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Photo Credit: Andrej Lisakov

The most important thing that enabled me to go from 50+ years of having no boundaries to having healthy boundaries was this: I made the shift from being super concerned with what others think of me to becoming more concerned with what I think of myself.

This doesn't mean I don't care at all what others think of me (of course I do, I'm human). What it means is that I used to be willing to throw my integrity out the window by lying and saying yes to things I didn't want to do. I’d volunteer for things I didn't really want to do. I wanted to be helpful for sure, but “wanting to be helpful” doesn’t explain why I over-gave to the point of being resentful and exhausted. It became over-giving because I cared so much about what other people thought of me. I didn’t want them to think I was a bad person, uncaring or unhelpful. 

I wanted them to think good things of me, like that I’m helpful, giving, and dependable. I didn't understand any of this at the time though. I thought I was “nice” and that was my motivation. I didn’t realize I was so invested in what other people thought of me.

This came to my awareness when I asked someone to help me understand how helpfulness turns into rescuing. I told her that I understood there’s a continuum of helpfulness that’s something like this:

And that I understood the difference between the two ends pretty clearly. I was confused about the middle part of the continuum. For example, how do you know when you’ve switched from being “helpful” to “rescuing” someone? She said, “It depends on your motives: why are you helping? It is truly to be helpful or is it so they’ll like you?”

I told her I was doing it to be helpful. But after a while her question percolated in my mind and I realized, “Holy shit! I really am doing it because I want them to like me!” Actually, it wasn’t so much that they’d like me, it was that I wanted them to think good things of me, like that I'm nice, helpful, and smart. I definitely didn’t want them to think I was a bad person. That would have been the worst!

I came to realize was willing to throw my integrity out the window for the chance that people would like me. I’d lie and say yes when I didn’t want to. I’d say I didn’t like things that I did for fear of what others would think. 

I was overwhelmed and exhausted from bending over backwards for other people. I had a sense of urgency all the time because I was trying to live a bunch of other people’s lives rather than just my own life. I came to realize I had a sense of urgency all the time when I heard someone in recovery use that phrase. Until then, that’s just how life was, I didn’t know any different. Once I identified it, I realized that it might be possible to live a life without a sense of urgency.

What happened over time is that I started living in line with my values. That means I say yes to things that light me up and no to things that don't. By living in alignment with my values, I’ve shored up my integrity. What that means is that *I* like me. 

I like myself now because I’m no longer lying, AND I’m doing things that light me up. I’m not doing things that drain me. I don’t do things that go against my values the way I used to because I was afraid of what others would think. Now, if I don’t agree with something, it's a lot easier for me to stand up for myself because I like myself and am invested in my own integrity. I’m less invested in what others think of me.

If want to live your life on purpose and have your own back, that won’t be possible if you don’t give a shit about yourself. This is what I mean when I say I've come to care more about what I think of myself than what other people think of me.

For me, the process of building healthy boundaries was about figuring out what I like and not like. Then, figuring out how to live my life such that there are more things I like in it and less the things that I don't like in it. Once I know those things, then -  how do I communicate that to other people?

It’s an experimental process to figure all this out, especially if you've been a lifelong people pleaser/chameleon like me. If you don’t really know what you like, you’ll have to experiment to figure that out. Once you know those things, then you’ll know where and when to set your boundaries. You’ll do it in such a way that you do more of what you like and less (or none) of what you don’t. 

You may have heard me talk about how I was a NY Giants fan, a Dallas Cowboys fan twice, and a New England Patriots fan because of who I was dating at the time. But really, I don't give a shit about football! Before I had healthy boundaries, I didn't even allow myself to realize that. I wanted to be a “good girlfriend.”

I had to figure out what I liked (Hallmark movies, not football) in order to be able to set boundaries around that stuff. That whole process was me getting to know myself: what I like, don’t like, want, need, prefer, what I value – what’s important to ME.  Only then was I able to stand up for myself because I knew who I was.

That whole process helped me to care much more about what I think of myself because I know that I’m an honest woman of integrity now. I'm living in alignment with my values so what you think of me isn't so important anymore. I want you to like me, but I don’t need you to like me the way I used to, because I like me. 

Join us at an upcoming public workshop! We will be at Wilson Library (303 Washington Avenue) on September 28th from 1pm-3pm.

Kid-friendly and food is provided!

Please help us get the word out to your friends, family, and neighbors!

https://newhavenvision2034.com/

Están invitados a nuestro próximo taller para Visión 2034, el Plan Integral de New Haven. Estaremos en la biblioteca Wilson (303 Washington Avenue) el 28 de septiembre de 13 a 15. .

Niños bienvenidos y ofrecemos comida!

¡Por favor ayúdenos correr la voz a sus amigos, familia, y vecinos!

I know sometimes people gag when they hear the term “affirmations.” I get it. You can’t just sit around saying “I’m rich” and get rich. That’s not what affirmations are for. They’re for clearing up the negative stuff that’s often swirling in the background of our minds – often for decades.

I wasn’t even aware I had negative self-talk until I was in my late 20’s. I was reading When Food Is Love by Geneen Roth (yes, I was a compulsive overeater even back then, but I didn’t know it). She wrote out some of the negative things her clients said to themselves and when I saw those words on the page I thought, “Oh my God! I say that shit to myself all the time!!!”

I wasn’t even aware all that negativity was playing in the background. I felt like I liked myself and had high self-esteem. I thought, “I guess I have a dual self-image.” I think that’s true for many of us. There are a couple of sayings in 12-step recovery that reflect that experience. One is, “I’m an egomaniac with an inferiority complex” and the other is “I’m the piece of shit that the world revolves around.” So I’m not alone in that. given that there’s more than one saying to describe the experience.

If you’ve spent decades telling yourself what a piece of shit you are, and you want your life to improve, you’re going to have to spend some time replacing those negative thoughts. The replacement thoughts are called affirmations because they’re affirmative, rather than negative.

“A negative mind will never give you a positive life.”

Think about it – if you’ve walked around thinking “I’m not enough” or “I’ll never catch up” or “I can never do anything right” how could you possibly feel like enough, caught up, or like you’ve done something right when these “programs” are playing in the background all the time?!

I’ve been saying affirmations of various kinds for years, and what’s really cool is when they become my “go-to” thoughts. Here’s an example from my life. Unlike most people in recovery who have low self-esteem and think they’re not enough, I tend to be grandiose and arrogant.

I don’t want to have those thoughts, I just do. I really think it’s just the opposite side of the coin of low self-esteem. Instead of not enough, I think “I’m too much.” It’s just another way of saying I’m not the right amount of something. There’s something wrong with me.

For me, the game changer in regard to that particular negative thought was when I was in a Y12SR class (Yoga for 12-Step Recovery) and the teacher took us through an exercise to help us determine our “Sankalpa.” Sankalpa is a Sanskrit word which means an intention or resolution. It’s a vow and commitment we make to support our highest truth. She asked us to write down, in a short phrase, the major issue that has plagued you for most of your life.

For me, it was “I’m too much.” We were then asked to come up with a phrase, a Sankalpa, that is the opposite of that short phrase that had plagued us forever. I fiddled with it for a while, and eventually, it morphed into “I’m just the right amount of everything.” Game changer!!!

When I first came up with it, I said it all the time. Now, I hardly ever say it because I’ve deeply internalized this notion. That is, it’s shifted from something I think to something I believe. And that, my friends, is magic. ✨ 

Beliefs are thoughts you’ve been thinking so long you eventually come to accept them as true: You believe them.

