Questions via Email: Impatient, ACoA, self sabotage, afraid they won't be able to think...

Hi Mr. SponsorPants,

As this is a question on how to become more focused and coherent, please assume both attributes will be absent from this message.

So here it is:  I'm impatient, and know that this impatience is sabotaging me in my recovery (from child of alcoholic to obsessive compulsive, and finally this year to anorexic to binge eater.  ugh. what a journey), and I even know that thinking this is sabotaging me is what is really sabotaging me.  I go around and around in circles knowing that I will arrive at the same conclusions, and yet off I go again. 

I want to be well and I want to be well right now, dangnammit.  Specifically I want to be able to research and structure arguments so I can stop throwing up at work out of fear that I am stupid and incapable of doing my job.

So, I would like to know, were you always as eloquent and coherent as you are now?  I don't mean were you charming your dealers with your Wildean wit, but rather once clean and sober did you just know how to reason?  Can I learn too?  Is this a ridiculous question?  I am so overwhelmed by knowledge and have no idea where to start with anything.

I know I need to be patient with myself but work has deadlines. 

I want to see knowledge, and I guess life, objectively.  I don't want to know things, I want to enjoy finding out, just as I did as a kid when the unknown was a challenge, not something to fear.

Any hints?

thanks a mil.

Let's start here:  Work has deadlines, yes, but your recovery does not.

Okay. 

Now, take a long, deep breath, hold it for a count of five, and then let it out.

Do that three times.

No, seriously.  If you are sincerely asking for my suggestions, that is the first thing I think you should do.  I want to tell you to get a watch with a timer or set your cell phone or something so that an alarm will go off every hour and to take three long deep breaths, holding for a count of five each time, every hour on the hour, but I'm not sure that's completely realistic.  Regardless of what vehicle you use to try to make that a (very) regular habit, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to start doing that.  It may sound frivolous, but it is a simple, free and concrete exercise that will absolutely help you if you really do it.

And candidly, it will help everyone around you catch a breath, too.  Whew!  You are in fast forward, and as you have correctly identified it is not helping anything.

Now, let me tell you this:  I believe that what you identify in your email as impatience is not impatience.

It is perfectionism -- and perfectionism, my friend, is a cruel tyrant.

It sounds to me like you have an unconscious impossible standard to live up to.  You believe that your thinking isn't good enough, your work isn't good enough, your body isn't good enough, the pace of your recovery isn't good enough ... no matter what it is about you, it is "not good enough."  The only "good enough" would be perfect -- that is, a state beyond criticism or question.  A state no one can achieve -- hence the circular nature of your thinking and your frenetic mentality.

Likely this is a core belief of yours, no doubt in part instilled by the emotional (and potentially physical) chaos of being the Adult Child of an Alcoholic, that the only way to avoid disaster (punishment?) is to be good enough (perfect) -- but since good enough means safe from any possible criticism or question (again, perfect) -- you labor -- no, suffer -- under an impossible criteria and a life-at-stake ticking bomb countdown somewhere in the back of your mind.

Take a long deep breath, hold it for a count of five, and then let it out.

My own perfectionism operates much like yours.  I have nebulous, idealized criteria which I compare myself to -- and because they are nebulous and idealized I come up short.  Way short.  Here's an example of where I see that in you:  You wrote  "... I want to enjoy finding out, just as I did as a kid when the unknown was a challenge, not something to fear ..."  that is not just a beautiful sentence and a lovely sentiment, it is an idealized and nebulous criteria.  I am not presuming to say that you did not love learning when you were young, or didn't have a wonderful time in the library or at school or whatever, but as a criteria to compare yourself to now, today, it is a set up.  No adult struggling with a grown-up's responsibilities and challenges (let alone the other issues you have) could ever recapture the wonder of a child's learning process.  And no child's learning process was always wonderful.  Ergo: Nebulous and idealized.  That's one specific example of how perfectionism is operating with you rather than impatience.

Why is it important to get clear on that?  For me, as I untangle the skeins of my own dysfunction, it is because I must take care to match the solution to the problem.

It is probably more important for you to work on being okay with being imperfect than it is to try and develop the quality of patience (though that surely couldn't hurt).

