Today I was in a meeting of a spiritual support group I attend, and the subject was “enabling” – how do we know when we are supporting others’ unhealthy behaviors by taking responsibility for outcomes that are really their responsibility? As I listened, I heard many messages – externally in others’ comments, and internally in my own experiences and awarenesses.
First, all human families develop and operate from an overall script which defines the specific roles and expectations of each family member. Based on the historical health of the family’s past ancestors, and based on the current emotional health of current “leaders” -- adults and parents – the family’s roles become rigid or remain fluid and flowing. The rigidity of roles depends on the level of conditions and rules which the family members use in emotionally connecting or separating from and abandoning each other.
There are many different roles that can appear: for example, enabler, victim, perpetrator and/or hero, lost child, scapegoat, and mascot. Without the enabler or hero, unhealthy families or relationships would seemingly self-destruct.
A metaphor that fits well in my experience is that when a person is born, and the umbilical cord is cut physically, it begins to be reconnected mentally and emotionally - in different forms -- to others. These "others" are initially the adult parental characters in our script, and brothers, and sisters, and continues on in time with other relationships. The dependency that this connection creates makes the relationship seemingly critical to our survival, and provides the energy to direct us into our “necessary” roles in other social settings.
I am aware that in every social situation I entered, I surveyed the people present for the roles they wanted and would expect from me, and put on that self or mask so I could be “successful”.
These factors are important, to me, because it sets the backdrop for all else that is about to happen – in the past, and presently. The motives behind our actions come from two directions:
1. To avoid the pain and shame of separation and abandonment by controlling outcomes. What flows down the emotional umbilical cord seems critical to survival, and therefore, any threat to the flow of attention, companionship, or intimacy must be avoided.
2. Our roles and our efforts to do this become harmful because they are trying to control the uncontrollable, and when we fail, we develop a “mental illness” – an unhealthy brain programming – which is separating and abandoning by its very nature – not matter what actually occurs in our lives and relationships. No human relationships alone can fill the wounded, infected hole we now have inside.
Our minds struggle to survive, and in the process they takes the greatest strengths we possess, and converts them into our egos – an artificial, survival self, who plays the prerecorded roles in an attempt to control outcomes, and avoid shame and abandonment. What were collections of our strengths changes into collections of our symptoms or "character defects" – emotionally motivated compulsions to avoid the pain of separation.
Something else I realized is that the “pink elephant” that we are dealing with – the harmful, unhealthy, dysfunctional behavior – is sometimes literally in the living room of our homes, and more frequently, the “pink elephant” we are dealing with is in our minds. They are both just as real as the other, only different in the specific details of our “illness” and treatment.
The “pink elephant” in our actual living rooms transforms over time into a mental “pink elephant” that only exists in our minds. Again, they are both equally powerful and harmful, only different.
When I first got into recovery, over twenty years ago, I began to receive a lot of information, knowledge, and understanding – answers – about what had happened and was happening to me. I was told that now I had choices – which I believed, because I believed that knowledge and understanding would give me control of my life’s outcomes. But I was wrong. I did not have the solution – only the answers. I had mental information and not spiritual experience. I had options but not yet choices.
I had to find a way to allow my umbilical cord to be disconnected from others, and reattached to my God. And I could not do this by my own intention or will.
I began to be taught certain spiritual principles which began to and still do change and empower my life.
1. First, I was taught to experience and admit my powerlessness – that my life – my perceptions, reactions, and actions – which included my roles and motives – were totally unmanageable by me.
2. Then, I was taught how to begin allowing the umbilical cord that was attached to others to be disconnected, and reconnected to the higher loving Presence of my God. I began to experience consciously that my God could restore me to my truest self by supplying me with the unconditional, and unending spiritual nutrition and power of Their Presence.
3. Finally, I was taught how to use this spiritual nutrition and power of God’s Presence to enable me to be disconnected from other people, things, and outcomes – to become surrendered to my God’s loving care. This process requires active participation in an intimate relationship with Them.
4. After this, I was taught to make a searching inventory of my history of past and present unhealthy roles with others – my "umbilical"connections. This was followed by a spiritual process of increasingly disconnecting from past unavailable others and reconnecting to my very present God.
5. And after this, I was taught to make a list of how I had connected my umbilical cord to others by harming them or believing I had harmed them. Then I began to make amends and change – to forgive and accept my unconditionally through my God’s Presence.
One person related how she had enabled her husband’s drug use, and she used the phrase, “shame on me”. Without this spiritual process, we believe we are responsible - have control over - for our unhealthy actions in our relationships. And we convict, sentence, and execute ourselves with painful separation and self abandonment. We are not, and never were bad – we have always done the very best that we could. But we will never “know” – experience consciously – our true selves, unless we come to consciously connect and experience our God’s loving Presence.
To me, recovery is about practicing daily inspirations in all my affairs. Inspirations are encounters with my God through words, events, and relationships which improve my conscious contact with my God. I need to do this “daily” and moment to moment because I need the steady and consistent nutrition of their loving Presence in order to survive as my real and deepest self. When I am on a steady diet of God’s Presence through “daily inspirations”, I have the opportunity to heal and become and love – to have an amazing life – unfettered by the injuries and illnesses of the past.
Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music
Photography/graphics by W. Wass
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