The last six months of 2018, I believe the theme of my life was and in 2019 continues to be....acceptance. It is funny how such a common word has become another crucial verb in my life as I travel forward on this journey of my sons addiction and my own recovery.
In our new and improved politically correct society, acceptance is a word we hear a lot. We must accept this and we must accept that. People drone on about it doing very little to back up their words (in my humble opinion) and it just becomes blah blah, blah in our heads. Well, I'm here to tell you that without acceptance, you can't move forward and you will stay stuck.
My first true understanding of what acceptance really means was when I was not only confronted with but proven to, beyond a reasonable doubt that my son was a meth addict. Gone was any chance of me denying the situation. All that was left was acceptance. No....it did not mean that I was throwing in the towel and giving into the unacceptable. What it meant was that I was realizing the facts of the situation and accepting that while I was denying and fighting against the reality, my son was becoming and now was a full fledged addict. That is true acceptance when you understand and fully believe the facts laid before you.
The next step in acceptance hit me not long after the realization of his addiction. It came after I had run myself ragged for several weeks believing whole heartedly that somehow I could control the situation, his addiction and him. Suddenly, I was once again hit squarely in the face with the realization that I had zero control over any of it. Again with the facts.... my son was an addict and he didn't even have control over his addiction so how the hell could I possibly have any control over any of it? The situation was beyond anyone's control at this point and being that my son was legally an adult, he legally had the right to make bad choices and screw up his life and I had no control over any of it. Acceptance #2 had hit me full force. I had no control and I was totally powerless over any of it.
Acceptance really began to domino when I walked into Al-Anon. The facts started flying at me hard and fast with every meeting I attended. Little fun facts such as, I was not a victim, but that I was however an enabler started rearing their ugly heads. I needed to change myself because I was never going to change him and the biggest moment of acceptance thus far has been, I need to mind my own business and focus on me. For REAL??? How do you take a mom who has been focused on her kids their entire life and tell her to just knock it off? And further more....how do you tell her that any control she had "prided" herself on in the past had just been an illusion since her child turned about 12. I truly wasn't sure I was up for this whole acceptance thing.
The great thing about Al-Anon is that even though the information and the realizations come at you hard and fast, especially at first, no one forces them down your throat. In each meeting they tell you to take what you like from the meeting and leave the rest. In other words, if something helps you....run with it. On the other hand, if you don't like what you hear, that's fine too. So as I was getting these glimpses of the real facts and not just the facts according to me, I slowly realized that I had to accept them, both the good and the bad.
What I think I have learned the most about acceptance is that in life and especially in addiction, we run from facts a lot of the time. We hide in denial and live in a fake world of our own creation. Eventually though, the facade fails us and the truth and reality seep in. You can try and continue to run and deny and make your world a twisted and complex tale, or you can face fact, accept things as they truly are and deal with them from that point forward. Not only does this simplify the world immensely, but it also gives you freedom of choice.
I learned that when I was willing to accept the facts, then I was also free to make a choice as to how I wanted to deal with them. An example was when I finally and fully realized that my son had no desire at that point in his life to get off the streets and get clean. Up to that point I had been masterminding, manipulating and trying my hardest to control the entire situation. I was literally making myself sick and driving myself to the brink of insanity repeating the same things over and over again, expecting different results. When I finally accepted that my son currently was who he was and that this was the life he was choosing for himself and I had no control over it, then that acceptance freed me up to make a choice. I could either continue running myself ragged with no positive outcome OR I could let him make his own choices (which hard as it was for me to "accept" were his to make) and start focusing on myself and getting myself healthy and less insane. Thankfully for everyone involved, I chose the latter.
The bottom line is, acceptance is not easy because it makes a person look reality straight in the eye and sometimes, reality ain't pretty. Once I did this though, I found a peace in the respect that I was no longer wrapped up in denial or the lies and complexities that go with denial. I no longer felt trapped either as I now had the freedom to make my own choices and focus on what was best for me, which in turn turned out to be best for all in my hemisphere. I saw a difference in all my relationships, especially with my other kids, when I no longer felt the need to express my opinion on their lives and their choices. With my addict son, I also saw a change, because once I accepted who he is, I made the choice to draw my boundary lines and also to quit constantly reminding him how his addiction was ruining his life. He knew he was ruining his life and me constantly reminding him, helped no one.
So today, I am grateful for acceptance. It has changed the way I think, feel and act in just about every situation in my life. I feel free to choose what is best for me and I no longer spend sleepless nights worried about others choices and my opinions of them. The fact is, I am a handful all on my own and if I continue to put as much effort into my own life as I have tried to put into everyone elses, then 2019 could quite possibly be my best year to date....and I whole heartedly accept that!
