Bottoms Up: A Journey from Despair to Freedom Through Service

by Lauren Dummit, LMFT, CST, CSAT-S

Like many my story of recovery started with a spiritual, emotional, and physical bottom, a moment of incomprehensible demoralization. I couldn’t look at anyone in the eye or stand to look at myself in the mirror. I was in so much shame and hopelessness that I stood outside the doors, stalking this 12-step meeting because I was too afraid to go in. To quote my first sponsor, “I may not have been thinking much of myself, but I was all I thought about.” All day and night I meditated on my resentments, my regrets, my lost relationships, all the pain I had caused others, how many people were disappointed in me or thought I was crazy, my broken heart, how much trouble I was in, or fears and the future paralyzed me, what people would think of me, getting fired, the list went on. Self-deprecating thoughts dominated my consciousness.

Within the first few days of joining the meetings, this man, whom I knew had been old friends with my dad, approached me and asked if he could talk to me. I thought I was going to die of embarrassment and shame. I didn’t want to be linked to my family; I should say I didn’t want him to see my family as connected to me. I was so worried about him discovering that my family wasn’t perfect or that my dad had a daughter who was such a screw-up.  But the words he said to me, words I will never forget, were precisely what I needed to hear in that very moment. His words saved my life.

He told me that he had heard about me and had heard about what I had done during my “bottom,” which had been the lowest, darkest point in my life up until then. As he continued to talk, with that light-hearted smile on his face, my whole body got hot, and my limbs became rigid; I thought my knees would give out. I was so embarrassed I wanted to jump out of my skin. But, as he went on, I slowly realized he was not trying to shame me; he was just trying to show me empathy by sharing the experience of his own spiritual bottom, which involved having hit someone with his car. At the same time, he was drunk and high and killing them, which was far worse than what I had done. 

I felt like I had swallowed a grapefruit as I tried to get the words out when he asked how I felt. I responded that I hated myself, that I felt like a monster and just wanted to die. He just hugged me, smiled this knowing smile, and laughed, “Ok, well you’ve got to let that go. You are just stuck in yourself. When you are stuck in self, you can’t be of service to others.” He explained that perhaps everything that had led me here to this very moment in my life had happened for a reason. Maybe I was “meant” to use this experience to help others. He assured me, “I know you don’t feel like it right now, but one day, you will look back on this event and think it’s the best thing that ever happened to you and feel so grateful for your experience. That’s what happened to me.”

He told me how once he surrendered to his Higher Power and humbly dedicated the rest of his life to serving others, he slowly started to heal from the shame and intense self-hatred he once felt. He moved from being completely self-centered to other-centered. He laughed again, “I just try not to think about myself too much.” He encouraged me to get into action immediately, pick up a broom right now, sweep, give up my seat to a newcomer, take commitments, offer to do chores for my mother, call someone struggling, etc. He promised me that if I just filled my mind with thoughts of how and who I could help, I would start to feel better.

That night, as I sat on the couch in my parent’s home after they had gone to bed, thinking about the complete lack of meaning and purpose in my life, just praying to die, my mom came down, seeming so worried and sad to see me so distraught but with so much love and peace in her face. When I shared how I was feeling, she sat down next to me and responded, “You know, if God put you here for no other purpose, no other purpose at all, then perhaps it was just to spread kindness to someone else, to try to make someone else’s day better.”

Perhaps it wasn’t coincidental that she would give me these simple words after the very similar message I had received from my dad’s old friend just that very morning. Since I felt so broken in that moment, I had no better plan, I was like a dog with my tail between my legs. I decided to trust this kind man and listen to my mother, one of the few people I knew would always have my back and love me unconditionally.  If he could heal emotionally and spiritually, staying sober for 24 years after what he had done, so could I. I became willing to try whatever he suggested. I could do that. Maybe it didn’t have to be something grandiose. I could just spread kindness like my mother had suggested.

