Newcomers
Oct 3, 08- (by Mama MPJ)
- 9 responses
- Family and Friends, Sober Salon
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I have been meeting a lot of women who have just found out that their partners are sex addicts. And I find myself feeling strangely awkward around them. I simply don’t know what to say to them, in spite of the fact that I have been in that dark and lonely territory where they now find themselves.
I feel like a veteran of the Vietnam war, who witnessed unspeakable horrors and came home, forever changed, with a new view of war: the kind of person who went into the army for the glory of God and country and came home to lead protests. I feel I was someone who saw friends die or lose limbs, yet came home physically whole. Lucky and changed, that’s me. And now I’m in front of recruits in basic training, heading to Iraq. There they are, like I was years before: angry, scared, passionate, eager to take on the enemy and win the war. Some of them are going to get through and some are not. Some are going to be changed and some may keep fighting the same battle forever.
So, what do I say? Do I tell them it’s not like they think? Or will their experiences be vastly different? Will they come home from a tour of duty with medals to cheer the war on to victory, where I came home from mine looking for the path to truce? Or will they come home bitterly defeated and spoiling for another fight? Or will they come home at all? Do I hold out false hope to the hundreds who will fall on the battlefield by standing on two legs and telling them I somehow managed to walk out of the firestorm physically unscathed when so many others didn’t? Am I being false to myself or untrue to them by saying, “Yes, I remember how much I wanted to kill the North Vietnamese,” when my experiences there brought me to see how pointless that killing was?
What would I have wanted to hear back then? What would I have been able to listen to? They have to, each of them, go through this experience for themselves, yet is there anything my experience can show them? Do I salute them and bravely wish them well? Do I rally them to battle? Or do I simply pray and weep with a mixture of sorrow and gratitude for where they are and where I used to be?
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In my experience, I’ve found it best just to be there and to listen as a caring person.
Wonderful metaphors to convey emotions. The war in the self too, yea? It is amazing that you had the strength to do so at the time when you did. VR is right, you can be there and listen and you can celebrate that a public awareness is rising–quite possibly with your help.
Alix and Vicarious, you’ve made me realize two things: 1. that where I get most tied up is when people are specifically asking me for advice or for clarification on my experiences, and 2. that part of what I’m struggling with is actually related to the medium in which I’m meeting folks: on the Internet, where they can’t see me and in order to let them know that I’m listening, I actually have to say something. There’s no Internet equivalent to a sympathetic nod.
Yes, I’m familiar with that feeling as well. One thing that worked for me was being aware of the deliberation when we make a shift from the “I” part of our healing to the “Us” part. I ask, what good would healing be if not to share it with others? It does require a different vocabulary to take it from the personal realm, removing the specific backstory, and make it universal.
Was that just a virtual nod you gave me?
Excellent metaphor. That was fun to read.
I struggle with newcomers both on and offline. I worry as a sponsor if I’m doing right by my sponsees…Should I call them if I haven’t seen them in a while, or is that being pushy? Should I talk to them about working the steps, or wait until they ask?
And online, it’s even harder. I sometimes want to volunteer to take on all the junkies’ wives of the world as my sponsees, but not everybody wants what I’ve found…and I don’t have the time to engage with everyone properly…it’s hard to know right from wrong for me here.
I like what Alix said about the “I” and the “we” of healing. I’m nowhere near as far along as you are in recovery, but I feel like whenever I talk to a newcomer, it helps me measure my progress as well as move farther along in my recovery. Whenever I advise a newcomer to focus on herself or attend a meeting or reach out for some sort of support, I feel like I’m reminding myself how to be healthy and kind of urging myself to take my own advice, if that makes sense. Whenever I talk to my sponsor, she always thanks me profusely for calling. Once, I asked her why she was thanking me when I was the one who needed help. She told me our conversations help her just as much as they help me.
My own experiences differ so vastly from yours, but the most meaningful words for me, in my time of loss and sorrow and pain was “I’m here”. I needed people who would listen, not judge nor offer advice nor give platitudes; people who wouldn’t compare or give me empty words that I couldn’t relate to. It’s true that each person will have to go through their own experience and pain on their own, and that often advice -no matter how valid, heartfelt, or true- may fall on deaf ears because they cannot yet relate to what others are saying.
I think the newcomers are lucky to know you; whichever way you choose to relate with these folks, you will offer them something valuable and honest.
I have no experience with what you have been/are going through, but your observation reminds me of how I feel when a friend says to me like, “Oh, I know someone whose mother has recently died. I told them they should talk to you.”
Each experience is unique. I can’t begin to know what to say. It’s good to connect with people with similar experiences, but shared trauma doesn’t make a person that right person to help.