As users, abusers and addicts of chemicals, the dynamic of control is far more involved than anyone can truly imagine. On a regular basis we at Bethesda are coming alongside our clients who have come out of hectic life-styles, and whose families are left at home licking their wounds.
Our clients start to surface from their swamp of addiction - in some cases like Shrek, all dirty and angry at the world. They then start to look at the havoc caused by their drinking and/or using, and they sink into emotional isolation, overcome by guilt. This guilt is always accompanied by shame and fear; even grief and loss.
The client himself is very often in post-traumatic stress syndrome, and this is the fibre of the person who then wants to put everyone else’s life back in order! “My wife was fine until I married her; I broke her; I should fix her.” And what no one realises is, the client is simply trying to gain some control over the emotional and spiritual chaos around them. Coupled with this, very often, there is the wife at home who suddenly finds herself with no one to look after or to complain about, and she is left to cope with all kinds of fears and regrets.
The client starts to combat his or her guilt with premature promises and apologies, and the spouse, hungry for something to hope in, believes the dream and starts to create a fantasy husband all over again. As children, we had very little, or no, control over our environment or the events that took place within it. As adults, therefore, we find that we have an extraordinary need to control our feelings and our behaviour, and we try to control the feelings and behaviour of others.
We become rigid, and unable to have spontaneity in our lives. We trust only ourselves to complete a task or handle a situation. We manipulate others in order to gain their approval and keep a balance of control that makes us feel safe. We feel our lives will deteriorate if we give up our ‘management position’. We become stressed and anxious when our authority is threatened; depression is never very far away. We know the truth yet live a lie.
Everyone seems to desire being in control, and what we call ‘The Three T’s’ often fall by the wayside.
1. Truth: The truth is, any spouse who can live with a drinking alcoholic or using addict, has to be co-dependent. The truth is, if trying to control the outcome of Bethesda and the future thereafter is not abandoned, and self-honesty seized, the addict in early recovery will only return to a co-dependent household. This, in turn, will demand, in a very subtle way, compromise on the part of the addict, which is the one luxury anyone in early recovery cannot afford. Much more devastation will very often precede new depths of depression, and eventual divorce, when dishonesty and control are not addressed.
2. Time: Our teachings are; “rather than tell your spouse that you are sorry, why not just go home and show them”? Go home and stay sober. “Don’t tell your wife you love her, show her”. Even show her by establishing boundaries around your self that she might struggle with in the beginning. Encourage self-help groups for the spouse, but only encourage, don’t demand. Cut out the words “I promise.” Rather, “Darling I appreciate that your trust of me has been shattered by my behaviour over the last ten years. I cannot fully understand why you are still with me, but in the next ten years I hope to show you how precious you are to me.
From time to time I will no doubt hurt you and fail you, but alcohol is not an option in this marriage any longer. God has to be included in my life, which means prayer, personal quiet time where I need to be alone and the involvement of new friends into our lives.”
Recovery is a family marathon, not an individual sprint.
3. Trust: Trust is not a decision or an event; it is a part of a sometimes very long process. Trust is the rose at the end of the stem, not the root, and it is a programme that all parties have to practice. The client has to practice honesty, even when everything within them seems to encourage a lie to meet an end or to find approval. The spouse has to also practice allowing for error from time to time without throwing the baby out with the bathwater at the first sign of ‘failure’.
If I am trying to live by the truth, over time, and I am allowed to err from time to time without judgement and condemnation, trust will slowly start to blossom. NA & AA groups live by the principle of recovery being about progress rather that perfection, and we at Bethesda also promote this dynamic. If then, when I fail my wife, even hurt her, and she still loves me because she can see that I was sincere even though wrong, we always get closer to each other.
A problem that took 20 years to reach its peak is not going to evaporate over a three-month stint at Bethesda. Recovery does not start at Bethesda. Recovery only begins ‘after’ Bethesda. Bethesda is merely a ‘discovery’ station that we wish spouses and other wounded parties would visit from time to time.
Another destructive dynamic stemming directly from the issue of control will be explored in the next newsletter, that of frozen feelings.
Please feel free to drop me a line if you feel that any of these dynamics are influencing your life at all. I cannot promise that I will have the solution, but I do know a Man who will.