Every time I was in a situation where I felt the need to back off, become small, or not share what was really going on with me, I said to myself “I’m just the right amount of everything.” After saying it very regularly, even when I was not feeling like too much, and as part of my morning routine, I eventually came to believe it. I realized that for some people, I am too much. And guess what? Those are not my people! They get to not be my people, and I don’t need to make it mean anything about me. No one gets to decide how much “enoughness” anyone can or “should” be.

Going from negative thoughts to affirmations is a process. It takes time. You weren’t born thinking you’re not enough or too much, you were programmed! It’s time to change that programming and it’s going to take a while. 

What’s required is that we be persistent with our affirmative statements. You don’t have to believe your affirmation statements at first, you just have to keep saying them. If you simply won’t allow yourself to be consistent because you can’t believe the new statements, you can scaffold your thoughts. That is, you can go from a negative statement to a neutral statement, then eventually to a positive statement. 

Here's an example:

Negative: I’m always broke
Neutral: I have some money
Positive: Money flows to me easily and effortlessly from expected and unexpected sources.

If you simply will not repeat positive statements about things like money, then you can scaffold your way to something from something neutral from something negative.

Ask-firmations: a new kind of affirmation

I was recently introduced to the concept of “ask-firmations” by a client. The idea is that, instead of making affirmative statements, you ask yourself good questions. They’re essentially affirmations in the form of a question. I’ve also heard this called Lofty Questions of Vishen Lakhiani, the founder of Mind Valley. 

My take on why these work is this: ask shitty questions, get shitty answers. Ask good questions, and get good answers. If you keep asking, “Why can’t I ever get things right?” you’ll search for answer to that question. But if you start asking questions like, “Why am I continually getting things right?” your subconscious mind will go about the job of searching for answers. As it’s said, “Seek and ye shall find.” When you look for good things, you’ll find good things. When you look for shitty things, you’ll find shitty things. This is why a gratitude practice is so helpful in turning your mind and your life around. You look for good things and find them.

If you’d like to start on some affirmations, you can listen to this podcast episode for a whole bunch, or you can listen to some askfirmations I created for people who are working on their boundaries.

For more posts like this go to: Fridayfragments.news

It used to be that when things would happen I’d decide, “It means this.” This was especially true of negative things, but sometimes also true of good things. I’d place a meaning on something and then continue on with my life as if that meaning was the absolute and eternal truth. Recovery taught me that frequently, I was making things mean things that they don’t.

I came to see that I often don't have all the information about a situation and when I don’t, I fill in the gaps. Typically, I make some kind of assumptions. Given that I had a deeply entrenched victim mentality for the majority of my life, the meaning was about how I’d get the shit end of the stick in whatever situation was occurring. Or if it was positive, the meaning I’d place on the situation would be that I was somehow the hero because of my arrogant nature. Mind you, I don’t want to have these mentalities, but I do. They’ve decreased massively since recovery, but I still think like this occasionally. I now catch those thoughts most of the time, but I don’t think they’ll ever entirely go away.

I really only have my own personal perspective about something. I don’t know what other people’s motives are. Hell – I’m sometimes not even sure what my motives are, so how can I know what other people’s motives are??

Here’s an example of making things mean things that they don’t which you may have heard me share before. One Christmas I got a gift from my sweetheart, and he told me he didn't have time to wrap it. I was fine with that, but in the past, I would have made that mean he doesn't love me or care about me or he’d wrap my present beautifully in Christmas wrapping paper with bows and ribbons. 

What’s cool about recovery is that not only do I no longer make something as benign as an unwrapped gift mean that someone doesn’t love or care for me, but I can also see that that’s how I used to think. It helps me see “my part” in the dysfunction of my life. Prior to recovery, I wasn’t even aware that I thought like that.

Recovery showed me I had lots of distorted thinking and unrealistic expectations. I now understand that the way for me to know how people feel about me is the way they treat me over time. It’s not contained in one simple act.

My inner critic seems to want me to be miserable. One of the ways it does that is it tells me things, in my own voice, to keep others at a distance. My mind still tells me f-d up stuff about people sometimes, I just know not to listen to it anymore.

Here’s more about that unwrapped Christmas gift. It was a microphone with a built-in speaker. I can magnify my voice with the flick of a switch! What's really incredible about that is that my entire life I was told I was too loud. I came to believe that was too much. So to have somebody who loves me give me a gift that validates who I am and gives me the message that I need to be heard, and my voice needs to be magnified, THAT is an incredible gift!

If I had made it mean that the unwrapped gift meant that he didn't love me, I would have been so stuck on that that I would have had no appreciation for the value of the gift. The gift was so much more than a microphone – it was seeing that he knows me and what my wounds are.

This is a great example to illustrate having unspoken standards. Before recovery, I wanted beautifully wrapped presents. But I never told anybody that. I expected them to “know” and then if they didn't do it, I made it mean, “they don't really love me.”

Are you doing that sort of thing? Ask yourself where, when, and with who you might be doing this. that. The best way this kind of thinking can be cleared up is to directly communicate with people. That is if they say something that you’re unclear how to interpret, come right out and directly ask them what they meant. Or say something like, “I don’t know what that means” and let them respond. 

Through recovery, I've learned that I don’t have to assign a rigid meaning to everything, especially when it’s based on old patterns of thinking. Instead, I can seek clarity and communicate directly. This shift has allowed me to build healthier relationships and experience more joy and connection in my life.

If you find yourself making things mean more than they really do, I encourage you to pause and ask for clarity. You might be surprised at how much easier life becomes when you let go of assumptions and focus on understanding rather than guessing. Recovery has shown me that the meaning we assign to things is not set in stone—it’s something we can question and reshape. And that, dear friends, is a gift in itself.

For more posts like this go to: Fridayfragments.news

The Ely Center of Contemporary Art, in downtown New Haven, has an opening effective November 2024, for a Treasurer, when its current Treasurer completes his term.

https://elycenter.org/employment23

Please see link with details. Nominations and expressions of interest may be sent to Board Secretary Dan Burns.

daniel.burns100@icloud.com Subject:  ECOCA Board Treasurer Inquiry.

Thank you. 

City Gallery is pleased to present ABSTRACTIONS, a collection of new work by member artist Judy Atlas. The show runs September 6 – September 29, with an Opening Reception on Sunday, September 8 from 2-4 p.m. The artist will be in the Gallery on Saturday, September 28 to meet with visitors and answer questions.

There are two approaches in creating abstract art: representational abstractions which have some reference to physical reality, and nonrepresentational abstractions, which are more intuitive in approach and process, involving exploration and discovery.

There are examples of both of these approaches in ABSTRACTIONS. Atlas's Mykonos paintings are representational, inspired by the natural beauty on the islands of Greece. While her collages and other paintings are great examples of nonrepresentational abstractions.

For the collages, Atlas “deconstructed and tore apart some of my old paintings and monotypes and used these pieces to reconstruct the new abstract art pieces.” In a separate series of paintings, she explores the use of lines, color, shapes and texture to intuitively create an expression of sensations, emotional and physical.

Atlas has studied with Lora Lee Bell, Graziella De Solodow and Barbara Harder at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, and also attended intensive workshops with Steve Aimone in Maine. She taught painting, abstraction, and collage classes at the Creative Arts Workshop for 20 years and has recently retired from teaching. Her work has been included in numerous solo, group, invitational and juried shows in Connecticut. She has been a member of City Gallery since 2008.

