An Amazing Response

Wow. I took a shot in the dark and shared on my blog this week about my spiritual journey and how much I miss a connection I once I had. I have to admit, I was kind of nervous about posting it. Faith, religion, spirituality and my big mouth can illicit all sorts of responses. What an amazing response I received! Several folks reached out in such a supportive way whether they agree with my decision or not. It dawned on me that the kind of people I have surrounded myself with over the past several years are also spiritual beings by nature and can identify how difficult it can be to experience an existential, moral, spiritual crisis. Thank you all for being supportive and reaching out.

I started a blog entry about taking chances and being vulnerable. I have found in the process of disclosing things to be a challenge. There are areas of my life that I will talk endless about - my family, my work, most of my recovery journey. I felt so compelled after a year of recovery to put it out to the world that I was actually an alcoholic/addict and I had something to share about it. I remember when I went to treatment and left work for 30 days. I was working at the transplant center and worked with 30 other nurses. Well, when someone is abruptly gone for a month, nurses can deduce quickly that either I had a mental breakdown or I went to treatment. Both were kinda true. When I returned, my supervisor was so respectful of not saying anything about anything regarding my absence. Three coworkers asked why I was gone, was everything OK? It went something like: "Can I ask why you were gone?" To which my response was "You sure can...." and then I wandered away without saying anything beyond that. I was rather smooth if you ask me. I was ashamed when I got out. I spent 2 of my 3 weeks in treatment worrying about what I was going to tell me. How was I going to be judged?

This blog has probably been one of the places I exercise attempts at vulnerability. Writing this blog has been more of therapeutic assignment I gave to myself to help flush out my story and my recovery. On a rare occasion, I have had people take issue with what I had to say and I did learn to let that go. My recovery is not your recovery. I write about my journey and, as I said in my other entry, I am not going to tell people what to do. It tickles me that people actually do read this and has offered me support. 

I am all about taking risks with some things. There are other parts of me that are locked up so tight that I am not sure I even want to open the door to those issues anymore. The shame in that is good, bad or otherwise, every part of my experience has contributed to the person that I am today. I forego the opportunity to let people totally into my life. Outside of my immediate family, I rarely ever let people in more than 50%. That is totally on me. I choose to keep people at a distance. Like many women I know, I hold myself to many stupid standards and judge myself more harshly than most people would. However, this is my reality so I choose not to talk about certain areas of my life or certain beliefs so the sheer fear of being judged, disowned, de-friended and the worst thing for me: rejected. 

There are times when I perceive my own feelings weak and my experience as invalid. The irony is that I tell my clients all day long that there is value in all their experiences and to have feels is never weakness. Ugh, how frustrating to not be able to extend myself the same courtesy. I have a level of hyper-sensitivity to being judged and rejected. There are some "normal" experiences that I have had and a reasonable person would be able to see that the judgement or whatever was more about the person than about me. Well, when I am already in a shame place about something and I hear something that pokes at that shame (intentional not), I immediately jump to the conclusion that my worst fear is true: There is something wrong with me. That is what shame is. Instead of looking at my actions as something I can change and have control over, when I am coming from a place of shame, I want to run and hide. There is no hope. There is something wrong with me. 

As I talked briefly about last time, I try to protect myself fiercely from judgement and hurt. It's not 100% healthy and I know that. It takes some time to reverse many years of patterns. When I got divorced, that whole process, in my mind, validated several things: I am a failure, I am cruel (chose alcohol over my marriage), I am worthless, I am easily replaced and I will never tell anyone anything ever again. (So that black and white thinking I mentioned....here it is in all its glory.) I trusted my ex-husband more than most. He kept secrets for me. When I asked for a divorce, there was very little discussion. He was gone with all my secrets and my suffering from being an active alcoholic for our entire relationship. I was cast aside with about a 3 minute discussion and he remarried very quickly. I tried to be vulnerable and this is how it ended. So many things solidified in my heart during that time. I carry forward a lot of innate sensitivities in my soul even 12 years later.

When I started to look into my spirituality, I started to see the world a bit differently. I started changing the core people around me to those who also strived to do the next right thing. I met these folks through AA, through my time at church and through volunteering around town. I never realized how amazing they truly are until this past week. These folks have laughed with me and cried with me. They have prayed for me and thought of me. When I get so lost in darkness, I suddenly forget about all this support. So, not only am I stuck in my head, I am cutting myself off from all the support that was there. All or nothing thinking. It's dangerous for me. I become isolated and a victim of my own unrealistic expectations and understandings of myself. I have needed, need and will always need to have something outside of myself. Getting trapped in my head is dangerous and lonely to me.

So, I want to extend my thanks for all the readers out there and also to the those who took a minute to shoot me a message. I thought of a whole bunch of critical and mean things people could have said to me in response. I hesitate on a regular basis to be vulnerable, specifically because I already assumed what I thought people were going to say or think. As I try hard to accept others, others took a moment to offer their acceptance of me. Wow. That is dang near life changing for me. Thank you.

​Julie