As I threw myself into service from that moment until now, I gradually became relieved from “the bondage of self.” My first sponsor kept reminding me that I had to do estimable acts if I wanted to build self-esteem. She was so wise. Throughout the years I have been in recovery, I have built a life around being of service. At times when I have wrestled with depression, my sponsor would remind me that I was spending too much time thinking of myself and would push me to call someone who was having a more challenging time than me. At times when I have struggled with social anxiety, I have reminded myself to just get into action, to find a way to be of service in some way, and to shift my focus to being “other-centered.”

Not only has this practice helped me build self-esteem, feel that I have a purpose, feel more connected to others, and heal relationships, but the loving energy that I put out comes back to me. Giving just feels good. This along with my daily gratitude lists has been the single most significant factor not only in my recovery but in my overall sense of happiness in life. I have no regrets because I know that everything that has happened in my life thus far has led me to where I am now.  My experiences have had meaning. They have allowed me to grow spiritually so that I can help others. They have given me the ability to feel deep compassion. Today, I love my life because I feel more connected to you. I feel part of a whole, something bigger than myself.

The ego has an important function; it protects us and ensures our survival. It is a primitive defense mechanism that is driven by fear of not having enough or losing what we have. It is all about the “I.” The spiritual path is an evolved state in which we are motivated by what is in the best interest of the “we” instead of just the “I.” When we are solely self-focused, we isolate ourselves, becoming lonely and filled with fear. When we are other-focused, we can feel connected, in union with the natural flow of life.

Creating a peaceful life in recovery is about finding balance, which often occurs slowly over time. This requires us to develop healthy boundaries. When we are new in our recovery, we usually lack healthy boundaries and are accustomed to living in the extremes. So, we may take on too much, finding ourselves frantically busy or overwhelmed, which can provide a mechanism to avoid feeling our emotions, which can be addicting in and of itself.

While service is called “service” for a reason, meaning it is not always convenient for us, it is only truly “service” if it is given freely from the heart without expecting anything in return. If we give with expectations or resentment, it is more indicative of lacking healthy boundaries and may be a symptom of underlying codependence. Often addicts have been very selfish in their disease so being of service is about taking contrary action. However, for those who struggle with always putting other’s needs first at the expense of their own, taking contrary action may look very different.

The recovery journey is a process, and one’s growth often evolves gradually over time. Finding balance is frequently a process of trial and error as we discover what works for us. It is vital that we not only demonstrate love and tolerance for others along our path but that we also show love and compassion towards ourselves.

Survival skills

by Lauren Dummit, LMFT, CST, CSAT-S

Due to their similarities, coping mechanisms, or coping skills, are often confused and discussed synonymously with survival strategies or defense mechanisms. Both processes are activated in times of stress. Both methods decrease the arousal of negative emotions and either activate the nervous system or shut it down. While they are certainly related, they are not necessarily the same. The function of both processes is to adapt, yet the manner in which each does so can be quite distinct.

Often, when people have experienced developmental trauma, attachment trauma, or relational trauma in their families of origin, they develop certain defenses in order to adapt to their current environment or relationship so that they can survive. As a result, their personalities become formed around the survival strategy. Typically, the survival skills that they may have relied on in their childhoods were an adaptation, functioning to allow them to emotionally endure the intolerable pain of not having their needs met by their caregivers. Most frequently these strategies, which were so crucial to survival as children, are carried into adulthood and then no longer serve to benefit the individual, but, instead, they create dysfunction in his or her life and relationships, both with himself and others.

According to Dr. Aline LaPierre, Psy.D. and Dr. Lawrence Heller, PhD. there are five basic survival adaptation strategies, that are formulated in unity with one’s unmet needs. Dr. LaPierre, Psy.D., and Dr. Heller, Ph.D. who developed the Neuroaffective Relational Model (NARM) to restore connection and heal developmental trauma, discuss “five biologically based core needs that are essential to our physical and emotional well-being: the need for connection, trust, attunement, autonomy, and love-sexuality.” When these needs are unmet, “predictable psychological and physiological symptoms result: self-regulation, sense of self, and self-esteem become compromised. They postulate that most of the emotional issues and challenges can be traced back to early life developmental and shock trauma that compromise the development of one or more of the five core capacities. When one has developed the capacity to attend to his or her own core needs, he or she is able to experience self-regulation, internal organization, expansion, connection, and aliveness, which are all representative of physiological and psychological well-being.

