Brave New Kitty

When you grow up in an invalidating environment—that is, one in which you aren’t valued and appreciated, whatever form that may take—it’s likely you struggle to “feel heard.” Furthermore, it’s likely you struggle with it without even knowing what it is. But feeling heard is one of the most important things a person needs to feel safe, nurtured, respected, and loved. It’s the very cornerstone of connection and the basis of all meaningful human interaction.

Actually, you don’t need to come from an invalidating background to not understand this concept; feeling heard is a precious commodity in most circles. But people who’ve had invalidating childhoods are likely to have a harder time identifying the issue and doing something about it than those with more supportive backgrounds.

What is feeling heard? Feeling heard is pretty much what it sounds like: somebody makes the effort to really hear what you’re saying, with no agenda other than understanding what you’re about. Feeling heard is just another way of saying feeling valued, appreciated, and respected, of feeling like you really matter. Hearing and feeling heard means we are fully present with another person.

So simple, yet so rare.

The world is full of people interacting, conversing, and having relationships, but not really seeing and hearing each other the way we all desire—it’s innate—to be seen and heard and appreciated for who we are. So full, in fact, it’s an epidemic: many people go through their entire lives without feeling heard or trying to hear others. It’s a tragic vicious cycle: they don’t know what a real connection feels like, so it’s never occurred to them to find out. Their conversations rarely leave the superficial realm, and strong feelings are comfortably expressed only during professional sports and Hollywood movies. They might sense there’s something missing, but they don’t know what. They may label it depression, and go on medication; they may call it a mid-life crisis, and get a divorce or have another baby; they may think they need an adventure, and have an affair; they may become addicts, to numb away the emptiness. All of these “cures” miss the point, which is that it is our own narcissism we must challenge, to the best of our ability, if we are to ever find joy and satisfaction. Because one of the classic symptoms of narcissism (which really just means “undeveloped”) is the inability to be present, not only with other people, but also with ourselves.

The noise in most people’s heads is so loud, you see, it prevents us from really hearing each other. We’re all so concerned with what other people are thinking about us—that’s our narcissism—that we aren’t able to hear what they’re really saying, which is almost always some version of wondering what we’re thinking about them. We can’t quiet our thoughts down enough to truly pay attention, most likely because we never learned how. If you grew up in an invalidating environment, then this was true for your parents, and your parents’ parents, and it’s true for you, too. In this sense, you can learn not to take your parents’ lack of positive attention (whatever form it took) too personally; it’s a human fallibility with which almost all of us are afflicted unless we seek actively to change it. That said, not making the effort to hear is the most fundamental way parents are disrespectful to their children and human beings are disrespectful to each other in general; it causes more pain, with its subtlety and intangibility, than all other cruelties and abuses combined. If people made the effort to hear each other, the world would be a much, much, much happier place.

Not feeling heard is so ubiquitous that, as I said, you may not even know what it is you’re struggling with. When spouses are locked in a power struggle, it’s never about the bills or the sex or the kids. It’s about trying to make your partner hear you. Actually, it’s really about trying to make your parents hear you. There is a direct correlation between the amount of invalidation you grew up with and how much you struggle with being heard as an adult. Not feeling heard is one of the core issues, if not the core issue, that compels us to re-create bad childhood situations so we can solve them in our adulthood; the worse the childhood situation, the greater the adult struggle. These struggles usually occur below the level of conscious awareness, or at least, they do until we identify their true nature.

Because feeling heard can be such an intangible thing, sort of like oxygen, it can be hard to identify. Chances are you got all the way through childhood without feeling heard by your family or even having an inkling what that means or what it would feel like (in fact, chances are if they didn’t hear you as a child, they still don’t hear you today). If that were the case, then of course it would be intangible and hard to identify! The first time you really notice it, perhaps with a therapist, it may evoke all sorts of weird feelings: sadness, grief, shame, anger, joy, attachment (feeling heard is such a powerful experience, it’s one of the reasons people become attracted to their therapists). I would even say that therapy’s greatest value is the modeling of a validating relationship. By spending time with somebody who truly hears you, you learn what it feels like, and two things start to happen. First, you start seeking out people who hear you while slowly weeding out those who don’t. Second, you start hearing other people. Both will increase your ability to stay present not only with others but also with yourself, and both will dramatically improve your quality of life.

It doesn’t have to be a therapist who models feeling heard to you. You may get lucky and have a great boss, friend, support group, or significant other who can teach you the importance of hearing and feeling heard. It doesn’t matter who the messenger is. All that matters is that you get the message so you can start to create the relationships you want for yourself and be present in your own life. And remember, it isn’t possible to become perfect at staying present, with others or with yourself. We all have noise in our heads that prevents this and you must never, ever flagellate yourself when you fall short. All you can do is be aware and try your best.

