Change Sneaks Up

Change arrives in nature when time has ripened. There are no jagged transitions or crude discontinuities. This accounts for the sureness with which one season succeeds another. It is as though they were moving forward in a rhythm set from within a continuum.

To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations, the sameness, the banality, or the pain. So often we look back on patterns of behavior, the kind of decisions we make repeatedly and that have failed to serve us well, and we aim for a new and more successful path or way of living. But change is difficult for us. So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference. We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere. We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality beings to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.

-John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Change is slow and fast at the same time. I search for change, long to be different, to be better, seemingly without any real results despite all my longing and striving. Then one day, I look up, and I’m called to do something I couldn’t have done five years ago, and somehow today, it is easy. The slow, slow progress comes to fruition in a single moment.

I’m bewildered by how different my reactions and inclinations have become in the last few years. Lately, I am faced with challenges that would have baffled me in the past, but on a daily basis, I now move easily through them. Something in me that I couldn’t see was changing, changing all the time.

Maybe I am more like nature than I think. In the natural world, vegetation naturally evolves from one state to the next. Every year, plants emerge, new and somehow ready for the brand new year ahead. They don’t know what the year will bring, but somehow, the vast majority of the landscape is completely ready for its challenges, better equipped than it would have been the year before. Nature feels the earth and moves with it. Something in me is dancing this dance, too.

My relationships with people have entirely changed, along with my orientation to work, music, spiritual practice, and family. Some changes are huge, and some are small. Most are indescribable with words. All I know is that when a challenging situation arises, I’m not sent into a frenzied state. I’m able to ask for help (more of the time). I know that everything will be okay.

Maybe that’s the miracle of time. The longer I live, the more chances I get to see things go wrong – and go right. And what do I learn from observing this? That the world keeps turning, people keep loving, lives keep moving. Life is okay. Things happen, and I deal with it. People deal with life, and we go on. Seeing our collective cycles of “dealing with it” adds a sense of calm to my life.

I’m not pretending that I don’t still freak out or have emotional upheavals. That’s simply my personality. But even my mood swings don’t perturb me the way they used to. I’m accustomed to the flow of life and of my emotions. The internal swings are less frightening and subside more quickly because I no longer increase their intensity with my extreme reactions and guilt.

I feel like I have been a child, learning all the basic things about simply living in a human body for so long. And now, I may not have learned all the lessons there are to learn, but I’ve learned quite a bit – enough that I’m ready for new challenges.  That’s a good feeling.

This stage of life is new to me – this feeling that I have truly learned something, without consciously learning it. So much of my education has been driven by concerted, organized effort, but this is something different. I will enjoy this feeling, even when life cycles back around to remind me that I am and will always be a beginner.

Some thresholds can only be crossed in one direction, and I’ve crossed something like that.

I think I can live better now. I think I can love better. And I am immensely grateful.

Progress Sometimes Feels Like Going Nowhere – Part II – Tightrope Walking

I am blatantly retelling a metaphor I heard in a meeting last week.  But I don't think the teller will mind…

Recovery is like walking a tightrope, but not in the way many people think of it—as tentatively taking one step after another, unsteady, unsure, risky, fearful, dangerous.

According to my friend's telling, when a person walks a tightrope, he isn't walking from one end to the other.  He's falling down from one end to the other.  As he crosses the expanse on his tightrope, the walker carries a long pole for balance. With each step, he falls a little to one side, shifting the bar to the other side to compensate.  Each step is a process of falling and recovery, of falling and recovery. 

My friend in the meeting suggested that each moment of recovery is where we meet God on the most honest level. We don't feel our need for a higher power until we really need one.  Without falling, we are never required to try anything new. We are never required to grow.  If we fall, we must do something differently in order to reach the other side of whatever expanse we are trying to cross.  Growth is rarely a matter of taking several steps in a straight line, even though to people who don't see the internal life of the tightrope walker, it may appear to be so. 

Another way to think of oneself living life and pursuing recovery is as a pendulum. We swing back and forth across a balanced middle. In the midst of our disease, we swung wildly, barely seeing that middle.  As we mature, we usually swing more slowly and don't necessary fly as wide away from the center as we used to.

But back to the tightrope.  Before we get much awareness of ourselves or of true recovery, we approach canyons and open expanses with trepidation. We take a deep breath and promise ourselves that we can make it across.  It's only a few steps.  We just have to keep our path straight.  When our assistants and friends come to us with a balancing pole, many of us shake our heads and claim we don't need it.  It will be too heavy, we insist. It would impair our progress. 

Then, no matter how strong we start out across that expanse, we each, inevitably, begin to fall.  Those of us who agreed to take the pole but have not yet learned how to use it throw it from our hands. Those who refuse it are out of luck from the get-go. We falling to one side.  What little we know about recovery is not enough to keep us on top of that rope.  The only thing we can do was grab onto that rope before we fall completely.

We cling to that rope, hanging on with our feet dangling.  We might try this for a long while, pretending we are some kind of hero in a spy movie, muscling our way across the canyon with our hands. But even the strongest among us can't move forward that way for too long. We have to stop at some point.  We stop and simply hang on.

That's what some of those plateaus I talked about in Part I of this post feel like.  We are merely hanging on.  Maybe someone gave us some techniques to use to recover, but we don't always know how to employ them all.  We aren't used to trusting a higher power.  We aren't used to doing things any other way than the way we've always done them.  We dangle from the rope and wait.  

At this point, some people let go.  Some people relapse.

Others of us are fortunate and brave.  Somehow, we take a rest and get back on top of the rope.  Usually, it's our higher power that manages this feat, but we must be willing.  This time, when someone hands us a balancing pole, we learn how to use it.  We watch other tightrope walkers and see how it works.  And it all eventually comes to together, sometimes after multiple turns under the rope.  We realize that we don't have to muscle through life anymore.  We just feel ourselves fall and move that pole. 