When one’s biologically based core needs are not met in early life, the five adaptive survival styles, methods of coping with the disconnection, dysregulation, disorganization, and isolation from which the child suffers, are activated. Humans are created with the capacity to adapt to adverse experiences by detaching from distressing internal and external experiences and the anguish produced by not having our primary needs met. “Survival styles are adaptive strategies children use to protect the attachment relationship with parents…They adapt to their parents’ acceptance or rejection in order to maintain and maximize the attachment and love relationship.” These survival strategies get woven into their identity. Often, one’s personality develops around them, so they are carried into their adult life and relationships.

 According to Dr. Aline LaPierre, Psy.D., and Dr. Lawrence Heller, Ph. D., these adaptation strategies are directly related to the core need that was not met. For example, when the need for connection is unmet, children give up their sense of feeling as if they have a right to be alive and take up space in the world, creating an innate sense of shame. They often disconnect in an attempt to make themselves unseen.

 When caregivers do not attune to their child’s needs, the child is told that his or her needs do not matter. Children end up sacrificing their own needs, putting the needs of others, especially the caregivers’, before their own. They often become deprivational, feel underserved, and even feel guilty for having needs.

 When the child cannot trust in his caregiver's relationship, he does not develop a sense of authenticity because he receives the implicit message that he must be who his caregivers expect him to be, or else the parent's love will be sacrificed. The child begins to feel that he is being used to keep the parent happy and satisfied.

 Children are robbed of assertions of independence for fear of being abandoned or hurt when their need for autonomy is not met. They form a people-pleasing, placating personality. They often grow up to fear authority and then act out in covert, passive-aggressive expressions of rebellion or micro-aggressions due to their pent-up anger.

 Those with the Love-Sexuality survival style grew up feeling that they had to be perfect or to perform and achieve in order to be loved. In childhood, their hearts were often broken by their parents (usually the opposite sex parent), who dismissed or rejected their loving feelings.  They frequently grow up to be highly successful, energetic, and attractive. However, they rarely live up to their expectations of perfection, and deep down feel shame that they are never good enough. Their sense of self-worth is conditional, based on their performances.

 According to Pia Mellody, an internationally renowned expert, author, and speaker on codependence, when children grow up in a dysfunctional family system, they learn to adapt to meet their needs by living in extremes. As they grow up, these adaptation strategies, or survival again become part of their ways of being in the world, affecting their perspectives and beliefs about the world around them and their relationships with themselves and others.

 Pia Mellody discusses five core issues influenced by family dysfunction and in which children learn to live in the extremes. They are self-esteem, boundaries, dependency, reality, and moderation. When one has healthy self-esteem, he is able to validate himself from within. He does not feel better or worse than anyone else. An inflated or low self-esteem are opposite ends of the spectrum. One either feels the need to go one up, feeling superior to others, or to go one down, feeling less valuable than others.

 Healthy boundaries mean that one can both set appropriate boundaries in relationships to keep himself safe or practice containment boundaries to protect others from inappropriate behavior. For example, if one is angry, he can choose to use his words to calmly communicate his feelings to the other instead of impulsively reacting to his aggressive impulses by hitting the other person. However, those living in the extremes either have no boundaries, damaged boundaries, loose boundaries, or have walls as boundaries, which impedes their ability to let people in and experience emotional intimacy and closeness.

People who have dependency issues either do not even know what their needs and wants are, or they may be overly dependent, needy, and clingy. On the other end of the spectrum, they may be anti-dependent, which means that they project a sense of not needing anything or anyone and that they are entirely self-reliant and self-competent. A more moderate option is to exhibit interdependence, meaning that the person is mainly independent but can also be vulnerable and ask for help when needed, acknowledging that we all have needs, some of which cannot be met by ourselves, such as affection.

 Those who have grown up learning to live in extremes often have difficulty owning their own reality, meaning they struggle to experience their authentic selves and, therefore, to share that with others. This includes an awareness of how they look and how their bodies function, an understanding of what or how they think, consciousness of their emotions, and recognition of their behavior and how it affects others.

