Brave New Kitty

Hello,

I am taking a week or so off while I recover from a minor surgery. Hope to see you all very soon.

Kitty

Be prepared. — Boy Scouts of America motto

When I was new to recovery, I was lucky to have a lot of good people in my life giving me good advice. Some of the best advice I ever got from my first AA sponsor was “always have a plan.” She was talking about taking care of myself, of course, which, in her context, mainly meant emotional care–that is, in situations of emotional stress, I should know ahead of time how I’m going to handle them.

This may sound like an obvious thing to do, but to me, it was not. In the family I grew up in, I never learned to take care of my emotional needs very well; actually, I don’t think I knew what my emotional needs were. For me, emotions were all about big overreactions. Either total withdrawing, as I’d done to survive my father’s rage, or having temper tantrums, as I did when I was acting out my father’s rage or my mother’s lack of boundaries. I was also quite good at putting myself in the path of other people’s inappropriate behavior, bad boundaries, and disrespectfulness, simply because I didn’t know any better…this emotional ignorance, in fact, was likely a primary cause of my addiction issues, as escape was the only way I’d discovered to deal with how bad all of this felt.

Anyway, after I’d been sober for a few months, I was going to visit my parents for the holidays, and I was terrified about it. Holidays in my family were full of tension. My father was always at his most rageful and unpredictable. But for some reason, although filled with dread, I’d dutifully promised my parents I’d be there to “celebrate” with them. I was still far too naive to think I could say “no.” After all, aren’t children obligated to spend holidays with their parents? I certainly thought so at the time.

My sponsor spent a lot of time with me, helping me prepare for the trip. We talked a lot about “having a plan” to take care of myself. She was very patient with me, repeating her questions until it finally began to dawn on me that they were not rhetorical, but actually answerable. What would I do if my father became drunk and violent, she asked me. What would I do if my parents started fighting? What would I do if I was shamed, ridiculed, or otherwise treated disrespectfully? Where were my boundaries–that is, what was I willing to put up with, and what wouldn’t I put up with? “I give you permission to take care of yourself, whatever that looks like,” she said to me, over and over, as she helped me put figure out what I was going to do during my first sober holiday with my family.

It was a huge revelation. Somehow, her “permission” gave me the insight I needed to give myself permission. Never before had it occurred to me that I could take care of myself in this way. That I could respectfully demand better treatment, and leave if I didn’t get it. Leave–what an idea! It was so risque, it filled me with shock–and excitement! I didn’t have to tolerate another awful holiday, if that’s what it came to. I was an adult. I could do what I wanted. I could leave.

And if I didn’t leave, I could do other things. I could call someone–yes, even though it was long distance (another horribly novel and risque idea for me, considering how much my father despised long distance phone calls!). I could find a meeting to go to–or better yet, make a list of local meeting times and locations before I arrived. I could take notes on my feelings and observations to rehash with my support people when I got home. I could pray.

The main point, I eventually realized, was not really what I did (beyond taking care of my physical safety, anyway). The point was that, after a lifetime of feeling helpless in stressful family-of-origin situations, I had finally embraced my power. I could do things differently. I didn’t have to do things differently–but I could. I had the capacity and the strength. Just as importantly, I had the support of people who understood, and who encouraged my budding self care in ways I could not have done for myself. I wasn’t in it alone, and this made all the difference. Without that loving support, I could never have stood up to the excruciating anxiety that came from trying to do things differently with my family.

Since that early beginning, I have had many people help me plan for better self care, as I in turn have done for countless others. We look at patterns, we discuss how we react and how we want to react differently, we role play, we address specific people, situations, and triggers, we go over possible scenarios and what we would say and do in each one, and we give each other “permission” to do things differently–maybe most importantly, we promise each other to be available to talk about the inevitable emotional fallout that will happen when we do. Without this kind of support, changing old, ingrained patterns is very, very difficult, if not impossible. So the first part of having a plan, I think, is having people to help you execute it. It’s all downhill from there.

Anyway, as you’re trying to make positive changes in your life, it’s a good idea to stay away from old triggers. But since you can’t always do that, the next best thing is to have a plan about how you’re going to deal with them when they come up. The mere awareness that you can have a plan, that it is possible to do things differently, can itself be a revolutionary idea that sparks tremendous spurts of growth and change.

