Secrets keep us sick

Have you ever been told that you shouldn’t feel a certain way?

As a child I had preferences, feelings and even an opinion or two. This is exactly how children should live in the world - with curiosity and ideas of their own. These ideas often upset the apple cart of our compromised family system. Experts agree that in family systems that are in survival mode, upsets of any kind that do not fit with the family dysfunction are frowned upon.

As a young child I asked questions about my father’s long absences. I began to have nightmares and intruding thoughts about my dad dying or getting arrested. I had no facts to back up my fears but my questions were not being addressed so I made up a story in my head that made sense to a five year old. Where do daddies go? Maybe they die or maybe they get taken away against their will. I could not imagine a world where daddies left because they got a better offer.

In response to these questions and suggested scenarios, I cannot remember the specific response of my mother but I do remember an understanding developing - stop talking, stop asking, stop making stuff up. I stopped asking questions. I stopped asking for help with my fears and anxieties. I stopped trusting that if I asked for help, I would receive it. I felt ashamed and guilty and maybe just a touch of shame for not being “normal”. I thought the problem was....me. This became a pattern of coping for me that worked until it didn’t.

One saying we hear in meetings all the time is this: We are as sick as our secrets. This is a decent saying. Excavating our secret fears and frustrations that we buried so long ago can be challenging - we have worked long and hard for many years to not deal with problems we lacked the skills to address. Now we can begin that work.

Where do we begin? One place to start is to grab a blank journal and begin cataloguing all your feelings in chronological order. What was your first feeling? Work your way through your memories and pretty soon, you might notice a pattern to your emotional memories.

Learn to confront a wide range of emotions

One pattern to watch out for in families that struggle with Substance Use Disorder is the distinctive but predictable ways some families think about emotions. Emotions are considered shameful. Usually the range of acceptable emotions is limited. Some families do not nurture the wide range of feelings available to humans; instead they are locked into a small subset of emotions that reflect the addictive family system’s limited worldview. This can happen for a variety of reasons. We are doing the best we can! But it is an issue that may need our attention.

When a child is frightened by the loud voices of angry adults, it is normal and appropriate for them to cry. But in a family where emotions are considered wrong or bad or weak, this vulnerable kid will be told, “Stop crying or I will give you something to cry about!” OR “Only babies cry. Stop being a baby!” The chaos, conflict and generalized neglect of self-care, relationships, and finances in families shaken to the core by addiction is something that is worthy of shedding tears over - for each family member, including the children. But this raw honest expression of sorrow may not be allowed. This problem is NOT limited to families with addiction issues. All sorts of families, doing their best but lacking healthy ways of being in the world, also struggle with emotional sobriety.

If we have a feeling that tries to express itself in a suffering family but we lack tools to deal with it, we might feel shame and guilt. If we haven’t been taught how to use tools to express and resolve our emotions and we have access to a limited range of emotions, is it any wonder that when we come to our Fourth Step we will struggle to process our resentments, fears, and even the joy we feel when we acknowledge our strengths? Step Four allows us to open up the can of worms and peek inside - only to find out that the rumors about emotions and their danger to the family has been greatly exaggerated. As we proceed we will learn and reinforce processing and taking responsibility for our emotions.

One of my survival skills as a kid was avoiding conflict. Conflict in my family was scary and could get out of hand. I learned to skirt around topics that might cause arguments; I preferred to lie than to tell the truth about anything that might spark my father’s anger or my mother’s criticism. This survival skill helped when I was young but it lost its usefulness as I matured. I needed to put that strategy down and pick up more effective skills for building strong and vibrant relationships.

Today my son and I walked down by the James River. It was brisk but sunny and wild with whipping waves and overflowing water covering many of the big rocks in the middle of the river that we enjoy sitting on during the summer months. We talked politics. He shared freely his political perspective and I learned a lot. I am so grateful to have a conversation with my son about a topic that would require me to process ideas that were new and sometimes even a bit strange to me. I know my boy for who he is; he does not have to hide parts of himself from me; he knows me in this same way. We have boundaries and privacy, as is appropriate, but there is no need to keep secrets for fear of rejection or raging conflict. In my family of origin, we did not have the skills to allow others the space to be themselves. This is one of the gifts that Twelve Step work can bring into our lives. Now - onto the first part of the inventory!

Coming clean before God and others

Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me,

get a clear picture of what I’m about;

See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—

then guide me on the road to eternal life.

