Giving And Taking Offense.

Often, when I hear the term "people-pleaser," I am reminded of a friend's small boy, who was playing on the floor, while his mother and I spoke about people-pleasing. After a few times of one or the other of us saying it, he looked up with a huge grin, and said, "Purple people-eater!" His mother smiled affectionately down at him, and replied, "Something close to that, yeah."

We agreed to try to avoid the phrase, but each time it slipped out, he would crow "People eater!" As small kids do, he thought this was a great game. Next time I went to her house, he met me at the door and said excitedly, "People-eater!" I had become associated in his mind with that phrase, and that was the first thing he thought of when he saw me. Children can be so helpful in teaching us humility.

At one time, I believed that I was a people-pleaser because I was such a nice person that I wanted everyone to be happy. I was disabused of that notion, the first time it was the topic of an Al-Anon meeting I attended, and everyone around that table spoke of fear, or manipulation, or control, being the reason they indulged in people-pleasing. I could relate to every one of the scenarios - I'd done them all.

I had said yes when I wanted to say no, for fear of the other person's anger or disappointment, and then gone on to do whatever it was I'd promised, seething with frustration and barely suppressed rage.

I'd bent myself in and out of shape, trying to satisfy another person's expectations of me, feeling as though I were on some wierd torturous exercise equipment that everyone but me knew how to operate - I just held on with white knuckles, and tried to get through unscathed.

I'd agreed to points of view completely oppositve to my true beliefs, for fear that my own beliefs would be ridiculed or dismissed. I did not have the courage of my convictions.
I'd given up what I did want, and tried to make myself want what I didn't want, all to be accepted, and hopefully, loved.
I'd agreed as a way to manipulate the other's opinion of me. I'd agreed as a way to try to get some control of a situation.
I'd given myself away to the point that I wasn't sure what was left was worth anything.

I'd done so much people-pleasing, that when I began to say "No," the flack was monumental - how dare the worm turn in this way? What happened to the agreeable me?

I heard:

"You sure seem grouchy lately."
"How come you never want to do anything I want anymore?"
"Why can't you just do this one little thing for me?"
"I do lots for you, you know, the least you can do, is do this when I ask."
"After everything I've done for you!"
"If you really loved me, you'd ___."

When faced with these responses, I'd wiggle and squirm with my discomfort, trying to maintain my balance, and often falling backwards into the old behavior, because I just couldn't stand the strain of saying "No." I'd explain, defend, explain some more, reason, argue. I asked my sponsor what to do about this, and she replied, "We teach people how to treat us - you are retraining your friends and family a new way of treating you - if you don't stick to it, how badly do you want the change?"

Oh. Back in my court. Okay.

I still have times when saying no feels horribly selfish and mean, but I've learned to say: "I'll have to get back to you on that," which gives me room to wait until I have some time alone to make my decision, instead of agreeing immediately, and regretting later.

I'm learning that if I behave in a way which is respectful, direct, honest and kind, that it's not my problem if the other person chooses to be offended by my honesty. I need to take a step back, and just - ride out my discomfort. I need that step back, that detachment, to keep me from rushing in to "fix."

I cannot do what is not humanly possible - this includes pleasing everyone, always. Pleasing myself is important, pleasing others needs to be a choice I am making, and not a knee-jerk response, out of fear or shame. 

I get "one time around" - one life to live. I want to live joyously.

Wresting My Attention Back Where It Belongs.

From the ODAT, page 58:

"When I ask, "Why does he drink when he knows it damages him and his family?" I really mean: "How can he justify what he is doing?", implying a condemnation I have no right to make. Al-Anon teaches me that the drinker knows no more about his compulsion than I do. I know he suffers from it, too. I will not waste time and energy trying to "figure out the alcoholic." I will concentrate on figuring out why I do what I do."

When I get caught up in trying to decipher the meanings of another person's words or behavior, I have lost my focus. I am engaged in an exercise which will swallow entire swathes of time in my life, to no end, since I'm never going to be able to achieve the level of understanding that I'd love to attain.

Or think I'd love - who knows if I'd be any more satisfied than I am at this moment? Just why does why seem so important? Do I still carry the belief that if I knew why, I could accept more easily?

The first time I read that page, and realised that I was doing that very thing of wanting the alcoholic to justify his behavior, I felt a tremor run through the bedrock of my certainty. (My entire position in that marriage was one of being in the right, while he was in the wrong - I cringe to remember my righteous indignation and stubborn judgement of the alcoholic.)