So whatever you want to do differently, go for it! Know that you deserve love and respect, and make a plan to have them in your life. Go ahead; I give you permission. Not that you need it, of course, but sometimes it’s just good to know you have someone on your side.

In Emotionally Distant Relationships: What’s the Payoff?, I defined emotional distance as, simply, “a relationship that should be intimate but isn’t.” In Is Emotional Distance Emotional Abuse?, I defined emotionally distant behavior as “cool, aloof, unresponsive, uncommunicative, and unwilling to be vulnerable.” While both of these are fine definitions, I realized that a little more detail may be helpful.

First of all, emotional distance can only happen between people who are supposed to be emotionally intimate. You wouldn’t say you are “emotionally distant” from an acquaintance or a coworker (for example), because intimacy is not normally part of those  kinds of relationships. The only people you can describe as emotionally distant are those who, as I said, should be close but aren’t. This includes friendships and most immediate family relationships, such as parent-child and siblings, although intimacy in these relationships varies widely according to circumstances. The most difficult emotional distance occurs between significant others. When we don’t feel close to the person we’ve chosen to spend our life with, it can be heartbreaking.

Whenever a person in an intimate relationship behaves in a way that masks her true feelings rather than exposes them, she is creating emotional distance. Emotional distance can take many forms, from silence to sarcasm to criticism, with many behaviors in between. We create emotional distance when we don’t feel safe enough to be vulnerable.

All of us are occasionally emotionally “distant.” We all have days we don’t feel like talking and subjects we don’t feel like talking about. We all have inner thoughts and feelings we instinctively hide from others, even those closest to us. And we all have topics we need to work up to before we’re ready to share. In and of themselves, none of these constitute emotional distance, at least not in any sense that would put an intimate relationship in jeopardy. There is nothing wrong with keeping things to ourselves, or with having an inner world we choose not to share with anybody (unless not doing so would hurt our relationship). Sexual fantasies, for example, are harmless and private, and should remain unvoiced for the most part. These kinds of emotional “distance” aren’t really distance; they are simply human beings retaining their selfhood in normal, natural, and healthy ways.

Emotional distance is only problematic when it means that two people in an intimate relationship don’t have the capacity for intimacy. This can come about when one person is unsatisfied with how much the other person is willing to share, and pressure and tension is created because of it, which create even more distance. It can also come about because both people are overly concerned with not hurting their partner’s feelings, so they tell each other everything is alright when really, it isn’t. Or, it can happen because a couple lacks a good understanding about how to communicate, about what’s important in their relationship, or about what intimacy really is.

In all cases, emotional distance is borne of the unwillingness to share your feelings with your partner. And although the one who does the most withholding usually bears brunt of blame for the problems, rarely is it one person’s fault; I would go so far as to say that never is it one person’s fault. Emotional distance is a dance that two people do together, each stuck in unhelpful beliefs and behaviors that must be challenged, understood, and overcome if positive change is to occur.

Perhaps the most interesting, and important, aspect of emotional distance, and one often overlooked, is that it is almost always done as a defense. When people are unwilling to be vulnerable, it is because they feel threatened; thus, emotional distance is an attempt at self-preservation. This is not to blame a person’s distance on his or her partner in any way. No one is responsible for anybody else’s behavior, and the reasons a person–or more accurately, a couple–feel threatened with each other usually have complex psychological reasons that both must be willing to face and address. The key to emotional intimacy is simple: it lies in feeling safe. But getting there will take effort, willingness, and desire. 

Is emotional distance the same as emotional abuse? Both emotional distance and emotional abuse are hard to define, as they cover such a wide and varied range of behavior. Some people might think that a person being emotionally distant to them–that is, cool, aloof, unresponsive, uncommunicative, and unwilling to be vulnerable–is being abusive. In some cases, this is likely to be true. But I am not sure if, in evaluating your relationship, it is entirely necessary to answer this question, or if doing so will help you figure out what to do.

