My mother knows the language of recovery quite well - she learned it studying psychology. Today, she mentioned, in reference to something, that she felt she was enabling me. She told me that she and I were going to have a joint session with our therapist soon, because she had some issues she felt we needed to work out. I love it.
I've been refusing to enable my parents for almost a year now - in fact that is, in my opinion, the source of at least half of their frustration with me. I don't co-sign their psychological and emotional abuse; I don't tailor my objectives or perspectives in conversation in reaction to theirs ('triangulating' we call it). I don't consider it an imperative that I do a given thing just because they do. When making amends to them for wrongs I've done them, I don't allow them to dictate the terms of the amends - my father, for example, demanded a "deeper" apology for something; I just said, "I didn't apologize to get your forgiveness, I apologized because it was the right thing to do". (And make no mistake, there have been many wrongs I've done them.)
I don't do (or not do) these things standoffishly, I don't make a big deal of it. In fact, my only response to my mother was that if it was important to her, I'd go do this session. But alcoholism is a family disease - meaning, while we call it a biopsychosocial disease, because it does encompass all of those systems within the addict, the truth is that you're not going to come to a full understanding of an alcoholic unless you take a family systems approach. I cannot be the only sick one - it requires the sickness of several others to contribute to mine. Even if it didn't, even if everyone who said "I don't need to participate - you're the sick one" was correct, they'd still have to have developed some interpersonal dysfunctions, even if only in reaction to my disruptive influence. And nobody in my immediate family other than myself is seeking treatment for this disease.
So when my mother comes to me with stuff like this, I take it in stride, but I'm bemused at the irony. I'm always being told, in essence, to own my own responsibility, my part in things. Well, that's fine - the problem comes in where people try to assume the authority to tell me what my responsibilities are. I'm not saying I'm the only one who gets to dictate that, but I am the one with the final say. It's my choice - as it should be, since any consequences are mine to own as well.
Mom and Dad have a little problem when my perception of my responsibilities to them don't line up with their perceptions of same. Tough shit. I seek outside guidance, to make sure that my choices are valid and respectable, and the right choices for continued recovery, but the final choice, the ultimate accountability, and all of the consequences, lie with me. (Even if others are negatively affected, it's still my responsibility, and therefore my consequence.)
My parents are probably never going to own their stuff, their baggage, the ways in which they've wronged me - I've learned to accept that. But just because they want to put it on me, doesn't mean I'm going to take it. There's a definite recovery-oriented gap between me and them, and I'm through trying to manage it and myself at the same time.
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