Making commitments is almost certain to call up a host of frightening thoughts, emotions, and memories. When these hard things come up, it will be hard for you to remain still. You"re going to want to get busy and let your mind start chattering. If that happens, breathe. Use those moments as a chance to practice Six Breaths on Purpose. Use those moments to practice stillness. Don"t try to push the hard stuff away. Just notice it. Watch it carefully. As you sit with it, it will start to pa.s.s.
If you are married, close your eyes for a few moments and recall the moments walking up to the altar. If you ever quit a job to take another job, close your eyes, let yourself get quiet and see if you can walk step by step through that process. What did you feel, think, imagine, and remember? Notice that some of your fears were "real" and some "not real." See if you can let go of the outcomes, and just notice the turmoil in those experiences. Events of this sort are instructive because they are clear examples of commitments. We ask you to recall them here in order to make contact with the storm of thought and emotion that often surrounds commitment.
Now, go back to those moments in imagination and see if you can notice your own thoughts in those moments as thoughts. Notice that in the light of knowing how that commitment played out, you have yet another layer of thoughts about those thoughts-that is, whether you were correct or not. See if you can simply notice those thoughts as thoughts too. Notice the emotions that were there, and the ones that you have now, and try simply welcoming them-old and new. And, finally, see if you can notice in their midst the you that was there then and is here now.
In this last values exercises, we"re going to try to get into something very hard: sorting out those values that are the most important to you. Be patient and kind with yourself. Before you begin, get ahold of a dozen 3 x 5 cards and a pen.
A Values Exercise: 12, 6, 3, 2, 1
Bear in mind that this is an exercise. We"ll be asking you to do something very hard in this exercise. We"re going to ask you to imagine letting go of some valued domains of living. We"re not asking you to actually give them up, simply to imagine it. Take a look at the valued living questionnaire and see if you can come up with a value that is important to you in each area. It could be one that is already a big part of your life or one that you do not have at all, but would like to in the future. Take a dozen 3 by 5 index cards and write on each card:
One of the areas from the VLQ-2 Some specific thing you can think of that you believe is in line with values in this area for you.
For example, you might choose the area of family. Write a few words about what this might mean to you: I"ve always had a hard time connecting with my father. After my mother died, we seemed to find fewer occasions to speak to one another, and when we do, he criticizes me quite a lot for my drinking. I want to get closer to him and to make sure he understands how much I love him. This might mean that I"ll ask him to go golfing with me a couple of times a month.
If you cannot come up with a value within each of the twelve domains in the VLQ2, see if you can come up with more than one from a couple areas so that you end up with twelve total.
Now comes the hard part. Sometimes people experience losses in certain areas of their lives. Sometimes life calls us to choose to let go of things we value. For example, sometimes a friendship, marriage, or career is so destructive that we need to let it go. Sometimes this is true even when we still feel great love and attachment to the thing given up. For example, think back to the example we used earlier: throughout history during wars, there have been people who handed their children to someone on the back of a truck knowing that they might never see the child again, but also knowing that handing the child to a complete stranger gave the child their best chance to survive.
So, here"s the hard part. Imagine that some circ.u.mstance arose in which you had to let go of half of the values you placed on the cards. Stack six in a pile that you hold onto, and put six into another pile that will get a sad, sweet goodbye from you. Take a moment with each, close your eyes, use your stillness muscle, let your eyes go closed, and let yourself see and feel what can be seen and felt as you gently release each one.
Mindfields: Your mind will likely get very busy creating justifications for why you release or keep each one. Or a huge "NO!" may show up. Your mind may also want to skip ahead and plan out all future choices. Your mind may berate you for choosing and not choosing certain values. Finally, your mind might tell you something about what you "should" and "shouldn"t" choose and what others would think of those choices. This will be an opportunity to practice stillness and acceptance and holding stories lightly. Life is full of hard choices and this will be practice at choosing stillness in the midst of a mindfield. You do not have to chase these thoughts away. Simple notice them and acknowledge them-not their "truth," just their presence-and see if you can choose stillness and gently let go of each of those six values.
After you have done those six, repeat this process with three of the six that are left. Again, notice what shows up as you make your choices: comparison, evaluation, no! Gently come to stillness. Let yourself see and release each of the three values. Place these three in the pile of values you have already released. Take your time. Practice stillness and noticing.
