I am taking a class called Consultation in the Helping Professions. I am also taking Marriage & Family Counseling. There is some overlap in these classes, which is always good because saturation of material really allows you to learn it. In both classes we have been covering Systems Theory. My cute, but married (darn it), professor said last night, “When people get stuck in a system, they start to lose the ability to see things from a different view point. People begin to behave as if their system is the only way to achieve their goals and they defend it. While their system may actually function at some level, they have become resistant to new ideas which could actually help them reach a higher level of functioning. They stay fixed in a system that has long been stagnant and that can block them from achieving desired growth. When you enter this system as an agent of change, you become the enemy.” Amen brother! This man was preaching my battle cry. Tell me, does this remind you of any system we know of?
In my Marriage & Family class we were talking about the term differentiation as it relates to family systems. Differentiation is a progressive, internal interplay between autonomy (separation) and connection (togetherness) while progressing toward the authentic self. Being an authentic adult is hard work and a never completed task. The pathway is paved with difficulty and challenge.
In layman’s terms differentiation is when a person has done their psychological work to differentiate themselves from their family of origin. It is when a person has successfully separated their emotional selves in a way that enables them to reduce being triggered by current situations because of family of origin issues. Systems theory scholars suggest that a person who is differentiated reacts cognitively to 80% of the situations in their lives and respond emotionally to only about 20%. Further, people who are reacting with strong emotion to situations have become stuck in a system that causes stagnation (i.e. their family or origin’s system). Differentiation is no walk in the park. In my process it felt like I was trying to stand up to hurricane force winds. Breaking free from any system is difficult because the people in that system will always try to get you to stay the same because they are stuck and have lost the ability to see things from a different view point.
My life has improved remarkably since I went to AA and got sober. There is no denying that. However, at some point I recognized the stagnation and I became despondent because I felt trapped. My whole being was screaming that there had to be more than this. There had to be more than the same damned words repeated over and over, the perpetuated sickness, the type of men available in the rooms, and the unbearable resistance to change. Being in AA meetings felt like walking through mud.
I was reflecting on the changes in my life yesterday and I realized that my life has again improved remarkably since I stopped going to meetings. Several people have commented to me about how much calmer I seem. The fear produced by my indoctrination has started to subside and I no longer feel like I am trapped with a bunch of people who are resistant to change and married to ideas that keep them stagnant. I am so on fire for school again because (as PJ often reminds me) my lessons are putting to words what I already knew but did not know how to say. I am, once again, in an amazing period of serendipitous lessons and epiphanies.
Wow, that class sounds cool and is spot on about stagnation. I'm so glad you're back in school -- plus I get to vicariously get the scoop from you. :) This also explains a lot why I am able to deal with my family better now -- I was finally able to separate myself from that system and not react so emotionally. My therapist calls it growing up. A lot of us think we do it when we become 18 or so, but many don't ever really detach from their parents or just find other substitutes for that dependent relationship.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I've tagged you for a meme, if you feel like doing one.
Hi VR--yeah, I know a lot of people who still react with a lot of emotionality. It really is fine, but I wanted my family to stop having control over me. When the awareness came of just how much they were still pulling my strings, I knew I needed to do whatever it took to cut them. I could not stand knowing that I was still a reflection of them. Something had to give. I also did not like the response I was getting from people I respected. It was something like, "Wow, what the hell is wrong with you that you are responding so emotionally." My responses were completely out of context and often inappropriate. I was still reacting like a child, and as your therapist said, it was time to grow up. I wanted to know what it was like to really be an adult (not just chronologically, but emotionally). It feels amazing, you know?
ReplyDeleteOh, and I don't know what it means to be tagged for a meme. Can you explain--maybe via email if you still have my address?
ReplyDeleteI do know what you mean about becoming an emotional grown up. What I've had to learn is to parent myself in the manner that was absent in my past. Not easy to do when the example set before me sucked. The good thing was I could model after how I felt about and treated others. Oddly, my mom was a big proponent of the Golden Rule. I learned that lesson well, even if she really didn't follow it.
ReplyDeleteOh goody! You've never been tagged before. It's kind of a blogger game. If you go to my blog, you'll see my latest post, which explains the tag (as in "you're it"). What's there is sometimes called a "meme" which is a little questionnaire type thing designed to help your readers get to know you better and to get you to possibly check out other blog sites. Usually the memes are pretty fun and silly to do.
You used that word "fear". Fear to move out of a depression, that was an eye opener when I discovered I was doing it, protecting the known. Stagnation was comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI like to think of our marriage contract as in motion. Revisited to make sure it doesn't need to be reworked in places. We change, why shouldn't it. It helps to revisit it, just to make sure we're both on the same page, even if it doesn't go into a revision. Sometimes it's painful to do and after the fight *giggle* the air is just so much cleaner. But, we're both on the same page.