Until next time......
Showing posts with label accept. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accept. Show all posts
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Friday, December 28, 2018
I Dare Not Expect
Expectations. We all have them. We expect our kids, our spouse our parents and even our friends to act a certain way. When they don't, we become upset, angry, disillusioned and sometimes it causes us to react in ways that are not totally becoming to us. The fact is....to expect is human nature. It is especially human nature when it is our child. When you have raised a child and you know they know right from wrong, good from bad and what is expected of them and you know who they are as people and then they suddenly start acting like someone born in a barn with no morals, no back bone and no good sense...then tempers will flair and we will lose touch with our prettier side. We as parents become disappointed, angry and we have no understanding of WHY?!
Until I started going to Al-Anon, it never occurred to me just how much I expected of others nor how upset I became when they didn't live up to those expectations. I viewed people a certain way and felt I had a pretty good handle on how others should and would react to certain situations. It was my expectation that they would live up to what I expected.
Looking back, long before I had an addict son, people were known to disappoint me. My dad was supposed to be emotionally supportive because that is what dads do. My dad wasn't and didn't and it hurt. However, it didn't stop me from continuing to expect it. My husband was supposed to grow old with me. He didn't. He died. You can imagine the disappointment and pain there. My friends were supposed to understand the times when I wanted to be social and also the times I didn't. When my friends quit trying, I was crushed and angry. Then I would reset and start the whole expecting all over again, only to be just as crushed and angry the next time. What I didn't realize then was, this was not on them. This was fully and squarely on me. I had expectations that these people didn't ask for or necessarily want....and probably didn't even know existed and yet when they failed me by not living up to what I thought they should. I was angry at them and I usually acted out and caused a friction that put a strain on the relationship.
Jump ahead to the point where I now have an addict son. You can only imagine all of the time I kept expecting from him while I lived in total denial of who he was becoming and what he was doing. I spent so much time wondering where I went wrong when I would expect him to respect the house rules....and he didn't. When I expected him to be kind to the neighbors, family and women in general.....and he wasn't. When I expected him to get a job and keep it.....and he couldn't, and when I expected him to speak to me with respect......and he refused. I felt as if I had walked into an alternate universe when he looked at me as if I were the crazy one while I stood there screaming to the top of my lungs demanding respect, demanding he get a job and demanding that he quit being a jack ass to everyone who came in contact with him. The fact is, we both had expectations at the time and neither of us was living up to the others. I expected him to act like a decent, kind and loving human being (according of course....to my standards) and he expected me to leave him alone, turn a blind eye to the negative things he did and believe whatever lie came out of his mouth (just because he said it). We failed each other daily with our expectations and spent most of our waking hours angry, fighting and in a very negative head space. It was miserable.
Once I started working my program though and reading my books, I started realizing that the person I was now dealing with, had no ability whatsoever to live up to mine or anyone elses expectations. Meth had messed with his brain so badly that when he was using his mind was chaotic, paranoid and very much in a thought process I couldn't even understand, let alone have any expectations of. Not only that though, when I started reaching deeper inside of me, that is when I realized that it wasn't just my son. It was everyone, that I had expectations of. I had felt let down by everyone in my world at some point and in most cases it was because of my expectations.
Now I look at life and people in particular in a much different way. Addicts included, my expectations are usually not fair. Thinking that people will act or react according to my rules in life forgetting that they have their own set of rules to live by has been an issue for me in the past. It brings up the question, how many people have I disappointed because of their expectations of me? It is a humbling thought. Today, if I want or need something from someone, instead of just expecting them to psychically know it, I simply ask. I ask with the knowledge that the answer may possibly be "no" and that if it is, I must be accepting of it. No longer do I just take for granted that another person is going to act or react according to my thoughts or beliefs, even on things as fundamental as love, honesty and respect. Instead, I assume that they may come from a different environment, situation, lifestyle or even thought process and that communication rather than expectation is the key.
As for my addict, understanding that I can't have expectations of him and that I must accept him for who he is and not who I want or expect him to be has been huge. This does not give him free reign to cause chaos though, because along with no expectations also come boundaries that I have made clear to him. I accept who he is as person and that currently he is an addict, but he knows that in order to have a place in our home and in our lives requires him to get clean and stay clean. It is not an expectation and ultimately it is a choice that he has to make for himself. If however, his choice is to keep using, he knows that I will always love him but that I can't be a part of the world he has chosen.