That was a beginning for me, when I was new to program, to realise that if I'd already said whatever I was about to say, did I need to repeat it, or was I striving to control the uncontrollable? From the starting point of keeping my words to myself, I had to then work, to wrest my focus back onto myself. I found it supremely difficult, because as an Al-Anon friend joked, "The alcoholic keeps giving me so much material to work with!"

Keep your hands in your own pockets. Clean your own side of the street. Tidy your own closet. All ways of saying: mind your own business, and leave the alcoholic to his/her Higher Power. I can, if I'm honest, occupy myself quite satisfactorily for the rest of my days, with tidying my own closet, since it seems that I no sooner get it all organised and close the door, than it re-jumbles itself to the point that the door won't close, and all my character defects are once more sliding from hangers onto the floor, and the sheer volume of accumulated assumptions and other stuff, is making it impossible for me to find anything comfortable that I'd want to wear.

Life is a journey; I choose my direction. I choose to walk either toward recovery, or back to the cave. And I make that choice every time I take a step. I pray to be given the ability to recognise when I'm heading in the wrong direction while telling myself and others that no, really, I'm not going backwards, that's an optical illusion - something to do with the light this time of day.

What Am I Seeing?

Drawing and painting in a realistic style requires that we set aside a large portion of what we believe about the world, and set down upon the paper or canvas, that which we acually see.

I must let go of my assumptions about this white lily, and be open to the truth about it - the shadows are the palest violet on one petal, and here, there's a pure green stripe running up from the base. When I sit and really look at this blossom, white is the smallest part of it - the only truly pure white on this flower, is the area lit up by the sun. All the rest of it is color, in incredible complexity.

In Al-Anon, I'm trying to learn to see myself and other people, with the same clarity with which I see this flower. I had so many assumptions - about the way the world should work: the way people should behave: the way I should feel. When I tried to live by my assumptions, life was a tangled mess of emotional discord.

One of the first assumptions I had to be willing to let go was: I can fix another person's alcoholism, if I put my mind to it, and if they would simply behave according to my regulations.

When I examined this belief in detail, I had to not only accept that I was powerless over alcoholism, I had to accept that it is not my right to tell anyone else how to behave.

That was the true shocker. How could I get what I wanted, if I couldn't give directions and make demands? I was not best pleased with any suggestion that the universe was progressing as it should, and I was not in charge of anyone but myself.

Reality is there before me, whether I face it squarely, or turn at an angle, trying to remove it from my line of sight. I have many times in a day, when I can pause long enough to truly look - at my thinking, my assumptions, my beliefs - before I continue. Oftentimes that few second's pause is enough to shift my attitude completely, from one of "full steam ahead" to "yield."

I'm not granted an automatic right of way in life. Courtesy, consideration, and respect are gifts. I give them willingly some days, some days not, but I can still give them. I don't have to indulge my character defects.

I can rise above them. I can let it begin with me.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

...is a peony. Starting to paint again is causing memories to surface, of friends I had in art school. Wilson was Chinese, and hated cliches: one could never get away with even one cliche when he was around; he'd finish your sentence with something unexpected.  The resulting laughter would cause a complete loss of one's train of thought.

He went through a period of driving us all bonkers, when, in trying to improve his English, he'd choose one word to use in conversation many times in a day, so as to fix the meaning firmly into his memory.

One might hear everything from, "I think ham and cheese fraternize well in a sandwich, so that's what I'm having." to "I don't think those colors fraternize properly; you need more contrast in that area of the canvas."

I adored Wilson, he had a dry sense of humour I found hysterical. I can't recall how it came about, but his pet name for me was "Grandma." (There must have been all of about 4 years difference in our ages.)

It seemed to irritate one of our instructors that Wilson had no interest in painting in an Oriental style, and he would go on and on about "being open to one's heritage" and "China being a land of mystery." After hearing this implied criticism enough times, Wilson turned from his easel, brush in one hand, palette in the other, and asked the teacher how much mystery was possible when a person had 900 million neighbours?

To give him credit, after a moment of shocked silence, the teacher burst out laughing, and later apologised to Wilson for singling him out that way. (After all, he didn't follow me around blathering about being open to my Scottish heritage, now, did he?)

I will always be grateful to Wilson for two things he said to me over the course of our friendship, both of them pertaining to my adoptive mother.

