Waking up Happy: Let go of those expectations

It’s hard for parents and their addicted kids to talk about addiction with each other. But leaving too many things unsaid can be toxic. Skye, who was addicted at a young age, has some valuable insights about this highly fraught problem. Here’s what she has to say.

Wisdom from Skye: It’s Time to Recover from the Disease of Perfectionism

Skye says: “We moved often when I was young, and I never felt like I belonged. My parents loved me, but my mom is a perfectionist. She always strives for something better, so I constantly felt pressure from her to improve. I never thought I could measure up.

In third grade, I had an anxiety attack and thought I was going to throw up because I was afraid I wasn’t going to get an A on a test. I constantly made myself sick with fear that I would disappoint my parents. If I got a B instead of an A, I felt the world would end. Nobody would think I was smart anymore.

In my teen years, I rebelled against all those expectations. I stopped paying attention in school and cut class. I said to myself, “I won’t be ruled by my grades any longer.” That could have been a helpful insight, but I didn’t put it to use in an effective way. I went from caring too much to not caring at all. I hadn't yet found that middle place where it was OK to make a mistake.

Being accepted by my peers was all I cared about as a teenager. So I started using drugs.  For a while I did feel accepted and cool and beautiful, but it didn't last. Pretty soon the only thing that mattered was getting more drugs.

If some people are pulled into drugs by their peers, and some are pushed in by needing to escape problems, I don’t feel like either of those is true for me. I wasn't pushed or pulled. I stepped in. For me, it was entirely self-will, my own decision to do drugs.

      
I kept using because I loved it. Then, when I no longer loved it, I kept using because I was an addict.  Here’s something no one ever tells you: When you first use drugs, they're great, but then they stop working. Everything that seemed so wonderful turns ugly and keeps getting worse. Bit by bit, your addiction steals your soul.
         
The lowest point came when my best friend, Ian, died from a heroin overdose. He was one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever known. I was the one who’d introduced him to heroin. And, although I believe we’re all responsible for our own lives, I couldn’t help blaming myself for his death. He wouldn’t have used, and he wouldn’t have died, if he hadn’t met me.
          
Who knows how long it would have taken for me to follow him into death? But after leaving an abusive relationship and having some run-ins with the law, I ended up in a Canadian jail. During those weeks in jail, I had no option but to get clean. Those weeks gave me the perspective to change my life. 
          
When they deported me back to the United States, I was a wreck with no place to go, no idea what to do. Thankfully, my parents, who were living in Wisconsin, took me in. Their nonjudgmental love at this time of my life was a touch of grace. They didn’t trust me (how could they after all the times I’d lied to them?) but they did support me, love me, and give me the chance to earn back their trust.
            
I put myself in their hands, and they found a sober house where I could live. When my mom took me there for the intake interview, the counselor asked me to relate my drug history. For the first time, I did so honestly, leaving nothing out.
           
It was shattering, the hardest thing I’d ever done – telling my perfectionist mom, whom I admired and respected more than anything in the world, that I was an IV-drug user. But I realized if I lied, as I’d done so many times before, I’d go back to using. Being totally honest was the only way I could make this time different.
           
I could see the horror in her eyes. She started crying, and so did I. It was a nightmare made real. Yet those tears were cleansing, washing away all the sick secrets and falsehoods of the past, freeing me to start again.
           
One of the first things I learned as I began to recover is that I had inherited my mother’s perfectionism, and that it was as debilitating as my drug addiction. To move forward, I had to let it go. I had to accept myself as a flawed, imperfect human being. Only then could I recover.”

THE KEYS:

• Almost all addicts are perfectionists at heart. They’re so afraid of failing that they would rather not try at all than to do something imperfectly. Perfectionism runs deep in families where there are addictions, and most likely you suffer from it yourself. Understand how destructive it is and how freeing it can be to let go of it. Realize that human beings are fallible, make mistakes, and fail constantly. Accept these frailties in yourself and others.
• Let go of expectations. Nothing is more restrictive than expecting things to turn out a certain way. Broaden your definition of what’s possible and acceptable.

 THREE THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK:

1.    Tell your loved ones funny stories about mistakes you’ve made and imperfections in yourself. Not only is laughter immensely healing, but you’ll be giving them permission to be more open about their own flaws.

2.    List times in your life that you felt you failed. Ask your loved ones to help you dissect those experiences and see the gift in each one. Together, find ways to see each “failure” as an education, a chance to change, a time to try something new.

3.    Every time you have a critical thought, write it down. Balance it with three positive, noncritical thoughts.           

We’ll return to more of Skye’s hard-earned wisdom in later blogs. For more exercises, take a look at WAKING UP HAPPY, www.wakinguphappybook.com

 JILL SAYS:

I had two perfectionistic parents. Not surprisingly, I am a recovering perfectionist myself, and so is my daughter. It’s still hard for me to be open about my many failures and imperfections. But each time I do, I am amazed at how freeing it is. Instead of turning away from me as I once feared, people actually seem to like me more when I am honest about my own struggles.

Please contact me with your own stories, strategies, insights, and any questions you may have, as well as an answer to these questions:

Can you see traces of perfectionism in yourself? How has this affected your life? What is one thing you plan to do to help yourself and your loved ones recover from perfectionism?

The author:  Juliana (Jill) Muehrcke (Jill@NonprofitWorld.org) is the author of dozens of books and articles, including the best-selling Map Use and Waking Up Happy (WakingUpHappyBook.com). She is the founder and editor of the international, award-winning magazine Nonprofit World (www.NonprofitWorld.org) – helping nonprofit organizations do their best, most productive work for the good of the world and creating positive change every day.