I’ve gone back and forth here between hearing and feeling heard because generally, they’re a package deal. If you’re prone to having relationships with people who don’t hear you, then you’re likely to be unable to hear other people, as well. This is nothing to despair or feel bad about. It’s simply something to be aware of. It’s your own stuff and as always, that’s good news, because it means you have the power to change it. Yay!

Hearing and feeling heard are simple concepts, but they require a willingness to confront your narcissism that can be daunting. Having the courage to make the effort says a lot about your character.

It being Christmas, I thought it might be interesting to write about the real meaning of the holiday. What is that, spiritually speaking?

If you are a practitioner of the Christian religion, you will have an instant answer: Christ-mass is the day on which we celebrate the birth of the savior, the one who sacrificed himself for the salvation of all mankind (those who choose to believe in him, anyway, and if you don’t, watch out) so that we might live in eternal bliss with our Heavenly Father.

That sounds nice, doesn’t it? So nice that people have believed it (or more accurately in most cases, claimed to believe it) for a couple of thousand years now. But that’s not what Jesus is really about. And believing that it is has been a gross misinterpretation of who he was and what his message for mankind really was.

I realize I’m taking on the entire Christian establishment in saying this. I find it quite humorous that all the Christian factions—from the Catholics down to the speaking-in-tongues evangelists—could unite against my blasphemy. But I’m not the first to say this, and I certainly won’t be the last: Jesus was a Buddha.

A Buddha is a person who has attained enlightenment. Many believe that Jesus traveled to the Far East, India or China, and there learned about Hinduism, about the teachings of Gautama Buddha. While studying these teachings, Jesus had a big whammy, a peak experience, a full insight into his true nature. Having had such a tremendous experience, he understood the importance of sharing it, of trying to help other people understand their true nature, too. Unfortunately, his culture wasn’t very open to this message. But people intuited that what he had to say was important, and so, after a couple of hundred years of myth-building, Christianity was born.

Christian myth and symbolism is almost entirely recycled material from earlier religions. The Buddha, it was said, was born out of his mother’s side, at her heart chakra; this turned into the virgin birth of Jesus. The Madonna imagery also pre-dates Christianity, as does the halo, seen above the heads of saints in ancient depictions of the sacred, which is symbolic of the seventh chakra that represents the soul or higher self. I could go on, but I’d have to do some research, and I think I’ve made my point, anyway, which is that none of the stories surrounding Jesus are meant to be taken literally (and that doing so diminishes the importance of his life and message).

This includes the salvation myth, perhaps most of all. In the myth-building frenzy of the hundred or so years following his death, Jesus was promoted to god status, and salvation became personified in him. Being a Christian meant believing that Jesus was your personal savior and the savior of all mankind. Or more to the point, that we are evil sinners incapable of saving ourselves and if we don’t believe in him, we’re doomed to eternal suffering.

Nothing could be further from Jesus’ true message.

Jesus’ experience was no greater or less than the Buddha’s. They were, in fact, identical. And his main teaching, his primary message, was that we, too, every one of us, are capable of having this experience.

Jesus was not our savior. Rather, he showed us how to be our own saviors. He was an example of what our own internal journey should look like; he was not preaching that it was all about him.

So the true spirit of Christmas, then, is to recognize your own potential. Your own humble beginnings, your own pain and persecution, and how they bring you closer to owning your own Christ-nature. The greatest gift you can give the world is your own enlightenment. Jesus understood this, and if we want to honor his life and teachings, we should try to understand it, too.

For reasons I explained last year in Getting Through the Holidays, I am not a big holiday person. I have pretty much unplugged from all the pressure to overspend, overshop, and overeat. I don’t get together with any people I don’t want to get together with. I don’t put up a Christmas tree. And I am lucky to have a partner who feels exactly as I do about the season.

This year, I haven’t done a single moment of shopping, other than at the grocery store. I made all the gifts we gave, and it feels terrific. Jim has nieces and nephews to shop for, but I’ve decided to leave that up to him; my attempts to help him only make him anxious, anyway. He’ll probably do his typical guy thing and go out on Christmas Eve day. I may go with him just to watch the spectacle of him and thousands like him rushing around in a panic. But that would be the only shopping I’ll do this year. (Jim and I don’t exchange gifts on Christmas. We’ll splurge on a nice meal.)

Anyway, it seems like this year I’ve sidestepped all the holiday stress completely. And this is odd, because usually I struggle with depression this time of year; if you read my post from last year, you’ll understand why. But I don’t seem to have any of that this year. Could it be I’ve finally healed from all that old hurt and pain?

I don’t know. I just haven’t given it a lot of thought, I guess, and then it occurred to me, “I should be depressed by now. What’s going on?”