 Lastly, people who have grown up in dysfunctional family homes often cannot express their realities moderately. They are frequently perceived as either out-of-control or overly controlled with their physical appearance (ie. being obese or severely underweight,) their thinking and opinions, their feelings, or their behavior. This usually stems from having their own caregivers model this immoderate behavior for them in childhood.

Defenses help the individual by distorting reality and coping strategies attempt to solve the problem, thus changing their reality. Miceli and Castelfranchi (2001) support this notion and add that “coping behaviors involve conscious modification of cognitive and emotional appraisals, which eventually modify the reactions to the stressful event rather than distort the perception of the event.” The individual has complete control of the coping strategies used. The individual can choose to stop a particular coping style and choose another approach. A choice of a specific coping strategy implies intent and full awareness of the behavior. On the other hand, defense mechanisms typically employ outside consciousness and understanding of the individual. One cannot intentionally choose to use another defense mechanism.

 Coping is an integral part of the stress process. It is usually viewed as a complex set of processes that may moderate the influences of stressful life events on the individual’s physical and mental health. Healthy coping skills are made up of both internal and external resources. Internal resources are the skills, practices, and abilities that support an individual. Typically, they do not require the support or presence of another person or thing. Some examples include grounding exercises (ie. feeling one’s feet on the ground, the back against the chair, orienting themselves to time and space by naming five objects in the room, self-care practices (ie. getting enough sleep,) identifying and asserting one’s needs, self-regulation strategies (ie. breathing exercises, chanting, noting one’s internal sensations with curiosity,) and/or mindfulness exercises.

A regulated nervous system means that one is experiencing the feeling of being calm, relaxed, and generally comfortable in his body. Ideally, everyone would be able to maintain a regulated nervous system and return to equilibrium reasonably quickly after a stressor or trigger from the past. However, when people have experienced trauma, sometimes they get stuck in either a state of increased sympathetic activation or nervous system hyper-arousal, causing their heart rates to go up, anxiety, perhaps heat in their bodies, or parasympathetic activation, or hypo-arousal, resulting in a feeling of depression, lethargy, or possibly shut down.

 If individuals mindfully listen to their external experience with curiosity, the nervous system can give them essential information about their levels of relaxation and dysregulation, which can be a valuable resource. When people can receive information from their bodies about their external sensations and experiences, it allows them to act on those signals in their best interests, putting self-care into action. When individuals notice when they are dysregulated, they can create the capacity to choose to return to feeling settled, which can be a precious life skill, allowing them to avoid feeling stuck on a rollercoaster of chronic dysregulation.

 External resources, on the other hand, involve something or someone outside of oneself. Some examples are calling a friend, sponsor, or mentor, going to a 12-step meeting or therapy group, or going to yoga. It is most effective to utilize internal and external coping skills for maximum support. However, external resources are not always available, so knowing how to self-soothe and use only the resources within us is crucial.

 Survival strategies serve a purpose; they keep one defended against pain. Therefore, the thought of giving them up can feel frightening and overwhelming. It is also highly challenging and takes a great deal of deep work in order to change these patterns that one has relied on for so many years and sometimes throughout one’s entire life. However, one must just weigh the function they serve against the dysfunction or limitations in one’s life and relationships to determine whether or not it is worth the journey.

References

Heller, L., & LaPierre, A. (2012). Healing developmental trauma: how early trauma affects self-regulation, self-image, and the capacity for relationship. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

 Lu, L., & Chen, C. S. (1996). Correlates of coping behaviours: Internal and external resources. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 9(3), 297–307. doi: 10.1080/09515079608258709

 Mellody, P., Miller, A. W., & Miller, J. K. (1989). Breaking Free: A Recovery Workbook for Facing Codependence: Harper & Row.

 Miceli, M., & Castelfranchi, C. (2001). Further Distinctions Between Coping and Defense Mechanisms? Journal of Personality, 69(2), 287–296. doi: 10.1111/1467-6494.00146