Catharsis - A Deleted Post.

I wrote a post two days ago, with the title "Catharsis," then went back later and deleted it, because I felt too raw and vulnerable. I'm not sure why, perhaps because what's happening is so precious to me that I want to guard and protect it? A moment of superstition? No matter.

This week, I've reconnected with my adoptive brother. We'd had a blowout (my fault) and didn't speak for a while (my pride and stubbornness - this preceded my joining Al-Anon) then later, he'd moved to another country, and I'd lost touch with him completely. After some time in program, I'd tried to reconnect, but my adoptive parents wouldn't give me his contact info, or him mine. Later, I tried to find him online, with no luck. I've tried many times since then to search online, with no result. My first sponsor suggested since I couldn't make the amend to him directly, I do it by writing a letter and reading it to her, and I did that, but I just could not lay it to rest. I've had no peace on that one thing for many years. I've tried to forgive myself, I've prayed and meditated, but I couldn't get there. I've tried and tried to let it go, but it's always been there, underneath. We were very close as children, and I've grieved the loss of that relationship a hundred thousand times.

For some reason, this week, a few days ago, when I did an online search, I included his middle initial, which I'd never thought to do before, and up it came - he's a member of faculty on a university in that country. I clicked on the link, and there was his picture, and an email address.

I prayed for guidance, wrote an amends letter and sent it off, heart in mouth. He responded within about 3 hours, warmly, thanking me, "surely accepting" my amend, and signed his response with "Love."

That undid me completely.

I cried so hard for about the next day or so, off and on, that, as I wrote to a dear program friend, "my eyes looked like little boiled cherry tomatoes."

I've carried the desire to make that amend for about 24 years. I've been afraid that he would die before I could find him, and make that amend to him.

I believe that this has happened at last, because I've moved forward in my spiritual growth of late. I've been doing what one AA speaker calls "seeking more" - making a concerted effort to work Step 11, and improve my conscious contact with my Higher Power. I've learned some painful lessons about myself and the way I still think and behave. I've grown in humility, and I've wanted that humility with all my heart and soul.

I think it was finally time for the reconnection with this wonderful man, my brother. My joy is like a  heat in my chest, and the tears are washing out 24 years of close-held pain and regret.
"Gratitude" seems like such a small word to describe what I am feeling.

Getting Honest With Myself.

This is a process; most of us are not able to go from the denial and excusing/blaming/accusing of others, to personal honesty, in one fell swoop. Even after a spiritual awakening, there is still the heavy force of habit operating in our lives.

So how do I do this? I examine my motives. I take a moment to stop before I speak, and ask myself: for which end result am I aiming?

Am I attempting to give the other person a clear statement of how I feel, or am I trying to hurt someone who has just hurt me?

Am I setting a boundary, or punishing and rejecting? Am I so focused on the other person's character defects, that all I can feel is rage and frustration? Am I blindly lashing out in an effort to vent my overwhelming emotions? When I didn't know any better, that's how I behaved: like a heavy object in a high wind being blown "hither and yon." Now that I do know better, I can't make excuses for myself.

Getting honest with myself means I don't justify or rationalise. I don't bash myself if I make a mistake, or choose to behave in old ways, but I also don't pretend I don't know what it is that I'm choosing to do. I detach from my feelings and take my own inventory. I work Step Ten every day: "Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it."

A sponsee asked me why do we have to do it "promptly?" Why does that matter?

I replied, "Give me an hour, and I can rationalise anything."

So I don't give myself that hour to play those games with myself, of shifting the lines slightly inwards here, and kicking them out an inch or so there, and moving this just a tad, and pushing that slightly out of the way, until I've rearranged everything to my satisfaction, and it all looks very different from the truth of the matter.

I became very skilled at that mental rearranging, before I came to Al-Anon, and it may have satisfied my character defects, but it was a dishonest and unhappy way to live. When I get honest with myself, I give myself freedom. I don't need to hide who I am, or what I'm doing, because it's all out there on the table. I bring out the skeletons in my closet, and I act in a way which fosters my self-respect.

Admitting Our Imperfections.