Emotional Abuse Defined
Because it involves such a wide range of behavior, there is no one definitive definition for emotional abuse. Wikipedia, calling it “psychological, mental, or emotional abuse,” says it is “a form of abuse characterized by a person subjecting or exposing another to behavior that may result in psychological trauma, including anxiety, chronic depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder.” Wikipedia also says emotionally abusive behaviors fall into one of three categories: dominant behavior, jealous behavior, and verbal aggression. Health Canada, the Canadian government’s public health organization, defines the characteristics of emotional abuse as “rejecting, degrading, terrorizing, isolating, corrupting/exploiting and ‘denying emotional responsiveness’”. You can find more information on Wikipedia and countless other web sites and books.

Personal history can also be a clue as to whether emotional abuse is taking place. Both emotional abusers and their victims usually have some form of abuse in their backgrounds. This makes sense, as mistreated children don’t learn what respectful treatment feels like, or healthy ways to meet their needs.

All of this provides good beginning guidelines for determining whether emotional abuse is present. And sometimes the abuse is obvious, as in the case of chronic irrational jealousy or blatant intimidation. But more often than not, emotional abuse is subtle and insidious, wearing at people and relationships like drops of rain on a rock rather than through cataclysmic events. Ultimately, decisions must be made by the person in the situation, usually with counsel from people she’s gone to for help and guidance after she’s realized that her own powers of discernment might not be enough to make good, self-loving decisions (and such self-doubt, not so incidentally, is also a clue that emotional abuse may be taking place).

Having said all that, arriving at definitions may not always be necessary when the overriding concern is doing what’s best for yourself. There are many far more important considerations.

Asking the Right Questions
People are emotionally “abusive” to each other all the time. We are all at times self-centered, self-absorbed, insensitive, harsh, cruel, unkind, unsympathetic, unempathetic, uncommunicative, uninterested, blaming, reactive, overly sensitive, frustrated, and even mean-spirited. We all have bad days that we occasionally take out on the people closest to us. We all feel misunderstood, hurt, and angry even when we’re trying our best not to. We  all have buttons that we don’t like to be pushed. In short, we are all human, thus, we all fall short of perfection. And when we do, there’s a good chance we will step on the feelings of the people we love.

Thus, the question is not so much whether we do “abusive” things, because we all do them from time to time. Nor is it whether we are the victims of abusive behavior, because we all, at times, are. Instead, there are other, far more pertinent questions to ask. The answers will give you much more insight into your relationship than the label “abusive” would. More importantly, they will be a good indication as to whether or not you’re getting what you want out of the relationship.

Is there a pattern of deliberately thoughtless or insensitive behavior? We are all occasionally thoughtless and insensitive. This is to be expected in all relationships, and is only part of the issue. The primary issue is whether such insensitivity happens on a regular basis. Is your partner routinely dismissive, belittling, cruel, ridiculing, critical, reactive, jealous, or otherwise insensitive to you and your needs? Are you routinely hesitant to be vulnerable with your partner because you expect a  negative response? Do you feel on uneven ground with him, in a state of constantly trying to please him or guess at what he wants/expect from you in order to “keep the peace,” while he is unconcerned about your needs or what you want/expect from him? Do you “walk on eggshells” according to his moods? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then the distance in your relationship has abusive characteristics.

Is there an abusive cycle present in our interactions? Emotional abuse usually follows a cycle of tension building–release–remorse–peace–back to tension building. If you can recognize this pattern in your relationship, it, too is an indication that the distance in your relationship has abusive characteristics. You can read more about this here.

Does my partner apologize and show genuine remorse when he/she does something thoughtless or insensitive, or does he/she try to place blame elsewhere? There is a difference between the remorse in an abusive cycle and genuine accountability for one’s bad behavior. Genuine accountability will take place much more quickly after the offending behavior, and it will be a simple apology, perhaps with an explanation, such as, “I had a really bad day at work and I’m sorry I took it out on you. I just realized how tense I am. Can you forgive me?” Remorse in an abusive cycle, on the other hand, will come after the release of tension, which will usually be an explosion of jealousy, accusations, condescension, or some other form of deliberate harshness. The apology will be maudlin, more about the abuser’s own remorse than about your feelings, and will often contain some subtle element of excuse or blame. It will then be followed by a period of peace, in which you feel very close (“makeup sex” is common in this phase), which gradually gives way to tension building and a repetition of the cycle.

Even if the abuse cycle is not discernibly present, we know when an apology is sincere. If you have even the slightest inkling that it might not be, don’t dismiss this intuition–pay attention to it! Mull it over, discuss it with someone you trust, notice how it affects you. Your intuition may turn out to be wrong, but even if it does, you’ll be very glad you took the time to figure it out.