WAKING UP HAPPY: Don’t Forget About Those Wasted Years; They’re Vitally Important

Positive, transformative change IS possible. You can make it happen by doing just a few small things differently each week. In time, those tiny changes will be life-altering.

This wisdom is from Jill Muehrcke, the author of dozens of books and articles, including the best-selling Map Use and Waking Up Happy. She is the founder and editor of the international, award-winning magazine Nonprofit World.  Jill lives in Madison where she gives talks and provides support for people, like herself (and her daughter, granddaughter, and grandson) who are rebuilding their lives after years of addiction. 
 
Each month, Jill will share a PROFILE of a recovering addict or family that include the tricks and techniques they used on their path to success.  She will offer some KEYS based on the profile and THREE ACTIONS TO PRACTICE to help keep yourself and your loved ones on the road to positive change.  

www.WakingUpHappyBook.com

Many of these stories and lessons are drawn from Jill's book, WAKING UP HAPPY: A HANDBOOK OF CHANGE WITH 
MEMOIRS OF RECOVERY AND HOPE 

Here are this month’s profile, keys, and three actions to start you on your road to a transformative new life.

THE PROFILE:  Go Back to Seventh Grade: Wisdom from Carlo

Carlo says: "Someone in my support group told me that you quit maturing at the age you start drinking and drugging in earnest, because you never have the chance to develop the life skills you would normally be learning. That means I’m twelve years old, just learning to cope with a universe in which I’m not the center.

I started using drugs to escape life’s troubles when I was twelve. So, although I’m thirty years old chronologically, my maturity level, when confronted with the normal stress and failures of life, is that of a pre-adolescent. No wonder I feel so inadequate so much of the time. Sometimes I feel too weird and damaged to be part of this universe.

But once I understood that I was a twelve-year-old trying to live in a thirty-year-old’s world, I saw why I struggled to get through the days. That insight gave me a new perspective on how I could reconstruct my life.

I started out by imagining what skills I’d be acquiring if I were twelve again. I’d be in seventh grade, discovering basic things like how to make decisions, form good work habits, plan for the future, and make sacrifices today to achieve a better tomorrow. I can go back to that time in my mind and begin again. I have the facilities now to learn all that I missed. I can take mini-courses, read books to help me develop those skills, and seek guidance from other people. I can keep my eyes open and see how others navigate the world, and when I see people I admire, I can ask them how they do it.

 As I started asking questions and sorting through information people gave me, I discovered that one core skill I had to learn was how to weigh priorities. In the past, I would wake up with a chaos of things to do in my head. Sometimes I would try to do them all. Sometimes I would do nothing because the multitude of options was so overwhelming. I had never heard the term “priority list,” but, once I did, it changed my life.

I learned to start each day with a to-do list, putting #1 next to the things that were most important, #2 next to the second most important, and so on. I tried to finish all the high-priority tasks before I started on the second tier. Even if I accomplished only one thing in a day, at least I knew it was the most important thing. That was a huge step for me and calmed a lot of the confusion and turmoil in my life.

From there, I moved on to doing exercises to help me control my emotions and impulses, delay my desire for instant gratification, tune out distractions, organize ideas, make short-term and long-term plans, and forge meaningful relationships. Those things are still hard but they’re getting easier, and in the process I’m learning who I am and what I want to do with my life. I now understand that the foundation I build today is the key to a better future.

Change is always frightening, and it’s especially formidable when you have to make so many shifts at once, bounding across years that were lost. But the good thing is, I can learn. I can always keep learning."

THE KEYS:

• Meet your loved ones where they are. Don’t expect them to “act their age.” Support them with love and understanding as they take small daily steps toward change.
• Help them learn the basic capabilities they lack because of their addiction. Experts on disease talk about DALYs (disability-adjusted life-years) to refer to years lost due to illness (including addiction). You may think your loved one lacks “common sense.” But common sense isn’t innate; it’s something people learn by observing, listening, and paying attention. Those in the throes of addiction pay attention to nothing except their addiction. They listen only to those who can help further that addiction. Be patient as you help them plug back in to the real world.
• Refuse to be drawn into the “drama” that often surrounds addicts (both using and recovering). Much of that drama is their frightened, confused response to the way the world works. Rather than participate in their theatrics, wait for a time when you can calmly show them some of the life skills they’re missing as a result of their addiction. (We’ll talk more about these skills in months to come. Meanwhile, see www.WakingUpHappyBook.com for more ways to solidify important life lessons, abolish bad habits, and actually alter the brain’s structure to become a whole new person.)
• As you talk to your loved one, use motivating interviewing techniques, which focus on empathizing rather than condescending, blaming, or lecturing. For example, listen carefully as your loved ones speak, nodding to show that you understand. Later in the conversation, repeat back what they’ve said, using the same verbal patterns they used (“I hear you saying that all you want to do is lie under the covers and forget about everything”) without passing judgment or giving advice. We’ll discuss motivational interviewing strategies more in the future. You can also find more at www.motivationalinterview.org

THREE ACTIONS TO PRACTICE:

1. Sit down, close your eyes, put your hands on your belly, and breathe deeply. With each inhale, breathe in all the goodness around you – people who love and support you, trees and grass and sky, dark chocolate and chamomile tea. With each exhale, let go of any tension, worry, or attempts to make things different from what they are.

2. Repeat at least 10 times throughout the day: Today, I will be gentle with myself. I will treat myself with the same kindness I would give to the person I love most in the world.

3. Tell your loved ones you are performing exercises (like the ones in WAKING UP HAPPY) to make fundamental changes in your life. Ask them to help you by doing the same exercises and then sharing answers and insights. This is the best way to help someone – not by telling them they need to change but by asking them to be your “Waking Up Happy Buddy” on the road to change.

 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 share your answer:

What has been hardest for you as you face the challenge of addiction, and what has that challenge taught you?