There are many myths about
recovery – and in this Blog I’d like to highlight one of them. The myth is: “If I recover, then all the people in my life will be different. Everyone will recover along with me. And I will never have to deal with difficult or
dysfunctional people ever again.”
Oh if only that were
true! I know that some families are
motivated enough to do the deep difficult work to change along with their
daughter or son who is recovering. But
many families are not. Some will do some
surface work and change a behavior or two – and some may even maintain those
changes for a long while, maybe forever!
But many of my clients come
from families that are resistant to change because their own Parts are so
extreme and may not have the “Self-energy” to tolerate the discomfort necessary
to make lasting changes.
So I tell my clients, “Your
family may not recover along with you.
They are who they are!” And then
my clients have to do double work, they have to do the deep difficult work
necessary to recover – and they have to find a way to maintain that recovery in
a family that may stay as difficult and dysfunctional as ever.
Some clients resist accepting
that their families will not change – and they may use a lot of time and energy
to get their families to change. They
may even put their own recovery on hold while they try and try and try and try,
thinking, “If I try hard enough, then
they will be different, and if they are different, then they will love me.”
I have an analogy that I give
to illustrate the futile nature of this.
Your friends go to a pet store and
come home with kittens and puppies. You
see them cuddling with and petting these pets and you want one too. So you go to the pet store and they hand you
a box. You go home and open the box and
find that it’s a hedgehog! You want to
cuddle and pet the hedgehog, but when you try, you get hurt by the prickly
spines.
There are some good things about having a hedgehog – they are unusual
animals and I’m sure they do some fun things.
But you have to be careful when you handle a hedgehog. You may need to wear special gloves and wrap the hedgehog in a protective towel.
No matter what you do, a hedgehog will not turn into a kitten or a
puppy. If you are really nice, the
hedgehog will still be a hedgehog. If
you give it a lot of money, it still will be a hedgehog. If you lose weight, it’s still a
hedgehog. If you are perfect, it’s still
a hedgehog. It will never, ever turn
into a kitten or puppy.
For those of you who come from
difficult or dysfunctional families the same is true – we may not get the same
things as our friends get from their families.
There may be some unique things about our families that we can enjoy,
but we may need to handle them in special ways – ways that our friends don’t
have to do. And no matter what we do, they will always be the way they
are. “They
are who they are!”
When we can accept our
families the way they are, when we stop spending so much time and energy trying
to get them to change, then we can work on the “special ways to handle” our
families so our recovery isn’t derailed every time we are with them.
I hope you ponder what “special
ways” do you need to learn to handle your family? You
may want to read another of my Blog articles: “Changing The Game” to learn a
fun way to deal with your family: http://awakeningcenter.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html
Namaste,
Amy Grabowski
Amy Grabowski, MA, LCPC is the
Director of The Awakening Center. She established
The Awakening Center 20 years ago! Yet,
she feels like it was only yesterday!
Posts
This post reminded me of how we sometimes get stuck trying to take the focus off ourselves. We do this sometimes because it is easier or sometimes because we are very selfless caring people that want to help everyone else but ourselves with their problems. This can be tricky with families because its also easy to play the blame game: "Well if you grew up with my mother, you'd probably be pretty messed up too" or "Well if they would just realize how they treat the rest of our family maybe we could fix things." The hardest thing to realize is that you cannot change anyone, just as no one can change you. It is realizing the appropriate time to be selfish and focus on the things YOU need and not others. Once you can switch the focus to yourself and let go of trying to change other people then I believe its easier to deal because YOU are taking the initiative and controlling how YOU handle things. We often forget about ourselves when that is precisely the person we need to care the most about.
ReplyDeleteThank you for exploring such a complicated issue. As we learn to have realistic expectations of ourselves, hopefully we can learn to do the same for our families.
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