If we pull the camera far back from the 12 Step healing model, it is grounded in finding a group of people who understand whatever your problem is as they have it themselves, admitting that it is not something you can address, solve or figure out on your own, and trying to apply the suggestions the group offers to deal with your problem -- suggestions based on shared experience of your problem and the collected experience of addressing it and recovering from it.

But the healing begins via the process of identification.  

Thus, since you have identified that you are an ACoA, and are dealing with some serious eating disorder issues, I hope you are involved in 12 Step groups that specifically address those things.  If you are just going to AA and hoping to apply what you hear there to what you are dealing with in these other areas that may not be enough.  YES you will find good information, fellowship and like-minded individuals, in that it is a room full of people trying to apply the 12 Steps to the addiction/dysfunction issues of their lives.  But I do not think I could have gotten sober in a Gambler's Anonymous meeting.  And I fear that addressing your eating disorder and your ACoA issues in AA alone might be like me trying to get sober in G.A.

The simple answer to your question is that it took me a long, long time for my thinking to clear.  Not just the physical detox, which was longer than I thought it would be, but crippling fear and self-obsession thwarted my ability to really think for quite a while.  Eventually it comes back.  As they told me early on, if it took you a long time to swim out to sea then it will likely take you a while to swim back to shore.

I believe very much in the healing power of working the 12 Steps (which means practicing them, actually doing them, not just sitting in meetings hearing about them -- that's like going to the gym and watching other people work out -- you're not gonna get much of a result that way).  I also believe that prayer and meditation can literally rewire our brains.  The fancy term for that now is the science of Neuroplasticity (more here and here) -- which is a fascinating thing to read about, but seems to boil down to the idea that affirmations, prayer and meditation can literally impact the physical structure of the brain.  (But you don't get much grant money if you put it in a simple sentence like that.)  

It's easy to make fun of affirmations, but I suggest that you develop a strong practice in those as well -- once I was able to silence the part of me which tries to mock that process I found it a powerful way to treat the negative self-talk so many of us suffer under.

Finally, there's this:

You sound very intelligent, and it seems like there is a lot on your plate.  You have identified a lot of what troubles you -- but that identification seems to be leading you to try to "figure out" how to get better.  Some of what you are facing is not something you can figure your way out of on your own.  Bulimarexia (which it sounds like you might have) is a very serious and insidious thing.  The core issues from being the child of an alcoholic are like rocks under the surface of a river -- having a profound effect on how the water flows yet all but unseen when looking down from above.

It is likely that you should not only depend on the 12 Step environment, but in addition to that find a trained therapist or counselor who has some experience in dealing with your issues.  

When we were out there we could find dealers to give us exactly what we were looking for -- that same tenacious ability can be applied to finding the right professional help as well.  God -- as you understand God -- can speak to you through many channels -- a trained counselor is also one of them.  You deserve that specialized one-on-one help.  You don't have to do this alone -- the 12 Step fellowship can be there for you, and a counselor can as well.

Money is always a concern, but there are terms and assistance available -- many counselors will work on a sliding scale.  And lack of funds never stopped any one of us from going out and scoring the drugs we needed.  We usually just launched ourselves into the world and figured we'd solve each problem in the way of getting loaded as they came up.  You can do the same in finding a professional counselor.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe and pray.

Write.  Get a pen and keep a journal -- writing by hand can help slow your thoughts down to the speed of a pen traveling across a page, rather than the breakneck circular race it can be in our minds.

And lots of meetings.  The way I got my mind back I think was by sitting and listening in meetings.  For many, many years I went to a meeting every day.  The listening in a meeting is like a form of meditation, and it is also (as I know you know) often a source of good practical advice.

I hope some of that was useful to you -- I ranged a little far afield from your specific question, but it was done with the sincere intent to be helpful, and in that I hope I was at least partially successful.

Thanks for the kind words about the blog, and please write again to let me know how things are going.

Breath.

Cheers!

Mr. SponsorPants

Comments

[Kimberly A]

I can so identify with the thinking, fast thinking, highly-charged thinking. It is the nature of my disease that my brain seems to run at warp speed. Thanks for the reminder to breathe-breathe-breathe.

namaste

[Syd]

I have slowed down in my thinking quite a bit since being in Al-Anon. I have much more calmness now.