Take Your Life Back

by Stephen Arterburn

  Toxic shame goes beyond self-criticism, which is a natural part of who we are. Self-criticism focuses on our behavior (what we’ve done), whereas toxic shame focuses on our self-image—what a bad, flawed, ugly person we really are. Shame-based codependency is an attempt to cover up our feelings of worthlessness by pretending we care about other people.

  Talk things over with your safe person to identify your basic emotional posture. Once you’ve identified your basic emotional foundation, you will be able to explore and confront the reasons why you operate from that particular posture, and you will begin to determine whether to confront and challenge the fear, anger, or shame. (Sadness as an emotional posture is typically reserved for the grieving stage of recovery, which we will discuss later in the chapter.)

  Name what happened to you

  One of the most powerful actions you can take is to give a name to what happened to you. It is about speaking the truth. To name something is to take authority over it. It is an empowering action. It’s something we have done since we were little. We named our dolls, our teddy bears, and our pets. There is intrinsic satisfaction in that ability.

  In some pagan cultures in the ancient Near East, a person’s real name was a secret, known only to a trusted few. In these cultures, they believed that if someone knew your real name, he or she had power over you. We see Jesus exercise the power of naming when he gives Simon the name Peter. Saul’s name was changed to Paul after his conversion. This renaming marked a new identity in both men’s lives. The power of a name is also seen in Peter’s declaration to the lame man outside the Temple: “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!”[32] There is healing power in the name of Jesus.

  Exercise that power now by naming what happened to you. For example, you might say, “I’m a recovering codependent who was emotionally and verbally abused as a child. I’m going to name that period in my life ‘my time in exile,’ and I am now in ‘the land of healing.’” You can name what happened to you as a child, or any chronic distress you’ve experienced, or you can give a name to the belief systems you held as part of your false self.

  The name you choose should not be aimed at another person. The point is not to express our anger or tear someone down verbally. The naming should be about yourself. I (David) refer to the season when one of my kids got caught up in the drug culture as “my days of ignorance.” My recovery involved becoming educated, doing things that didn’t make logical sense, and trusting some people who knew how to work with addictions. But that’s still my name for that period of time.

  Once you have truthfully named the important parts of what you experienced, it’s time to move on to the next step, which involves processing your grief.

  Grieve what was lost

  As you acknowledge the truth about what has happened to you, it becomes clear that something was lost during that time and that it’s still lost today. Based on what we’ve learned about our woundedness, abandonment issues, fears, anger, and shame, we can say that the primary loss has been the loss of our real self. We lost our sense of who we are because we felt unaccepted, unappreciated, and uninformed, and we were isolated from genuine love and comfort.

  Grieving emotional losses is a four-stage process that cannot be rushed through. Because we have lived for so long through our false selves and considered it normal, we must begin by refamiliarizing ourselves with what we have lost, moving from unawareness to awareness. Because we had to bury our true self in order to live through a false self, we must undertake an excavation process by which we re-identify—and re-identify with—what we’ve lost. That’s the process we began when we named what has happened to us.

  By identifying the losses we are going to grieve, we begin to grapple with two interwoven facets of grief: anger and sadness. Anger is a form of protest: “That’s not the way it was supposed to be!” We know what we missed, and we’re not happy about it. It was wrong! The flip side to protest is the sadness and resignation that we feel.

  Men tend to embrace the anger and protest part of grieving, but they may get stuck on the sadness part. Weeping over what was lost can seem like crying over spilt milk. It doesn’t feel manly.

  Women tend to embrace the sadness, but they have a more difficult time with the anger and protest. Many women, when they tap into their anger, quickly return to the tears and the sadness.

  Therapeutic grieving requires both anger (protest) and sadness (resignation). If you are having difficulty with one or the other, try writing either an angry letter or a sad letter to those who withheld from you what was lost. This letter is for your eyes only. It’s okay to share it with your safe person, but never send it to anyone else. It is simply a tool to help you grieve.

  Eventually, grieving must lead to forgiveness. After all, that’s what God did with our failures. He forgave all our sins. With that great, undeserved forgiveness in view, there is really nothing that can happen in our lives or in our families that is beyond forgiveness. How long the forgiving process will take, however, will depend on how early in your life you were wounded and how deep the wounds go.

  Some have likened this part of the healing process to peeling an onion. We have to work our way toward the core—and it may not happen without tears! Grieving is not something we do once and for all. It may need to be repeated as we become aware of deeper issues. But the desired outcome and resolution is always forgiveness.

  Now that you’ve come this far, congratulations on your commitment to becoming healed. Now we will look at the important issue of defining healthy perimeters and how to say no so that our yes has meaning.

