Boundaries

Healthy Relationships

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Healing Within Our Alcoholic Relationships, CAL, p. 16

“Building Healthy Connections

As the experience of our fellow Al-Anon members demonstrates, the more we practice Al-Anon’s spiritual principles in all of our relationships, the more those relationships change. More than that, we change. As we build trust in ourselves and others, we begin to move through our lives with more confidence and less fear. By learning healthy ways to express ourselves and developing the ability to listen, we build connections with others, ourselves, and our Higher Power. In taking responsibility for our own needs, we become better able to see that those needs are met. With a solid spiritual foundation and the loving support of the Al-Anon fellowship, we find ourselves better equipped to be more fully ourselves. We become able to live more fulfilling lives.”

I’ve heard it said that ours is a disease of relationships. And I believe that’s true. Not to oversimplify, but to me the 12 Steps are the key to my becoming a better, healthier person than I was before I discovered them. Just the amends steps, for example. Before recovery, I was often too proud to apologize for something. Now, nothing could keep me from making an amend when it’s called for. And how much healthier my relationships are as a result! Or just the first step, admitting my powerlessness over people, places and things. If, for example, my husband has severe OCD, I don’t have the power to change that. Maybe he can, but I can’t. Instead of endless snarky remarks and frustration, I’ve learned to accept his peculiarities with love and grace. Or the third step, my turning my problems over to my Higher Power. Stop trying to fix everything, Marilea! Ask Him to do what He can, and then let go. You’re not God; stop acting like you were.

My relationships are infinitely healthier now because I’ve incorporated the 12 Steps into my life and my behavior toward others. I always joke that it’s the best therapy around, and it’s free! Grateful I am, and always will be, for Al-Anon and my fellowship of friends. Have a beautiful day, everyone. God Bless!

Live And Learn

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From Healing Within Our Alcoholic Relationships, CAL, p. 9-10

“Ceasing to Enable

Our constant protective watchfulness of the alcoholics in our lives makes it easy for them to continue drinking and delay getting help. As long as we convince ourselves that we are doing our very best for them, they may have no incentive to get sober. Until we learn, as we do in Al-Anon, that shielding alcoholics from the consequences of their drinking only prolongs the course of the disease, the situation isn’t likely to improve.”

It took me years to really believe this and stop “helping” my daughter. At the time, the consequences looked unbearable to me: living on the street, going to prison, etc.

Out of my own sense of guilt, since I’m a double winner, I felt that she got it from me, that it was my fault. Over time I finally accepted that my daughter’s illness was not my fault. Period. And any attempt to carry the responsibility for her disease was terribly misguided. When I brought this new attitude into my belief system, I felt free for the first time in years. I cannot save Annie from substance use disorder, but I gratefully and gracefully have learned to save myself.

Because I’m worth it.

The Melting Away Of The Great White (Frozen) Wall Of Guilt

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

I have been in ongoing recovery for quite a few years, and I’ve  written this blog for over a decade. Yet it is utterly refreshing for me to see myself grow in real time and share it with you. Here is something I have realized recently as a result of my 12-Step work:

 I’ve often said here that guilt is a crippling emotion. How so? I had felt that when I let guilt overpower me, I would become vulnerable and lose my resolve when dealing with my daughter, and probably others as well. The boundaries I had set to protect me would fall away. So I would become crippled in my dealings with her.

That kind of thinking demonstrates how far I needed to grow in order to work with guilt differently so that it would become my teacher and not a means to punish myself. Now I see that the only thing that crippled me was me, and not the emotion behind it. The second promise of AA says that I will not regret the past nor wish to close a door on it. When I can truly not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it, I will be able to accept myself as an evolving woman just like so many of us in recovery.

I will see that my whole life—the good, the bad and the ugly—has been a series of lessons for me, one after the other. And that wishing away my past would be a form of self-annihilation. I will try to embrace my failures with my loved ones—not with angst and remorse—but with humility and. grace.

This is the power of my program at work.

