, but I don’t have anything else to say.

“Why do you think you’re a loser if you don’t run the whole thing?”

“Because… I feel like a failure.”

“What are you afraid of failing?”

“Life.  It’s not just running.  It’s like my running is tied to everything else.  If I settle for 35 minutes in running, I’ll settle for anything.  I’ll settle for doing an average job.  I’ll settle for being an average mom or an average wife or an average friend or an average Christian.”

“What’s wrong with being average?”

My body freezes.  I can’t move.  My brain has been jolted.  I can’t think.  I heard the words that came out of her mouth, but I can’t figure out what she said.  I always think we are on the same page. I think we’re playing the same game until she comes up with a perspective that tells me we are miles apart from each other.  No wonder life is hard.  We don’t all play with the same rules.  I don’t understand why she thinks that average is good enough.  Does she really think average is okay?  Does she think that it’s okay for me to be average because I’m in therapy?  Maybe, since I’m in therapy and I’m a recovering alcoholic and I have depression I can’t live an above-average life.

“Adult children of alcoholics don’t learn to separate their behavior from who they are.  They learn that if they make a mistake, they are a mistake.  You need to begin to separate who you are from what you do.  You are not your behavior.”

What she says sounds familiar.  Foreign, but familiar.

“I think Terri talked about that in our DBT group.  She was trying to explain something, but we weren’t getting it.  We were talking about mindfulness.  Something about just observing or something.”

“Yes!  It’s all about experiencing and living in the moment, while ignoring the part of you that wants to judge yourself.  You have to learn to observe things without judging them.”

I look at her, but I’m not really looking at her.  I’m still thinking about whether being average is okay.  I was raised with perfection.  Our house was a wreck, but my dad worked on everything until it was perfect. 

I’m 10 years old.  We’re going to my cousin’s house.  It’s about an hour-and-a-half away.  I’m really excited.  They have a cool log cabin house and lots of land.  We play in the woods and drive their jeep and four-wheeler around.  We play hide and seek and build forts.  We were supposed to leave a couple hours ago, but my dad is cleaning out his van.  He doesn’t just clean it; he takes every single thing he has out of the van, carpet rolls, tool boxes, jackets, blankets, crates, cans, boards.  He has a small village in the back of his van.  Once he takes everything out, he puts it back in like a puzzle.  Everything seems to have a place and if he puts it in the wrong place, he takes it out again and reorganizes it.  We aren’t allowed in the van until every tool and box and crate and piece of carpet are perfectly placed.  My brothers and I go play, because we know it will be a long time before we actually leave. 

I guess it was more than just perfection with my dad.  It was an obsession or compulsion.  He did this with everything from his office to the garage.  No wonder he drank.  If he was that obsessive about having things in order and our house was trashed, that had to make him slightly insane.  For a moment, I’m standing in his shoes as he comes home from work, and I understand why he might have screamed and yelled every night when he went from his highly organized work environment to our house of chaos. 

Sometimes he tried to show us how to do something.  He’d start by letting us help him with a project, but we could never do it right, so we were set aside while he finished it.  Or more likely, he took apart whatever we had started and did it over.  I’m beginning to see the reason that nothing I do is good enough.  I’ve adopted my dad’s perfectionism.  I don’t know how to get rid of it.  It’s ingrained in me like rocks in cement.  I feel like if I let go of it, I will fall apart, because nothing will be holding me together.

“When you run this week, try to observe your surroundings without judging yourself.  Ok?”

“Ok.”

“In order to grow, you’re going to make some mistakes.  You have to give yourself room to make mistakes.  You need to forgive yourself, be kind to yourself, and give yourself some space.  When you are able to become a friend to yourself and not be judgmental, then you will start to be effective.”

Being nonjudgmental and kind to myself feels wrong.  I feel like if I let myself off the hook I’ll never get any better.  It’s the competitiveness inside me that drives me to be better and better.  There’s no second place.  There is only winning and losing.  If I’m not judgmental with myself, where do I draw the line?  What if I drank again?  Would that be okay?  Can I be nonjudgmental about relapsing?  It feels like Jen is trying to wrestle this competitiveness out of my hands.  If I lose this fight I’m worried I won’t know who I am anymore.  It feels like being strapped to a table for a lobotomy, and if I don’t fight it off I’ll never be the same.  The only reason I’m still here listening is because of my kids.  If I had any idea about how to stay sober on my own, I would be out of here.  Jen continues talking about DBT skills.

“Being effective means to see a situation for what it is and react to it in a way that benefits you and others.”

“So, right now I’m not effective because when something happens, my reaction is to explode or judge myself into another bad situation.”

“Yes!” 

