Anxious?...Me?

You can run but you cannot hide from yourself. I have been reading about relationships and attachment styles for years. I never could describe my attachment style, maybe because I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted to be a securely attached person, meaning that I had a healthy attachment to others. I wanted to believe that I could rise above what I used to be and be something else. Hmmmm where have I done this before? Oh yes, I remember, when I refused to believe that alcohol and drugs and loving alcoholics and drug addicts had had a profound impact on my life. That also worked out well for me.

So yesterday I was planning my day out and trying to connect with someone that I hadn’t seen in a bit. There was a misunderstanding about what that meet up would look like and when it would happen. I reacted badly. I took it very personal and felt rejected, unimportant and confused. I went down a rabbit hole of feeling like a fool, rejected, angry, not good enough, and like there was no hope for my relationships and I was doomed to be alone, partnerless, friendless, and familyless. It was a pretty extreme reaction and I was surprised by it.

I see a therapist and we recently talked through some of the losses I have endured in my life. Losses of relationship, friendship, mentorship are very upsetting. I have had my share and I haven’t always had time, energy or the safe space to process my feelings about it. Two years ago I had gone to a retreat with a counselor I had been seeing remotely for a few years. He lived in California but was coming here to do a retreat with clients that he saw remotely. It was a wonderful retreat and I had learned so much from it about feeling my feelings, letting my body process the energy inside and use or release it. I had learned to own my power to create my own life and I had felt a great sense of empowerment and also being held in safety while I explored painful truths and memories.

Two weeks later during my remote session with this counselor, he started talking about some pretty weird things and just didn’t seem right to me. He was talking about feeling like he was one with Jesus and that he could make things happen because he was directly connected to God. I felt very weird about it because we never talked about religion in sessions and he seemed to have a strange energy about it and strange look in his eyes. That week would prove to me that my perceptions were correct and he became mentally unwell. He started leaving me voicemails calling me names from the bible and telling me to join him in his kingdom. I didn’t know what to do. I could tell he was not okay, his clothing was dirty and his hair wild. He was sending me videos of him speaking in tongues and wandering the streets of California.

The person that I had trusted with my mental health and healing for the last three years was having a mental breakdown. It was almost beyond my comprehension. I felt care and concern for him because he had helped me so much over the last few years, but I could not help him because of distance and also because I had learned from him that I needed to protect myself from his unacceptable behavior. It was an extremely triggering event for me. I had trusted this person with my innermost sensitivities and traumas and he had used them against me when he became ill.

That felt like my marriage to Ryan. He knew my innermost weaknesses and sensitive spots and would use them to manipulate me so he could continue in his addiction. The person that I had attached my life to could no longer be trusted.

That felt like my relationship to my father. He was the one that was supposed to be my rock, my support, my most secure relationship, but he was unable to be that for me. As a child I did not trust that relationship and it continues to this day.

There are others, many other examples of this pattern in my life. I have a difficult time trusting and having healthy relationships with people, especially but not limited to men. The picture above names many of the things that can send me down a rabbit hole of all too familiar feelings of betrayal, loss, fear, ANXIETY, and doubt. My instinct is to then practice behaviors that feel like protection. I might lash out or yell. I might use guilt to manipulate you into doing what I want so the feeling of anxiety will go away. I may cut you off or close my heart to you. I may turn all of that inward and start to doubt my worth, to try to talk myself into accepting unacceptable behavior, try to attach to another person to prove that I am worthy of love.

I’m not going to lie, it was ugly yesterday. I was in a dark space. I practiced unhealthy behaviors in that relationship, I did silly things to distract myself, I ate too much, I spoke to myself very unkindly in my own head, and I was probably manipulative in my communication and judgemental. I did not feel good. And…I also did some things right. I did something physical that would benefit me, I cleaned my laundry room with fury. I made a list of things I needed to do to take care of me and the family and I did the ones I could. I let myself cry. I realized that my reaction was over the top and I let the person know that I knew that and was going to work through it. I talked with a trusted friend. I journaled. I gave myself space to process that this is all connected. That my perception that someone didn’t want to see me was connected to this character trait in me of anxious attachment. That any one of the scenarios in the picture above has the ability to knock me down the rabbit hole. It is my job to know that I do this and to let people in relationship with me know that I do this. Not in a shameful way because I cannot help the relationships I have had that created this in me. It was a learned behavior since birth. It isn’t anyone’s fault but it is my responsibility.

I always hope that my lived experiences and awarenesses can help others. My anxiousness tells me that no one cares and that it is ridiculous to share these things out in the world, but my deep knowing tells me that we are only as sick as our secrets. I don’t want to be sick and I don’t want others to suffer because they think they are alone. So I’m putting this out into the universe with the hope that one person reads it and feels less alone, anxious, crazy or hopeless. Be well.

The Gift of Hope

I recently had a gathering with a few friends and we talked about hope. It was a much needed talk for me because I had lost sight of hope for a bit and needed to remind myself that it is always available to me. I’m so grateful for the word hope and for being surrounded by people and resources in my life that remind me of it.

When I was in my mid to late twenties, I was in a place of no hope. I literally thought that there was no hope for me, my husband, my daughter, or any hope that our lives would change for the better. We were in the depths of living with addiction and the chaos that surrounds it. I was experiencing the life I had tried so hard to avoid and I was ashamed, confused, and defeated. I had no tools to deal with what I was experiencing except for the tools I had learned in childhood to deal with my dad’s drinking. Those were survival tools for sure but they were not the tools of hope.