The ABSTRACTIONS exhibit is free and open to the public. It runs September 6 – September 29, with artist events on Sunday, September 8 and Saturday, September 28. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Mentoring has been practiced for millennia. It’s a fantastic way to build community, groom new leaders, forge ties between various groups, pass on institutional knowledge and culture, and feel connected to others. I’ve learned a ton about both being mentored and being a mentor in 12-step recovery through what’s called “sponsorship” in recovery. The most basic model of sponsorship in recovery is that you “find someone who has what you want and ask how s/he got it.” If the conversation goes well, you ask them to be your sponsor, and if they say yes, they take you through the 12 steps.

In some 12-step recovery programs, people are told that if someone asks, “Will you sponsor me?” you must say yes. As a former people-pleaser and rescuer, that doesn’t work for me. I’d have 50 sponsees if that was the case! So the main message I have for you here is:

Whatever mentoring relationship you get into, it needs to work for YOU!

It doesn’t matter if that’s a sponsorship relationship in 12-step recovery, career mentorship, spiritual mentorship, or a right-of-passage program. If the mentoring relationship doesn’t feel right to you, you don’t have to stay in it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the mentor or the mentee. You get to be in a mentoring relationship that fits you, feels right, and you’re getting something substantial out of it.

I’m going to share my experience of sponsoring and being sponsored with some recommendations. Just as with everything I share, take what you want and leave the rest. My way is right for me, it might not be right for you.

Recommendations about mentoring relationships

If you're the mentor and feeling completely drained because you have too many mentees or other responsibilities, or your mentees need more from you than you’re willing and able to give, you can let people go. You could also change the way you do things. Perhaps start a group mentoring situation. Being a mentor should enhance your life, not detract from it. If you decide to let them go, you might try to help them find another mentor.

If you’re a mentee and feel like your mentor is just not getting you, not helping you, or you feeling crappy every time you talk to them, you can let them go. It's okay to do that. It's likely that over the course of your life, you’ll have multiple mentors. Some could be in different areas of your life, some could be in different stages of your life. In fact, having a coach is much like having a mentor except that mentors are typically not paid. Sometimes people work together with the same mentor for decades, and some people go from mentor to mentor. It's an individual thing, there’s no one right way for everyone.

If you’re the mentee, you get a say in whether the person mentors you or not. If someone says, “I’m going to be your mentor” you don’t have to agree. It’s unhealthy for people to foist their help onto others. We get to consent to whatever types of help we accept.

Getting started with mentoring

In choosing who might be your mentor, it’s good to look for someone who has the kind of life you want. This could be the kind of career, family, spiritual life, or recovery that you want. Whatever the area is that you’re seeking mentorship, they should be doing well in a way that you admire. When you find someone like that, speak to them and tell them what you admire about them, and ask if they’d be willing to be your mentor. Consider trying it out on a temporary basis, which might be best for both of you to get started. It will also be easier to let the relationship go if necessary when you start with an understanding that it’s temporary. 

Whether you decide to try out the mentorship temporarily or on a longer-term basis, perhaps check in at the 30-day point and again at the 90-day point to make sure it’s working for both of you. I recommend putting the onus on the mentor to do the check-in and to do it via email to make it as easy as possible for the mentee to bow out of the relationship if they choose to do that.  

Personally, I think it’s important to wait to get a mentor until you find one you really like. That way it’s much more likely to be a good match than if you just get a mentor to get a mentor. However, in 12-step recovery programs for addiction to substances like drugs or alcohol, you could possibly die if you go one more day without a sponsor. Keep that in mind. 

Take what works and leave the rest

The way the person gives you guidance is also important. You’re an adult and get to make your own decisions about how to live your life, so if someone is telling you to do something that just doesn’t feel right, you don’t have to do it. In fact, I prefer people who say things like, “Here's what I’ve tried that might work for you…” or “If I were in your shoes, here’s what I’d do…” rather than someone who says, “You need to do this.”

Think of it like this: they’ve been on this metaphorical staircase before you. They're ahead of you with a flashlight and they know which stairs creak but are still strong, which one's got a nail sticking out, and which one is broken. They're not there to tell you “You must go this way” but instead, “Here’s what I recommend” or perhaps “Here's what I've seen work in such situations.” They're there to guide you, not dictate to you. 

My personal experience

Now I’ll talk about my personal experience with sponsorship in 12-step recovery. When I met my first sponsor in OA, she said, “I’ll take you through the 12 steps, and when we're done I'm going to move on and get a new sponsee and you're going to move on and get a new sponsor.” That is, she set up the expectations for both of us from the start. That way, the entire time I worked with her, I knew it was going to end. I knew to start looking for another sponsor as we got toward the end of step 12. I found another sponsor soon after she and I finished the 12 steps. 

That person worked on something different with me using 12-step literature rather than doing the steps. But the work was still specific to the recovery program we were both in. My current sponsor and I read personal development literature together and talked about it. Sometimes it’s 12-step recovery literature, sometimes it’s not. I also share with her any difficulties I’m having and how I’m using the steps and my other recovery tools to handle things. I ask her for advice when necessary, and vent to her if it comes to that (which is less and less often as the years go by). I have a bi-weekly call scheduled with her, but if necessary, I reach out to her in between calls when I need support.

In terms of being a sponsor, I have several sponsees between my two recovery programs. In my ACA program, I’ve been working with the same sponsees for years. Once we completed the steps, we moved on to other program literature. Most of them I meet with bi-weekly at this point, though we met weekly for the first couple of years. I have one sponsee who’s taken the summer off from sponsorship work and another who’s currently on “pause” but texts me daily that she’s meditated for 10 minutes that day. That was something we both agreed would be helpful to her in her early recovery and she continues to do it. That way we’re still in touch a bit. At some point in the future, we’ll likely pick back up where we left off in the literature we were working through. 

When I started sponsoring, my sponsor told me I might sponsor 10-12 people before I finally take a sponsee all the way through the 12 steps. That was really helpful to me because I worked with people who’d dropped out of recovery, who decided our relationship wasn't working for them, or they weren't willing to do the work. Knowing that it doesn’t always work out the first time (or the second or third…) was so helpful. For me, it was my ninth sponsee that I got through all 12 steps. I had the intention of continuing to work with her after we finished the steps, but she decided to move on so I got another sponsee after in that program. The same could be true in any mentoring relationship – the relationship may not last as long as you’d hoped.

The other thing that I do in terms of how I work with my sponsees is that I have them scheduled ahead of time. If we meet weekly, it’s the same time each week. If it’s biweekly, it's the first and third or second and fourth weeks of the month on the same day and time. That’s what works for me and my sponsees. Some people gag at the idea of being the scheduled like, and that’s okay. That’s what works for me. It also ensures that I don’t lose track of any of my sponsees and that they stay in the work. If someone can't commit to being on the phone with me at a prescheduled time, I’m not the right sponsor for them. If they need to speak with me between calls, they text me to find a time to talk soon.

If you’re someone who has been around in recovery for a long time, or in a career or other position for a long time, I hope you’ll consider mentoring others. People are thirsty for connection, especially post-COVID, and this is a great way to give back to others.

The Neighborhood Leadership Program at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven is Accepting Applications

New Haven, Conn. (July 18, 2024) — Residents in New Haven, Hamden, East Haven and West Haven who are looking to make a difference in their communities are encouraged to apply to The Community Foundation’s Neighborhood Leadership Program.

The leadership training and grant program is holding an informational session on Thursday, August 1, 2024 from 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven 70 Audubon St., New Haven. A light dinner will be served.

REGISTER HERE

The Neighborhood Leadership Program is a networking, skill building and grant program carried out over eight months running from September - April. The program trains and supports participants as they imagine, develop, test and realize projects which build community and provide positive outcomes.

Participants are eligible to apply for grants of up to $3,000 to carry out their community-based projects after completing the training and planning stages of the program.

