The Way It 'Sposed to Be

From Strong Choices, Weak Choices: The Challenge of Change in Recovery

Chapter 3: The Way It's Sposed To Be

Sally’s Story

What do I do now?

Sally Johnson didn’t know the answer to that question. She was tired and angry and it was hard to think straight. Everything had changed. Her husband had finally stopped drinking, he’d gotten sober and healthy for the first time in years, and just when Sally thought they might have a chance for a decent marriage, he dropped his bombshell. He wanted a divorce.

That was six months ago, and, by God, he’d done it. He divorced her. He told her he wanted to start a new life, he wanted to be free and unencumbered so he could find himself. And now, just three weeks after the divorce was final, he had already remarried.

It was a nightmare. Secretly, she’d been hoping for a reconciliation, but that was impossible now. What she wanted to do was just collapse and cry. She wanted to curl up and disappear, to hide, to make herself numb so she couldn’t feel or think or hurt anymore. But she couldn’t do that. She had the kids to think about. I have to cope, she told herself. She’d coped through sixteen years of being married to a man who was drunk half the time, so she supposed she could cope with not being married at all. But she was falling apart, and she knew it.

What do I do now?

Money. That was probably the biggest problem. How was she going to support herself and take care of the kids? How was she going to make a decent life for them? All these questions kept racing through her mind until she felt like her head was going to burst like a big overfilled balloon.

Thank God for friends like Elaine. On impulse, Sally had shown up at at Elaine’s doorstep late at night, seeking shelter from a storm of unhappiness and self-pity. What Sally needed more than anything was an old friend who could listen to late night bursts of inarticulate anger and anguish, and still be a friend in the morning. At an hour past midnight, Sally and Elaine sat on opposite ends of a long couch, sipping diet ginger ale from crystal wine glasses and watching the light from the fireplace dance softly in the warm darkness as they talked of heartbreak, unfairness, and betrayal.

“I never thought my life would turn out this way, ” Sally said, her voice a combination of bitterness and dismay. “I never thought it would be so . . . so hard. I’ve been through some dark moments before, plenty of them. But this . . . this is the worst.”

She huddled her arms around her knees to stop herself from shuddering. She was scared, and so deeply hurt she hardly dared admit it to herself. It was the kind of pain that could drive a person right over the edge.

“All I ever wanted out of life,” Sally said, “was to get married and have a family. I wanted a man I could love and trust and I wanted to raise healthy, happy children. Is that too much to ask? I tried, really tried, to be a good wife and mother. I did everything to make them happy . . . but we had so many problems because of Steve’s drinking. We fought a lot in the last couple years, but I thought once he stopped drinking that would get better.

We’d been through so much together — I thought we had enough love to get us through this too.”
On Sally’s 37th birthday, her husband took her out to the best restaurant in town. Over dessert, he announced their marriage was dead, that he hadn’t really loved her for quite a long time, and he was filing for divorce. And then, as the blood roared in Sally’s ears, he calmly talked about community property and child custody. “Of course, ” he said, “you realize I’ll want joint custody of the children. Now that I’m sober, I’m ready to be the kind of father they need.”

“Shut up, damn you!” Sally screamed, and then she felt her heart pounding with enough force to explode. All around her, people at other tables had stopped eating and were staring at her. Nausea gripped her stomach. She had a sudden urge to run from the restaurant, to run into the parking lot and down the street to the safety of her home. To hide. To awaken with a shudder from this bizarre and frightening nightmare. With great effort, she brought her impulse to break and run under control. It’s a joke, she told herself, just a bad joke. Steve just wants to get a rise out of me. He doesn’t really mean it.

But he did mean it. In the following weeks, Sally watched helplessly as the life she had built during the last decade and a half disintegrated around her. Her lovely home went up for sale. Furniture and personal possessions were divided up and carted away. Credit cards were canceled. Friends and relatives chose sides or just plain disappeared. Her twenty hour a week job turned into forty-five hours, but she had less money than before. Her two teen-age children fought and sulked and cried, and their grades in school plummeted. And now, just three weeks after the divorce was final, Steve had a new wife.

Sally had wanted nothing more in life than to create a happy and loving home with a husband and children to share it with, but now she found herself living in a cramped apartment. “A part-time mother and no-time wife, ” she told Elaine ruefully.

In a matter of a few short months, everything in Sally’s life had changed. The unfairness of it all left her feeling both overwhelmed and confused. After all, Sally was a good person. Not just on the surface, but down deep inside where it really counted. No matter what, she always tried to do the right thing. And in a fair and just world, terrible things weren’t supposed to happen to good people. Or so Sally had always believed.

What Goes Around Comes Around . . . or Does It?

From a very early age, Sally had been taught that if she lived right, if she made the correct choices, if she followed the rules, if she was unselfish and caring, then God would reward her with happiness and a good life. That was the way it was supposed to be. But it wasn’t working out that way.
What had she done wrong? Why was she being punished when she had always worked so hard to be a good person? It just wasn’t fair!