Next, let go of one more from the three remaining values, repeating the same process.
Next, let one last value go, imagining you had to release all but one of the values. Especially, take your time with these last choices. Notice what your mind throws up in the midst of the exercise.
Long-Term Recovery from Addiction: A Story of Daughters and Redemption
Long-term recovery from addiction is a hard road. I have been in recovery from severe substance dependence for more than twenty-five years. My own recovery has involved a lot of three-steps-forward-and-two-back. For more than twenty of those years, I have had the privilege of working on the development of ACT.
I happened upon ACT (in a somewhat earlier form) in the late 1980s as an undergraduate. It came at just the right time. It is a marvelous thing when one"s personal life and vocation can flow together so naturally. That is how it was with ACT and me. I was learning about acceptance in my own life. I was learning about opening myself up to pain in the service of what I loved. And, since entering graduate school in 1989, I have been privileged to translate that learning directly into the development of ACT.
Part of the tragedy of addiction is the costs to relationships. My own story is like that and I share it in hopes that my own story can help, in some small way, people who see no light and no possibility in their own lives.
Just so you know, right at this moment, I am sitting on my back porch, and I have my redemption mix playing, featuring Johnny Cash"s cover of "Redemption Song" sung with Joe Strummer, just to set the mood. What follows is a redemption song.
I have two younger daughters who are a tremendous delight to me (Sarah, who is sixteen as I write this, and Emma, who"s eighteen). They have never seen me with a cigarette hanging from my mouth. They have never seen me drunk or stoned. They have never had to hear that daddy would not be coming because he was in jail. They have never had to hear that daddy would not be coming because "we do not know where he is."
I have come home to these girls every night of their lives except when I"ve been on the road for work. When I say that I am going to be somewhere, or do something, they know that I will come through. Not perfect fathering. I am impatient, short-tempered, and p.r.o.ne to lecturing and pontificating, but on the whole, they have never had a reason to doubt that I love them, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, "to the level of everyday"s / Most quiet need."
I have another daughter, Chelsea, who is older. She was born in 1975, during the height of my addiction. It is painful to even think about the risk I put her at when she was small and vulnerable and needed me most. In 1978, when she was this amazing, bright, tiny three-year old, her mother Elizabeth took her and left. I do not think she actually wanted to leave, but the plain fact was that to be near me was to be in danger. I was on a direct course for self-destruction and anyone nearby was bound to be injured in the process. Elizabeth did the right thing. She took Chelsea away and kept her safe. It was a difficult and courageous thing. I know that she neither needs nor likely wants my grat.i.tude, but she has it nevertheless. She took care of our daughter at a time when I was incapable of caring for her myself. (I have had a lot of good fortune that way, but that is for another appreciation.) I can still remember the day Elizabeth took Chelsea. We were standing in the dining room of our house in the north end of Seattle. There were rum bottles scattered around the house and people pa.s.sed out here and there after a very long night of drinking and getting high. Elizabeth had a job and had to get up in the morning. She stood there in that room, with Chelsea standing beside her, and said something to me about change. I do not recall the words, but if memory serves, it was a last plea that I do something different. She had hung in there for five years and now it was not just her life in danger, it was Chelsea"s also. I remember the sad little bewildered face Chelsea wore that morning.
Try as I might, I cannot for the life of me fathom how little effect it had on my behavior. Today, that face would stop me in my tracks. Today, the mere thought of it, the soft brown hair all around that small face, can bring me to tears. But that day, that day, it didn"t change my course in the slightest.
I felt sad. I could see the tragedy unfolding. But it was like watching a play. You know that the next line, the next movement, will make the tragedy still worse. You know that the next act will make unredeemable something that has at least a tiny chance. You want to shout "No, no! Don"t do it!" But the play continues. I watched myself light a joint. That was my response. This account may be wrong in detail-it has been more than thirty years-but it is entirely accurate in spirit. Elizabeth had to go. It was for the best. Lighting that joint was me signing away my last chance. And, in some bizarre twist of logic, I imagined that I was doing everyone a favor by forcing the choice.
Over the next seven years, I was jailed, in many car accidents, beaten in fights, homeless at times, sick, and sad. For my daughter Chelsea, I was absent. I took no responsibility for her care and support. I saw her sporadically. I think Elizabeth stopped telling her when I was coming because it was so questionable whether I would come or not. I expect she got tired of having to explain why daddy was not there.