If you have a commitment to making a positive difference through resident engagement, are eager to build your skills and capacity to increase your impact, and you want to engage with other leaders in learning, practice and project execution, then YOU should apply to this program!

The Neighborhood Leadership Program is limited to residents of New Haven, East Haven, West Haven or Hamden.

REGISTER HERE

For more information, contact Lee Cruz.

About The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven in Connecticut was established in 1928 and is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the U.S. The Foundation stewards a permanent charitable endowment for 20 towns in Greater New Haven that has been built by donors creating funds to support a broad variety of issues and organizations. The Foundation’s mission is to inspire, support, inform, listen to and collaborate with the people and organizations of Greater New Haven to build an ever more connected, inclusive, equitable and philanthropic community. For more information about The Foundation, visit www.cfgnh.org or follow @cfgnh on facebook and twitter.

The incident that landed me in a 12-step recovery was that I hit a codependent bottom. It happened as a result of inviting my homeless friend Dan from church to stay overnight at my home during a really heavy snowstorm in January 2015. He accepted my invitation, of course. Then he stayed another time and another time, and within a few weeks, he was practically living with me. 

He was an admitted addict and an alcoholic. Now I think it’s possible he also had some kind of personality disorder. This guy messed with my head in a way I’d never experienced. He made me question my reality, and my motives and generally wreaked havoc on my life. And yet I continued to allow him to say. 

One time he was super high on this stuff that was going around in New Haven at the time. It was called K2 and it was almost like PCP in its effects. The high made the person have super unpredictable behavior and be really “out there.” During one of these highs, he was stumbling around my apartment and just wrecking the place. I was really scared. My nervous system lit up just by writing that. 

I had no idea what to do so I took out my phone to video record him. My brilliant idea was that if I showed it to him when he was sober, he’d “see the error of his ways” and stop getting high. I thought I could manipulate him out of his addiction. I didn't know any better back then, which seems rather obvious since I invited a homeless person to stay in my home!

Instead of him seeing the error of his ways, he lost his shit when I showed him the video. He said, “That's exactly the kind of thing that my father did to me!” By then I knew how much he demonized his father. When Dan’s mother was alive, she’d allow him to sneak into the family home to get food and sleep sometimes. His father was the one who kicked him out because he wasn’t willing to enable him, which is why Dan demonized him.

When I showed Dan the video, he turned me into the villain. He acted like I was a horrendous person because I recorded his escapades. This strategy took the focus off of HIS behavior and put it on ME. He blamed me as if I’d done something wrong by making a video when he’d just trashed my apartment. 

At the time I thought, “He’s the one taking advantage of ME here” but I now know that he wasn’t “taking advantage of me.” I opened my home to him, invited him in, cooked, and did laundry for him. I drove him places, bought him cigarettes, and did all kinds of things to enable him so he would not suffer the consequences of his homelessness. And not suffer the consequences of his behavior while high. He was not taking advantage of me. I offered all these things to him.

Then I got resentful when it became too much. This is a hallmark of codependence – we give and give and give, expecting nothing in return. Then we hit a wall and become resentful because of the imbalance in the relationship. 

I didn't have any boundaries. I had a victim mentality, thinking he was doing these things TO me. Yet I’d invited him in, and gave him all kinds of stuff to make his life easier so he could continue using. I can see now what I couldn’t see then: I believed that I could somehow save him. That if I just provided him with enough stuff, care, and attention he’d magically turn things around.

What's interesting about that is he and I had a conversation once time where I mentioned how hard he had it being a homeless person. He laughed and said that I had it so much harder than him because he had no responsibility and I had tons. I was flabbergasted! He was a homeless person in New Haven, CT in a snowy winter with no income, he begged for money and went to 12-step meetings just for the free coffee and to get warm. And he thought MY LIFE was harder!

I lived in an apartment with heat, hot water, had many changes of clothes, a bed, food, a car, and other material items, not to mention a retirement plan and health insurance. He had only the clothes on his back and thought my life was much harder than his!

He said, “I don't have to do anything. I don't have to be anywhere. I don't have to answer to anyone.” What he was saying, which I know now, is that responsibility scared the shit out of him. He clearly did not have the skills to manage life. He shared with me that he’d come to believe that his mother subconsciously kept him needing her. He was the youngest of four children and she didn’t want him to leave. This kept him from not taking responsibility for himself. So the idea of responsibility scared the shit out of him. My guess is that he also didn’t think he deserved much better than what he had.

Back to my codependent bottom. I just didn't know how to make it stop. He’d do things like the K2 episode, lay these heavy guilt trips on me, and make me question what was wrong with me that I would even think about recording him. Now I can see that what was wrong with that wasn’t so much that I recorded him, it was that I thought that him seeing the video of himself while high would be enough to get him to stop getting high.

I can see now that I believed I could do something to intervene between him and his addiction. That's the thing with codependence -  we feel this compulsion to get in between other people and the consequences of their behavior. But we can't because we're not God. Then we get resentful of them, and make them be the entirety of the problem, even though we’ve been enabling them all along.

He was blaming me for being the problem because I recorded him. Yet I was blaming him for being who he was from the day I met him. And I was also taking the blame by feeling responsible for getting him to stop using.

Eventually, it just got to be so painful that it was intolerable. It finally sunk in, “I have to get him out of my house.” My sanity and my safety finally took precedence over trying to save Dan, who I’d only met a matter of months earlier. My compulsion to rescue, fix, and save him was so strong that I acted like it was my destiny to save him from himself.

Recovery truly and deeply showed me we cannot change other people. It doesn't matter how much we love them, how much we give to them, or how much we bend over backwards. It doesn’t matter if we slit our wrists and bleed for them.

We can't change other people.

This is why the Serenity Prayer is such a staple of 12-step recovery. I believe this is one of those lessons in life that we have to learn over, and over and over again: to discern the difference between what we can and cannot change. 

We especially cannot change other people who are addicts. The only thing more powerful than addiction is God. The thing about God is that the addict has to seek God and welcome God's guidance in order for God to interfere with the addiction. God can't interfere without that person's willingness because of that whole freewill thing. Since God is the only thing more powerful than addiction, but only if invited in, then you and I are not going to get another person to quit no matter what you do or don’t do. 

There are things you can do to make it more difficult for them to use, but you can’t stop the addiction, make them quit, get them into rehab, or get them into recovery. Those things essentially boil down to centering yourself in your own life instead of centering them. You can learn more about that in episode 140 of my podcast, “Loving Someone through Addiction” with my guest Jane Mackey. In the episode, she recommends the book Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Threatening and Pleading. It’s excellent.

The book and Jane’s episode teach things you can do to lessen the likelihood of them using, that is, to stop enabling them. You can create conditions where you’re not making it easier or more pleasant for them to use. You’ll learn to make it more difficult and less pleasant. The main way you’ll do that is by centering yourself in your own life. I typically refer to that by saying, “Keep the focus on yourself.” You’re the only thing you can control, so the endless drain of energy that comes from trying to control people, places, and things will end when you keep the focus on yourself. They may or may not recover, but at least you will no longer be endlessly drained, and resentful and you’ll learn to actually enjoy your life. 

For more posts like this go to: Fridayfragments.news

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven is seeking a qualified candidate for the position of Administrative Associate, Grantmaking & Strategy. 

The application deadline is August 16, 2024.

For more information and to apply, click here.