Denial

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

“No, not my daughter. She’s had such a privileged life, was given so many advantages, this couldn’t be happening to her.”

This is what I told myself for a long time. I simply couldn’t believe that my daughter would throw her life away like this. “This sort of thing happens to other people’s children.” Well, I got rid of that arrogance very quickly. Her behavior was undeniably that of a full-blown substance abuser, deep in the disease. This was the child I had raised, not other people’s children.

She stole everything that wasn’t nailed down in the house. When she said we must have been robbed, I believed her and called the police. I swallowed her lies hook, line and sinker. When she stole my identity, twice, the credit card company called me and encouraged me to call the authorities. I blew them off and said I would take care of it. I did nothing, afraid of the consequences she would face. I lacked the courage to do the right thing.

Those consequences might have taught her a lesson. But by helping her to avoid them, she was  emboldened to do more. This is what my denial had wrought; my daughter was a runaway train, having abandoned the moral code I taught all my kids when they were little, caught in the grip of a cruel disease that had claimed her for 23 years. Maybe if I had faced the truth early on, things would have been different. Or maybe not. I needed to accept the fact that my part in her disease was insignificant.

I don’t beat myself up with guilt anymore. I, too, have been in recovery for 23 years. And I have learned something important in the rooms: I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. I have since learned a lot and I know more, about denial, enabling, and preventing my child from facing the consequences of her actions.

 Yes, this is one of my many mantras: “I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.”

No more guilt. Just love and compassion for the both of us. Amen to that.

“What You Allow Is What Will Continue”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Many of us do it, at first anyway. Sometimes it’s easier to take the path of least resistance. We are so terribly stretched out to begin with. We see our children caught in the vise of substance use disorder, and it’s natural to want to make things easier for them.

I paid off my daughter’s huge debts. Big mistake. And was she grateful? No! “How could you be so stupid, Mom? Now they’ll see that as an admission of guilt!” Oh yes, she knew all the ins and outs of this game she was playing with the law. And I naively thought I was “helping” her. By interfering like that, I was just encouraging her to rely on me bailing her out all the time. When she stole my identity and the credit card agency begged me to call the police, I did nothing, denying her the accountability she deserved. The lesson she might have learned. The chance to look at herself and turn her life around.

Far from being a help to my daughter, I was very much in the way, a big hindrance to her getting better from the disease that was claiming her. I needed to adopt a “hands-off” approach and let life unfold for her logically. The chances are that eventually her unlawful behavior would catch up with her. And she would have to face some consequences. And learn something.

The stakes might be higher this time. She wasn’t caught cheating on a quiz in school and had to get an F as punishment. This time she might be breaking the law and, if caught, might face a harsher penalty. Every parent’s fear, and possibly the only way my daughter would see the need for her  behavior to change.

So I stopped allowing my daughter to use me like an ATM machine, among other things. This is when she cut me out of her life. And whether or not she’s still indulging in the same behavior, at least I’m not encouraging it to continue by making everything easier for her and being over-protective. She has very likely found new sources of money.

The price I’ve paid? I haven’t seen her in 13 years. My Higher Power is protecting me from the guilt—and longing to seduce her back into my life, no matter the cost.

And her Higher Power is there for her as well, ready to help her whenever she asks for it.

I sleep well at night now, knowing that our fates are in God’s capable hands.

Boundaries

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Boundaries do not have to be angry walls that shut other people out. They are a form of assertion and self-affirmation. In the spirit of friendship.

They tell people: “This is what I need in my life, and I need you to acknowledge and respect it. When you do, things will work well in our relationship. But if you don’t, if you cross lines and disrespect my boundaries, our relationship might break down and stop working. I will probably exit the relationship out of self-respect.”

Boundaries are not there for others. They are there for our self-regard—to benefit us.

Twelve Signs Of A Spiritual Awakening

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

  1. “An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
  2. Frequent attacks of smiling.
  3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature.
  4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
  5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience.
  6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
  7. A loss of ability to worry.
  8. A loss of interest in conflict.
  9. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
  10. A loss of interest in judging others.
  11. A loss of interest in judging self.
  12. Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return.”