I don’t know! But anyway, I’m glad I’m not. Depressed, I mean. I’m glad I’ve been able to ignore and enjoy the season exactly as I want to, in a way that feels completely right to me. Also, I haven’t felt my usual cynicism for people who do spend the season doing all the things I’m not. I just feel completely unhooked from all of it. Sure, I’m sad I don’t have a family to spend time with, but that’s ongoing; this year, the season hasn’t heightened it a bit.

I suppose my point is that this is an unexpected gift from the Universe, and when such a gift comes, in all its wonder and delight, it’s important to accept it and not question it too much.

This awareness itself is a gift. Noticing when things go right and not questioning it is such a wonderful way to see the world. As most of us with an abused little kid living inside of us do, I tend to wait for the other shoe to drop whenever something good happens. Or, something good will happen, but I’ll only notice it in retrospect, after the fact, and feel sad that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate it while it was occurring.

One of the coolest things about this awareness is the sense of reciprocity I’ve been feeling. When the Universe gives me wondrous gifts that I am able to notice and appreciate, I want to give something back. This has created a feeling of openness and spaciousness, gratitude, and lightness of being that words can’t really describe.

If you’re struggling with the holidays, you’re not alone. My heart and good will go out to you. Give yourself the gift of self-love. Take care of yourself. Treat yourself to something you’ll enjoy. And try to notice what’s right as well as what’s wrong in your world. It’s there, I promise.

I’ve felt “different” my whole life. As a child, I wasn’t very good at making friends and I got teased a lot. As a teenager, I was painfully shy and awkward. I hated school and felt like a complete outsider, and continued to get teased. (Thank god for drugs and older boyfriends.) As a young adult, my social life revolved around drugs and alcohol. I believed myself incapable of attending social functions without social lubrication. So I mostly went to bars, keggers, and rock concerts. I had a few friends, mostly buds I got high with, and the crowd I hung with depended on my boyfriend du jour. I was never good at finding my own people. I was, am, and always will be an introvert.

There is no shame in being an introvert. As my dear therapist Richard used to say, it just means your primary role at parties is “listener.” And that’s absolutely true, if that’s all there is to it. That wasn’t the case for me.

For me, connecting with people usually meant a terrible case of self-hatred afterwards. I’d replay the tape in my head endlessly and beat myself up mercilessly for all the stupid things I said or did. I would lay in bed and cringe until I passed out, then ruminate over whatever I could remember the next day. The raw feeling would ease after a while, but it would inevitably happen all over again the next time I tried to connect with someone. And this was the rule, not the exception; to this day I wonder how I got past that and made the friends I was able to make.

After I got sober, this problem only got worse. I was engaging in the same behaviors—not knowing how to do anything differently yet—but being sober made the emotional pain more acute. Anything could set me off: sharing at AA meetings, a therapy session, an interaction at work. The simplest conversation could cause me to feel awful about myself for days, isolate, and question my worth as a human being. The first few times I went through this, I understood why the relapse rate is so high—who wants to feel like this?? But for me, relapse wasn’t an option. I knew I’d found something better than I’d had no matter how bad I was feeling, and I intuited that these awful feelings were the reason I became an addict in the first place. My only option was to figure out what was going on.

I’d first learned about shame back when I was reading Adult Children of Alcoholics books in my early 20s. Now that I was sober and dealing with my issues in earnest, I returned to that idea. I found a few great books on the subject (Healing the Shame that Binds You, by John Bradshaw, and Shame: The Power of Caring, by Gershen Kaufman) and discovered that shame was, indeed, my issue.

Shame is what causes you to feel inferior, less-than, and unworthy. It’s more than an emotion. It’s a belief system that you are somehow a bad, undeserving, unlovable person. If you believe this about yourself, it makes perfect sense that when you interact with other people, the voice in your head tells you you don’t measure up.

What a terrible place to be.

If there was one word I would have used to describe myself, it was unlovable. I really believed that anybody who got to know me couldn’t possibly love me. And it was this belief, and the resulting negative emotions, that caused me to go that dark place, not introversion or feeling different. Introversion is merely a personality type, a description with neither a positive or negative connotation. Feeling different is part of the human condition, also neither good nor bad. Neither of these were the cause of my bad connecting experiences and sense of isolation. It was shame.

I’m not saying that if I hadn’t been shame-based, all my reaching out experiences would have been positive. That is not possible. But because I was so shameful, it was easy for me to blame myself whenever things went awry. Of course it was my fault. I’m unlovable. I’m a bad person. I’m fundamentally incapable of forming healthy relationships with other human beings. And I don’t deserve good things.

It took me a long time and a lot of work to get past these beliefs. Oh, they’re still in there, but they’re no longer my default view. I have to really be jarred to go there. But when I do, I don’t go as deep and I don’t stay as long. I no longer assume my unlovability is the problem, and I now have tools to take care of myself. The easiest and most helpful one is telling a safe person how I’m feeling. So simple, yet so powerful. And it makes sense, because if shame is what makes us feel isolated, then breaking that isolation should alleviate it.