My sweet, logical husband tried to explain something like this to me once, but I got mad at him.  Now that I’m hearing the same message from Jen, it hits me that banging my head against the wall isn’t going to change anything other than the wall and my head.  We talked about this in treatment too, but in a little different way.  If we have a craving, we need to play the tape all the way through.  In other words, I have to think further out than the drink and think about what the consequences are after I’ve taken the first drink.  If I can think it all the way through, I can usually talk myself out of the drink because it’s not worth the negative results.  But it takes practice to remember that when I’m in the middle of a craving, and I want the drink really bad and I’m not thinking, only feeling. 

“So what kind of thoughts could you use to be more effective in your running?”

I look up at the ceiling.  I feel like a little kid staying after class to learn something I was too dumb to understand during class.  I close my eyes and start tapping my foot trying to think of something, but I’m frustrated, which makes it hard to think.  Jen gives me some help.

“What if you told yourself that running for 35 minutes is good enough?”

“What if I don’t believe that?”

“Fake it ‘til you make it.”

Jen says this with gusto, like a cheerleader.  I hate cheerleaders.  Not personally, I just don’t like the cheering thing.  I think she can tell that I’m annoyed, so she begins to lay it out piece by piece.

“Your emotions follow your thoughts.  You don’t feel something until you think of something.  So, if you fill your mind with positive thoughts, you can trick yourself into feeling good.”

I’m staring at her.  I feel defensive right now and I’m not sure why.

“Let’s try an example.  Right now you look a little annoyed.  Is that right?”

I don’t want her to think I’m annoyed with her, but it must be obvious.

“Yes.”

“Ok, right now your face is giving this away.  I want you to just slightly smile.  It doesn’t have to be big, just turn up the corners of your mouth.”

Everything in me is fighting against this request.  I tell myself to turn up the corners of my mouth whether I feel like it or not.  I have to consciously force myself to do it.  I turn up one corner of my mouth and it’s weird, but I can’t smile, even the slightest little bit, without feeling a little happier. It’s like my face and my feelings are directly connected. 

“How do you feel?”

I want to tell her I’m still annoyed.  Why am I fighting myself to stay mad instead of letting myself feel happy?

“It is working.  I feel better.”

“Good.  So if you can force yourself to say that running 35 minutes is good enough, you might actually begin to feel that it is enough.”

I’m afraid.  I’m afraid that if I think it is good enough and really believe it then everything will be good enough and I won’t stand out or be better than anyone else or count for anything.  No one will notice me, and I can’t let myself go unnoticed.  It adds to my loneliness. 

“Have you been communicating with JB?”

“Sort of.”

I think about the homework I’m supposed to do with him.  I’m supposed to tell him how I feel once a day.  I usually wait until the last moment of the day.

JB and I are in bed watching TV. My homework for therapy is to tell him one feeling word.  I don’t want to tell him anything.  I want to go to sleep and not wake up.  I take a deep breath.  What do I feel?  I feel anxious for sure.  I could say that.  Ok, I’ll say that.  … I want to tell him, but I’m scared.  What if he’s not listening?  What will he say?  He probably thinks this is so stupid.  Why can’t I just say it!  I wait for a commercial.  I turn to him and say,

“I’m supposed to tell you how I feel.”

He turns away from the TV and looks at me.  He looks confused.  He turns off the TV. 

“Ok.”

“You know, for therapy, I’m supposed to tell you how I feel at least once a day.”

“I didn’t know that.”

I’m messing this up.  I didn’t start very well.

“Well, yeah, I’m supposed to tell you how I feel so I can start figuring out how I feel and communicate with you.”

“…what do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know yet.  Just hang on.”

I breathe again.

“Tonight I feel anxious.”

“Why do you feel anxious?”

His eyebrows are raised and he looks defensive.  I didn’t want to say more than that.  I’m done. 

“I don’t know.  I’m just saying it.  You don’t have to say anything.”

"Ok.”

He looks at me to be sure that’s all he needs to say.  I wish he would just watch TV again.  I hate this.  What’s he supposed to say?  I feel like a little kid.   

He looks like he’s about to break something.  I think he is.  It’s like we’re both trying to fit pieces of my porcelain vase back together after it was destroyed in my childhood.  The pieces are fragile and delicate and I don’t know exactly where they go.  I wanted to put it back together myself, but I’m supposed to let him help me.  So I’m trying to let him help me.  I’m just afraid he’ll break something.

“How did you communicate with him?”

“I told him how I felt one night.”

“Wow!  That is big!  Do you get that?  That is a big step!”

I smile slightly.  I don’t want to smile too wide.  It always surprises me when she gets excited about something I did.  It feels good.  But I don’t want to get too comfortable.  I’m always waiting for the “but” statement to explain the things I didn’t do right, but they never come.  I feel proud now that I shared.  I feel brave.  It sounds silly when I think of it.  But I still feel like I did a good job, like it was good enough.