It was very hard for me to be around children during those years. I could not watch them on television. I could not stand to be around other people with children. To see children, especially ones the age Chelsea was, put me right next to what a complete and utter failure I was as a father. I ran. I ran deeper into the dope. I ran deeper into the bottle. My consumption was crazy enough to frighten even hardcore addicts and alcoholics. I chased oblivion. I chased whatever moments of peace I could achieve. I did so without regard for the cost.
1985 was a big year for me. I have written about it in other notes. What happened that year is that I became so bone-weary from running that I could run no more. There was a time when there was respite in that last swallow at the bottom of a bottle. By 1985, there was no rest for me, only a bone-crushing certainty that the end could not possibly come soon enough.
Then, the strangest thing happened. That year, life got a very firm grip on my ears, and jerked my head out of my a.s.s. And you know what? Once you get the feces wiped from your eyes, you can see a lot of things. The world is not all one brown ma.s.s. It has color and shape and movement. And, another thing I could see, a very hard thing to see, was that I had been willing to let a little girl go without a father in order to save myself from feeling bad.
I started getting back in touch that year. I started paying my small child support-every single month. I started doing what I said I was going to do. Still, I think Chelsea was probably scared of me. I was a big blank spot and her mother and stepfather Mark (another amazing blessing) were a solid and caring known.
I recall asking her to visit during those years, all the while knowing that I did not deserve it. I recall once when she was in Spokane visiting me, and knowing she so wanted to go home to her mother. And, I can recall thinking, Who could blame her? I did a faltering job for the next five years, trying at least to be sure that she knew that I thought of her and loved her.
Chelsea held me at arms" length a bit. I am sure it was incredibly awkward and uncertain for her. On my worst days, I knew I deserved only contempt. On my better days, I was less focused on myself and more on her. I think I knew how impossible it would be for her to even know who I was. I knew from Elizabeth that there had been times when she was very small when she blamed herself for my absence-how else could a child understand such a thing? I knew in my heart of hearts that she carried some of that forward into her view of herself in this world. How could it be otherwise? I did my best during those years to become someone who could be counted on, someone useful in this world.
In 1990, my wife Dianna and I were living in Reno, going to graduate school. I remember calling Chelsea on the phone and telling her, as I had many times, that I would love for her to visit. To my great surprise, she said "How about Thanksgiving?"
It was a stunning visit. I had been holding the door open for her for five years, but not really expecting her to ever fully walk through it. Not that she was ever unkind to me before that. She was always kind. In fact, I recall always being shocked that she was so nice to me, even when I relapsed into being out of contact. That fall of 1990 though, she came to Reno to see who her dad was-or perhaps who he had become.
That visit started a cascade of events. She wanted me to come to her high school graduation a couple years later-wanted me to be there. And I was there. I remember sitting in a funky little cafe in an old building in Olympia, Washington. I was telling her about what the building was like when I was a boy and it was Mottman"s Department Store. She was smiling and laughing. And I was there. She wanted me to be at her college graduation. And I was there. And there was that delicious week we spent together not long after my grandson Fletcher was born. Usually when we get together, there is a bit of nervousness. I want to be someone she will like. She is nervous about the same thing. The result has often been that we get a little busy. But that week, because Fletcher was small and getting busy was not possible, we sat and talked. A lot. Sumptuous.
I have not been a great dad for her. Even now, her mom and her stepdad Mark provide incredible support and I am thousands of miles away. But still we have what we have-something that is of incalculable value to me. I think that she knows that in the clinches, she can count on me.
So let me finish this tale with an appreciation for my oldest daughter Chelsea. You see, she is the most amazing woman. And here is why. She has taught me about unconditional love. I do not deserve her love. My good friend Mick says, "If I ever get what I deserve, you do not want to be standing next to me." I know exactly what he means. I have not earned her love. And she loves me anyway. Back in 1990, she gave me another chance. Not because I earned it, but because in her world, it was the right thing to do. She has persistently included me and forgiven me and taught me.
Although I am not a Christian, I have been persistently interested in a few Christian concepts. One is the concept of grace. Grace means unmerited favor. Sometimes this is interpreted as "You don"t deserve this." As in, your deserving falls below the necessary level. There is another way to understand grace though-that is, grace is unrelated to deserving. It is not the sort of thing you can deserve or not deserve. This is what Chelsea has taught me about love. That it is simply not about deserving or not deserving. She has offered it freely and persistently and in the midst of that love, I have come to understand the meaning of grace. It is very good to know that, even though my head continues to say "earn it, earn it," my head is not in charge of my daughter"s love.