A very dear person in my life suggested that I try a twelve step program for me, to help me deal with living with an alcoholic/addict. It was one of the only things that had been suggested to me that was different than the controlling, manipulating, fighting, giving up, crying, screaming, leaving, returning, etc, that I had been trying. I went and on the very first night I left with the tiniest seed of hope planted deep inside my heart that I could learn a new way of life for me.

I had the tiniest feeling of hope that I could deal with the disease of addiction in a different way that didn’t mean survival but meant living well. I had met people that night that smiled, that laughed, that hugged, and that loved and I hadn’t done any of those things in a long time. Hope was planted in my heart.

Over the years, I kept attending and I kept growing the hope in my heart. My hope kept changing though, in ways that hurt my heart. I started in my first few years with a hope that my husband would stop drinking and drugging and that we would become a family in recovery. My hope was attached to his sobriety and it was smashed to pieces every time he used again. My hope was that I would be enough, that our child would be enough, that our love for him would be enough to defeat his addictions. It was exhausting getting up every morning and lighting that little flame of hope inside me when it had been drowned the night before by drinking, drugs, a hospital stay, another rehab stint that didn’t work, or another move in with a relative for our safety. It was like lighting a piece of wood on fire that you just dragged out of the lake, took forever, had to have intense amounts of false hope doused on it before it would even catch fire, and then just smoked all day and stung my eyes because it was crappy wet hope anyway.

I finally learned that if I was going to have any real hope at all, that it had to be in myself and my own recovery. I could not continue to tie my hope to someone else’s life and expect them to make my life better with their actions. I had to do the bettering. I had to take control of the only thing that was in my power to control, my life. My hope now rested in me. It scared the crap out of me. I didn’t trust myself, I was a failure. I had landed myself smack in the middle of the life I swore I would never live. I would never tolerate addiction in my life, I would never allow my children to be affected.

I had sat in a bathtub with my toddler child while my husband, in a drunken, drug induced rage, punched at the locked door, cut our phone line, and was beating at the handle trying to get to us. He was screaming that he would take our child and run away with her so that I would never see her again. My life was out of control. I was in danger and I had put my child in danger by choosing to hope that my husband would get better. I failed. You would think that any hope I had in my husband would have died that day, but it didn’t. Denial is a sneaky little bugger, and I continued to put myself in danger for a while, just hoping that this time, he would mean what he said.

I finally gave up my hope in him. I remember the day. He came into my work with a group of people who were taking him off to rehab. He said something to me that was an attempt to give me hope and I felt nothing. I wanted him to leave and I wanted to be done hoping. My heart could not take another attempt at hope with him. After he left, I wrote a long letter to God. I explained that I was giving my husband to him. That I could no longer hope, I could no longer help, and I could no longer live with him. I wished him well. I hoped for his recovery, but I was separating my hope for me, from him. I never went back again. We divorced.

When my ex-husband died years later, I really was devastated. I had never lost hope that he would recover. I never lost hope in him. But I had long severed the hope that I would only be okay if he was okay. I had long stopped the hope that we would be okay together. I had stayed in my twelve step recovery group and had learned to hope in myself., to hope in my God who was in charge of my life, and not in any one human being besides myself. The night of his funeral, I went to a meeting, and as I spoke, I realized that my worst fear had happened and that I still had to live. I still had hope for me, hope for my child, that we could live, even though the one we cared for so much had died. Once again, it was tiny, the smallest flame of hope there is without burning out-but it was there.

So many times in my life, my hope has gotten so confusing. I forget that the only hope that I can have is in myself and my higher power. I think that my hope is tied to people, jobs, experiences, titles, money, security, goodness, success, etc. It is a lie. I have to remember that the only hope that can burn in me is in myself. I cannot tie it to anything outside of me or it will get extinguished at every turn. I have no control over other people, their choices, their feelings, their life, and tying my flame of hope to them is dangerous. It is an invitation into darkness.

I am in the process right now of untangling my lines of hope that I attached to some things outside of myself. It is a natural part of life, it is part of living as an imperfect human who wants to hope in others, who wants to hope in things outside, who wants to rest in something other than themselves. Maybe someday I’ll learn the lesson that I can only rest in me, and in my higher power, but I’m slow at learning many things. I have more power than I think to survive tragedy, to stand up for myself, and to have hope for the future. I just need to look back a little in my life to be reminded of how it felt to have my hope tied up in someone else, to give my power away, and to think that I would die if they made the wrong choices. The real truth is that we are all responsible for ourselves. And that person that you think you will die if you lose, you won’t, you’ll have to live through it. They will die and you will move forward guided by that tiny little flame in your heart, your hope in yourself.

Thank you to to people in my twelve step program who show up and tell me always of their hope in themselves, of their hope in the program, and of their hope in God. It is how I knew I could do it then, and how I am doing it now. I may not be facing a tragedy like I have survived in my past, but every little loss is a reminder that I am still here despite the loss. That I must always move forward and search for my flame of hope. It is a comfort to know that my flame is mine and that no one can blow it out with their words, their choices, their life decisions, or their desire to blow out my hope. It lies deep in me and I can look within at any time and cut the ties that I may have hooked my hope to, or any ties that others may have thrown onto my hope candle to try to make me responsible for their hope. So I’m cutting, I’m cleaning, I’m grieving, I’m stoking my fire within, and I’m resting in the knowledge that if I hold on to me and my hope, that pain will end, and I will be okay.