One comment was made when I was talking to him about a lunch I'd had with her. I'd dressed carefully, picked a restaurant I hoped she'd like, and treated her to lunch, trying so hard to please this woman who had spent the ten years I'd lived in her home, finding ever more inventive ways to beat the daylights out of me - a wierd facet of  of human behavior, that we still want to please our abuser. This was before Al-Anon, and I'd internalised the messages of being "no good" that I'd heard so often from her. Lunch was a disaster: she criticised, attacked, shamed, guilted - nothing new. (From this vantage point, I look back and feel empathy for the young woman I was then - I truly believed that if I just tried hard enough, I could find a way to be accepted and loved by my abuser.)

I had been describing her behavior to Wilson, and trying to make sense of it, because I knew I hadn't done anything to provoke her, except perhaps exist. I was asking him why would she be so mean to me, and he said softly, "Grandma, I don't know why, all I know is, happy people don't behave that way."

I clung to that thought, not because I liked the idea of her being unhappy, but because it made her behavior more about her, and less about me. It made it possible to let go of some of the shame and guilt I carried around. Prior to that, I'd gone along not questioning whether I was the rotten person that she had convinced me I was, because otherwise, she wouldn't need to pound on me the way she did. In such a way do children try to make sense of an adult world.

I went on to talk to him about how painful it had been to try so hard, and get nothing but more of the same nasty crap I'd always received from her. And that's when he asked what would turn out to be a pivotal question. He asked me, "Why are you still trying to get love from someone who can't, or won't, give it to you?"

Before that conversation, I was still so enmeshed in the abusive relationship, it hadn't ever dawned on me that no matter how hard I tried, regardless of the number of hoops through which I flung myself, she was never going to love, or even like, me.
I could sentence myself to a lifetime of trying to attain the unattainable, or I could let it go. Wilson knew from personal experience what it was like, to have a parent who couldn't love or accept their child.

Wilson, bless him, has stood me in good stead with those two observations; I like to think that with those, he opened the doors of possibility to the miracle which Al-Anon has worked in my life. He was offering his own version of experience, strength, and hope, and he was honest and direct with it. I'm grateful.

What Makes You Happy?

That question was posed to me yesterday. I'm passing it on to you - what makes you happy?
Has this changed since you began your recovery journey?

I'm really interested to know. This question went around a room of non-program people, and the replies were fascinating.

Generating Trouble.

From  ODATIA, page 52:

"Mental sobriety is a state of reasonableness, rational judgement, balance. It is emotional sickness when we continue to be apprehensive and anxious when we really have no reason to doubt.
I will pray today and every day, for healthful, wholesome thinking, so that I may not generate trouble for myself."

Before Al-Anon, I had no concept of how I generated trouble, I was under the firm impression that all trouble in my life came from outside me, and I was just reacting to it.

Practising the Steps has taught me that I caused much of my misery by hopping up onto the gerbil wheel at the slightest sensation of unease, and giving it a good workout. I ran as though all the Furies of Hell were after me: as if I were training for a new speed record.

I could take a minor situation and through obsessive thinking, turn it into something which occupied my thoughts to the exclusion of anything pleasant, and had a physical effect upon me - making it impossible to sleep, eat, relax.

I was a master at generating trouble. I couldn't let anything go, I couldn't detach, I couldn't enjoy my life. I can see now that these were lessons learned in early childhood - that was how the adults in my life dealt with their environments, so that must be the way it's done.  I added years, without maturing in mindset: a fearful angry person. Before I could achieve any perspective on my own internal dialogue, I needed to deal with my resentments, and martyrdom - until that happened, I accepted whatever sentiment wandered across my mental horizon, as the truth, not understanding it was the truth only according to me.

My first sponsor set me a task - for one week, I was to question all of the editorial comment from my internal dialogue, and to act upon none of it. I was to work towards achieving a state of relative quietude inside my own head.

Right. Sure. I'll start that immediately.

I must have been gazing at her with a snarky disbelief upon my face, for she reiterated her directions in her "brook no argument" tone, and finished with a rhetorical question about those who are negative about each and every suggestion or idea offered to them, and how was that expressing willingness, could I tell her that, please?

I slunk off home feeling hard done by, woke up the next day, and decided in my stubborn fashion, to prove to her that it couldn't be done, it was ridiculous, it was asinine, it was a waste of time....oops, that's editorial comment, isn't it, and I'm supposed to be allowing life to flow past like a tinkling stream...