Did you read that?  We feel ourselves fall and move the pole.  This depiction of recovery explicitly states that we will not be urge or symptom free 100% of the time.  Recovery isn't about that.  Sometimes, the addictive thoughts go away.  Sometimes, they do not.  In either case, it usually takes time for them to leave us. 

Recovery is about how we react to those urges and thoughts.  It's about not going crazy or freaking out when they happen.  Even if we act on ED impulses, it is to our detriment to think it's the end of the world.  All we have to do is move the pole slightly.  It's a barely perceptible movement sometimes. We learn how to accomplish these slow, steady movements over time.  We learn how to not completely lose our minds (most of the time) and change one thing in our lives. We do one thing differently.  We discard something that used to work for us that no longer works. We find a new way to handle a situation.  We move that pole.

And we find the middle again.  We can walk forward. 

This is such a different image than the hero or the whirling dervish that picks herself up and does everything possible to stay in recovery. Sometimes, these wild attempts at changing our lives do more damage than good.  Maturity in recovery means we get a little more discernment—at least a lot of the time.  Or maybe it's simply that we start being able to see the difference between extreme and prudent action.  

Risk-taking is essential.  Tightrope walking is inherently a risk!  I'm not saying we live our lives in a boring way and always make "safe" decisions.  But we can make smart moves instead of panic and fear-driven ones.  Recovery helps us do that. 

I feel that recovery is helping me do that, even if I still find myself driven by fear no again.  At least I can see it now, and move that pole. 

Sickness Is Healthy?

Sometimes, circumstances thwart us from doing what we want or hope to do. This happens on large and small scales, but no matter what is at stake, those situations can be incredibly frustrating.

Right now, I’m a bit under the weather, and as a result, many things I would like to do are out of my reach. I get bursts of energy during which I can do a load of laundry or clean the kitchen, but after about thirty minutes, I’m dragging again. I could take this as an irritation and inconvenience, but instead, I’m choosing to see it as an opportunity to think beyond my usual schedule.

Incapacitations lead to creativity. When a human can’t do something one way, that person usually finds another way to do it or is led to another interest. Sicknesses and inconveniences are essential for me because I tend to get so bound up in routine; only something at least moderately severe can break the chains of my own tightly-controlled regime.

Illness works for me because it slows me down. I get in much better touch with my body and my emotions during illness. Eating disorder thoughts lessen because my notions of food start to center around what will get me better (or what will help me survive, if I feel that terrible). Sickness is a good thing (at least under my usual, non-terminal conditions). Funny that I spend so many borderline obsessive/compulsive moments scrubbing things and washing my hands to avoid it ;)

I can even extrapolate this perspective when looking back on my entire history with eating disorders and recovery. I would not be who I am without that struggle. My inability to “fit” in certain ways has led me toward new ways of living.

In this moment, however, my aching body needs to rest, and I’m doing to jump on the opportunity to adhere to that early bedtime I’ve been trying to move myself toward for months! My to-do list is no match for this kind of exhaustion.

Space for Change

Let’s take a minute to acknowledge ourselves exactly where we are and as we are. Take a breath and accept that. Now, revel in it; realize that we are where we are for a reason and that we are all connected to each other.

Now, let’s look objectively (as objectively as possible) at our lives and the patterns in them. What do we keep doing that we don’t like? What are we doing that we do like? Are there things we want to change? And are we ready to change them?

I used to ignore that last question. My degree of readiness didn’t matter. If something needed changing, I required myself to change it ASAP. If I ended up not changing or realizing that I was incapable of change in that instance, I beat myself up. And if I did manage to change myself or the situation, but the result did not live up to my expectations, I gave myself a mental lashing for that, too.

Of course, my actions and changes rarely met the standard I had set, resulting in a perpetual cycle of shame. Today, I am starting to look at things differently.

I have been taught over the last few years to look at myself and my life without judgment. The way I am now is the way I am meant to be. Sure, future choices can move me in different directions, but the forces that brought me to where I am deserve to be acknowledged. All of my perceived flaws, all the hang-ups, the confusion, the circumstances beyond my control, and also the successes and good fortune, need to be appreciated if I want to see myself as a whole human being.

Once I have assessed these portions of myself and this life, I can understand where I am rather than judge it. Only then can I see if I am ready to change or not. By respecting my feelings, I can allow myself to hang back and not change now and then, especially when I’m not quite sure exactly what action to take. I must ask myself why I think I need to change and see whether my answer comes from a loving place or old, misguided beliefs that still hang around in my brain.

The greatest tool I have found in catalyzing change has come to light during the moments when I think I need to change but have a stubborn part of me that doesn’t want to. This emotional situation will often confuse me, and I begin wondering why I don’t do the things I clearly want to do. Why does a part of me hold back the rest of me that wants to grow?

The key to these moments is asking for willingness to change. I also see this as asking for a space to open up that will allow change to come. I don’t have to enact the change. Perhaps my divided desires indicate that I shouldn’t be the actor. Rather, I need to position myself as a vessel for change.

When I feel stuck, I can ask for a space to be opened up inside of me where innovative ideas can form, new desires can develop, and external change can creep in. Sometimes, the answer to this request comes as an unexpectedly free time slot on my schedule. Other times, it’s a person or thing that shows me a new perspective or way of being. And still other times, my desires quite literally change on their own in time, without me doing anything but asking.

We all wish we did certain things better, but why not seek to understand the reasons behind our current patterns before attempting to change? Perhaps where we think we want to be isn’t where we are headed at all. Instead of continually determining to enact change on ourselves and the world around us, we need to invite change in from time to time.