Why is this so hard for most of us? Why do we kick and scream, (or if you have a different personality, sulk and emit poisonous waves of sullenness) when it's suggested to us in Al-Anon, that we too, are imperfect, and that we can improve our lives greatly by trying to do something about that fact, rather than change someone else?

I used to worry about the way other people would think about me, if I ever admitted to being wrong, or being weak, or being imperfect. My sponsor called me up one day, laughing; told me she'd just come across the perfect quotation for us, which we should write out and put up somewhere we could read it many times in a day:

"You wouldn't worry so much about what other people think of you, if you knew how seldom they did."

I, of course was deeply offended, but tried to pretend that I wasn't. I'd learned fairly quickly that although my sponsor was a woman who had enormous empathy for other's sufferings, she had little patience for me, when I was having a hissy fit, and being offended. She was well-acquainted with that defense mechanism, having used it herself for years. She'd pointed out to me that when she was offended, it was usually because she knew that what had been said was the truth, and she didn't want to face it. She suggested that next time, I try putting aside my desire to take offense, and work to be honest with myself - was I being offered a chance to see myself more clearly?

Most of the time, that's just what's happening: I only ever seem to feel upset in that precise way, unless I am recognising the truth about myself: my character, and habits of thinking. When, in the past, I've chosen to take offense, it has been an effective way to push that truth aside, and concentrate instead on the failings of the messenger - so rude! So tactless! etc etc, and after a while, I'd be wallowing in a stew of self-righteous indignation, and the chance for me to learn and grow, would pass on by, forgotten.

This week, I was finding it increasingly difficult not to worry and stress over an issue in my life. My present sponsor, is a wise woman with many years in program, and when I talk to her about something with which I'm wrestling, she always emphasises asking my Higher Power for guidance. When I did, the guidance came in the form of a realisation about a decision I'd made a while ago. I was granted the ability to see it from another angle, to realise that while some of the reasons behind it were healthy - not enabling, not allowing the other person to take advantage of me - another part of the motivation for that decision was a desire to punish by withdrawing my support.  I realised that I needed to make an amend.

That wasn't an easy amend to make, because in order to do it cleanly, I needed to admit to my less-than-delightful motives. I had to say, "I was wrong to do this, and this is why."

I've been in Al-Anon for quite a while, and there are still amends which curl my teeth to make, because I have to admit my lesser qualities. I will always have to admit to my lesser qualities, because I will always be imperfect.

Once the amend had been made, and we were talking about it, I was given the further realisation that on some level, I'd been uncomfortable with my decision from the start, but had been refusing to allow that discomfort headroom, because if I did, I might have to reconsider.

For me, when I admit my imperfections, it is always better afterwards. That "better" can range from the lightly giddy feeling of a clean conscience, to improved intimacy with whomever, to doors opening in my life. There is no downside to this that I've ever found, so why do I still occasionally find it difficult?

I think because of pride - I don't want to admit that I am still prompted by those imperfections, that there are going to be times when my decisions are made while I'm in the grip of my frailties and character defects. I want to be "all better now."
I can forgive other people their character defects, but I still judge myself for mine,
now and then.
So it goes. The sun is shining, and I'm feeling relieved.

Receptivity and Sensitivity.

"If you try to keep an open mind, you will find help."

That sentence comes from Al-Anon's suggested closing to a meeting. I must have heard that hundreds upon hundreds of times, before I was able to begin the work of keeping an open mind. For me, it has been hard work. I lived in such fear that I was unable to be open-minded to anything which didn't fit my precise definitions or standards.

I was unable to take the time to challenge my thinking, because I was engaged in a precarious balancing act between obsession, control, and despair, continually cycling among those three states,  never managing to break free long enough, or feeling sufficiently safe, to be able to consider alternate viewpoints. I knew what I thought about things, and that was a done deal. I couldn't see far enough past my own misery, to understand what keeping an open mind could gain me.

When I was new in program, the book One Day At A Time In Al-Anon was the only daily readings book available, and I read that book the same way I did so many other things in my life - obsessively. In my case, that was a good thing, because it meant that I absorbed the wisdom almost without realising or knowing that I was doing so - I thought I was just finding comfort and solace. I didn't know that the readings in that book, and the wisdom of the meetings, were slowly slowly prying open my so firmly closed (also locked, and bolted with sixteen deadbolts and a motion sensor alarm) mind.