Reflecting on my journey through the 12 steps of recovery, I can see that I previously expected the world and the people in it to meet my needs. I mean for things like validation, love, and acceptance. That seems pretty normal. But what I’ve learned is that if I give those things to myself first, I don’t go to the world to get those things in a clawing, needy way. I want your validation, love, and acceptance, but I don’t need them like I used to. Because I give them to myself

I also wanted the world to adapt to my ideas of how it should run. I thought people should be kind, thoughtful, trustworthy, dependable, and follow through on what they say. It’s fine for me to have those expectations for myself. But I’m going to be continually disappointed if I expect that from everyone, especially people who have shown me they are not those things. 

Very early in my recovery, someone said to me, “Barb, the world was not created to meet your needs.” I couldn’t even wrap my mind around that! I had no idea what that meant. I wrote it on a sticky note and left it on my coffee table for about a year so I could contemplate it from time to time to try to make sense of it.

Now I understand it. Deeply. I was going out into the world to meet my needs and because it wasn’t created to meet MY needs, I was disappointed, let down, resentful, angry, and frustrated. I was full of all those difficult feelings, which I then brought out into the world. 

I tried to hide all that stuff, of course, being the people-pleaser I was. So I kept it all to myself, which meant from time to time I’d explode. My explosions typically happened at times like driving alone in the car when someone wasn’t going fast enough for me, or someone pulled out in front of me. I’d spew out all those shitty emotions while alone in my car, which meant I was the only one affected by then. In fact, thinking back, I think I sort of kept all this FROM myself, not just TO myself. I really didn’t know how much anger and frustration I had until it was gone. 

When I got into recovery and went through the 12 steps, I was able to clean up the wreckage of the past. I learned how to manage my life going forward in ways I just wasn’t taught growing up.  I took full responsibility for my actions and was no longer blaming the world, the people around me, my family, or anyone else for my difficulties.

All that crap that had been spewing out of me is no longer there. I'm emptied of it. Now have peace and serenity most of the time. Most of the time I’m happy, joyous, and free. Which means I'm no longer looking to the world to meet my needs. I now understand it’s up to me to meet my own needs.

I have a quote (on yet another sticky note) on the mirror in my bathroom: 

“It’s a delusion that the outside world could give us satisfaction
if only things went our way.”

It's not the outside world that's going to get me the things that I want and need. It's my internal world, what’s going on inside of me, that will do that. How I treat myself matters. My relationship with my Higher Power that matters. Those are the things that are really going to transform my life. And they have, dramatically. And they’ll continue to do so. 

Now, instead of trying to go to the world to get my needs met in some clawing, desperate, needy way, I go to the world to give. My codependence, which looked to the outside world like giving behavior, was really about getting: getting affirmation and approval. But now that I give those things to myself, I don’t need them from you. I want them, but I don’t need them.

I now give from a genuine place of caring rather than from a desire to get your approval, feel like I matter, and belong. Now that I have love, happiness, joy, peace, and serenity inside of me most of the time, and I'm able to give that to the world. 

I can go to the world and give to the world without needing something in return. I can be of service to God and my fellows which is my purpose here. Thank you 12 steps of recovery and thank you Higher Power!

For more posts like this go to: Fridayfragments.news

For its summer invitational, MOSAIC, City Gallery welcomes Yale School of Architecture graduates Uzayr Agha, Ariel Bintang, and Ethnie Xu, with a special mobile appearance by NXTHVN and cARTie. The show runs August 2 - August 25, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, August 10 from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.

The summer invitational is always an exciting exhibit at City Gallery, welcoming diverse multigenerational artists from the varied cultures and ethnicities that comprise the greater New Haven community. MOSAIC came about as after creative conversations between artist and architect Ethnie Xu, Gallery members Roberta Friedman and Sue Rollins, and NXTHVN’s Student Program Manager Jay Kemp. The result is an exhibit that features a range of painting, mixed media, collage, and ink and print work.

In addition, as part of the exhibit’s Opening Reception on August 10, NXTHVN & cARTie will present The Legacy. This mobile exhibition, centered around the theme of “legacy,” includes artistic contributions from NXTHVN’s 2023-2024 apprentices, as well as residents of the Hanna Gray home that highlight the concept of generational legacy.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Uzayr Agha (born 1995) is an architectural designer and painter from Karachi, Pakistan. He holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture and has previously studied at Georgetown University and Bennington College. Agha integrates architectural conventions with painting to challenge traditional methods of architectural representation. Primarily through painting and mixed media, he experiments with various surfaces such as canvas, wood, and textiles, merging architectural elements with painterly techniques, creating analogies that reflect the fluidity of memory and identity.

Ariel Bintang (born 1999) is an architectural designer from Jakarta, Indonesia. He holds a Master's degree in Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture and has previously studied at Melbourne University. To synthesize the two fields, Ariel utilizes the language of painting to generate a dialogue with a building and vice versa. His work 18 colours is a series of small painting exercises created as a way to study methods of occupying abstract colours.

Ethnie Xu (born 1997) is a Chinese New Zealander artist and architect living between New Haven and New York. With a MArch and MBA from Yale, she creates ink and print works that explore the connections between cities and their inhabitants, capturing the dynamic essence of urban life as seen in her works 0.2 Miles Apart and Telephone Booth.

MOSAIC offers an opportunity to see the work of these three distinct artists and to learn more about their approaches to and practice of art. The exhibit is free and open to the public. It runs August 2 - August 25, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, August 10 from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.

City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.

Photo Credit: Marcus Aurelius

This is the third part of my three-part series on my most important tools for life, which is learning to keep the focus on myself. If you missed the previous two, they’re Mastering the Art of Pausing and Embracing the Power of Reaching Out.

When people hear the phrase “keep the focus on yourself,” they usually think that means being selfish and self-centered. That's not what it means. It means focusing on what you can control as opposed to what you cannot, which is people, places, things, and situations. 

As a recovered codependent, this has been absolutely key for me. Codependent people focus on that which is outside themselves - other people (what they're thinking, saying, doing, or not doing), societal systems, social situations, organizations, etc. The reason codependents do that is that we've somehow come to believe that if everybody and everything around us is okay, then we will be okay. The problem is that you can't make other things around you okay, you can only make things within you okay. To do that requires you to focus on yourself. 

I’ll share five ways I've learned to keep the focus on myself here. If you have other suggested ways to keep the focus on yourself, please let me know. I'd love to hear them!

• What do I want or need right now?

The first way is to ask yourself what you want or need in any given situation. Before recovery, I never asked myself this question. It was always, “What does s/he/they need?” or “What does the situation/organization need?” and I never paid any attention to what I might want or need. It was all about those around me.

When I started asking myself this, I often didn’t know what I wanted or needed because I was so used to being a chameleon. Over time, I started to discern what my preferences were and what my needs were. That will never happen if you don’t ask yourself what you want and need.

• Am I minding my own business?

This is related to respecting other people’s boundaries. I used to dole out unsolicited advice all the time! I foisted my assistance on others without their consent, perhaps in situations where they didn’t even believe they needed assistance. Speaking of consent, I love consensual relationships. It’s fine to help people, it’s actually more than fine, it’s great to be helpful. But only when you get the person’s consent. Or better yet, wait until they’ve asked for your help.

Getting consent means asking questions like, “Are you looking for suggestions or just venting?” or “I have some suggestions for you, would you like to hear them?” If they say no, then you keep your mouth shut. It’s amazing how much more energy I have in my life just from minding my own business. As I got better at this, I came to see that one of my “ways” had been being helpful to be controlling. That is, I would “help” so that things would go in the direction I wanted them to (e.g., “I’ll contact the event space” so I could make sure things were done my way).

• What’s my part in this?

Another very important aspect of keeping the focus on myself has to do with understanding my part in things. This was my greatest gift of recovery - learning what I was doing to contribute to the chaos and drama of my life. 