  12

  BECOMING A DECIDER, A DEFENDER, AND A DEVELOPER

  AS YOU BEGIN to take your life back—from the control of another person, an addiction to a substance or habit, or the residue of a shame-filled past—you may soon come to realize that three very important qualities are either underdeveloped in your character or missing altogether. These are the abilities to decide, defend, and develop. You may have conceded them to someone else out of weakness or confusion, or as part of a defective survival strategy. Or they may have been taken from you—stolen outright by someone who discounted or ignored the value of your identity as a person uniquely created in the image of God.

  Without these vital building blocks, you will continue to stumble along as you try to get by on your own. Fortunately, you are no longer consigned to existing in a constant state of reaction. You now have the freedom to overcome the familiar obstacles of passivity, compliance, and blind service and to respond to God’s call with everything you have.

  No longer will you live in the shadow of shame. No longer will you allow your life to be overcome with unresolved emotional turmoil, untreated dependency, or uninvited intrusions of any kind or from any source. If there’s a battle cry welling up from the depths of your soul, it will surely be “Victim No More!” (It feels good just to write those words!)

  But before we examine how to become a decider, defender, and developer, a word of caution is in order, lest you sabotage the potential for better that is just within your reach.

  As you learn how to draw some healthy new lines of demarcation, we don’t want you to overrespond by erecting walls topped with barbed wire when a white picket fence would do just fine. The purpose of deciding, defending, and developing is to create room for yourself in your relationships, not to put up barriers to keep other people out. We want you to be able to define your territory without laying a minefield where other people will never be welcome, never be allowed to ask forgiveness, or never receive permission to make restitution.

  Wouldn’t it be sad if—after years of being ignored, minimized, abused, or alienated—you put up walls that made you more isolated than ever? Ultimately, we all want the best that God has for us, even if it means temporary discomfort in the short term. We want flexible borders, not impenetrable walls. When our motive is to honor God, the pain
that comes from doing the right thing will be redemptive pain that leads to something better.

  Austin and Kathy dated for two or three years before they got married. Both had a strong faith, and they were always talking about doing the right thing when it came to their relationship. The wedding day finally arrived, but hidden storm clouds came with it. Within a week, it was clear that the honeymoon was over. Unrealized and unmet expectations during the first few days of marriage put their relationship on rocky ground before they even got their feet under them.

  Now that Austin had “secured the prize,” his attention turned to other priorities in his life. Although he had always put his best foot forward in courting Kathy, he quickly reverted to business as usual in his daily routine. And though he would never state it in such crass terms, there was a part of him that was relieved to no longer feel the pressure to constantly woo her. In fact, things about her that had never bothered him before now became instant irritations, and he let her know it. There was such a radical disconnect between pre-wedding Austin and his postwedding persona that Kathy was shocked and deeply hurt.

  She immediately went to a counselor and told Austin that he had better get one for himself if he didn’t want to be telling his friends that he had blown up his marriage in less than ten days. Though disillusioned, she said she would stay in the marriage if he would get help.

  When Austin went in for counseling, the therapist was able to show him how all the barriers to vulnerability he had lowered in order to attract Kathy had been raised up again once the vows were said. The counselor explained how fear had played a strong role in Austin’s defensiveness when Kathy tried to reconnect with him after he had settled back into the world inside his head—a world she didn’t know existed. The counselor was also able to connect the dots for Austin, showing him how his mother had drawn him in and then abandoned him when he was younger. After a couple of sessions, he was ready to do whatever it took to win Kathy back.

  Unfortunately, Kathy’s counselor took a different approach. Everything she said affirmed Kathy and strengthened her, but it led Kathy to build walls that became obstacles in the marriage relationship. She counseled Kathy to refuse to sleep in the same room with Austin, or even interact with him, for thirty days. The therapist called it a cooling-off period, but it really stoked a fire of resentment and misunderstanding instead. It was a radical reaction to the hurt that Austin had caused.

  During the time when Austin was taking a look at himself and was willing to acknowledge how he had created a nightmare of a marriage for both of them, Kathy would not even allow him to tell her what he was learning and coming to understand. Ultimately, she constructed an impenetrable wall that she never took down, and within a year they were divorced.

  Walls of protection can definitely keep us from getting hurt, but they will also damage a relationship if they offer no way for the other person to break through. It helps to be aware of the walls we’ve built, and to be willing to destroy those walls and replace them with firm but flexible borders that allow others to get through and connect with us heart to heart.

  If you feel uneasy or even a bit panicky as you are reading this, wondering whether you have misunderstood, misappropriated, or misapplied what you thought were healthy, God-honoring principles for establishing boundaries, we encourage you to continue reading. When you start to take your life back, you might be afraid that you’ll go overboard and wall off God’s work in your life or in the lives of your loved ones. But if your spirit remains willing, the Holy Spirit will help you see the areas where you have taken a healthy concept to an unhealthy extreme. To set your mind at ease, it might help if we clarify some things about unhealthy walls.