Do I feel completely comfortable and able to be myself? Do I feel safe? In an abusive situation, we are constantly in alert mode, gauging how to behave by the mood and actions of the other person; there is an incredibly uneven balance of power. We may feel safe and comfortable at certain times, for example, right after sex when we are feeling most intimate, but that feeling is dependent on the “phase” the relationship is in and is not a given, as it would be in a safe, supportive–but sometimes distant–relationship. If our sense of safety and comfort routinely changes with the mood of our partner and the circumstances of our connection, then there is a good chance the emotional distance has abusive characteristics.

Sometimes, if a person grows up with abuse and has never really experienced an intimacy where she is free to be herself without risking judgment and criticism, she may literally not know what such intimacy feels like. This can make it difficult to know whether or not she feels comfortable in the relationship. In this case, a good question to ask herself would be, do I feel as free and safe with him as when I am by myself?

And yes, such intimacy is possible–not only is it possible, but it should be a given in a healthy, loving relationship. We may censor ourselves for many other reasons, but should never feel that we have to do so out of fear.

When I try to answer these questions, do I feel confused, uncertain, numb, or otherwise doubt my ability to trust my own perceptions? When a person is being emotionally abused, one of the primary outcomes is self-doubt. Emotional abuse undermines a person’s confidence. It makes her question her own observations and perceptions. When she tries to figure things out, she may feel herself go numb, feel “out-of-body,” or emotionally shut down. She will feel fear, anxiety, and self-doubt, and find herself at an utter loss to move past these to find a solution. And these dark feelings will, tragically, reinforce the critical messages that her abuser is communicating to her. It can be a very difficult cycle to break free from, particularly if she has an abusive past and little experience with positive, loving, supportive relationships.

Summary
Sometimes emotional distance can be indicative of emotional abuse. And it can be important to determine which is going on in your relationship, for your own sense of well-being, and also to decide whether the relationship is worth working on or not. Having said that, making this distinction should probably not be your primary focus in a troubled relationship.

I don’t mean to belittle emotional abuse. Quite the opposite! It is a tragic, awful thing that no human being should have to tolerate. But if we worry less about labeling and building a case against the person who’s hurting us (as we with abusive backgrounds are wont to do, largely because we trust external evidence more than our own feelings), and instead focus on a)whether we’re getting our needs met, and b)what we want to do about it if we’re not, then the issue of abuse becomes largely moot, and we can put our energy into learning what makes us happy and how to get it. How to get our needs met is the lesson we really need to learn, and once we can do that, everything else will just kind of fall into place.

I have been so low energy this week. I’ve been sleeping a lot and not very productive when I “should” be working. I don’t know if it’s the hot, humid weather, stress, or my body fighting a bug, but I have struggled all week and not accomplished much of anything. In every area of life, I’ve managed to do no more than the bare minimum.

I was berating myself and being hard on myself for this. I have so much to do! When will I ever get done all that I need to get done? How will I ever finish all my projects? Nobody is going to do them for me, and time is running out!

But I wasn’t being lazy. My body was truly exhausted. I don’t know why, but it was. I realized, after about my fifteenth attempt to get some writing done, that it wasn’t going to happen. Not just then. No matter what I did, I simply did not have the mental energy to put words down on paper. Not even bad words that would require extensive editing later on. The words weren’t coming. My brain had simply gone on strike, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. I was feeling angry with myself and despairing that I would ever accomplish anything I wanted to accomplish. Then I remembered that sometimes, all you can do is surrender.

Sometimes, you have to give yourself permission to just be whatever life is calling you to be, even if it’s not what you want and not what you think you need; maybe especially if it’s not what you want or think you need. Sometimes, you can’t fight, nor should you. You just have to pay attention to what’s going on and do the best you can with it.

This can be a hard lesson to learn, but an extremely valuable one. Learning to listen to powerful and insistent callings, urges, and intuitions, especially when our head is telling us they’re wrong, is hard to do. We always want to follow our rational mind, even when our body or emotions are screaming with everything they’ve got that this time, the head is wrong.

I am not talking about self-indulgence, where, out of fear or avoidance we ignore our calling and instead occupy ourselves with meaningless distractions (although some of this is inevitable, too, and we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves about it, either). And how do we know the difference?

