Stepping Away from the Cliff of Relapse

Every twelve step Program is about acceptance. It starts with accepting what is uncomfortable about our situation, and growing to accept and love ourselves.

The irony of my life is that after all these years in program, each year I struggle to accept that school ends in mid-May. You’d think I’d have that down by now. But acceptance happens in stages. Or in layers, like an onion.

My excuse is this: each year, spring has a different set of challenges.

This year there was Little League baseball with two evening games a week, Boy Scouts and piano recitals. Those alone would have been enough for me.

If only my husband had not also not been called out of town three separate times this spring. Radical acceptance was needed.

One of my character strengths proved to weaken me this year, when my husband was away. I'd already found a great deal of insight (and even pleasure) this winter in revisiting my story with folks I knew and loved in my young womanhood. Normally I find it my sense of purpose is enhanced by awareness of meaningful coincidences.

But what usually brings me pleasure and insight, was too much for me once April hit. Co-incidences I'd left alone and ignored, decided they would have their way with me. Was I to be a victim and not a victor, for allowing them to make their power known to me? Could they lead anywhere, but to self-doubt?

The coincidence that I did care to recall was May 20th, the first anniversary of my friend Maia’s death. Radical acceptance was what I wanted, in order to honor her place in my life.

Turned out that there were repercussions from three other anniversaries of events usually too distant for me to want to empower. This year, they acted as triggers that rocked my confidence in the strength of my recovery. Being aware of my history was like looking over a cliff even as I took it one-day-at-a-time through my husband’s first trip out of town during Holy Week and the anticipated let-down the week after his return.

My first deep synchronicity is that it was also mid-April when I had my first bout with the emotional/spiritual illness I continue to respect today. In April of 1991, we were settling into New York state, after a move abroad, when I suffered a breakdown and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. That illness befell at the end of a life-changing year that had begun with losing my job during Holy Week. My job loss had accelerated a move to Germany, and cut off options for my husband’s easy return to California.

The third co-incidence came from a childhood memory that demonstrated the unsettling of my psyche, living with a person with undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. I'd been blamed for something that was an act of God. Radical acceptance of that experience was necessary for me to heal it.

Before my husband's first out-of-town trip, I was happily outgrowing my need for my psychiatrist, Dr. S.. I'd gotten so much into my recovery, that I had only the occasional need of a pharmaceutical for short-lived anxiety. Now, I had to accept, radically, my need for consultation with him.

Fortunately, I had one good coincidence working on my behalf. An April 20th appointment with Dr. S had been scheduled months ahead of time.

I brought my husband along for that visit, to help mirror my strengths, even as I admitted my need for Dr. S’s perspective and pharmaceutical guidance. In the two weeks prior to that appointment, I had already experienced several trigger events that challenged my ability to stay comfortably in the present. One brought me closer to my “edge” than I even cared to admit to the good doc.

I had hard-won perspective to share with my psychiatrist; thank God he demonstrated radical acceptance. He used our fifteen minute appointment to reassure all of us that I was resilient enough to get through the next five weeks.

Other big coincidences lay ahead. Our fifteen minutes was up.

I would be the one looking back to understand the triggers that lay behind me. I would share every detail when I came to my appointment alone (scheduled again without conscious planning-- for the next time M was out of town).