Through Al-Anon, I have learned that expectations of other human beings can be the road to disappointment, anger and even destroyed friendships and relationships. To expect is to push your agenda onto another and frankly, their own agenda might be quite different than yours. As for the alcoholics and addicts in your life, please remember that they aren't capable of living up to anyone's expectations. If they aren't kind enough, loving enough, receptive enough or respectful enough, it is not necessarily because they don't want to be, it is because they are listening to the lies that drugs and alcohol tell them and at the end of the day, you expecting more from them will just disappoint you both.
Until next time........
Until I started going to Al-Anon, it never occurred to me just how much I expected of others nor how upset I became when they didn't live up to those expectations. I viewed people a certain way and felt I had a pretty good handle on how others should and would react to certain situations. It was my expectation that they would live up to what I expected.
Looking back, long before I had an addict son, people were known to disappoint me. My dad was supposed to be emotionally supportive because that is what dads do. My dad wasn't and didn't and it hurt. However, it didn't stop me from continuing to expect it. My husband was supposed to grow old with me. He didn't. He died. You can imagine the disappointment and pain there. My friends were supposed to understand the times when I wanted to be social and also the times I didn't. When my friends quit trying, I was crushed and angry. Then I would reset and start the whole expecting all over again, only to be just as crushed and angry the next time. What I didn't realize then was, this was not on them. This was fully and squarely on me. I had expectations that these people didn't ask for or necessarily want....and probably didn't even know existed and yet when they failed me by not living up to what I thought they should. I was angry at them and I usually acted out and caused a friction that put a strain on the relationship.
Jump ahead to the point where I now have an addict son. You can only imagine all of the time I kept expecting from him while I lived in total denial of who he was becoming and what he was doing. I spent so much time wondering where I went wrong when I would expect him to respect the house rules....and he didn't. When I expected him to be kind to the neighbors, family and women in general.....and he wasn't. When I expected him to get a job and keep it.....and he couldn't, and when I expected him to speak to me with respect......and he refused. I felt as if I had walked into an alternate universe when he looked at me as if I were the crazy one while I stood there screaming to the top of my lungs demanding respect, demanding he get a job and demanding that he quit being a jack ass to everyone who came in contact with him. The fact is, we both had expectations at the time and neither of us was living up to the others. I expected him to act like a decent, kind and loving human being (according of course....to my standards) and he expected me to leave him alone, turn a blind eye to the negative things he did and believe whatever lie came out of his mouth (just because he said it). We failed each other daily with our expectations and spent most of our waking hours angry, fighting and in a very negative head space. It was miserable.
Once I started working my program though and reading my books, I started realizing that the person I was now dealing with, had no ability whatsoever to live up to mine or anyone elses expectations. Meth had messed with his brain so badly that when he was using his mind was chaotic, paranoid and very much in a thought process I couldn't even understand, let alone have any expectations of. Not only that though, when I started reaching deeper inside of me, that is when I realized that it wasn't just my son. It was everyone, that I had expectations of. I had felt let down by everyone in my world at some point and in most cases it was because of my expectations.
Now I look at life and people in particular in a much different way. Addicts included, my expectations are usually not fair. Thinking that people will act or react according to my rules in life forgetting that they have their own set of rules to live by has been an issue for me in the past. It brings up the question, how many people have I disappointed because of their expectations of me? It is a humbling thought. Today, if I want or need something from someone, instead of just expecting them to psychically know it, I simply ask. I ask with the knowledge that the answer may possibly be "no" and that if it is, I must be accepting of it. No longer do I just take for granted that another person is going to act or react according to my thoughts or beliefs, even on things as fundamental as love, honesty and respect. Instead, I assume that they may come from a different environment, situation, lifestyle or even thought process and that communication rather than expectation is the key.
As for my addict, understanding that I can't have expectations of him and that I must accept him for who he is and not who I want or expect him to be has been huge. This does not give him free reign to cause chaos though, because along with no expectations also come boundaries that I have made clear to him. I accept who he is as person and that currently he is an addict, but he knows that in order to have a place in our home and in our lives requires him to get clean and stay clean. It is not an expectation and ultimately it is a choice that he has to make for himself. If however, his choice is to keep using, he knows that I will always love him but that I can't be a part of the world he has chosen.
Through Al-Anon, I have learned that expectations of other human beings can be the road to disappointment, anger and even destroyed friendships and relationships. To expect is to push your agenda onto another and frankly, their own agenda might be quite different than yours. As for the alcoholics and addicts in your life, please remember that they aren't capable of living up to anyone's expectations. If they aren't kind enough, loving enough, receptive enough or respectful enough, it is not necessarily because they don't want to be, it is because they are listening to the lies that drugs and alcohol tell them and at the end of the day, you expecting more from them will just disappoint you both.
Until next time........
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