We know. We only have to trust that we know–that we can trust what feels right.

In this case, my body was so insistent that there wasn’t a lot else I could do but give in. The giving in wasn’t the hard part, it was forgiving myself for giving in. The hard part was realizing that not only was this all I could do, but that it was the right thing to do. For some reason, I have to learn this lesson over and over and over: that surrendering to callings outside of my rational mind is not only inevitable, but also the best thing to do. Best in the sense of kindest, most loving, and even most productive. Because if I try to force myself to work under duress, not only will I not do good work, but I also won’t get the rest and rehabilitation my body is demanding. This will only prolong the fatigue, thus prolonging the time until I will feel re-energized and ready to tackle my work. In the long run, paying attention to my physical and emotional needs will result in more productivity, even if it feels at the time like it will result in less.

And this is exactly what happened, just like it always is. I just rested for a few days. I didn’t push myself and just gave in to what my body was telling me. And sure enough, I woke up this morning feeling full of energy and eager to get to work. I’m so glad I was able to surrender to my self, even though it took me a few days to realize that that’s what I needed to do. Maybe next time I’ll be able to do it faster, and with less guilt and more self-love. Sometimes, that’s the best I can hope for.

I have learned that each of us enters this world as “enough”, and that “enough” lives and breathes inside me. “Enough” will shine from within, if only we let it.–Roxanne Galpin, www.traceyclark.com/iamenough

I found this great website where women share their thoughts, stories, poems, videos, and photography about “I am enough.” What it means to them, how they came to believe it, or their ongoing struggle to believe it. It’s really beautiful. It made me want to write down my own thoughts about “I am enough.”

The first thing that occurs to me when I hear this is that I want to own it. Or not so much own, but acknowledge as the birthright that I know is inside of me. I feel sad about how hard it is to accept as true something that I know is true. And I know it is true because I have had many experiences, during meditation, or being out in nature, or just having it sneak up on me while I’m thinking about something else, that it is the truth. In those brief crystalline moments when all my fears, anxieties, expectations, and insecurities are stripped away, “I am enough” is what remains. It is plain and obvious and right, so natural that I often wonder how I, and people in general, have moved so far away from it that recognizing it takes all we have and even then, it comes only in glimpses.

Of course, I’m not talking about being enough in the sense that I can accomplish all that I want, become all that I want, know all that I want, or have all that I want. None of these are possible. I will never be the perfect anything; certainly, I will never experience or accomplish a fraction of my desires. We enter the world incomplete, we get to work on ourselves for awhile, then we leave the world incomplete. All consciousness is a work in process. There is no end point. There is no point of satiety. There is no “enough” in this sense. And paradoxically, it is in accepting this and surrendering to it and embracing it that I have found the most potential to recognize my “enoughness,” which does indeed exist inside of me regardless of any external circumstances.

So being enough is not so much about becoming anything as it is about recognizing what is already there. I’m not enough to be and do and have all that I want in life because nobody is. But this is not what enoughness is. Enoughness exists beyond our physical capacities, our mental acuity, even our emotional well-being (or lack thereof). Enoughness is an inherent human quality we need only claim as our birthright; nothing else is required, except of course to truly own it. Which makes sense, doesn’t it, if you think about the definition of “enough:” it stands alone. It wants nothing, needs nothing, expects nothing. Enough is whole in itself, and it belongs to me–or I to it, or perhaps they are one and the same. I believe they probably are.

“I am enough” is, really, a spiritual truth.

I don’t need to convince myself, work on myself, or reach some point of accomplishment at which I believe I’m enough. None of that will do it, anyway; that isn’t what enoughness means. In fact, such efforts are the opposite of enoughness. All I need to do is remember, truly and with all of my being, that I don’t need to do any of these things, that my enoughness is always and already there. Just remember.

I wish this weren’t so hard to do. Sometimes I feel like there’s something  wrong with me because this is so hard, when it seems like it should be the simplest thing in the world. So I try to remember, in those lean times, that everyone struggles with it if they are able, and that to have the opportunity to struggle with it is a great fortune that I ought not take for granted.

I am enough. You are enough. We are all enough. We always have been, and we always will be. And we all already know it, too. The still, small voice tells us; all we have to do is listen.