If you find yourself in a certain dynamic in various situations that aren’t really working for you, take a look at what you might be doing to contribute to these situations. This is not to beat yourself up, it's so that you can ask yourself, “What might I do differently next time?” If you never ask this question, you’ll probably be like me and assume it’s the people around you or the situations you’re in. You’ll never seek to change what you can (i.e., you). If you’re experiencing the same recurring pattern, you're the common denominator. You can’t change others, but you can change yourself. You won’t do that until and unless you ask, “What might I do differently in such situations?”

Realizing that I had a habit of not minding my own business is a perfect example. I stopped offering unsolicited advice, which meant I stopped getting annoyed at people for never following my advice! Before recovery, I honestly didn't know that I was doing anything to create the discord, lack of peace, anxiety, and tension I frequently had in my life. Much of the dysfunction of my life was cleaned up when I started looking for my part in things! If other people really are the problem, you’re screwed! Finding out what you’re doing so you can stop or change it can make a world of difference in improving your life.

• Am I taking good care of myself?

I neglected and even abused myself for much of my life (drugs, alcohol, food, toxic situations and relationships, running myself ragged). I just didn't take good care of myself, so I was always trying to pour from an empty cup. I love what Ashley Kirkwood says, “Don't pour from your cup, pour from the overflow.” The only way to have overflow is if you fill your cup first. It is not selfish to take good care of yourself, it's self-preservation. And it’s selfless. 

You have more to give when you pour from an overflowing cup. I honestly give more service to my community now that I have healthy boundaries than I did before when I was a “volunteer-a-holic.” That’s because I do it by choice (not compulsion), strategically (not at the drop of a hat) and I fill my cup first. I try to pour from the saucer, as Shannon Daniels says. That means I’ve got so much overflow that it’s spilling into the saucer.

As I said to one of my clients the other day, “It's amazing what you can withstand you take good care of yourself.” She’d just made it through the fiasco of getting dozens of kids onto flights back home when there was a huge outage that affected flights across the nation. She said, “Self-care was a major factor” which she never made time for until she started my coaching.

• Stop feeling and managing other people’s feelings.

Before I had healthy boundaries, I could literally feel others’ feelings. There’s something that happens as you build boundaries that’s almost like an invisible force field that develops around you. Other people's stuff just doesn't penetrate you like it does when you don't have healthy boundaries. I helped this “force field” along by telling myself, “It's not happening to me” when other people were going through crises around me. It helped me differentiate their feelings from my own.

When it comes to managing other people's feelings, this was where I lived! It acted like it was my job to take care of other people - to make sure they were happy, content, and had everything they needed. This goes back to the idea that I needed everybody around me to be okay so I could be okay.

The problem is, there are 8 billion people in the world! I can't make sure everybody is okay. I get to stop managing other people's feelings and let them manage their own feelings. If someone is upset, they get to be upset. If someone is grieving, they get to grieve. It's not my job to make them feel better. I can ask open-ended questions like, “Is there anything I can do?” or “What would feel supportive to you right now?” But they get to be in charge of their own feelings, just like I get to be in charge of my own feelings.

I could say so much more about keeping the focus on yourself. This is absolutely paramount for me and my recovery. I have so much more energy than I didn’t have before I learned to keep the focus on myself. That's because I'm now living just one life: mine. 

In the past, my consciousness was focused on so many people, places, and things around me that I felt like I was being pulled in all different directions. Now I’m so much more effective in the relationships I'm in and the places I go because I'm not scattered. I'm grounded in myself. Try it. You’ll be amazed!

For more posts like this go to: Fridayfragments.news

Photo Credit: Nini form Paris

This is part two of my series about the top three tools for managing life that I gained from 12-step recovery. If you missed part one of “Mastering the Art of Pausing” you can read that here. 

Today’s topic is reaching out for help and support. For me, that means both reaching out to other humans as well as reaching out to my Higher Power. I was incapable of reaching asking for help and support, even from God, before I got into recovery. This is despite the fact that by then, I identified as a very spiritual woman. 

Reaching out to other people

I somehow internalized the notion that I had to do everything myself. I wasn't “allowed” or not supposed to reach out to others to ask for help. It just wasn’t an option for me. I was the helper, the fixer, the rescuer. Recovery taught me the absolute necessity of reaching out and accepting help from others and my HP. 

We are wired for connection, and we’re pack animals. We need each other. I recently heard someone say that there are many ways to build a community, but there’s one way to annihilate a community: be self-sufficient. If everyone is self-sufficient, we don’t need each other. And that’s simply not the truth. 

This business of learning to reach out for help can be crippling. I remember feeling like I was gonna die when I first started entertaining the idea of asking for help. It felt threatening. I came to see that I believed it was somehow “weak” to reach out to others when that could not be further from the truth. It’s courageous and strong to allow people to see us, especially in our most vulnerable states.

One of the many ways that 12-step recovery programs are helpful to us in our journeys to heal and grow is that they’re group programs. As we say in recovery, they’re “WE programs, not I programs.” We recover together. We’re protected when we’re connected.

My first overtures to seek support were at times when I was really upset. I remember thinking, “What are they gonna do for me?” when I thought about reaching out to other women in recovery for support. What I learned is that what they’re going to do is witness me. They’re going to see me. And that is unbelievably powerful – to be seen at our most vulnerable, and accepted, and soothed and comforted.

Don’t get me wrong, the process of getting to the point where I actually reached out for help was extremely difficult. But lucky for me, I had hit a codependent bottom and was so desperate for healing that I was willing to try things I’d never tried, and to do what others in recovery told me worked for them. I became willing to feel the discomfort of trying new things that scared me, instead of the discomfort of suffering alone that was oh-so-familiar. The first time I sobbed on the shoulders of another woman in recovery was monumental for me. It was as if my sorrow was cut in half, shared by her. What a gift!

One thing that helped tremendously in my ability to reach out for help was to talk about how difficult it was with others in recovery. They had the same experience too. And to reach out to them just to stay connected, not because I needed help. That meant when the shit hit the fan, it was so much easier to reach out because I already had a connection, a relationship with these people.

Reaching out to my Higher Power

Then there’s reaching out to my Higher Power, which I choose to call God. I grew up agnostic until my mid-thirties when I read the book Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh. When I finished that book over a weekend, I believed in my own conception of God. I began to identify myself as a very spiritual person. 

By the time I got into recovery about 15 years later, my spirituality had evolved enormously. Yet I’d never once reached out to God to ask for help, or to ask for guidance. What I mainly did before recovery was express gratitude to God. Which I still do, all the time (in fact, this month is my 24-year anniversary of keeping a nightly gratitude journal). But recovery taught me to use God.

What I mean by that is I “use” God for guidance and support. I didn’t used to do that. I didn’t really see God as a resource, which BTW – God is the ultimate resource! Now I turn my will and my life over to God multiple times a day. I ask God to show me what to do. I turn things over to God when I don’t know what to do. That was a revelation to me. 

Previously, I felt like I had to know how to handle everything¸ at all times, in all circumstances. Learning to hand things over to God and ask for guidance has relieved so much tension and anxiety in my life. I thought I was a woman of faith before recovery, but not like this!

I love what my friend Melissa Pearson says, “Fear and faith are the same in that you’re putting trust in something that hasn’t happened yet. Which will you choose?” Well, I choose faith! The fear thing wasn’t working for me.

I say that like I never have fear anymore, which isn’t so. But what’s different now is that as soon as I realize I’m in fear, I reach out to God, and/or I “change the channel” and think of good things instead of catastrophizing. But that’s a whole other article!