~Psalm 139:23-24, The Message

I used to believe that God is all-knowing. And certainly he knows a lot. But a more careful reading of the scriptures indicates that sometimes God is surprised by us mortals. (If you are interested in knowing more about this concept, Scott taught a class that dealt with this issue, and if you contact him, he will send you a link to his materials. scott@northstarcommunity.com)

If God knows everything all the time, then taking an inventory is just for me. But what if...what if the inventory process is also a way to get everything out in the open with God too? (That happens in Step 5.)

It is so fascinating to dare to think that our increased self-awareness, which surely an inventory would produce if done well, might also give God an opportunity to get to know us better too.

Doesn’t that sound cool?

Taking an inventory is less scary when we remember who God is

In deference to living and working an honest program, I have a confession to make. I did not grow up in a home where honesty was practiced or rewarded. For most of my growing up years I lied when it was easier to tell the truth. It was a habit. It was a safety measure in light of my family system. Partly it was fantasy living. Mostly it was trying to read the room and figure out what others expected from me and then giving the people what they wanted.

Today I understand that this was my attempt to win approval, avoid punishment and seek positive attention - but I did not understand it then. My adult self has compassion for the little girl who felt like she had to perform like a circus clown to get anyone’s attention. It was a terrible habit that turned into a character defect and although it worked fine at home, out in the real world most people prefer to relate to people they can trust.

When I turned my life over to God, I was ill-equipped to deal with the truth. I expected God to be either apathetic or downright hostile towards me. I still struggle to maintain a more accurate view of God and his love for me. My first Fourth Step reflected my lack of understanding of God’s love for me. Undergirding all my efforts to become a more honest human has required me to increase my conscious contact with who God is, not who I imagined him to be, as I looked for him in my father. I use scriptures to teach me that I can trust this God, which has turned out to be a better guide than what I heard from the pulpit in my grandparent’s church or the speculations of others who often tried to convince me that I needed to be afraid and perform for God.

You may also struggle with this, so before we get into the weeds of Step Four - here is a reminder of who God is....

This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.

~ 1 John 4:9-10, The Message

Sin - living independently of God, only a problem in that living independently of God is not healthy focus.

God - not as worried about how we live as he is about the effects of how we have lived and our relationship with him, ourselves and others. God is not worried about his reputation; he is not asking us to be good so that he feels better. He is focused on the object of his love - us - and is deeply committed to healing our wounds.

Keep this in mind, we might just need this kind of support going forward. And, FYI, as you are building a team to support your work, make sure it is people who don’t practice shame or blame or are judgy McJudgsters. However, they do need to be people who can not only hear the truth, but can speak it too.

Healing starts with honest self-reflection

An inventory is when we basically take stock of our life. This means everything, not just the problem that got our attention. Inventories are done thoroughly when we include EVERYTHING on the list. This includes the positive and the negative, and later on I will make it easy for you to complete one with instructions so thorough it will make your head spin. I have yet to meet a person who does a particularly decent job listing the positive traits about themselves AND no one gets all giddy over the possibility of inventorying their fears, resentments and sexual history. Despite our collective reluctance, the list needs to be as complete and honest as we can bear.

A couple came to Northstar Community (a recovery church I co-pastor) looking for help for the wife’s drinking. He thought she had a problem, she did not agree with his assessment. During our conversation I asked the husband about his drinking habits. I do this to assess what we’re working with when we meet a family. He said, “I have one drink a night.” Sounds reasonable.

I replied, “Would it be possible for the two of you to go alcohol and drug free for thirty days? This will help us establish a bit of a baseline for whether or not there is a problem with alcohol in your family, especially since the two of you are not in agreement about the severity of the issue.” They agreed.

Within twelve hours the wife was in detox; after another twelve hours, her husband joined her. It turns out that his single vodka per night was poured into super-sized Yeti cooler. He was pounding the vodka but was technically accurate when he said he had “one drink” per night. Figuring this out saved him from detoxing in an unsafe manner. It helped the treatment team treat the real problem, not just the identified patient in the family (his wife).

When you do this inventory, problems will emerge. That’s reality. But because this is a spiritual program, we can trust that it is not a harsh reality intended to shame and blame. It is a pathway to healing. The more honesty you can muster, the better the support available to you will be because your team will be better informed.

If you are interested in taking this step, begin today by building a team of folks who can support your work. You need more details about how to build this amazing support group? Give Scott or Teresa a shout out! (scott@northstarcommunity.com or teresa@northstarcommunity.com)