If you grew up in an invalidating family (whether addiction was involved or not), there’s a good chance you have shame issues. If so, you must address them if you want to feel better about yourself. Shame, the belief that we are unlovable, is a lie. And it’s no way to go through life. If you have any of these symptoms:

• feeling out-of-body when talking to someone and/or chastising yourself afterward,
• being unable to look a person in the eye,
• feeling isolated, hopelessly different, or unlovable,

then you probably have some shame issues. Educate yourself (read!), deal with your addictions, find a good therapist, and develop a support network. Having even one person you feel safe with can make all the difference in the world.

If you have shame issues, connecting with people can feel like a big, scary, terrible burden. It’s easier to remain aloof. But the real burden is how bad you feel about yourself; efforts to connect merely exacerbate that underlying truth. When you deal with that truth, connecting will take on an entirely different dynamic, one full of promise and possibility. It won’t always feel good, and you won’t always make wise choices, but when you can flub it up and feel okay about yourself anyway, it will make all the effort worthwhile.

The old adage “Idle time is the devil’s workshop” really applies to kicking an addiction. I had good intentions to quit getting high so many times, but once I was sans drugs, I found myself climbing the walls with anxiety, misery, and boredom. It was a recipe for relapse. Then after I kicked getting high, I went through very similar processes with tobacco, then with caffeine, then with sugar; my anxiety would get the best of me, and I found myself digging cigarettes or Oreos out of the trash on more than one occasion. Ugh. Getting sober—that is, kicking an addiction, whatever it may be—is not for the faint of heart.

If you’ve tried numerous times to change and can’t, there are one of two things going on:

• You don’t really want to change (see The Means/End Dichotomy for a discussion about this)
• You haven’t made a plan (read on).

To accomplish anything, you must have a plan. Kicking an addiction is no exception. Self-awareness, as always, is key, and it is within this context that I offer the following suggestions, all of which I found essential to maintaining sobriety. The details may not all work for you but if you grasp the main concepts, then you can substitute what does and know that you’re not setting yourself up for failure.

Understand Your Addiction
Addictions aren’t there by accident; they don’t happen in a vacuum. We develop addictions, in a nutshell, to deal with our anxiety, usually when we don’t have better self-care tools available (which explains why children who grow up with poor parenting are so much more likely to develop addictions). So when trying to get sober, it isn’t the idle time that’s the problem, it’s the anxiety. Once in the habit of soothing our anxiety with compulsive behavior, it can be incredibly difficult to stop. We like it. It feels good. And it’s often the only means we have for dealing with our anxiety (because addiction is so powerful, addicts tend to stop looking for other tools). It’s only when we begin to realize that our habit is causing more problems than it’s solving that we even consider quitting.

If we’re not aware of the purpose addiction serves, it’s easy to underestimate what’s required to kick it. We tell ourselves it’s time to stop and we make an effort, but if we don’t have an alternate plan to soothe our anxiety, we leave our poor psyches dangling in the breeze. It makes perfect sense that our anxiety would become so overwhelming, we would run, not walk, back to the only way we know how to alleviate it.

It’s important to understand the true nature of your addiction—that it is a way to soothe anxiety—because if you understand it, then you can formulate a plan to take care of yourself while going through the excruciating transition to sobriety. (For more info, see The Heart of Addiction: A New Way to Look at Addiction, and also Dodes’ fabulous book.)

Keep Yourself Busy
If you want to stay sober, you must immerse yourself in activities that both 1) distract you from the urge to use, and 2) actively challenge your addiction. Distractions include getting together with friends, exercising, going for walks, going to the movies, and working. Actively challenging your addiction includes going to 12 Step meetings, reading books about your issues, journaling, and talking to other addicts (preferably sober or struggling to stay sober).

Both categories are necessary: You have to find things to do that you enjoy because it’s important to find new ways to feel good and good about yourself. You also have to address your addiction directly because doing so loosens its hold over you. 12 Step meetings are one of the easiest and effective ways of doing this. They’re everywhere (and if you can’t find one that addresses your particular addiction, just go to an open AA meeting: all addictions are the result of the same impulse, anyway), and they provide a structured, supportive environment for getting sober. You may not agree with all of their principles (I certainly don’t), and you probably won’t like all the people you meet there, but if you have a higher goal—sobriety—you’ll put up with it. And it’s fine to try a few groups until you find a good fit, but don’t use this as an excuse to give up. As long as you’re not being ignored, ridiculed, or hit on, it’s probably a decent meeting.

Ditto all other groups (Rational Recovery, SMART Recovery, therapy, etc.).