What’s helped enormously in reminding me to reach out to God more frequently is my consistent conscious contact with God. I say certain prayers in the morning, afternoon, and evening (and often in between), I meditate, say affirmations, do mindset journaling, and do spiritual readings daily. This routine didn’t happen all at once, mind you. I built up this practice over many years. Because of this consistent conscious contact with God, it’s much easier to remember, “Oh yeah, I don’t have to do this alone.” I’m much more likely to seek God’s help or support when I don’t know what to do or say, or when something feels too big. Words can’t express the enormous relief that brings me.

What's also really different is that I now ask God to use me. That’s not something I ever did before recovery. I ask God to help me be of use to God and to my fellows. I ask, “What can I do, who can I be, what can I say, what are the thoughts you want me to think so that I can help heal the world?” The places that has taken me in recovery and in my business are absolutely astonishing!

My life is profoundly better than it was when I was trying to run the show with no support from others or from God. I don't have to figure things out on my own anymore. In fact, when I hear myself say the phrase “figure it out” I know I'm screwed. Because “figuring it out” landed me in a 12-step recovery for codependence and compulsive overeating. 

For more posts like this go to: Fridayfragments.news

• Teachers MUST RSVP to attend. You can arrive at any time between 12pm and 5:30pm. Check out will begin promptly at 5:45pm.
• Sign up for a field trip to New Haven Reads during the school year. More information about our field trip program will be available during the event.
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Join us at an upcoming public workshop! Our next workshop is a virtual workshop on Zoom on July 30, 2024 from 5:30pm-7pm.

Register here: https://newhavenct.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrf-2hqz4qHdPN37wKnqfomEfq39fgFhKK

At this workshop, special guest IfeMichelle Gardin will lead participants in creative writing and visual art imagining New Haven's future.

Please help us get the word out to your friends, family, and neighbors!

https://newhavenvision2034.com/

Están invitados a nuestros próximos talleres para Visión 2034, el Plan Integral de New Haven. El próximo taller es virtual en Zoom el 30 de julio de 2024, a las 5:30pm.

Registrate aqui: https://newhavenct.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrf-2hqz4qHdPN37wKnqfomEfq39fgFhKK

En este taller, la invitada especial IfeMichelle Gardin guiará a los participantes en escritura creativa y arte visual imaginando el futuro de New Haven.

¡Por favor ayúdenos correr la voz a sus amigos, familia, y vecinos!

Photo Credit: Gary Barnes

This is part one of my series about the top three tools I learned about in 12-step recovery. Mind you, I have an entire tool shed of tools now, thanks to recovery. But these three have been at the top since the very beginning and remain there. They are: pausing (the topic of today’s essay), reaching out, and keeping the focus on myself. The next two essays will be about those topics.

Before recovery, I’d heard things like, “Count to 10 before responding when you’re angry” but it never occurred to me that that could apply to me. After all, I was hardly ever angry (or so I thought). I didn’t make the leap to the fact that counting to 10 is a way to pause, or what the effect might be. I just wasn’t that aware.

Why pausing is so important.

I'm going to start with why pausing is so important. Then I’ll talk about learning to do it in the moment no matter how stressed you are. Many of us react rather than respond to situations, especially when we're stressed out. The problem with that is when we react rather than respond, we haven't put any thought into our response. We've just let our bodies take over. The most likely thing to come out of us is not from a place of calm thoughtfulness and often, can make the situation worse.

When we pause, we’re much more likely to be able to respond thoughtfully. That’s because when we pause, we take the time to breathe, catching our breath and calming ourselves down. The reason this is so important is that when we’re calm, we can think clearly. When we're stressed, we can’t. That’s because stress puts us into “fight-or-flight” mode. In that mode, our bodies are poised for action, not thinking. 

During stress, we can’t afford to spend the energy required for thinking, which is an enormous amount of energy. We need all that energy to go toward taking action (i.e., fighting or fleeing). Our bodies are so intelligent that when the stress response occurs, our higher-order thinking is no longer accessible. That’s so we don’t expend energy on that so it can be conserved for taking action. In the modern day, our bodies continue to work as if our lives are under threat. Today, the kinds of “threats” we encounter are things like comments from colleagues, approaching deadlines, traffic jams, or arguments with our lovers.

You may have noticed that when you're really upset, whether it's anger, fear, sadness, or some other difficult emotion, it's hard to think clearly. That's normal. I like how David Bayer refers to these types of emotions. He calls them “primal” emotions, which are contrasted with “powerful” emotions or states of being. When we're in primal states, the bulk of our body’s energy has been rerouted so that we can fight or flee rather than think. Our bodies are “wired” to protect us so that we can stop thinking and start acting. 

The thing about the modern day is that stressors come to us in ways that affect our bodies as if our lives are at stake when they're not. That means we react to things as if our lives are under threat when they're not. Unfortunately, when we react like that, we often make things worse rather than better. Pausing allows us to catch our breath, relax our bodies, and internalize the message “I’m safe” so that we become calm and are then able to think clearly. This is possible because our respiratory system is the only part of the autonomic nervous system that we can affect. The other parts of that system are not under our conscious control. This is quite the gift!

This is really important. If you want to have a well-lived life, thinking clearly matters. This doesn't mean we don't pay attention to our feelings at all. Of course, we do. But feelings are feedback to be taken into consideration, they shouldn’t be considered as the only information we use in to make decisions.

How to pause when stressed

Once I understood the importance of pausing, I thought, “Great idea, I have no idea how to do that!” 

Getting to be able to pause was monumental for me. It seemed like an insurmountable task because I’d been a reactor my entire life. I wasn’t aware of that until recovery though, I didn’t know there were other options. So learning to pause and respond instead of react was extremely difficult for me.

Part of my inability to pause, I think, came from the sense of urgency I lived with at all times before recovery. I felt rushed all the time, and like I had to have an answer for everything, even if I had to make it up! What I learned about pausing is that it’s like just about everything else in recovery – it’s a process and it takes time to learn.

This is how the process of learning to pause unfolded for me. It’s not a fast process, but it’s a deep process. I promise you, if you allow yourself time and are patient with yourself (i.e., don’t beat yourself up about it) over time you’ll be able to pause even under the most stressful situations. That’s the case for me now.

It starts with reflection. When a situation doesn’t turn out the way you would have hoped, or you’re not particularly proud of the way you handled a situation, take time to reflect on it. In my early months and years of recovery, I’d act out my usual dysfunctional patterns and see that that was not what I truly wanted to do. So I’d reflect on it and think, “I could have done X instead. That would have been a good time to pause.” Noted.

Taking that time to reflect was not easy or natural for me (even though I’ve always thought of myself as an introspective person, I was not reflective). What that meant is that sometimes it would be a couple of weeks after something happened that I realized I could have paused and chosen a different response. 

Then another time, I’d do something similar that wasn’t the healthiest thing and realize again that I could have paused. This time maybe it was a week later rather than two weeks later that I took time to reflect. Over time I started to see the gap in time closing between when I did something dysfunctional and the time I realized it was dysfunctional and that I had other options! That is, I could have paused and responded.

I got excited, because I thought, “Pretty soon I’m going to realize it before I do or say anything reactive and will be able to pause!” And that’s exactly what happened. It wasn’t a linear process – sometimes I remembered and sometimes I didn’t. But now, pausing is very much a part of the fabric of my life.

Paying attention to this process will help to sensitize you to the kinds of situations in which you’re reactive rather than responsive. You’ll be more aware of situations that are likely to trigger your reactivity and will see them coming and be able to stop, pause breathe, and think clearly, “How do I choose to respond to this situation?” 

