THE PROFILE:
Wisdom from Skye: Explore Your Deepest Truths
Skye says: The second stage of sobriety – after getting
clean – was much harder than I expected. It’s that way for everyone, and if you
aren’t prepared, it can derail you. You’re newly sober and pleased about your
recovery, but you’re rudderless. It’s easy to get stalled at this point and
slip back into old habits.
Why was it all so hard? Much of the time I felt that, rather
than making progress, I was barely holding on.
Then it occurred to me that I was having a hard time moving
forward because I was unsure of who I was. For a huge chunk of my life, I was
an addict, so if I wasn’t that anymore, who was I? I wanted to be honest with
myself, but who was “myself”?
The way I answered that question was to list what I called “My
Truths.” I started with the only thing I knew for sure: People are born
good. Even at my lowest point, when I
was using heavily and unhappy with who I was and what I was doing with my life,
I still believed in people's basic goodness.
That belief was enough to fortify me as I tried to put
myself together out of a jumble of pieces. Soon I was adding more to my list
every day. As my list of truths became longer, it became clearer to me who I
was.
One tactic I used to ferret out my truths was to say to
myself, “I did such-and-such because...” and then add the reason I did it.
Often I wasn’t sure why I did something, so I would ask myself what I would
surmise about other people if they did it. For instance, when I stayed late at
work, at first I wasn’t sure why. So I asked myself: What would I think about
someone who stayed late? I would guess that they valued hard work and
responsibility. So then that became something I knew for sure about myself: I
valued hard work and responsibility. I could add that to my list of truths.
Another truth had to do with personal accountability. I
believed I needed to take total responsibility for myself and my decisions.
That conviction gave me a big boost on my road to recovery. I didn’t waste time
blaming others, which saved me a lot of misery.
THE KEYS:
1. Learn
who you are. Only then can you be true to yourself and form healthy
boundaries with your loved ones and others in your life. Such boundaries are
the foundation for productive relationships with those you love.
2. Look
squarely at your problems. Work through them rather than avoiding them. A
corollary to this key: Don’t solve your loved ones’ problems for them. Only if
they confront their own troubles will they be able to grow and move forward in
their lives. “Be there” for them as a sounding board and a foundation of love,
compassion, and support, but not as a solver of problems or giver of advice.
THREE ACTIONS TO PRACTICE:
1. Do the
following exercise, and ask your loved ones to do it, too. Then discuss the
results, and notice where your values overlap and where they’re different.
Which of the following values
do you want to put at the center of your life? Place a 1 by the three
values that are most important to you, a 2 by the next three most important,
and so on. If you think of others, add them to the list.
__Honesty __Creativity
__Compassion __Fairness __Security
__Loyalty __Inner peace __Communication with others __Kindness
__Generosity __Respect for the
environment __Belonging __Love
__Adventure __Courage in the face
of obstacles __Friendship __Nonviolence __Spirituality __Teamwork
__Tolerance __Independence
__Joyfulness __Gratitude __Beauty
__Accountability for your actions
__Industriousness & hard work
__Learning __Service to others __Justice
__Personal Growth __ Others:_______________
2.
Check the boundaries you have with those you love. Have you set clear limits about
what you will and won’t
tolerate? Are there any demands or intrusions that make you uncomfortable? If
so, spell these out. Then talk to the other person, explaining your needs with
clarity and compassion. Don’t back down. You have every right to make the choices that are best for
you. Give the other person time to adjust to the new boundaries, but don’t let them take advantage of you.
3. In
the morning, rather than leaping out of bed, take five minutes
to simply lie there, be still, and take advantage of that wonderful twilight
between waking and sleeping. That’s when your dreams, intuition, and deepest self are likely to speak to
you. Write down the insights that come to you during that twilight time. If possible, have your loved ones do the same thing, and compare
notes. That’s when the greatest changes are
likely to occur – when you do the same exercises,
reflect on them, and discuss them together.
For more exercises, take a look at WAKING UP HAPPY, which includes “Things to Do Today” (at the end of each chapter) and “365
Steps on Your Journey” (an
exercise for every day of the year), www.WakingUpHappy.co.
JILL SAYS:
Like most of the people who tell their stories and share their secrets
to success in WAKING UP HAPPY, I had a lifetime problem with forming
boundaries, differentiating my own needs from those of others, and being true
to myself. In my memoir (the first chapter in WAKING
UP HAPPY), I describe a turning point in my life, when I attended an Adult
Children of Alcoholics’
(ACOA) workshop.
One speaker had us draw our family of origin, using circles to
represent each family member. I depicted myself as a small circle
near the middle of the page, my older sister Janey as a big circle about
halfway across the page, and my parents as two bigger circles, together at the
farthest corner of the paper.
When we shared our pictures, I was stunned to
see how many people’s drawings looked like mine, with
huge distances between the circles. Either that, or the circles were actually
inside one another. Both indicated a lack of proper boundaries between family
members.
Someone asked, “But
what does a normal family look like?” The speaker answered by sketching a line
of circles, all the family members right next to one another but not quite
touching.
Later, when I tried to explain to my husband, Phil, what insights I’d gained about growing up in a dysfunctional family, he said “I
think all families are dysfunctional.” I
asked him to use circles to portray his family, and he drew a line of circles
exactly like the normal family the speaker had drawn on the blackboard.
When I showed him my circles in comparison, I could see the light
go on in his mind. From that moment on, he was a companion on my journey to
understanding.
Please contact me with your own stories, strategies,
insights, and any questions you may have, as well as an answer to this question, if you’d like to reflect on it and send me
your answer:
What boundary issue have you struggled with, and how have you addressed
it?