Another concept that interests me is redemption. There was a time, years ago, that I was certain that there was no way back into life for me. There was such darkness everywhere I turned and I was just waiting for it to consume me. Since then, a lot of light has come into my life, but the light Chelsea shined may just have saved this soul. In this light, I have come to know redemption and to find my way to many other lights.
Chelsea, you just cannot know how much it means to me that you let me be your dad. Thank you.
If you are a person in recovery reading this, with a day or a decade: welcome, friend. I hope that you have found a bit of light in all this.
Turning from Values to Commitment We"re almost at the end. Having now gone through five of the six parts of our intial question, we thought we put it back here again. Read it now, and wonder a little whether it means something more to you than it did when you first read it:
In this very moment, will you accept the sad and the sweet, hold lightly stories about what is possible, and be the author of a life that has meaning and purpose for you, turning in kindness back to that life when you find yourself moving away from it?
We mentioned earlier in the chapter that just choosing a valued direction doesn"t suggest that you will be a perfect example of that value all the time. We are pretty certain that you will fail spectacularly at living in a way that furthers any serious value you hold at least once and probably many, many times for as long as you hold that value. And you know, this is totally okay. The only people who do not fall down are people who do not get up.
The work we"re talking about is this book is grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy. We already talked about the acceptance part. Now, let"s get to the commitment bit. And, just as it was for values, we"re going to talk about commitment in a way that, at first, might seem a little surprising.
AA and the Gift of Values
The 12 steps and ACT are similar in that they are really all about valued living. Both of these traditions are means to an end, and that end is a richer and more meaningful life. This is important to mention because in some other traditions this may not be so, and there is a danger that, even in 12-step and ACT, we might from time to time forget that it is so.
Sometimes, for example, you might hear someone talk about acceptance for its own sake, as if acceptance were intrinsically good. The same could be said about getting present, holding your stories lightly, and so forth. When these techniques are taken to be ends in themselves (rather than means to an end), therapy can easily take on the character of emotional wallowing.
That"s not the intention in the ACT model, and it"s not the AA model either. In ACT, we accept, get present, hold stories lightly, learn to take other perspectives and to notice the "I" that is not some tightly held story. All of these are done in the service of more effective living. And "more effective," as we see most clearly in this chapter, means effective in authoring a pattern of living that you could love.
In AA, the agenda is the same. Acceptance in AA is not for its own sake. Remember that "Grant me the courage to change the things I can" is also part of the Serenity Prayer. Even getting sober is not something you do for its own sake. It"s not an end in itself. From Living Sober: Simply trying to avoid the drink (or not think of one), all by itself, doesn"t seem to be enough. The more we think about the drink we are trying to keep away from, the more it occupies our mind...Just not drinking is a negative and sterile thing. To stay stopped we found we need to put in place a positive program of action. We"ve found we had to learn to live sober" (AA World Services, Inc., 1998, 13, emphasis in original).
Notice how this AA text highlights the futility of avoidance and the virtues of actively authoring a pattern of living. That chapter goes on to talk about a variety of domains of living not unlike the domains discussed in this book.
How can you practice active authorship of valued living in the context of AA? Many of the AA steps can be hard to swallow. For example, an admission of powerlessness: who wants that? However, if you"ve struggled and struggled to manage your drug or alcohol use, only to fail repeatedly, perhaps you"re one of those who need to "manage" drugs and alcohol by simply letting them go as part of your life. Think of all the effort you"ve put into controlling your use. If it had been fruitful in any lasting or satisfying sense, you wouldn"t be reading this book. Now imagine that all the effort you poured into controlling use could be diverted into a value-one that you would want on your tombstone. "He was a devoted father," for example. How might that value thrive if all that effort you put into not drinking could be poured into fatherhood? How might you grow as a father if all the hours spent struggling, drinking, not drinking, worrying over doing and not doing it were instead spent on your kids? When you work the first step, consider asking yourself, honestly, do you really want your tombstone to be inscribed with "He struggled mightily with alcohol?" Or would you prefer it read: * He was an inspired artist * He was a great teacher * He made a real difference in his community as an activist * He was a wonderful parent, spouse, and neighbor Could you let the first step symbolize a turning point in your life where you let go of that struggle with drugs or alcohol and put your hands firmly on your own life?