  First of all, we must remember that we all are flawed human beings. We all build aspects of our lives that are defective. Fortunately, character construction that is not up to code can be reworked in line with God’s standards. This awareness could lead to the breakthrough you’ve been looking for that will allow God to work in your life in ways you haven’t seen before. Jesus, the Master Carpenter, is used to seeing defective work and turning it into something magnificent. This could be the beginning of a transformation of healing and wholeness in your life.

  The only thing worse than building a wall is not building anything at all. Defective walls can be torn down, but complete inaction or resistance is impossible to counter. Denial, resistance, and passive inaction are prisons that we hope we have left behind. Here are some construction guidelines that we hope will help you.

  Learning to Decide

  A life that has been taken back is a safe and secure place to live. We are not tossed to and fro by the whims and whams of other people. We remain free to be ourselves, free to choose, free to heal, and free to be mature adults. As we begin to see transformation in our souls, we realize that we don’t have to react to every little thing that might threaten our comfort or safety. Instead, we are able to respond in a mature way and choose the best decision. With healthy demarcations, we know where other people end and we begin. We know that our loved ones are entitled to communicate with us, engage with us, and love us in healthy and appropriate ways, and we decide to allow that to happen, even facilitating the process. We allow other people room for their defects and imperfections, and we decide not to allow those defects and imperfections to hurt us or dominate us—or even to affect our thoughts and feelings. When we hold the title to our own lives and maintain full ownership of who God made us to be, we decide to experience connection, healthy attachment, and attunement to other people. And we make bold decisions not to allow evil to be done to us or to others.

  As we rediscover our real self and begin to live comfortably without pretense or facades, we develop standards that we intend to keep and that we expect others to honor. They provide a measure of certainty, consistency, and reliability in our relationships.

  One example that may help us understand healthy standards is the subject of sex in a marriage relationship. The Bible clearly teaches that spouses are not to withhold sex from each other.[33] That is a profound truth that is easy to understand. It’s also easy to see what can happen if we don’t abide by it. If we withhold sex within marriage, we prevent or undermine a deeper connection, fail to keep the commitment we made when we married, and open up ourselves and our spouses to temptation and vulnerability. A healthy sexual standard allows for mutual agreement about timing and frequency—and even allows for times of abstinence—but the underlying agreement is to pursue intimacy. Because sex within a marriage binds the couple together and builds their relationship, it is a biblical mandate that makes very good sense.

  Let us say one more thing about this example for anyone who may be saying, “Yes, but . . .”

  Healthy sexual standards and practices in a marriage mean that sex will never become coercive or manipulative. If that has happened in your marriage, it is a violation of your real self and an act of defiance against the God who created you. Likewise, both spouses should reasonably be able to expect protection from insults or abuse. Soul protection is as important—and even more justifiable—than protection of the body. Emotional abuse and insults eat at the very core of the soul.

  If a wife tells her husband that he is worthless and a loser because he lost his job, and if she reinforces that message until he finds new employment, he has an obligation to protect himself from those harmful words. If a husband tells his wife that she is not what he thought she would be, not what he wants, or not what he deserves, she has an obligation to protect herself from those abusive statements.

  The behavioral standard and expected response in both cases is the same: “I have made a healthy decision not to remain in the presence of that kind of treatment.”

  Learning to Defend

  When we live with healthy standards and limits, we don’t allow others to become our “deciders.” We also learn that it is a sign of growth when we decide to become our own strongest defender.

  We’re not talking about becoming defen
sive whenever someone points out a defect or flaw that needs our attention. We’re talking about deciding that we have rights and responsibilities that must be defended. We decide that we will no longer be used by others as if we have no worth or will. When appropriate, we will defend our right to be who God has created us to be, and we will defend ourselves with the most powerful two-letter word in the English language: no.

  Saying no as a positive response that preserves our freedom might come in several forms:

  Asking an abuser to stop

  Demanding that abuse stop

  Leaving the room

  Leaving the house

  Asking the other person to leave the room

  Asking the other person to leave the house

  Asking the other person to make a call in order to get help immediately

  Making the call yourself to get help

  Scheduling a counseling meeting and asking the other person to show up

  Getting help from a wise counselor, plotting a path to resolve the problem, and following through to create an opportunity for the best possible outcome

  All of the above options are healthy alternatives when you decide you are worth defending and when you step up to do so. They protect the involved parties and foster freedom. They are respectful of goodness and things that are right. They are the opposite of enabling evil, waiting for God to do what we should be doing, or passively wishing that things would get better on their own. They are clear reflections of a heart that is open to repair and restoration while defending against control and manipulation.