Stay Connected
One of the primary aspects of addiction is a sense of isolation. All addicts feel isolated. They believe nobody has ever gone through what they’re going through and nobody will understand. In one sense, this is true. Everybody is unique and our experiences are ours alone. And yet, we all share a common humanity that is remarkably similar. Both views are correct, and we can choose which one we take. Because addiction is such an isolating experience, one entirely focused on what makes us different, addicts must get out of themselves and connect with other people if they want to get sober. We must actively learn to choose the other view.

For me, this was one of the hardest things to do. I was absolutely convinced that I was different and that I would never fit in with any group anywhere. (“I’m not a joiner.”) But when I went to my court-ordered AA meetings, I felt better, even if I hated them and most of the people I met there. Because most of me really wanted to be sober, I focused on feeling better rather than on everything I hated. I wasn’t aware of this at the time but in retrospect, I think it was a major factor in staying sober. I met a couple of women who I actually liked and who I had a few things in common with, and suddenly I had a little support network going. Of course, I didn’t call them (I’m not a caller, either), but I got lucky: they called me.

Anyway, if you don’t have a safe, supportive person to talk to about your issues, a 12 Step meeting is a great place to find one. It doesn’t have to be a sponsor (that can feel like a lot of pressure) or even someone you want to have a long-term connection with. The most important thing is to pick someone who feels non-threatening and whom you think would be easy to connect with. Maybe a kind middle-aged lady, or someone who looks as lonely and needy and scared as you feel. If you don’t find someone at one meeting, go to another. Keep looking until you find someone to exchange phone numbers with, or force yourself to settle for somebody less than perfect if you must. Just make sure you connect with at least one person you will actually call. Plan a specific time to phone her, when she’ll be expecting your call so you won’t fret about bothering her. Or, if you know you won’t make the call, ask her to call you. And remember that at this point, it’s the reaching out that matters, not the quality of the connection. Reaching out will bring you out of your isolation and you can feel good about making the effort, even if the actual connection is less than you’d hoped for.

If you have a safe person in your life, good for you. (By the way, this excludes people with whom you have emotional baggage, which usually means most family members.) Make use of her. Tell her what you’re going through and ask for her help. If she’s truly safe and supportive, she’ll be willing to do whatever she can.

Another thing you can do is have a couple of hotline numbers handy. Most cities have a 24/7 AA hotline, manned by rotating volunteers, meant specifically for people struggling with addiction. And many employers participate in an Employee Resource Program (ERP) that you can call in emergencies. There are many other hotlines available for people in emotional pain. Check your local listings. Don’t be afraid to use them if necessary. That’s what they’re there for.

Yet another resource is the Internet. There are thousands of sober chat rooms out in cyberspace where you can talk freely about your struggles. There are also online 12 Step meetings going on 24 hours a day. However, be aware that you can run into a lot of not-so-safe people online. Make use of the resource if it’s a good fit for you, but be careful.

Finally, this is probably obvious, but avoid people you get high with, unless they’re actively trying to get sober too and you can help each other.

Get Plenty of Rest
Getting enough sleep when you’re trying to get sober can be a real problem because you’re in the habit of drinking or smoking yourself into oblivion; you’ve essentially forgotten how to sleep without your drug. This is dangerous because when you’re overtired, it’s easy to give up and slip into old habits. Therefore, you must have some plan of action to ensure you get enough sleep.

Exercising is one way to make your body tired enough to sleep. This doesn’t always work, though, because you can be bone tired and still your racing mind will keep you wide awake.

Another thing you can do is buy a guided meditation or relaxation CD (or MP3 for your iPod) and listen to it when you’re trying to go to sleep. Some have the added benefit of subliminal messages encouraging relaxation and a sense of well-being. They are a healthy habit to cultivate on many levels, so consider it even if sleep isn’t a problem.

Yet another way to relax enough to sleep is with herbal tea—a Chamomile blend such as Celestial Seasonings “Sleepy Time” is best—or a natural calming substance like Valerian root extract, which you can buy now in most grocery stores, but certainly in health food and vitamin stores.

If none of these work, consider using an over-the counter sleep aid. Benadryl, an allergy medicine, is the active ingredient in both Excedrin and Tylenol PMs, and is probably the cheapest sleep aid on the market. It’s also surprisingly effective.

The point is, if you need help sleeping, get it. The fortitude necessary to stay sober requires a rested mind and body.

(And if you experience the flip side of this, that all you seem to want to do is sleep, that’s okay, too. Just allow yourself that luxury for awhile and don’t make too much of it. It’s normal for sleep patterns to change when you’re going through transitions.)

Don’t Make Other Changes
Kicking an addiction requires a tremendous amount of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual commitment. It’s a good idea, when you’re trying to get sober, to put all other non-essentials on hold. Otherwise, you can find yourself pulled in many different directions in the middle of doing one of the hardest things you’ve ever done.