Over the years, many of Sally’s friends had suffered family break-ups, job losses, illnesses, the death of a loved one—and always Sally had been sympathetic and understanding. And always in her mind, as she comforted her grieving friends, had been the unspoken thought, I can keep myself safe, I can protect my family, as long as I live right, as long as I’m caring and unselfish, as long as I keep everything under control, nothing bad will happen to me or my people. For Sally, these thoughts were a kind of magic. If I am a good person, I will have a good life.

Then suddenly, in the middle of her thirties, the magic didn’t work anymore. She had been a good wife and good mother—not perfect, but good enough. Still, the magic failed. As she struggled through her pain and confusion, a new idea began to take hold in her mind: Maybe bad things do happen to people who try to live right and be good. Maybe there is no protection against pain and heartbreak and trouble. Maybe I can’t keep myself and my family safe.

These thoughts left Sally feeling disillusioned and vulnerable. It was as if the whole world had suddenly tilted ten degrees out of alignment and she had to hang on to reality with her fingernails in order to keep from flying off into space. She felt disoriented, lost, and bewildered. She even began to doubt her sanity.

She couldn’t control her feelings anymore. Her temper was short, and even the smallest tasks seemed to require massive concentration and energy. She couldn’t remember the simplest of things, like where she’d put her purse or if she’d turned off the coffee pot before leaving for work.

A part-time grocery checker for the past eight years, Sally now had to worry about getting enough hours to pay the bills. Sometimes in the past, she had to pretend to be pleasant to customers, but now she found herself being curt and churlish on the job, snapping at some of her favorite shoppers. Trying to smile when she didn’t feel like it made her jaw ache and her cheeks hurt. By the end of the day, her entire head felt like a badly abused soccer ball.

Her emotions seesawed between a frightening, almost hysterical hostility and a helpless apathy that left her too weak to climb out of bed. She felt continually pressured and harassed. And if she were forced to make one more decision about her life, she thought she might start screaming and not be able to stop. Erratic mood swings jerked her around as if she were a mindless puppet. Half the time she felt herself filled with a jubilant, wild desire to storm out into the world to start a sparkling new life . . . the rest of the time she wanted to crawl under her bed and hide. All proof, she convinced herself, that she must be losing her mind.

Adaptive Overload

Every year, millions of us face disruptions in our lives that are just as shattering as Sally’s. Like Sally, we may find ourselves overwhelmed by our emotions—fatigued, depressed, frustrated, and angry. And although we are confused, unhappy, and stressed to the breaking point, we’re not going crazy. And neither was Sally.

Sally’s distressing symptoms were the natural consequence of too much stress. It’s important to note that Sally is no fragile little snowflake of a girl, ready to dissolve at the first sign of heat. She’s a mature woman, strong in her own way, and able to handle a fair amount of trouble. But the divorce, and all the small and large changes that came with it, proved to be more than her system could take. This doesn’t mean Sally is weak. It means she is human, and because she is human, she has limits. As we all do.

Alvin Toffler pointed this out in the book Future Shock: “Experiments with deer, dogs, mice and men all point unequivocally to the existence of what might be called an `adaptive range’ below which and above which the individual’s ability to cope simply falls apart.” Change — divorce, death in the family, loss of job — always tests the limits of our adaptive range. Too much change, too fast can break even the strongest of people. To complicate matters even more, such changes don’t happen in utter isolation. Rather, one change leads to another. Divorce usually means a change in financial status, social life, and living arrangements. A new job means new responsibilities, new co-workers, new assignments. The death of a loved one not only creates major disruptions, but a multitude of small changes in daily routine which send shock after shock through our being.

Whenever change happens, we can find ourselves overstimulated mentally, emotionally, and physically. Like a tightrope walker in a hurricane, we struggle to maintain a sense of balance. This hectic struggle for equilibrium leaves us wrung out, exhausted, and wondering if maybe we haven’t gone just a little bit crackers.

But it’s important to remember this: People suffering from the shock of too much change are not mentally ill. Even though our emotions may be careening wildly out of control, we are not going crazy. We are suffering from a predictable condition called adaptive overload.

Adaptive overload is like a short circuiting of our physical and emotional wiring. The human mind and body can only handle so much pressure, stress, and change. Too much change in too short a period of time overloads our body’s ability to adapt — both physically and psychologically. In short, when our circuits are overloaded, we either blow a fuse or go up in flames.

Even healthy and normally well-adjusted people can suffer from these common symptoms of adaptive overload:

anxiety
mental confusion
hostility toward people who try to help
wild mood swings
over-reaction to mild irritants
refusal to deal with major issues
depression, social withdrawal, and apathy
self-destructive coping measures such as drinking, drug-taking, compulsive eating, obsessive partying, or anonymous sexual encounters.

