What Do You Call Three Lists That Get Things Moving?
Cata-lists! I promised to show you mine. Here they are.
I’ve decided to give my husband a name. His name is George.
I have a confession. This post is the one I intended to share with you on New Year’s Eve. After I drafted the outline for the Smashing Resolutions, my ego got in the way, and I insisted on bragging about the crazy number of habits I had broken and the personal improvements I achieved. SIX habits, SEVEN achievements!!! I was so caught up in keeping up with whatever life was throwing at me that I didn’t keep track of anything that didn’t have a deadline.
I believe I have my ego in check now, and we can return to our regularly scheduled programming: “Three Lists That Changed Everything.” Does that make them Cata-lists? (harharhar)
If you’ve been keeping up with my story from the beginning, you’ll remember that I let 2022 end with zero resolve to change a single miserable thing about my life. Fate gifted me with unexpected inspiration a few days later: three lists.
Of course, I didn’t expect to do anything involving effort. I didn’t even turn the lists into goal plans. I didn’t track any progress or completions. Hell, I didn’t even keep a copy of the lists! I had to re-create what the lists felt like a year ago, being careful not to include any of the therapy terms I didn’t possess until June. They looked something like this:
My theory was that if I had the wherewithal to get my all-around health (mental, emotional, physical) in shape, replace bad habits with good, and foster a more positive attitude with a sense of meaning and purpose in 2023, I could replace the “Unacceptable” list with “Satisfying and Healthy” list in 2024.
If you understand that I have leveled up to the 2024 portion of the game, and you haven’t fainted from the shock of that reality, you don’t know me at all! My ability to stop short of completing a project without touching it is so reality-defying that it’s practically a superpower.
I wish I could take credit for achieving goals month after month through talent, skill, and dedication, but supernatural intervention is the more logical explanation. The Universe could have somehow received and approved the frequency of my intention, or the combined energy that was being simultaneously released by millions of people giving up on day 4 needed a new host and picked me. Either way, 2023 was slow-pitching for me… All I had to do was keep my head in the game and stay calm even when George tried to distract me.
The Paradigm Shift
As I’ve mentioned before, I assume responsibility for George’s emotional state, constantly monitoring for indications of negative feelings. This marriage is not my first toxic relationship, so I have read everything I can find about maintaining healthy relationships and being lovey-dovey. But there’s nothing one person can do to maintain something that doesn’t already exist, no matter how pleasing she is willing to be or how far she’ll go to avoid conflict. And yet… I perpetually search for someone podcasting out the miracle fix. It’s like attending therapy as a full-time job.
Imagine my amazement when I clicked on a podcast that I expected to miss the mark completely and heard someone talking to me about, well…. ME! And every relationship I’ve ever been in! Including the current one! She was talking about trauma bonding, attachment styles, love-bombing, codependency, boundaries, and a lot of other relationship issues I had never heard of… And I felt like she was reading my journal.
For once, I felt like I had a hint of power in the situation. But with great power comes great responsibility… I needed to make sure that I wasn’t projecting people and situations onto a novel relationship theory for the sake of having a theory.
I collected worksheets, writing prompts, and quizzes from various sources and started analyzing myself and practically every relationship I’ve been a part of, going all the way back to my earliest memory. I didn’t rush the process at all. I took my time, not only for accuracy but for distraction as well. I was becoming very anxious about my appointment with the Gastroenterologist. I didn’t have the mental capacity to ponder a sick liver weeks before meeting the doctor.
At home, relationship tension increased, and communication decreased as he continued to drink at his normal levels, and my drinking progressively decreased. We rarely managed to sync up the vibe. Now and then, I’d drink a little more to be more on his level, but it wasn’t helping much.
A Masterpiece of Nonsense Literature
Although I hadn’t more than glanced at the codependency and trauma worksheets while George was home, I immersed myself in them as soon as he went back to work.
I have been in and out of therapy since my early teens and quickly developed a dislike and distrust for the process and the blatant dishonesty involved in the introduction/test/analysis/diagnosis/drug phase of the relationship with a new provider: “What a coincidence that you brought your daughter to an ADD doctor for diagnosis and that’s exactly what she has! How lucky is that??!!” Even as a teenager, I was aware that my mental health was in the hands of Looking Glass characters. It was a waste of time and money, but it made everyone feel like they were helping me, with the added benefit of being able to engineer a desired personality for me with drugs. For 40 years, I’ve wanted someone to tell me what tf is wrong with me and how I can fix it.
I did the worksheets. I read the details. I compared the healthy relationships I burned down to the toxic, mind-melting relationships that I wouldn’t give up on until I almost lost my life trying to stay. Without question, I am the personification of codependency. That’s not a self-diagnosis because it’s not a diagnosis at all! It’s not a mental disorder. It’s not in the DSM. THERE’S NOT A DRUG THAT CAN TREAT IT.
It’s a learned behavior. Specifically, it’s a survival mechanism that is learned in response to trauma. What kind of trauma?
(This is the best part…) Most commonly associated with EARLY CHILDHOOD TRAUMA.
No wonder any doctor, diagnosis, or drug would do. It didn't matter to them as long as I wasn’t talking about or acting out what had been done to me. How lovely that they were aware that I was becoming more aware, so they just turned off the part of my brain that had awareness of living inside my body. The entire concept makes me feel very… I’m going to keep that emotion to myself. It’s one I’m still learning how to process. I’m sure it will be an entire post topic someday.
This Is Where It Starts Getting Good
I have a perception that the common expectation of dealing with severe, long-term, repeated, unaddressed, compound trauma is that it is horrific, triggering, soul-crushing, and dangerous to try to address without professional help and support and possibly Xanax. That has not been the case for me (so far) because I don’t know that I am going to address the actual trauma events. I have already handled most of it in my hundreds of journals, among thousands of entries.
What I have been addressing is codependency, and it’s been as simple and comforting as opening a journal with a brand-new pen. Since I was a teenager, I have filled pages with “Why did I do this in that situation?” “What is wrong with me?” and “Why did that happen to me?” There have been times I have felt so close to the answer that I almost expected it to come through my skin, but it just slipped away. The fact that the answer is so clear and simple is almost like I have a spell to counter a curse, and the one spell defeats all curses.
I’ve still got a lot of work to do, but it doesn’t own me anymore. I get to make a lot of decisions about what’s good for me. And the results are amazing. See for yourself the difference between the content of the blue list I posted at the top of the page and the list I’m actually working on for 2024 below. The blue list is the best I managed to do in 40 years. I got to the new list in 6 months.
Consequences of Healing
Unfortunately, not everyone I want to have in my life will approve of me having opinions or a voice, and certainly not boundaries that keep me safe and healthy. Some of them would rather see me remain sick, stuck, and suffering than healthy, happy, and whole. I’ll miss them, but I’ll be okay. Some I miss already.
“Unfortunately, not everyone I want to have in my life is going to approve of me having opinions or a voice, and certainly not boundaries that keep me safe and healthy. Some of them would rather see me remain sick, stuck, and suffering than healthy, happy, and whole.” And unfortunately that is what will happen when you start recovering. It’s essential to join groups and connect with those who are in the same place as you and those who get it. But you are doing amazing and I’m proud of you as you are putting in so much work to reinvent yourself.