I've been meditating a lot lately on the concept of 'surrender.' In recovery, this is a word that I hear thrown around a lot - one of those omnipresent buzzwords that enters into conversation through many different doors.
I hear people talk about surrendering to a higher power, surrendering their faults (or character defects if one prefers to church it up,) surrendering a drink or a pill or a joint and surrendering their will. That last is, in my mind, both overused and terrifying; to surrender one's will is to give up, as I see it, and to embrace powerlessness as a state of being rather than a spritual or emotional pain point that can result in growth.
Twelve-step programs are rife with amateur phraseology, and I think that most of it can be helpful. It's never caused me pain to think an action through all the way to the outcome, which is what is the action that the old-school slogan 'Think, Think, Think,' is intended to prompt. 'One day at a time,' another cue that's been around seemingly forever, reminds me that I don't have to spend today wallowing in the unchangeable past or stuck on the scary possibilities of tomorrow.
HALT - an acronym for Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? means to me that when I find myself in a particularly sour frame of mind - or with an overwhelming desire to escape my life with a mind-altering dose of self-medication - I have the ability to pause and to take this quick needs assesment. It's simple. Hungry? Eat something. Angry? Find out why and do some work on the root cause of the feeling in order to acknowledge the truth of why I'm feeling this feeling. Lonely? Call someone. Tired? Take a nap. All of these pauses take me out of my head and into the real world of nourishment, tangibility, interaction, rest. Often, the pause provides me with as much course correction as the ensuing self-care action does.
So, to use another common phrase, we 'take what's good and leave the rest.' The word surrender triggered a hot-button reaction from me for a long time, because I could only understand the definition of it as one of retreat, giving up, giving in and throwing in the proverbial towel. Eventually I talked to enough people and gained enough experience in my internal bullshit-o-meter to hear with my heart the best definition of true surrender that I know:
"Surrender doesn't mean that we quit trying to do anything, Vanci. It just means that we decide to continue to take the right actions in our life while giving up control of the outcome of those actions."
Wow. This gem was handed to me by a good friend who happens to give off these powerful Zen calm, peaceful vibes. When he walks into the room, I think... Ahhhhhhhh. So, naturally, I want what he has, which means that when he talks, I listen.
In the context of my Crazymaking FOO, this concept of surrender was a tough one for me to apply. My experience with all of them has been, to varying degrees, that what they do when they don't get exactly what they want from me is to apply massive pressure from any angle they can find.
As an example, several years ago, OS and YB lived elsewhere from the town that I lived in. NM and EF lived about 15 miles from me. The parents decided to take a trip to visit my siblings, and it was expected that I would watch their three dogs. No one asked, mind you, they simply told me when they would be gone and told me that they'd leave the house unlocked. It was spring, which meant that their extremely rural driveway was impassable. My two daughers were in 2nd and 4th grades, and school was in session. DH and I both worked full time jobs. There was no way that we could pack up our entire day-to-day lives and move the 15 miles out to the clan compound for a week, and, frankly, no normal person would expect this from a busy young family such as mine was.
I told NM and EF that I wouldn't be coming to stay at their house, but that I would make the 30 mile round trip drive each day - on my dime, of course, compensation for this was never a question - to check on their dogs. The pushback began immediately.
I received a phone call from OS in which she berated me for my selfish actions. I received a phone call from NM and EF asking me why I was making it so difficult for them to go visit OS. Was I jealous? Couldn't I find the time to do as I was asked for these people who had sacrificed so much for me? YB wanted to know why, just because I couldn't understand the bond that the parents had with their dogs, couldn't I help them out just this one time. The over-riding sentiment was that if I didn't buckle, didn't 'decide' to do exactly as I was asked, either NM or EF would have to stay home. This would, of course, be my fault.
I can't remember how that particular spiral of multi-faceted abuse and pressure ceased, but I'm fairly certain that DH - ever the voice of reason and as an outsider, he was always treated by a better code of behavior than I was - intervened and calmly asserted that A) the dogs would be fine and B) the negotiations were closed and if there was further talk about the situation it would be along the lines of which kennel the dogs could go to. We ended up driving the 30 miles round trip daily and checking on the animals, who were, in the end, fine.
In retrospect, this was part of the pre-pre-pre-Vanci rebellion. For about three years before I finally took real, tangible steps onto a path of healing, I made these tiny little forays into independence. I was beaten into submission every time, but with each little step toward freedom I gained valuable knowledge. Even the half-assed compromise that I made in the Great Dog Watching Rebellion - I mean after all I did spend a good 90 minutes each day for two weeks saddling up and driving out to the boon tillies to check on the dogs - was a step forward for me. Previously under the same circumstances, I wouldn't have even questioned that I was intuitively fulfilling an inappropriate expectation. They said jump...
Those little wins didn't feel great to me, and in truth my inconsistent here-and-there small scale balking against the puppet master's strings created a lot of conflict in the short term. I knew I didn't want to be their whipping girl any more, so I tried not to be. But I didn't yet know how to be anything else; I certainly hadn't re-connected with any part of my true self yet. So all I really knew in that time was that I didn't want to be what I'd always thought I was. It was an empty and lonely time, but those baby steps were crucial as the very beginning steps in building what would eventually become a strong foundation to a new, healthier life.
As I continued to take one step and then another on the ever-widening path to mental health and freedom from fear, I learned slowly and sometimes painfully about the concept of release through surrender. As I sought out and took the right actions - over and over and over again - I built up a play list of examples that eventually helped me to identify patterns.
A problem would arise.
It was my job to fix it.
I'd do everything within my power to do the right thing.
It still wasn't good enough for them, especially of my idea of the right thing varied from their idea of what I needed to do for them.
I'd apologize and cave in to complete whatever chore they had in mind for me in the way they wanted it done.
It would still be wrong.
And then...
A problem would arise.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Endlessly.
At some point the pattern became clear and I stopped apologizing. I stopped giving in. I started making little stands here and there. The issues that I stood on got bigger. I got stronger. Wham-o.
Now I embrace surrender, with the understanding that comes from acknowledging that I am responsible for me. That is all. Just me. When I do the right thing, I'm freeing myself from responsibility for any one else's reactions or feelings on the matter. I'm giving it up. Sometimes even the right actions create pain, and that is when I now know that I can use that. I can look at that pain and use it as a touchstone for growth.
When I am aware enough to identify those sore spots as areas that I need to tackle, work on, strengthen, it quickly leads me to gratitude. How lucky am I that I can see and feel these sick cycles and constructs that I was given for the awful bullshit that they really are? And how lucky am I that I have the tools now to recognize those nasty people, places, things for the festering wounds that they are and take action to clean them out so that I can move on with my life?
Damn lucky, that's how much. Damn lucky.
Love,
Vanci
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