Dysfunctional Families (Wisdom of the 12-Steps)

Bottom line: Don’t give up. We’re all capable of healing and recovery, but we have to reach out for the support that awaits.

We’ve heard the term, but what does dysfunctional mean, anyway? Merriam-Webster dictionary defines dysfunctional as “not functioning properly: marked by impaired or abnormal functioning.” It may be difficult to pinpoint, or put into words, what’s dysfunctional in a family or individual, but generally we know something’s amiss on a gut level.

Growing up with a father who frequently binged alcohol after cashing his Friday paychecks, then arguing and physically abusing my mother when she confronted him, I knew things were out of kilter. Their fighting scared and saddened me. I felt torn during those years between wanting to escape and avoid my confusion, hurt, sadness and my helplessness over their turmoil. I worked to steer clear of the intensity of Dad’s rages. At the same time, I wanted to prevent harm to Mom, as I was terrified of losing her altogether by Dad’s hand. In spite of, or because of, my feelings—doesn’t matter which—I searched for clues as to how I could intervene and stop the periodic madness.

As a young boy, I couldn’t explain normal . . . not to myself, and not to anyone else. Nor did I know how other fathers acted towards their children, except from glimpses I could get here and there. But my feelings told me that my nuclear family situation was wrong, wasn’t healthy, and desperately so. Like when I burned a finger after touching a hot stove, or scrapped a knee from a fall, I knew if something caused pain, then that something wasn’t good. And I knew to avoid repeating behavior which caused pain. I didn’t know what I could do to change my dad’s drinking, my parents’ arguments over it, or Dad’s abuse of Mom. I didn’t have the tools to communicate my feelings with others. Some invisible wall of silence had been erected, which trapped my mom, my brother and me, and prevented us from seeking effective assistance to change the equation. I couldn’t intervene physically. The best I could do? I hunkered down, observed, and empathized with Mom when I could. I calculated how, and moreover when, I might intervene . . . while at the same time pursuing my boyhood interests at school and during visits to my grandparents.

Visits to my grandparents, particularly my maternal grandparents’ farm, became my saving grace. The unconditional love I received there from extended family members uplifted me. Dad didn’t drink around my grandparents, that I knew of anyway. Moreover, my parents didn’t argue or fight while there. And so, those visits provided me a safe harbor, a place to anchor myself, lower my vigil, absorb healthier life lessons, and experience the closer-to-nature lifestyle of subsistence farming.

It’s been said that all families are dysfunctional in their own way. And at best, it’s probably a rare few who would claim they didn’t grow up dealing with chaos or experiencing trauma. Who among us can claim they grew up unscathed? Beyond that, none of us can claim we’ve never suffered a loss. Loss is an inevitable part of life.

Some individuals and families, without doubt, are more toxic and dysfunctional than others. And some individuals are harmed more than others. Children in particular are more likely to suffer to a greater degree as they have fewer resources to cope and escape. But we all have opportunity to reach out for support, even in small ways, to avoid further damage and begin our healing journey.

If you don’t have friends or family to whom you can reach out, Twelve-Step meetings are a safe place to start, particularly if counseling/therapy isn’t an option.

Years ago, my healing journey involved reaching out while in undergraduate school when suicidal thoughts threatened to consume me. So, reach out and connect with others. If nothing else, start with a phone call or a remote meeting. There are others out there who can relate and are willing to listen. Unburden yourself of your secrets. You’re only as sick as they are. Drop the public mask you hide behind and let down your walls. Learn to trust others. Learn to love, and accept yourself in spite of your warts and imperfections.

You can read more about my journey by visiting my website (my name .com) and reading my memoir, Once Upon a Kentucky Farm: Hope and Healing from Family Abuse, Alcoholism and Dysfunction (released early 2022).

I leave you with this quote from an unknown source: “You don’t have to save me, you only need to hold my hand while I save myself.”

Photo Credit: Quang Nguyen vinh (Quangpraha) - Pixabay

Spirituality (Wisdom of the 12-Steps)

Bottom line: There are many paths to spirituality.

Aristotle said man is a social animal. I say, in addition, man is a spiritual animal. As such, each of us has an inherent desire to answer the bigger questions of our existence.

