Healing from the inside out takes time, but the rewards are great
The Big Book suggests that I am to share with you, in a general way, what I used to be like, what happened and what I am like today.
Here’s what I used to be like: I came from a home where I learned that the meaner I was, the quicker other people would shut up. I saw that as a “win.” I felt a fleeting moment of victory and then burned with shame for my behavior, which, in turn, made me more angry, fearful, defensive, and mean. I started self-harming at the age of 7, trying to soothe my overwhelming anxiety. My parents didn’t get me help. Instead, I was constantly told: “There’s something wrong with you!” I had horrible nightmares. I felt terrorized by my father and not protected by my emotionally absent mother.
I never felt safe. I was a tomboy who always wished I was really a boy. I have two siblings. I was the middle child. The three of us were shamed for having feelings, so we learned to deny them. I developed a desperate need to win and cheated, lied, stole, and blamed others to feel better than, if even for a moment. I wanted to feel different but couldn’t figure out how. I longed for a “sense of ease and comfort” which continually eluded me.
At our house, we had to switch emotional realities in a heartbeat if the doorbell rang and company arrived. From anger to “everything`s fine” in a sing-song voice. I began to dissociate to cope with this forced denial of reality. Our family style was about “image management.” Portray the perfect family at all costs. But then came the fear of what would happen after company left.
I had a sense that our family was all wrong yet was powerless to do anything about it. I believe that “what you live with, you learn.” I learned to be rude, mean, disrespectful, judgmental and to deny any responsibility for anything, including my feelings, because it was always someone else`s fault. I was afraid to ask for help because I was made to feel less than for needing it. I felt like a victim.
I also inherited toxic shame. Ì had no self-esteem. I was in constant emotional pain. I developed a Jekyll and Hyde personality. I switched from controlling to passive-aggressive in an instant. I was sneaky and ingratiating. I was also a budding musician and athlete, but not a good teammate or bandmate.
What happened first:
Then, at 15, I found alcohol. Suddenly, I felt that “sense of ease and comfort” I had longed for all my life. I was an alcoholic from my first drink. I wanted more of this feeling, and I wanted it all the time. I was “restless, irritable and discontented” until I could get my next drink.
I was a daily drinker by the time I was 19 and in my first year of university. That year I also came out as a lesbian. I finished university a varsity athlete in two sports and taught high school Phys. Ed. for 12 years. I was constantly falling in passionate, everlasting love with a succession of women and then diving into heartache, despair,
and self-pity when they left. They were all addicts and I thought I could save them. I had no spirituality in my life, although the longing to believe remained.
As a result of years of living with physical and emotional abuse, I developed complex PTSD which was diagnosed in the 1990s but not treated until 2010. I did not know that I was also living without an effective mental health diagnosis and lost everything when I experienced a drug-induced psychosis resulting in the loss of my career. I spent three years in a day treatment program to help me to change my behaviour. I was asked to leave because I still couldn`t stop hurting people with my words. I could not change. I could not let go of needing to feel like a victim. I could not let go of my desperate need to control. So that`s who I was.
What happened next. My alcoholism was chronic and debilitating. I had become violent when drunk. I spent a night in jail. Through an intervention by two beautiful, loving friends, I had a moment of clarity and agreed to get help. I ended up in a treatment center outside Montreal and was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. I started going to meetings and hated the God talk and the language used in the literature. I was a lesbian feminist pagan, and my perception was that the rooms were full of middle class straight Christian people. I didn`t feel like I fit in and I didn`t stay long. This was the beginning of 36 years in and out of A.A., 26 of which I have been sober. Through periods during that time, I used marijuana to cope and that had disastrous consequences. I was still seeking that “sense of ease and comfort” from the “outside in” through people, places and things.
I tried to stop fighting everyone and everything, but I just could not let go of control. Years down the road I know that trying to control people, things and
situations was my dysfunctional way of trying to survive. When I finally received treatment for my PTSD, things started to change. I became willing and able to change. I learned to be part of, yet I still didn`t really feel like I belonged in the rooms. I was still too terrified to put myself in the care of anyone or anything outside of myself. When I despaired of ever finding a spiritual source, I again looked for that sense of ease and comfort outside of myself and picked up the first drink. I have relapsed five times.
I have come to understand that all my relapses were caused by my inability to find a Higher Power that I thought you thought was good enough. I was still seeking outside approval for my beliefs. I tried every faith on the planet. I would give up the search in despair because I could not believe, and yet all of you could. But I kept trying to be willing by getting help. It took: two detox stays, two chemical dependency stays, four codependency treatment programs, three years of Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings, years of therapy, treatment at a psychiatric facility, 40 women’s spiritual retreats, a dozen therapy groups and loving, gentle sponsorship, to heal me emotionally. In 2014, I decided to give the program another chance. I was finally able to admit that my way didn`t work and I needed help.
In 2015, when I was one year clean and sober, the first secular meeting of AA started near my home. I was excited to go. I had struggled so much with visualizing my Higher Power that the AA program has been difficult for me to internalize. But I had a spiritual experience as I sat in that room. I was overwhelmed with a sense of joy and freedom; ease and comfort, and knew in my heart that, finally, everything was going to be OK.
What I am like today is up to the people in my life to describe. By having some emotional distance from my “instincts run riot,” I have learned not to take anything personally. I have learned to “pause when agitated or doubtful” and focus on the next right action. I have learned how to keep myself safe. I now identify as gender-fluid and have resolved all my issues around sexual shame. Just for today, I have forgiven my parents. Just for today, I am the person I always wanted to be. If “what you live with, you learn,” I now live with a new family of loving, honest, compassionate, tolerant, wise people and I am learning those qualities as I witness their examples.
Today I have a wonderful, big life. I am retired but still work two days a week driving a taxi and helping people get around. I sing in a choir and have friends in both our local queer community and in AA and other programs. I enjoy drawing and painting; I play music with folks; I go to meetings; I walk my dog. I try to live life to the fullest.
I had always tried to fix myself from the “outside in.” All attempts failed. I finally discovered “the Great Reality deep inside”— the truth is that we heal from the “inside out.”