Consider the second and third steps and the idea of restoration to sanity and turning life direction over to a higher power. Some have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. What"s the alternative? For some who are religiously inclined, or spiritual in a more general sense, G.o.d (as you understand G.o.d) can be your guide in this. There are no great religious or spiritual traditions that are not centrally concerned with what it means to live a virtuous life. Sometimes you have to sift through a lot of scary talk about h.e.l.lfire and d.a.m.nation to find it, but all of the great religions are fundamentally concerned with how we might live among our fellows.
But if you"re spiritually uncertain, or even if you"re an atheist, couldn"t you add just one little "o" to the word G.o.d-making it "good" instead? After all, some say G.o.d is good. The third step might sound something like: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to Good as we understood it." What might it look like if you were to practice the embodiment of living well, to the best of your ability on a given day? Could you allow good to organize your life? Could it be that allowing your own most deeply held values to direct your life might result in a life free of the insanity of repet.i.tive, life draining patterns?
The fourth and fifth steps are most clearly about finding where we have gotten sidetracked from the things we care most deeply about. Taking inventory in the fourth step is a values exercise. It is largely a step about how fear, resentment, and avoidance have corrupted relationships-and, after all, most values are connected to relationships. "A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke...If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values. We did exactly the same thing with our lives" (AA, 64). Many components of the inventories we did in the early chapters of this book-practicing stillness in a storm, practicing perspective taking, practicing holding stories lightly-can all be allies in working the fourth and fifth steps with a kind but firm hand on the rudder and an eye toward the direction you are moving in your life. Let those skills carry you through these challenging, life-orienting steps.
Steps six and seven are about letting go of old, repet.i.tive, unproductive patterns and allowing some force other than fear, avoidance, and self-defeating stories to organize your life. These steps can be a sort of reaffirmation of all that has been done in the first five steps. The first five steps are a process of becoming ready to let go of old patterns of being. The sixth step is an affirmation of that in light of all that has been seen in the preceding steps. The sixth step is an affirmation of the harm that has been caused and the path to better living. The seventh step in many ways echoes the second and third-freely choosing to have good or G.o.d, in whatever form that takes for you, orient you one day at a time. This is most certainly a values question: what will organize my life?
Steps eight and nine are also very much about growing in the direction of a valued pattern of living, but they are even more closely related to committed action, which is described in the next chapter, so I"ll save discussion of those steps for later. Steps ten, eleven, and twelve are often thought of as maintenance steps. They encapsulate the processes described in the first nine steps. They are the "rinse and repeat" steps in AA. Again, I"ll say a bit more about these in the next chapter on committed action, since these steps bear a very strong relationship to the meaning of committed action in the ACT model.
A final place to consider ACT values components in relation to 12-step partic.i.p.ation is in the domain of community and social relations. Most who use AA as a place to practice their recovery become part of a community. It is worth spending a bit of time meditating on, and writing about, who you would like to be in that community. As in all ACT values work, hold your values-authorship lightly. Hold the story about who you want to be lightly. As you grow and change in that community, what is meant by "being a good member" will likely change. I encourage you to stretch a bit and move around in your role in that community. Spend a bit of time pa.s.sing and not speaking, but listening with extra care. Spend some time speaking frequently. Take time to notice your place in that community. Do you walk up to a newcomer, shake her hand, and welcome her to the meeting? Do you serve coffee some days? Can people count on seeing you there-rain or shine? Are you someone who shares both their brightest and darkest days? Meetings are a good place to practice interpersonal values.
7.
Turning Back, in Kindness Here"s the interesting thing about all these areas, these processes, that we"ve been talking about: stillness, perspective-taking, acceptance, the holding lightly of stories, and values. Like the facets of a jewel, all of them are reflected in each other. Take a look at any one of them closely, and you"ll see the others. Maybe they won"t appear exactly the same way, but they"ll be there. None of them is more important than the other, but this work depends on all of them working together to foster psychological flexibility and, from that, the possibility of changing your life for the better. This weaving together and connectedness of the areas is the subject of our last discussion: commitment. You can think all you want about the stuff that comes earlier in this book, but all of it risks being for nothing unless you can get your feet to start moving.