Ever ask yourself how so many religions came to be? My answer, culture and man as spiritual animal. Each culture or society (group of people) grapples with the fundamental existential questions to which every human seeks an answer. It all boils down to where and how we, individually and collectively, fit in to the bigger scheme. I’m including many and varied questions here, such as, What happens when we die, Do we have self-determination, and How did life begin?

The need/desire to answer some or all of those questions has driven the development of religions, which then serves the spiritual needs of its followers, though each reflects the values, practices and beliefs of the culture from which it sprang (springs). And as every individual has fallibility and blind spots, so do cultures, and thus religions. As a result, no one religion has the corner on spirituality. By that I mean every religion potentially can lead an individual to the same place, if only. . . . If only the cultural blind spots don’t inhibit that person. If only the individual can work their way through the weeds, the labyrinth of rituals and practices that create that religion’s blind spots.

If you're still with me here, I’m saying no religion has the perfect formula, nor a formula for everyone. As well, every religion changes over time as a reflection of its followers/cultural underpinning. No religion is the sole proprietor of spirituality. Moreover, no one religion is necessary to attain enlightenment/spirituality, nor any in that sense. Rather, finding and piecing together the commonality helps alleviate contradictions in any particular culture/religion and gets closer to the essence of spirituality.

Having lived a few years now, and been exposed to the 12-Steps, I consider those steps a good guideline, not only for those seeking relief from their struggles with destructive behavior, but a path to their spiritual development. I don’t see the 12-Steps as part of a cult nor a religion, though they can act as an adjunct to religion.

Though the 12-Steps originally incorporated the use of the term God, though higher power has supplanted that more recently. I’ve heard encouragement to newer members/attendees of meetings to consider a chair as their higher power, if that works for them. There is no dogma attached to anyone’s definition or determination of higher power, in whatever form.

The purpose of developing a personal higher power is to surrender one’s self in Step 2. That is, give up the idea that one controls and can deal with their problem(s) alone through their thinking and willpower. In psychological terms, I see that as putting the ego aside. The entire point of surrendering willpower is to give up on the notion of controlling that behavior which has been and is out of control for that individual. Imagine resisting drinking water when your dying of thirst! Most everyone attempting to overcome an addiction to a substance or destructive behavior can testify that they’ve quit many times, though never remained abstinent. Obviously, a significant focus of discussion in 12-Steps meetings centers around relapse, and the phrases, One day at a time, and, Easy does it, which are heard frequently.

Case in point: my father smoked like a chimney and stopped many times. Problem was he couldn’t stay stopped and succumbed to lung cancer.

Recently, someone claimed the 12-Steps and meetings were a cult. Here’s what I say about that. The Merriam-Webster dictionary includes several definitions of cult. To apply any of those to the 12-Steps or 12-Step meetings in any serious way becomes a considerable stretch, at least in any negative sense. The 12-Steps don’t extol a deity, nor the program have a leader. Instead, the steps point the way on a path that has worked and is working for others to avoid their destructive behavior. Absolute adherence to dogma isn’t required. Instead, recommendations are made and some best practices are followed, such as maintaining anonymity and utilizing a sponsor (a more experienced support buddy). The 12-Steps are voluntary, take ‘em or leave ‘em. Meeting attendance doesn’t require special clothing or tithing. There’s no hierarchical establishment, though there are fellow recovering members who have secured a meeting location, lead the meeting, purchase coffee and so on. Meetings can occur anywhere, wherever an organizer can arrange. Some meetings occur in a house of worship, though that isn’t a necessity and many don’t. The meetings are intended to provide safe places for attendees to share what they are doing that is working for them, unload emotional baggage, gain insight, and provide encouragement and support to others. The latter brings the steps full circle at Step 12: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs." (Substitute other destructive behaviors for the term alcoholics.) The meetings become a mutual self-help process utilizing the guidelines of the 12-Steps. I see this as a similar process to that of therapy/counseling, the final goals being the same or nearly so.

I believe answers to our existential questions are all around us. We are of them. We are infused with them. We are not, and have never been, separated from our spirituality, though we blind ourselves by creating walls within ourselves. And that if each of us listens and looks, maybe we can come to understand the above, arrive at an inner peace of grace and serenity, and live in the question without self-righteous judgment of others. Moreover, perhaps, we can abandon intolerance and the expectation that others follow our path.

Photo Credit: pexels - Adam Kontor

Isolation (Wisdom of the 12-Steps)

Bottom line: Like the sun's rays, human connection brings life-giving energy. So, reach for the light . . . hope waits there.