What to say to give yourself time for pausing, reflecting, and responding

If you don’t know at the moment how you want to respond, there are a variety of ways to give yourself the time to pause.

“I need some time to think about this.”

“I’m not sure, I’ll have to get back to you.”

“I don’t know” (this was HUGE for me - I somehow grew up with the idea that saying IDK was unthinkable!)

“I’m going to have to get back to you.”

“I’m gonna put a pause on that for now.”

Some examples of pausing

If you receive an email that you know will be difficult for you to read, pause until you have the psychic space to deal with it. If you read it and it enflames you, pause before responding. Even if you type up a reply immediately, pause before sending it, then come back and re-read it again when you’ve had time to calm yourself. Or have another person read it first.

If someone asks you to help them move and you’re really not sure you want to, say, “I’ll have to get back to you.” Take the time to think about whether you actually want to help them move or not. If not, perhaps there’s another way you can be supportive if you choose to. You don’t have to answer immediately. If someone pushes you to answer immediately, say, “If you need an immediate answer, it will have to be no.”

Sometimes a pause will be very long. I once took 18 months to decide if I was going to go back to an organization where things unfolded in a way that left me unsettled. 

What I’ve learned over time as I’ve gotten better and better at pausing is that in addition to being able to use my thinking brain as a result of pausing, it also allows me to seek my Higher Power for assistance. When I was constantly reacting to situations, I couldn’t even think of reaching out to my HP.

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Since doing the 12-step recovery, I now have the ability to look back at my life before recovery and see it with crystal clarity in a way that was just not possible before. I’m frequently able to look back at various situations and see: here's what I was thinking, here's what I was doing, and here's what my motives were. Meanwhile, at the time it was happening, I was completely blind to all of it.

One of the things I can see now is that the extreme desire I had to understand things was rooted in my need to control outcomes. I wanted to know all the facts, the context, and the variables that contributed to something. I can see now that that extreme desire to understand things was because I thought if I knew everything that was involved, I could manipulate the variables in such a way that things would come out the way that I wanted. In other words, I could control the outcome.

When it came to romantic relationships, I wanted to understand why “he” (whoever “he” was at the time, since I date men) did that or why he keeps doing that. I felt that if I got that, then I could get him to stop doing “it” (whatever “it” was that I didn’t like). I did all this without having any conversations with him, of course, since I didn’t know how to directly and clearly communicate, nor was it an option for me. I didn’t know that was a thing. This is an important reason why I frequently resorted to manipulation and control. Direct and clear communication is key. For example, “Help me understand what you meant by that” rather than filling in the gaps with your own story and making their actions mean something that they don’t. Get clarity.

There are many ways I’ve let go of control in my life because of recovery. Some of that came from the fact that I didn't even realize that was what I was doing. As they say, awareness is the first step in any change process. I also became aware, on a deep level, that the only thing I can control is me: my thinking, my feelings, my attitudes, and my behavior. 

Another big shift that has allowed me to let go of control is that I became willing to let go of outcomes. I do the footwork, then let the outcome go to God. Even though I was a pretty spiritual person by the time I got into recovery, I wasn’t using God the way I do now. What I mean by that is I now seek guidance from God. I turn things over to God (i.e., give the outcome to God). I ask God, “Show me your will for me and give me the power to carry that out). 

This has changed everything. I no longer feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I no longer feel like I have to have an answer for everything or know everything. I now make sure I stay connected to my Higher Power because I truly believe that my HP power knows better than I do. I trust in the inherent goodness of the universe. I know that even if things don’t look that good, ultimately they will be.

I was hyper-focused on things coming out my way and I’m no longer invested in that. This shift was aided by the fact that I came to understand that my way isn’t necessarily the right way or the best way. This was news to me when I did the 12 steps! It was the process of doing the 12 steps that revealed that to me.

Something that's come to the surface of my consciousness about all this is that I've really gotten the message that I don't get to get my curiosity satisfied all the time. I used to always feel like if I was curious about something, then I somehow deserved to get my curiosity satisfied. It felt like I HAD to have my curiosity satisfied.

Now I understand that I can just be curious and am able to live with not having it satisfied. I'm able to not get closure on things. I can live with things sort of “hanging open” and it doesn't flip me out the way it used to. Of course, I like to get closure, but it’s not required for my peace and serenity. 

This brings to mind two sayings about understanding. One of them is:
“When you understand, things are as they are.
When you do not understand, things are as they are.”
Meaning: the facts don’t change with understanding.

Another saying that contrasts with that is: 
“There could be something, the knowing of which, changes everything.”
I lived in the second saying. The facts may not change, but our interpretation of what those facts mean could change if we knew just one other little piece of information. I always thought that if I just understood some additional piece of information, then everything would make sense to me. Understanding would fall into place, and I could move on to the part where I could control the outcome. 

I think that partly my need to understand things came from growing up very confused. I didn’t realize how confused I had been my whole life until recovery. There wasn’t much direct communication in my family. My family didn't talk about a lot of things, we were just expected to know things or figure them out. 

A very basic example is that I was told my whole life, “You’re going to college” but never given any information on what, exactly, it means to go to college. What do I need to do to prepare (besides getting a good grade, I got that part!). But I never got any help on how to get good grades beyond, “try harder.” So, when I first landed in college, I dropped out mid-way through my second semester. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I felt completely lost. I was there because my parents told me to go.

That’s just one rather mundane example from scores of subjects in my life where I was just expected to know things. And the option of asking questions just didn’t seem possible. I can see now that I often didn’t understand what was going on, and what things meant, why are we saying we do this in our family when we actually do that? And why are we saying we don't do that but we actually do?

I think that confusion or lack of clarity partly drove my need to understand things. Now I don’t NEED to understand things like I used to. I’ve really internalized that I don’t get to get my curiosity satisfied, partly because I’m no longer attached to outcomes and no longer feel the need to control people, places, and things that are outside my control. I focus on myself, my thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors because those are things I can control. I also know how to directly and clearly community with people, which has radically changed my life.
I wanted to turn my partners into emotionally available people, turn my boss into someone who followed through on things and change our education system into one that equitably distributes education and resources to urban districts just like in wealthy suburban districts.

By taking an inventory of my life in recovery I realized that none of my efforts to control such things was working. Despite all my efforts to manipulate and control, I wasn't making things come out the way that I wanted. Attempting to do that was draining me and robbing me of the peace and serenity which are my birthright. 

I was trying to control the uncontrollable (people, places, and things). Because I had all my focus and energy out there, I wasn't focused on myself and what was going on internally (i.e., the things that I could control) so as to make my life even more manageable. 

When I'm attached to outcomes, it means I'm using my teeny tiny little Barb Nangle perspective rather than allowing God to use the perspective of the entire universe to figure things out. And that never worked!

As a recap, here are the seven insights I shared from my own personal experience on letting go of control.

1. Awareness of the Need for Control: Recognizing that the extreme desire to understand things was rooted in a need to control outcomes.
2. Letting Go of Outcomes: Becoming willing to let go of outcomes and trusting in a Higher Power.
3. Control Over Self: Understanding that the only things you can control are your own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors.
4. Living with Unanswered Curiosities: Accepting that you don't always need to have your curiosity satisfied and can live with things being unresolved.
5. Trust in a Higher Power: Seeking guidance from and turning outcomes over to God, which has alleviated the pressure of having to know and control everything.
6. Realization of Ineffectiveness: Recognizing that attempts to control others and situations were draining and ineffective.
7. Focus on Internal Control: Shifting focus from controlling external factors to managing internal ones, which are within your control.

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