I tried to avoid needing help by becoming the one who helps
'Helping' as numbing without a substance
I’m going through some stuff right now that I am not sure how to put into words. It’s not all good or all bad, and in a lot of ways: it’s neither. It seems that with recovery comes a receding of the need to cling to black-and-white, binary, either-or thinking, and for this I am so grateful. Because as it turns out, for better or worse, everything — really just about everything in this life and all of its many experiences — is on a continuum.
I wanted to be done recovering, for instance. I got one year sober and immediately became a sober coach. To help others do what I did. And I did help a good number of wonderful people. But in hindsight, I can see the evidence that one of the things I do to pretend I am fine and don’t need help is to try to jump to the part where I become the one who helps. Instead of be where I actually am which is: I still also need help.
I need to slow down. I need to learn deeper vulnerability in private settings. I need to learn to feel hurt when I’m hurt (and not jump to the part where I try to help the ones who hurt me.) I need to feel anger when I am angry. I need to learn how to see myself and the world through newly recovering eyes. This takes a lot of time, effort, and attention. It is not something I can put on display. I need to move through it for myself. I need to let the mystery, lessons, insights, and revelations happen on their own time.
My recovery is becoming a collaborative process with my version of Spirit (God) in a new and deeply personal way. I am learning to let go of control, let go of needing an end point. Let go of the me that I was, the me who thought I could only be loved if I never needed anything or anyone. And I don’t know how to do this. It is hard, confusing, scary, and painful to do this. But I’m open. I’m here. I’m willing. I trust. I have faith that this is all bigger than me, that there is a plan that isn’t mine and yet I’m collaborating on it with something much more beautiful than me alone, and that I am held and guided.
As I move toward completing my second year of sobriety, and thereby sliding into living through my third, I realize I have a lot to learn. And I’m not so sure I want to document it all in the same way I have been for my first two years of recovery. I sincerely shared everything I was learning as honestly and openly as I could in real time. I am a sweet person, I want to help others feel sweet about themselves, too. But now when I go to write about the emotional sobriety I’m in many ways very new to, when I realize one of the ways I numbed my pain was to jump into “helper” mode in an effort to leap over the part where I’m afraid, lost, searching, hurting, in pain, confused, new, raw and vulnerable, I realize I’m in a new place inside. And I’ll have to change the way I do things. I’ll still write, speak, and share here on Substack, but it will look and feel different. Because I am different. I am not the woman or writer I used to be.
And I don’t know yet what that means. And I am okay with that. With being in this space and waiting. As the world makes plans and resolutions for next year, I am sitting with my not-yet-knowing. But at least I’m not jumping. That’s new, and it’s way bigger in terms of my personal growth than it sounds. I’m aware that part of my addiction was to try to escape hard things by leaping over them to get to the part where I am in service of others. There’s something a bit twisted in that, though also, so brave, bold, generous, and beautiful. The difference now is that I’m not trying to catapult my tender quiet hurting self into “the next thing” before I’m ready. I’m staying here. In the disconcerting, disquieting stillness of a new kind of wintering. It’s cold but it’s also cozy, here with my new self. A me that is more me than ever, even if it feels like we’ve only just met.
I am wishing you a peaceful and joyous holiday season. If you are on the path of recovering from addiction, no matter where on the path you find yourself (because it’s all the path), I am sending you extra big hugs. This is a long and windy road. I’m going to spend a lot of time trying to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, so I don’t miss anything; so I can remember to pay attention. I am learning. I am evolving. In this manic culture of oversharing, gluttonous content creation, and trying to “be somebody” in the eyes of others, be they friends and family or an online group of strangers brought together by a courageous desire to learn and grow together, I’d like to take some time to just be me, just with me. And what can feel scary about not sharing everything is that we are fed an illusion that if we don’t share what we are going through, it isn’t really happening. If I don’t share all of my insights, thoughts, pondering, learnings, how can I prove I’ve had them? How will I show my work? Is it really true that “pics or it didn’t happen”? That’s what writing is, afterall. Snapshots of moments in time.
I don’t want to be part of that kind of trap. I’d rather be off the grid sharing my heart with just a few true loved ones — even if they are only the trees in my yard — than to ever for a second question that what I have done (and will continue to do) to save my own life isn’t real. When in my past I mindlessly jumped to “I’m fine, I don’t need help, I don’t need anyone” it was never more acute than when I became pregnant before I was ready, and when my mom died before I could have possibly been prepared. Over-helping, for me, is a trauma response. Or should I say it this way: pretending I don’t need help by becoming the help to other people, that is a trauma response to a deeper trauma: thinking that if I need help I don’t deserve to receive love. That’s twisted. But I couldn’t see it until now. So when I got sober and left my job, while those things are tremendously empowering, they are also tremendously disruptive to absolutely every piece of my identity. I need time to be with what this is. I need time to not try to explain what it is. I can’t anyway. I don’t know.
The old part of me wants to push myself to get to the next thing, the part where I “fix” everything. Where I am recovered and have a fully established new identity that smooths out the yet-inexplicable rough patches. Where I force a happily ever after ending. But the new me knows better. The recovering me knows that that is exactly where addiction starts. With forcing a lie to be true because the truth feels too overwhelming to face. I’m facing it now. I’m facing all of it, gently, lovingly, and with great care. Because I now also realize that everything I’m facing wears my face. And I don’t abandon myself anymore. I have to be with what is. I have to take each little bit as it comes.
Contrary to what the outside world tells us, we are mighty even if no one else sees. We are strong, alive, vibrant, and creative even when we retreat into silence. Soon it will be the part where I share again. It will be sincere. Always and forever my shares will be the most sincere. But this is the part where I go into the dark and sit with deep gratitude for the way my life is. Not to try to guess, predict, control, deny or worry about the way it seems.
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Boy, I see the phenomena you spoke of at AA meetings. A new person comes in and the ‘pillars’ are knocking each other out of the way to get to them. Also, there’s about 12 people that basically sponsor everybody. Those ‘pillars’ are avoiding their own Shadow by projecting it on to a newbie and then ‘fixing’ them. I can here it in their ‘shares’.
Another great post and topic Allison!!