The Olympics And Recovery

  

What do the Olympics have to do with recovery? Well, for one, I am finding myself addicted to them! I don't know about you but I can watch them 24/7 (at least for the 2 weeks they're on TV). First, the opening ceremony was spectacular! Second, I am a sports nut to begin with! Third, I get to root for my fellow countrymen and countrywomen! Fourth, I get to be amazed by all the different events and colorful people and stories! Fifth, I get to be inspired by the discipline and heart of the athletes to push themselves to their limits! And sixth, I get to take a break from my other addiction--following politics!

 

On another level, I get to remind myself that as a recovering person I, too, am an Olympian of sorts. For recovery is like a marathon (or at least an event made up of many, many sprints). We work hard to understand ourselves and our addictions and to practice, practice, practice new ways to avoid relapse, get stronger, heal, grow and meet the challenges of life each and every day. All that training can make the difference between caving and succumbing to an urge to use/relapse or declaring a greater victory of achieving a personal best, breaking our own record(s), and standing on the podium (if only for a brief time), with our heads held high in dignity.

 

And like the Olympics which bring together men and women from across the globe and show us how similar we are, addiction is also the great equalizer. None of us can take on addiction by ourselves just as no athlete gets to the Olympics alone: he or she has many coaches, many supporters, and many fellow athletes to be inspired by and to learn from. 

 

One of the ultimate goals of both the Olympics and recovery certainly is to be all we can be--or at least to give it our all!

  

 

Living Nonviolent Communication

  

You ever have one of those experiences where people keep mentioning or recommending a book, movie, or something or other and, for whatever reason, you're just not ready to follow-through? Well, I first heard about non-violent communication (NVC) a couple or years ago and, then, I heard about it again recently and finally got the book Living Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Boy, I wish I had read it earlier! It might have saved me a lot of heartache! 

 

As much as I like to think I know a lot about communication. After all, I've been an attorney for 20 years, psychotherapist for 15 years, I've been in therapy several times in my life, and I've certainly read books about communication. But Rosenberg's book simplified and clarified some basic concepts that I feel really make sense and can be effective in helping to resolve conflicts.

 

Rosenberg's main premise is that we all have the same basic human needs--pretty much taken from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But, he says, we usually lack the "literacy" to express our own needs let alone realize or validate others' needs. He explains that most of us think we expressing our needs but, more often, we are either afraid to do so or out-of-touch with what our real need are. Therefore, we either expect others' to be mind readers or we express our needs in a critical, demanding or blaming manner which only evokes much of the same back at us. He also describes the difference between expressing a need and a strategy to get that need met. 

 

An example might be something like this. An adult child is going through what he feels is a financial and emotional crisis. He tries to manage it as best as he can but gets to the point where he feels the need to reach out for family support. His family has a sense of his crisis and responds to his request for a family meeting. He doesn't specifically ask for what he needs--in part because he's not sure, he only knows that he's feeling scared, stressed and vulnerable and, perhaps naturally, turns to his family for some kind of help--emotional or financial. 

 

His family responds, in essence, by telling him to "take the emotion out of it" and telling him that he can take his own money out of his retirement account if needed. He feels numb, let down, abandoned, betrayed. He feels unloved and unsupported. What he really needed, should he been able to express it, was just to feel heard, loved, and supported. Perhaps if he stated this, his family could then have asked: "How can we support or help you?" 

 

Instead, he left the family meeting shut down and feeling unsafe to express his real hurt. A couple of weeks later, he emailed a letter to his family expressing his feelings of hurt, anger and abandonment in order that he might be heard--a need of his--and because he didn't feel it would be honest to pretend he didn't feel that way and he didn't yet feel safe to express his feelings in person based on his own perception of past events. However, the wording of his e-mail evoked an equally shocked and hurt response from his family who then "lashed out" at him at a later meeting they had which, in turn, hurt him even more. Thus, the cycle snowballed. 

Have you ever been in a situation like this? How could this have been avoided? 

At the point he first came to talk to his family, he may or may not have known a strategy they could have used to help him feel heard, loved or supported, but he might have said something like: "I just need you listen, validate me, reassure me, hug me, help me out with a loan or gift, be on my side..." It's unclear but likely that his family may have been able to meet some of his needs. And though his e-mail to his family might have been worded differently, again, things might gone differently if his family had been able to hear his "cry or anger" as a call for understanding or love. Granted, it's hard not to get reactive but that's part of what nonviolent communication skills request of us.

 

The book also talks about how each party needs to hear and validate the needs of each other. So, in the case at hand, the adult child needed to be somewhat aware of his family's needs, too. Their needs may also have been to be heard and understood where they were coming from but things never got that far. 

 

Expressing our needs does not ensure they will be met... and that is sad when that happens. But most of the time, the book asserts, we really want to meet each other's needs--we're just not always sure what they are. So, we need to learn what our own needs are, legitimize them and the needs of others, and do our best to hear the underlying needs in any requests and honor them. 

 

The author claims he has been using nonviolent communication (NVC) skill successfully for years with individuals, couples, families and groups. Imagine a world where we could really hear each other. Let's go there together...