From the ODAT, page 49:

"If I take to myself each day, even one small new idea, heard at a meeting, or read in Al-Anon literature, I will make progress. Things may not work out as I want them to, but as my point of view changes, what I thought I wanted changes, too. My absolute contentment does not depend on having things work out my way."

What I have learned in my time in program, is that when I am fearful, I am less open-minded. When my mind is closed, partially or completely, I am turning my face away from the gifts life has to offer, and then complaining about the hand I've been dealt.

I cannot receive wisdom unless I am willing to stop long enough to hear, and consider, new information. I cannot grow if I am unwilling to let go of my old behaviors of judgement and condemnation.

I had an experience this week, in which I was grouchy and unaccepting because I was exhausted. As soon as I put the phone back down upon the charger, I knew that I had been in the wrong, and needed to make an amend.

Making an honest amend was a completely new idea to me when I was first in Al-Anon - before that, I might apologise, but the apology would be bracketed with justifications and rationalisations, and be a sparse and paltry thing. In Al-Anon, I learned that if I wanted to have a better life, I needed to become a better person.

That included being sensitive to the feelings of others, and being upfront about my own mistakes. I don't need to batter myself with my wrongs, but I do need to be receptive to needs and feelings of those around me, and if I lose my way for whatever reason, and trample upon those feelings, the road out of that morass is a clean and clear road I've travelled countless times.

Make a direct amend, and then sit quietly and accept the consequences - don't justify, don't rationalise, sit in silence, and listen. Hear the other person when they speak of how I have affected them - hurt them, irritated them, whatever it is. Be receptive.

And the last step to making an amend - forgive myself, and learn from the experience, so I don't repeat it; use what I have learned, to make myself more receptive and sensitive, more open-minded.

When I used to bash myself with my mistakes, anything was preferable to admitting to the damned things - once I admitted to them, they would overtake me, and give me hours of unhappiness.
I had to not only be willing to be more open-minded about the way in which I treated other people, I also had to be more open-minded about my treatment of myself. If it wasn't acceptable to berate and guilt-trip another person - well, I was a person too, therefore, the same rules applied.

Step Nine.

"Made directs amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."

When I was doing this Step for the first time, my ego was telling me that almost everyone on my list was covered by the second part of the Step, so I didn't need to make amends to that person, or that person, or that person, or...anyone much, really!

I was very entertaining for my first sponsor. She was British, and didn't mince words. When I was finished my little recital, she looked me directly in the eye, smiled sweetly, and replied:
"Bollocks!"

Considerably chagrined, I started again at the top of my list, and we picked out those I felt I could make an amend to immediately. That was followed by those I was afraid might reject my amend, so for those people, I needed to prepare myself - pray, and work to let go of the outcome.

That left a few (a small few) with whom I'd lost touch through one of us moving, or had been estranged from for so many years that the idea of contacting them filled me with dread.

The latter I set aside, and began making my amends. I was amazed at how many were accepted either with astonished laughter - I'd been worrying for years over that? Or a gracious thankyou for my having the courage to make the amend - that response invariably made tears spring to my eyes.

I always made it very clear at the start of the amend that I was not doing this in an effort to resurrect the relationship if the other person was not so inclined. I'd made my peace with that possibility, and in some cases, that's how it went. Others were willing to be friends again.

One met my amend with anger as fresh as the day I'd wronged them. That was excruciating, since I felt it necessary to sit and listen, without defending or rationalising or justifying. My amend was summarily rejected. I had to accept that I'd made my amend in good faith, and I needed to let go of the outcome; that's always in God's hands, not mine.

A few amends, I made with my sponsor standing in for the person I had wronged.

My amends to myself, I made sitting quietly at my kitchen table, during a time when I was home alone.

When I finished doing Step Nine, I was emotionally exhausted, and at the same time, strangely exhilarated - my guilt was gone. (I promptly began manufacturing some more, since I have that type of personality, and that's why I'm still in Al-Anon.)