I recall an early morning, some years ago, which serves as a stark lesson for me.

I’d arrived on time, 6:30AM, before dawn had wiped away that winter’s morning darkness and the sun’s rays had chance to warm the air. My part-time counseling cohort had followed me into the Methadone Maintenance Clinic by a minute or two.

We may have exchanged hellos, I don’t recall, but he soon launched into his news, “I found a guy laying by the tracks as I came in. Checked him out. He was cold.”

I hadn’t noticed anything amiss as I approached the front door. The clinic and railroad tracks ran along opposite sides of the intervening city street. But then, I’d made a bee-line in order to avoid the cold . . . and the street out front wasn’t lit.

“Dumped?” I said.

“Yeah, probably, after an overdose.”

“Somebody dropped him there, not wanting to be implicated in drug use?” I said. Hurriedly abandoned along a railroad track like a bag of trash, I thought.

“My bet,” he said.

Damn. “What a way to go!”

Working around opioid addicts struggling to get and stay clean, the facility treatment staff were all too aware of the frequency of relapses. Known as “recidivism,” many “patients” turned serial repeaters. Such is the nature of opioid addiction, one of the most difficult of addictions to overcome, as I understand.

I could only appreciate the withdrawal process, never having done it myself. “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” as is frequently said in recovery circles. But, I knew all too well the psychological and emotion difficulties in stopping a drug habit. I’d already worked in residential drug and alcohol rehab facilities for years.

Intense counseling coupled with utilization of 12-Step program meetings offered the best option for those in recovery, as I had come to believe. Once clients “graduated” residential treatment, they were expected to continue out-patient counseling, as well as attendance of 12-Step meetings. However, in the Methadone Clinic out-patient setting, the tenuous leverage we held as staff to drive home the import of 12-Steps program participation, the need for deep introspection and emotional work, became the weak link in the patient’s recovery potential. Most arrived before the birds awakened, got their “doses” of methadone and counselor contact, usually a session of nor more than fifteen minutes before they scooted off to join the morning traffic rush on their way to scattered locations across the SF Bay Area.

Sure, the titrated (decreasing) methadone dosing regime prescribed by the clinic doctor, helped minimize withdrawal symptoms, but even with staff contact and support, relapse was as common as trees in the woods. It wasn’t impossible for a patient to succeed, but many hurdles needed to be negotiated by each patient, such as their physical discomfort and “stinking thinking” when alone. In addition, they’d need to navigate—total avoidance, unlikely—their twenty-four hour, seven-days a week environment filled with the negative peer pressure of using acquaintances or pushers, as well as other daily issues and situations, which likely got them into their predicament in the first place.

Try changing an ingrained routine, even a “simple” one entwined with a deep emotional need, and in the face of a contrary environment.No easy task, “sweat equity” required . . . an absolute necessity.

The most difficult, and disheartening, aspect for me was the work with patients in relationships with other addicts. Picture two drowning individuals clinging to one another. Yet, in the face of their obstacles, their journeys needed to be taken, and I did what I could at each contact and learned to look at the long-term, as each individual’s progress could be slow and fleeting.

So, I wasn’t too surprised to learn that someone’s time had run out.

I wonder now—as I did then—about his life as a parade of questions cross my mind. What passed through his mind as he “nodded off” into oblivion? While sprawled on the cold steel track? My best guess? He’d hoped for, and welcomed, the release from his inner turmoil and psychic pain. Maybe, even longed for the permanent escape through death. I will never know, nor will any of us.

The whole situation quite sad, I wonder if he’d felt cared about or loved . . . or who grieved or marked his loss.

I’m thankful I’d reached out when suicidal, and taken my first step towards recovery from my brand of physic pain and inner turmoil. I recall that isolation vividly. I don’t wish to die enveloped in that isolation, and now know I won’t need to do so. And it’s not that I prefer people suffer my final departure, but expect that some will, contrary to what I say or think. For me, my connection to others and relationship with the universe creates the foundation on which I stand.

The 12-Steps bookend the issue of isolation, and step meetings help counter it. Step One establishes the need to reach out, while Step Twelve emphasizes the importance to continue to do so. All the while meetings, and sponsors, support and assist those in navigating their “stinking thinking” as they work through the steps. (More on sponsors, later.)

Photo Credit: pexels - pixaby