People make this mistake all the time. It feels so good to take on their drinking (for example), that they want to take on their smoking, their relationship, and their unfinished college degree, too. Most likely they’ll fail at all of them. If you want to stay stuck, this is a perfect way to do it.

Don’t try to change everything at once. Focus, focus, focus on staying sober, and only when you feel you have that under control (give it at least a year!) should you take on another major life change. I can’t stress enough how important this is. Taking on too much is a sneaky way to be mean to ourselves and ensure failure. Don’t do it.

Accept the Difficulty of It
Finally, go into it knowing that it’s going to be hard. You’re going to have a lot of anxiety and other painful feelings. You’re going to stir up stuff you’ve been pushing down for a long time. Basically, you’re going to come face to face with your demons. If you know this ahead of time, it’ll be easier to tolerate while going through it.

Learning to tolerate difficult, unpleasant tasks is a powerful lesson. Not only will it get you sober, it will get you where you want to be in general. There is no pleasure without pain, no light without dark, no ecstasy without agony. These opposites define each other and are part of life. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can get to the real issues. So whether it’s sobriety or something else worth having, tolerating unpleasantness is essential to fully living our lives.

Most people understand this. What they don’t understand, and what can get them into real trouble, is how long it can take before they start to feel better. I think many people who have trouble getting or staying sober simply get impatient. They have a vision in mind for how long it “should” take them to get it together, and when it doesn’t happen, they think they’re doing something wrong, and they give up.

The truth is, you can feel bad for a long time. My path through sobriety went like this: my first year was fantastic and fun, then years 2-7 were excruciating. I spent many a night balled up on my living room floor in the dark, listening to sad music and crying, crying, crying. But all those tears were healing, and after awhile (yes, a long while), I started to feel better and figure some things out.

I was lucky in that early on, I realized that this was a different sort of pain than being an addict, that this was a healing pain. On some level I understood the difference and it kept me going through some unbelievably difficult times. I think many people who struggle with sobriety simply haven’t made this distinction yet. It’s a really, really important distinction to make.

Above all, be kind to yourself! Firm, yes, but always, always kind. Personal growth is not something that can happen with an iron fist. It’s more like a seed that needs water, sunlight, warmth, and fresh air—but it needs all of these, or it will perish.

Summary
Following a simple plan to stay busy, get connected, and take care of yourself is crucial, but it is just as crucial to understand the true nature of addiction. If you treat the addiction without addressing the anxiety at its root, or treat your anxiety as a secondary or even unrelated issue, you are bound to run into walls. This is because addiction is the result of anxiety, not the cause of it. Once you understand this, you can approach sobriety on your own terms. There are no groups or methods holding a patent on sobriety; there is no wrong way to do it as long as it’s about taking care of yourself and becoming the person you want to be. With deeper understanding, all of life becomes about the spirit, and not the letter, of the law, and our own moral compass becomes the way, the truth, and the light.

I’m not proud to admit this, but I’ve always been a high-strung, short-tempered, easily-irritated person, particularly with my significant others. I probably wouldn’t be admitting it at all except that, after twenty-plus years of struggling with it, of flaming temper tantrums and dark pits of remorse, of self-flagellating and self-loathing, of therapy and self-help groups, of medication, meditation, and introspection, I’ve finally gotten control of the behavior. I know I’m not alone with this problem, so I decided to share my story in the hope of helping others who may be struggling with similar issues.

As do most life-changing awarenesses, it came to me quietly and without fanfare, and it wasn’t anything I hadn’t already heard a thousand times before. But this time, it got in. The circumstances were completely ordinary. I was paging through a book, the title of which I don’t even remember, and I found something about how when we feel upset, we should try to pause before we react.

This is not a revolutionary idea. We are taught from the time we’re little that we should learn to control our tempers. And as I said, I’d been trying to do so for a long, long time with many different techniques that hadn’t worked. Maybe it was the phrasing in the book, or maybe I had just had a blowup so I was open to suggestion, or maybe I was just ready and it would have happened no matter what I was doing. I don’t know. All I know is that from the moment I read that, I’ve been able to pause before reacting almost all the time. And in that pause, I’ve found gold.

That evening, when my partner said something that annoyed me, instead of jumping all over him, I paused. Instead of going outward, I went inward, and I saw that what he’d said wasn’t really a big deal (in fact, his intentions were good, as they almost always were), and that my annoyance was about something else; something inside of me.

Not reacting felt soooo wonderful. I recognized it immediately for the huge thing that it was, as what I’d been trying to get to emotionally my whole life. I felt lifted up, empowered, whole in a way I had never felt before. I wanted more of it, and in that instant, I developed this new habit. It felt as good as getting high for the first time; I knew it would stick. And it has.