Revision, is a good word, it has vision in it.
Always the student, sometimes begrudgingly.
postpaleo
Interesting point, Postpalo. I don't think as a whole AA thinks very much about revision, although it probably should. As he even admitted, Bill W and the early AAers didn't have all the answers about alcoholism and things adjusted as the group formed. Yet now it seems like things are so frozen and inflexible. Everything Bill W said was gospel. Forget that the man was a womanizer and died of his cigarette addiction. He didn't really have all his shit together, for crying out loud.
ReplyDeleteThere doesn't seem to be much in place to check to see if everything being done really is in peoples' best interest. It is just assumed The Way It Is Being Done Is The Way It Should Be Done. To Stray From The Path Spells DOOM. No revising there. Plenty of fear of change. Which - wasn't that one of the ruts that got us into trouble to begin with?
Please, don't even get me started on the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" crap. Ugh! The fact that the General Reps keep voting down fixing the gender issue in the big book is enough to make me scream, but it doesn't stop there. As far as I am concerned there is plenty that is broken about AA. Most AAers refuse to even consider that it might be better. They seem to forget how much better other upgrades have made their lives.
ReplyDeleteI had one woman say to me when I told her the gender issue needed to be corrected, "Well, you know, I really don't take offense to the patriarchy in the book." I had to swallow blood not to snap back at her, saying, "Well good for you and your self-centeredness! Who cares about the hundrerds of thousands of women who do, right? As long as it's not offensive to you." Again, this issue is only a beginning.
I know this is straying from the original post, but something Vicarious wrote struck a note. It occurred to me that the reasoning in aa that you can't stay sober without the group doesn't hold water. I quit smoking cigarettes 12years ago and don't have to constantly remind myself about it thru a group. I know that alcoholism differs from addiction in some ways, but once the substance is out of the system, it's the same thing. Cigarette addiction is very hard to kick and there is no CSA that I know of, a group that would tell you that you are doomed to smoke again if you don't do xyz.
ReplyDeleteI loved your post, Timibe. It's alot to think about. I know I'm still growing up. I think letting go of aa was a good step in that direction. Your post put a light on some of my reactions in the workplace. I'm going to let this sink in. Thanks.
Post--I think you wanted me to give you some examples of how AA is sexist? Let's start with the fact that the big book is written completely from a man's perspective. It refers to the alcoholic in the masculine almost completely, aside from some stories. There is a chapter entitled, "To the Wives," instead of to the loved ones or partners or even spouses if it had to marriage specific. It always refers to god as him, even the steps refer to god as he. I know a lot of women who have been brutalized by men and it is impossible for them to conceive of a "male" higher power. Yet people in the rooms get so upset when someone changes the readings to reflect their beliefs.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my dog's name is Jung.
Yeah I did, thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe god thing, probably guilty of that one on more then one occasion. When in fact I do use the word god and actually mean something. I just don't know what started all this and all of that, so, why not god for a name. I have nothing against those that choose what they do and to work it into what they see fit, but to preach it in the rooms themselves as "the way", bull shit. I also find it very hard to approach those that seem to be asking for input on blogs and have a huge religious over tone, it feels like a huge block. I mean they have god on their side and a huge book that has been thrown at me more then once, in resounding circular thinking and it just doesn't have to be that way at all. Some huge insights in that there book.
It's pretty difficult being brought up in a certain society, being around it's values and much religious comes in to play. Not only from the churches themselves but they have evolved in various forms into the very government laws themselves. And of course some would like to see the separation of church and state out and out gone and baring that, warp it. I guess what I'm saying is, try as I might it isn't easy to shed it all and some of it isn't so bad.
Point taken on the rest of what you had to say to get a few brain cells warmed up and thanks. I will watch for it. I just didn't know the book had that bent to it. I mean I try to be aware of the female side of it and yes I do think there can be a difference and sometimes a very big difference. But in the same breath there really are no two of us alike, just a few stories and perspective shifts, observations that might be of a benefit.
The book was written in a time frame where that was more of the norm. Much has changed since then, way to much and if they continue to stay stagnant, they will fall, as all things do that remain motionless. Or who knows, maybe some grass roots movement will take their place or force them to come to the 21st century. Hey, it could happen. I find it rather refreshing the way the pros are now viewing AA/NA more and more, but I'm not too damn fond of them either. But I will say the up and comers do seem to be going in a direction I think is the way to approach it and that is work with what we know now and keep the mind open for the new.
I kiddingly say cousin Carl. I suppose he is really related but how far back I don't have clue, it's a pretty common name, Jung. I Have no doubt your Jung is smarter then he was. Ya ok, he got a few things right, but I bet your Jung does too. ;p