Learning to Live in Process

2005-02-28T21:43:00.000-08:00

I feel as though I'm living in a different world since I started Living in Process® work and 12-Step recovery, and I am very grateful.

My bottom was in 1992-93, when my former husband was in the process of deciding to divorce me and then going through with the divorce. The winter of 1992 was the depth of my bottom. I was depressed, isolating, and obsessively fantasizing about murdering my husband, the woman he's now married to and, because I couldn't imagine how I could live with myself afterwards, myself. I tried to pray and couldn't. I couldn't tear myself away from my obsessions to feel present with God. I was in a miserable place.

In March 1992, I suddenly came out of isolation when I burst into tears at my stockbroker's office. She's an old friend, who in two-and-a-half hours (in the midst of tax season) started me looking at myself and what I could do about my misery. Later that same year, I was taken by the title of Anne Wilson Schaef's book, Escape from Intimacy. As I read the book, I identified as an addict for the first time, a relationship addict. In January 1993, as my divorce became final, I read her newly published book, Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science, and I decided to write for more information to the address printed at the back of the book.

In July 1993, I went to Montana for my first Living in Process® workshop and knew I needed and wanted "more." I still remember how completely different I felt at that first Intensive from the way I'd felt in my marriage. My marriage had looked pretty good on the outside and I'd felt miserable, helpless and hopeless inside and I didn't know what to do about it. The Intensive looked and sounded pretty awful on the outside, with people crying and writhing and pounding on mats, and I was amazed at how wonderful I felt inside. I was drawn to people's openness, honesty and clarity - which I experienced to an extent I never had before. I basked in the atmosphere of acceptance and freedom from judgementalism. I started Living in Process® Training in August 1993. I've kept on ever since, and I need to keep going on. I have lots to learn.

I'd like to share an experience I had several years ago in which I acted in a very different way than I would have before I started recovery and Living in Process® work. (Before I begin, I want to be very clear that I share this experience with the complete permission and blessing of my daughter.)

One Friday morning I received an e-mail message from my daughter requesting no contact with me. If she had asked for no contact ten years before, I would have felt shocked, embarrassed and ashamed and I would have stuffed my uncomfortable feelings. I wouldn't have known what else to do. I would have focused on her, obsessed about her, wanted to change her. I would have isolated and not talked about the situation and my feelings about it with anyone other than perhaps my husband. I would have felt painfully alone. I would have lied and pretended that nothing was "wrong" and that I was "OK". I feel pain even now as I write these words.

That Friday morning I did feel shocked and embarrassed and a lot of self-pity and pain - and I didn't stuff my feelings. I went to a safe place, a mat, which we have where I live, and cried and cried and cried. No one tried to stop me from crying. No one tried to stop my process by touching me, talking to me, or suggesting I take medication. I felt so grateful that everyone respected me and supported me doing my emotional work. I cried a good bit of that day, staying with my painful feelings, and I felt relief just staying with my pain. I had wanted to go on a trip with a friend and her brother that weekend, and I knew when she came to me late in the afternoon that I couldn't go with them. I would need to stay near the mat and stay with my feelings over the weekend. I checked in with her and told her what was going on with me. She didn't judge me or give me advice, and she gave me her love and support.

Saturday I went back to the mat and cried some more and checked in with several other friends. Sunday I had several telephone check-ins and described to those people what was going in with me. I was not isolating, as I would have before. I was reaching out for help. Some people I checked in with told me that they had asked for no contact from their parents and others told me that their children had asked for no contact with them. I felt so much relief when I found out I wasn't alone. The following Thursday was my daughter's birthday - I considered sending her a birthday card and checked this out with people, too. I wanted to respect her request and I wanted her to know I love her. Monday morning I mailed off a card to her whose message was simply, "I brake for birthdays" and in which I wrote, "I hear you. I love you. I'll wait for you to contact me." By Monday afternoon, I felt calm and accepting of my daughter's request and accepting of my feelings and actions. I was in a very different emotional space than I would have been had I stuffed my feelings and isolated.

And, that wasn't all. I've come to understand through my recovery and through Living in Process® work that I need to "look at my part", at what I have done and what I can learn and what I can, with God's help, change in myself. On the mats in the midst of staying with my feelings and again in checking in with people, I began to look at my part. I prayed - "God, be with me. God, show me. God, help me learn what I need to learn."

The trigger for my daughter's request for no contact had been an e-mail message I'd sent her about my eating habits and losing weight and finding my cholesterol ratio had dropped into a normal range. I began to remember that she had asked that I not talk to her about food or weight or emotional issues around food. (She herself had been wrestling for some time with issues around her own eating patterns and weight.) My rationalization for sending her the message - my lie to myself - had been that my message was about me and not about her and it was OK for me to talk about me. And, it wasn't OK with her. Another person I talked to was my son. He told me that when he had received my e-mail message - I'd sent it to several family members and friends - he had immediately thought, "This is for my sister".

So, I looked at my motives and my energy in sending out the message. I checked in with myself - had I intended to "sell" the way I was eating to my daughter? I had not paid attention to my intent in sending the email to her. I had just sent it without thinking. I learned that I needed to be aware of my motives and my energy, and not lie to myself about them. To see my part in this experience with my daughter has been a sobering lesson for me, a step of spiritual progress in my recovery.

Eight months after she'd requested no contact with me, my daughter e-mailed me that she was ready to resume contact by e-mail and snail mail, though not yet by phone. Then, just before the next Christmas she e-mailed that she was open to a phone conversation on Christmas day. We talked for a couple of hourse that day, and it was the best Christmas present I had. She tells me she's grateful for my respecting her desire for no contact during those eight months. Today I delight in our relationship of mutual respect.

This is just one experience of many from which I have learned and grown since 1993. I'm so glad and grateful that God, whom I call the Creator, saw to it that I got into Living in Process® and into recovery back then. I don't know that I'd be here, alive and loving life, had I not come to this work. I surely never want to go back to the self-pity, misery and depression I experienced so often before.

I deeply value and appreciate that Anne Wilson Schaef has been doing her own work over many, many years. I am grateful that she shares with those of us who participate in Living in Process® work, and with the readers of her books, her experience, her strength, her clear vision. I especially trust that Anne does not promote herself as any kind of ultimate authority, or proclaim herself a guru. She simply is what she is and shares where she is. She walks her talk, and for me that's enough.

As I said above, I feel as though I'm living in a different world than I was in 1993. I love where I have come to, and I want to continue to live in process, to learn and to grow spiritually.

Bobbi