But as I paused more and more in my life, as great as it felt to not react, I realized that I was feeling sadder and sadder. I was functioning just fine, feeling pretty good about myself and solidly in control of my reactions, but I was just sad. I didn’t know why. Then one day it hit me: the purpose of my big reactions all these years had been to protect myself from even more unacceptable feelings. Anger pushes down my grief, sadness, and fear, I realized; if I stay irritated and reactive, I don’t have to deal with those other feelings. So when I quit getting angry, sadness, grief and fear began surfacing.

At first this didn’t make sense, because I’d been working through my pain and grief for about two decades, and had made sense out of most of it. But the awareness was so lucid and powerful, and fit so well with what was going on that I knew it was right.

I call these pushed-down feelings my secondary emotions: I push down feelings I don’t want to have and substitute less overwhelming ones. Like most defense mechanisms, I probably learned this technique to protect myself from feelings that weren’t acceptable growing up, which in my family meant pretty much all of them; the only acceptable emotion was anger, and the only way to handle that anger was ragefully: yelling, swearing, and blaming. (Please understand that I do not say this to portray myself as a victim or to blame my parents for my problems. My issues are my own to deal with and work through. But there is no doubt in my mind that many of them are rooted in my childhood growing up with two very unhappy alcoholic parents.)

Anyway, it seemed that normal, everyday connecting with people evoked residual sadness and fear buried deep inside of me. I had come so far in being able to have genuine connections with people, but I had worked mostly on the big stuff: love, honesty, and trust. Critical, yes, and a darn good start. But I’d missed a big piece of the puzzle. It had never occurred to me to look at simple, everyday interacting (you know: what do you want for dinner? How was your day? We need to go grocery shopping) as a source of anxiety. But it makes sense that it would be, historically, because it was always innocuous things that caused the hugest blowups in my family. Running out of my father’s favorite salad dressing or the phone ringing too late could result in hours of haranguing, swearing, and name-calling. For eighteen years, I lived with the anxiety of never knowing if something I did would set my father off: it makes perfect sense that the mundane interactions of life would be a trigger for me.

It seems that I was aiming too high in my recovery, that I’d overlooked this simple little thing, and in doing so, I felt so stuck in that awful, reactive behavior. So there are a couple of lessons here. One is about reactivity and secondary emotions: if you’re able to pause and look inward instead of react, you might figure something out, potentially something that could change your life like my awareness did for me. The other lesson is that there is so much to be reaped from everyday life. Not just in terms of personal growth and coming to terms with our demons (although that is certainly awesome when it happens), but in appreciating every moment of our lives, big and small, for the potential gold it contains. Because it’s there; you just have to know where to look.

I’m not saying I’m cured. Like anybody, I get irritated and I get annoyed, and I still have to hold my tongue on a regular basis. But being aware of what’s going on at a deeper level was a tremendous leap forward; the instant reactivity is gone. I’m much better at knowing what’s my stuff and what isn’t and drawing those boundaries respectfully. And becase I’m doing that better, I feel better about myself, more confident, more relaxed than I ever have around other people. The sadness subsided, too; ironically, I think a lot of it had more to do with my shame about being reactive (when I should “know better”) than it did with old grief (although it’s all closely related). So there is a third lesson: through this process, I found a deeper level of forgiveness and compassion for myself. Whenever this happens, as I’ve so often written, the world becomes a kinder place.

Finally, I’d just like to say that it’s scary to put myself out there like this. I would much rather write about growth from an intellectual standpoint than a personal one because I don’t feel nearly as exposed that way. But this experience was really huge for me. I think the idea of secondary emotions is probably not original. I’ve probably read about it over the years and the idea was hanging around in the back forty of my mind. But intellectual understanding is so very, very different from emotional experience. It’s like the difference between a speed bump and a mountain in terms of growth. So if sharing my experience helps anybody in figuring out their own, it’s well worth it to me.

So pause when you’re having a big reaction that doesn’t feel good. Simply pause. Then look inward. If you can stay with the process, there’s gold to be found.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…Walt Whitman

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.–Sheldon Kopp

In “Leaving the Herd,” I wrote about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (preconventional, conventional, postconventional) and how they apply to personal growth (in a nutshell, that it’s hard to become postconventional but it’s necessary to reach our fullest potential). Now I want to get a little more in-depth about certain aspects of conventional spirituality—a subset of morality—and how they can limit our growth. This is important because of how easy it is to delude ourselves into thinking we’re following the path of postconventionality (that is, true individuality and eventual self-actualization/enlightenment) when we’re actually engaging in beliefs and practices that hinder growth and prohibit the possibility of ever reaching our fullest potential.

The norms required to keep a society functional do not promote individuality. In fact, these two forces—conformity and individuality—are pretty much exact philosophical opposites. Yet norms are necessary to keep people within acceptable boundaries, so the answer is not to ignore or defy them in the search for self and truth. Doing so indicates preconventional behavior and means you’ve probably got a lot of basic growing up to do before you develop an inkling of true postconventional morality.