A tall order, that’s for sure. But, as with all of our attempts to change ourselves and improve our well-being, baby steps work best. This is no time for the monster of perfectionism. No one, absolutely no one, is perfect. #9 is extremely hard for me, so I keep trying to let go of what motivates others. And #6? Enjoy my chemotherapy? To enjoy it, I’ll focus on how it is saving my life, rather than focusing on the discomforts that come with it. This is how I deal with all the negatives in my life: like losing my daughter to substance abuse; I have two other kids and grandkids. I focus on them. Gratitude offers me grace. Life is still a wonderful adventure when I try to keep spiritually healthy. God Bless!

“We Are All Broken. That’s How The Light Gets In.”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

“This journey of mine, this parenting journey, would involve going two steps forward sometimes and then three steps backward. It was not vertical progress I was making, but it was progress. And strangely, the more I kept the focus on myself and striving to be happy, the easier it was to let go of my child. I knew I had paid my dues, and I feared no one’s judgment, least of all God’s.

I’ve railed at God many, many times during these twenty-three years of joy and pain, this God they speak of at Twelve-Step meetings. How many times had I sinned in my life? Many, more than I want to remember. And so the child in me had been sure, earlier on, that I was being punished for all of them. It was my karmic payback. “What goes around comes around,” etc. Indeed, for all of my life, before my breakdown, I had no faith in anything or anyone other than myself. I grew up very lonely and isolated, and if there was a god, he wasn’t paying any attention to me. So I learned to be very independent and self-reliant.

But when I finally found myself on my knees, I felt broken and whole at the same time: broken because my MO for dealing with my problems hadn’t been working; and whole because I finally let myself believe in something outside of myself to strengthen me, to fill in the gaps that were missing in me, and to help me cope. I was starting to develop and cling to a faith that assured me that I was not being punished and that I would be OK in the end, no matter what happened to my daughter. And I realized that fighting her battles for her was not only a waste of time; it was also useless and of questionable value.

My energies, spent though they were, would be better directed toward reclaiming my own life, which had been sorely compromised in the fight to save my daughter. And in reclaiming my own life, I was bidding for my redemption, long overdue, but just within my reach. This was my journey now, I knew it; I sadly accepted it. I wanted us to be connected but we weren’t. I wanted her struggle to be our struggle, but it wasn’t. I wanted to save her life but I couldn’t. I could only save my own. And I’d keep working at it—or this relentless disease would claim two more victims instead of one.” ~Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Maggie Romero, 2014

“Deal From Strength”

Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

From “The Forum,” October, 2014:

“Before I came to Al-Anon, when I was figuring out if I was okay, I had a mental checklist: is my daughter okay, is my son okay, and is my husband okay? If I could answer yes to all of those, then I knew I was okay. When I could no longer deny that my teenage son had a big problem with substance use disorder, I was no longer able to feel okay, because he wasn’t okay. I had it backwards.

In Al-Anon, I’m learning how to be okay without first checking in with my loved ones to see if they are okay, If they aren’t, maybe I can say or do something helpful; maybe not. I will still be okay. The action I take is much more likely to be effective if I am acting or speaking from a place of serenity. And with serenity I can begin to let go of the outcome, knowing I have done all I can and that I am powerless over the rest.”

All I can add to these wise words is another saying I’ve picked up along the way: “Deal from strength.”  So often in life our actions, and more often reactions, are born out of fear. When my daughter robbed me, I was afraid that if I had her arrested she would be scarred forever, when in fact it might have taught her a valuable lesson about consequences. This is an example of enabling at its worst. My fear governed that very poor decision. Now, through the wisdom I have learned in the rooms, I do things differently. I make choices, not out of fear, but based on what I feel is right. I deal from the strength of my convictions. Then I can let go of outcomes and be at peace with myself.