By the time I met up with my sponsor again, had I used a water allusion, it would have been more of the "natural disaster" and "swept all before it" or "engulfed completely" sort, than her choice of a gentle stream. I'd been shocked to discover just how much of my thinking was driven by anxiety and apprehension, and how similar to bailing the ocean with a teaspoon it had felt, trying to achieve peace and quiet in that madhouse between my ears.

I had an inkling of the depth and breadth to which the floodwaters of my pessimism and fear could spread, given any encouragement whatsoever. Trying to curb my "editorial comment" gave me a grasp of just how entrenched it was.

I felt powerless, and I knew unmanageability; I had seen it in action in my life. I had, instead of wandering through my day while living in resentment about the past, or dread of the future, spent some time in the here-and-now, and didn't like it one bit. "Why would anyone want to live in the now?" I asked, when we met again. I laugh writing that, but I wanted an answer that would make sense to me.

As I saw it at the time, my sponsor failed me, giving me the feel-good reply, "Because the now is all you get, my dear." What a patient woman she was, putting up with being bombarded with carefully-thought-out justifications for staying stuck in my unhappiness, which had been bad enough to drive me into Al-Anon, but once there, I didn't want to have to exert myself making any real changes. I wanted a fast solution to my ex-husband's drinking.

Give me the secret code, I'll plug it in, he'll be recovered, and we'll live happily ever after. Or not. Even now, with all that I've learned and know, I can still get stuck in that place of "Why should I have to..."

I shouldn't have to. In the best of all possible worlds, I wouldn't have to. But this isn't, and I do, if I want to get anywhere. I was washing the dishes tonight, listening to my silent, internal, editorial comment, and sighing to hear how childish it was. I like to tell my sponsees, when they get into the "But why? Why?"  drawer,

"It is what it is."

"Yes, I realise that, but blah blah, and I just need to know why it is."

"What if you can't find a reason? Are you going to predicate your recovery upon getting reasons you find acceptable? Life doesn't always give us nice tidy reasons. It is what it is."

I can hear their teeth gnashing together in frustration, and think with great affection of my first sponsor, who listened with such warmth and love to all my tooth gnashing.

That's how program works; we receive it, and we pay it forward.

The Satisfaction Of Expertise.

I have worked in one artistic medium for almost 30 years,  and developed a level of skill which allows me to realise my imagination with a fair amount of accuracy. Switching mediums has put me into a different place entirely - that of beginner.

I'm finding watercolor a fiendishly difficult medium in which to work. Years ago I painted with acrylics, with which one works from dark to light - watercolor is the precise opposite, one works from light to dark. It requires an about-face in how I plan a painting, and also that I always be aware of where the light is, because I cannot plop a streak of highlight in later on, after I'm finished painting the shadows. Once it's gone, it's gone, and I'm left with the distinctly unsatisfactory business of trying to lift paint from the paper, in order to restore a highlight.

It's maddening, and because of that, engrossing. It's a voyage of discovery, frustration, botched paintings, and the occasional "aha" result. I sit down, try something, see how it works - it doesn't, just makes a mess. Okay, try something else, see how that works -  oh dear, that creates a sort of medium nothingness, doesn't it? Bland and boring. Hmm, how to get around that?
Why did I put that tree there?

I'm having a marvellous time with it, and none of my paintings so far have been worth a jot, but oh the hours of pleasure I've had in creating those messes have been a godsend. I was talking to a friend today about painting, and she laughingly said, "Girl, you are wierd, to enjoy being frustrated."

I pointed out that something like this meshes perfectly with my character defects - obsessiveness, stubborness - and turns them into forces for good. Those determined aspects of my nature keep me plugging away, carrying me through the parts where another less willful person might give up, and never reach the point of having some mastery of the medium. In art school, one teacher used to say repeatedly, "Every bad painting is a good thing, it's one more out of the way."

On another subject, today I realised that something I had at first seen as a constraint, has turned out to be a protection. A clear and bright example of the limitations of my own vision. When we moved here, I was irritated by being asked to sign a year's lease on this place. What if we found the perfect house at 11 months? Today the landlord came over to tell us he's putting the house on the market in 2 weeks. That lease I muttered and mumbled about, will protect us from being evicted, being told we cannot have the dogs here, or a rent increase.
(Thankyou, Higher Power. I'm sorry for complaining earlier.)