Even so, the postconventional journey requires that we transcend conventional morality with a morality derived from deep contemplation on our own internal ethical standards and ways of being. How can we do this and still acceptably fit in to the society in which we live, a society that, by and large, does not value or encourage “leaving the herd”?

The answer is simpler than you might think: We follow the rules of our society by being responsible, conscientious people, but we do not rely on these rules to determine our moral, philosophical, or spiritual beliefs. If we do, internal development takes a backseat to gaining approval, and our personal growth—i.e., the drive toward self-actualization—gets squelched.

Thus, one of the first tasks of a person becoming postconventional is to investigate the moral and philosophical standards of his society. Why are they there? What purpose do they serve? Do they encourage freethinking, or are they rigid and dogmatic? And what you will inevitably find, if an organization is conventional, will be two basic elements: one, that it is self-perpetuating, in the business of keeping itself alive; and two, that conformity is much more highly valued than individuality.

The Christian church is, of course, the obvious example of conventional morality (mainstream Christianity, that is; Christianity has its share of transcendant practices and mystic sages, but these rarely filter down to Sunday church services). It’s been around for centuries, and for almost all of that time, it’s been an extremely powerful organization, exerting massive influence on Western civilization. Whether it’s Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, or the hugely popular Evangelical movement, there’s no question that Christianity is a lucrative business and has done a stellar job of perpetuating itself, thus meeting my first criteria for conventional moral standards. And of course, it meets the second one as well, being the poster child for conformity, having elevated dogmatism—that is, shaming people out of asking intelligent questions—almost to an art form. Back when it could get away with it, the church tortured and murdered people—“heretics”—for questioning its doctrine; you can’t get much more rigid than that! Now that hardly ever happens anymore, but just try to have a rational conversation with a devout Evangelical about the limitations of interpreting the Bible literally, and you will be shamed and ridiculed and shut down no matter how well you make your point. This is because believing as everyone else in their group does is more important then seeking truth. And to come full circle, such dogmatism supports the organization and perpetuates its existence. So you can begin to see, I hope, how these two elements—organizational self-perpetuation and unquestioning conformity to that organization—work together to hinder individuality and the movement toward postconventionality.

Another, much more interesting example of a conventional organization is 12 Step groups. They have many elements of organized religions, including a rigid belief system that members defend vehemently (e.g., that addiction is a literal disease, that you are in recovery for life, and that there is no other way than the 12 Steps to “truly” recover from addiction), but which falls apart upon the slightest application of critical thought.

12 Step groups have helped so many people in such a powerful way, including me personally, that I am hesitant to be too critical of them. Yet I think that, if you are a member of one or know someone who is, it’s important to understand what they do and don’t do well. 12 Step groups do an absolutely stellar job of helping preconventional people (addicts) become conventional (functioning, productive members of society), and that is extremely important and beneficial work! Life-saving work! But if you want to get beyond conventional, you will sooner or later be forced to move beyond the 12 Steps. They will not get you there. Yes, they are much more open-minded about spirituality than most churches, and yes, Bill Wilson (AA’s founder) wrote about the importance of open-mindedness and using your own brain to figure out what’s best for you (a truly postconventional attitude). But 12 Step groups have fallen into the self-perpetuation trap like most organizations do, and the fact is, members are discouraged from, and often shamed for, questioning core beliefs. When such a ceiling exists, regardless of the organization, there is no way to continue growing without leaving the organization behind. You may choose to remain a member, but you will pursue your postconventional ideals elsewhere.

The truth is, if we buy too much into any organization or belief system, we can get stuck. All beliefs are at least somewhat dogmatic, and all organizations are at least somewhat self-perpetuating. This is why it’s better to see yourself, for example, as “practicing Buddhism” than as “being a Buddhist.” No matter what the group, there is always the temptation, probably rooted in our innate desire to belong, to see it as the destination rather than as part of the journey. But no such group exists. Sheldon Kopp’s great quote, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” speaks to this. Ultimately, our growth—and hopefully, our eventual enlightenment—is internal. Anything “out there” is only a vehicle, a tool, a device to help us along the way. But the way is ours and ours alone. We must be constantly willing to shed our beliefs for wider and deeper and more compassionate alternatives. Conventionality does not encourage this; postconventionality does.

There is no contradiction between following the conventional rules of society and developing an internal postconventional morality. Postconventionality is merely the next step in our growth, and while it may bother and confuse the people who settle for facile, conventional answers (as sadly incomplete as they may be), it’s beneficial to them as well as ourselves, because whenever anybody undertakes the search for internal truth, it increases the positive energy in the world. It is our natural path, and one to feel good and excited about.