Adaptive Overload and the Chemically Dependent Family

Catastrophes, natural or man-made, can destroy our sense of safety and well-being in a flash. But there is another, much more subtle, route to adaptive overload. Perhaps one of the most emotionally draining situations any person can endure is living in an unhappy family. The constant tension, the arguments, the silences, the pain of not knowing if we are safe and loved and secure — all of these things create stress levels high enough to leave us spinning.

In almost every case, a family that includes one or more members who drink too much or who abuse other drugs will be a family full of unhappiness and turmoil. Why? Because chemical dependency breeds chaos through lies and promises, hope and disappointment, expectations of love and grinding resentments. People living under the shadow of chemical dependency are prime candidates for adaptive overload because every day is filled with danger, worry, fear, guilt, and anger.

We must understand that these distressing emotions are an inevitable reality in homes conflicted by alcohol and other drug abuse. When we experience these feelings day after day without let-up, we overtax our ability to adapt. As a result, many of us end up feeling terrible much of the time, and these bad feelings hamper our efforts to work, love, and pursue a normal life.

One of the real heartbreaks for alcoholics and other addicts and the people who love them is that we all feel the tension, pain, and stress, but we don’t understand it. We don’t understand that adaptive overload is a normal response to family chaos. Instead, we go around thinking there must be something terribly wrong with us as people because it seems like we’re walking along the edge of disaster most of the time. We’re all tied up inside, frightened, waiting . . . waiting for what? We’re not sure, but we know it’s going to be bad.

Think about this for a minute: Adaptive overload is a normal response to family turmoil. Insecurity, self-doubt, fear — these are normal responses to threat. The inner churning and that waiting-for-the-roof-to-fall-in feeling are part and parcel of adaptive overload. Our bodies and minds are overstimulated by the stress of dealing with family chaos. Just coping with everyday life keeps us constantly on the edge of our emotional endurance. All it takes to push us over the edge is a small nudge, one more unexpected stress and we’ve had it. That’s why we sometimes overreact to small problems.

When a stressed-out mother screams at her young son because he drops his jelly toast face down on the kitchen floor, she isn’t responding just to his carelessness. It’s the dirty kitchen floor and the unpaid bills and the sex problems with her husband and her sleepless nights and her worry, anger, and fear about the future that makes her scream like a crazy woman. Of course, the little boy doesn’t understand the long chain of his mother’s emotional reaction. All he knows is that his mama is mean to him and every time he makes a little mistake, he tenses up, afraid of what her reaction will be. If his tension continues, he’s heading for his own case of adaptive overload.

His mother probably doesn’t understand what’s going on either. But she desperately wants to understand. Unfortunately, most of the time she’ll come up with answers that are all wrong, such as, “I scream because I have a bad child who needs to be punished.” Or: “I scream because I’m a bad mother.” Neither of these explanations is helpful. All they do is lead to feelings of guilt, shame, and blame, which, in turn, add to the already heavy burden of adaptive overload.

Have change, stress, and family chaos made you a victim of adaptive overload? Now is the time to ask yourself some searching questions.

If you are chemically dependent yourself, or if you love someone with an alcohol or other drug problem, you have undoubtedly suffered more than your share of stress and distress.

Do you feel pushed to the breaking point?
Are you plagued by nameless fears and feelings of imminent doom?
Do you feel like you can’t think straight? Is it hard for you to concentrate and make decisions?
Do you sometimes feel like you might start screaming or crying and not be able to stop?
Are you chronically fatigued, exhausted, sick, or in pain?
Do you feel irritable or do you fly off the handle over little things?
Is your stomach tied in knots or do you feel pressure and a choking sensation in your chest and throat?
Do you feel overwhelmed much of the time?
Have you lost hope? Do you feel that your efforts to make things better are futile, so you’ve given up trying?
Are things so bad you just want to hide?

If your life is full of turmoil and change and if you answered yes to any of the questions, you could very well be suffering from adaptive overload. Simply put, you’ve been pushed right to the edge of your endurance. You’re on the verge of exhausting your physical and emotional resources. You find it harder and harder to pull yourself together in order to appear as if you’re okay. But regardless of how you look on the outside, you are hurting on the inside.

Adaptive overload takes a heavy toll on our emotional, physical, and social life. It makes us feel grouchy and sick and unlovable. Now, feeling unlovable is a terrible thing. We all need love, but nobody likes a grouch, especially not the grouch himself. So, we end up hating ourselves for not handling our lives better. And self-hate always makes our problems harder to solve.

But if we accept the fact that adaptive overload is a normal and predictable consequence of too much stress and change, then maybe we won’t feel it so necessary to beat up on ourselves when we start feeling a little crazy and freaked-out around the edges. Instead of hating ourselves for experiencing normal — although distressing — human emotions, we’ll be a lot better off if we interpret our distress as a sign that we’re under a lot of strain and that we need to do something about it before it knocks us flat.

Chapter 1 :: The Sparkling Middle Place of Daniel J. Travanti

Chapter 2 :: The Challenge of Change in Recovery