Preface
Recently I took a walk with a good friend of mine along the river that runs by our homes. We were walking our dogs and talking about the final stages of this book. She has been very interested and supportive of this project. Over its development we have talked about its contents and their applicability to our lives. We continue to do so. We are also now talking about the details of putting it into print and distributing it beyond our community.
As we sat on a fallen tree and watched the river flow by, I reflected on what a life project this has been for me. As you will find in reading DISENTANGLE, it has evolved as I have evolved. There were times when I truly felt lost in someone else, as though I was lost in a woods. I would feel terribly overwhelmed by the situation with this other person and have no idea what to do about it or how to help my self find my way back to my own security and peace-of-mind.
I have chosen to use the picture of the tree on the front of this book for at least a couple of reasons known to me. The tree is in my front yard and is positioned outside of the window out of which I look as I have written this book. It has been my constant companion and has endured many seasons as has the writing of this book that now totals 8 years in the making. I have also chosen to use the picture of the tree as it represents both lostness in a woods as well as the finding of our way out of the woods as suggested by the light shining through the expanding branches. I have learned that by applying the ideas of disentangling to my life, I experience the same type of openings, expansions, and light, and in so doing, I find my self and am no longer lost.
As you may have already noticed in my writing here, I am separating the word “self” from pronouns such as “my” and “your.” This is intentional on my part. I want to emphasize the word “self.” It is, in fact, what this book is largely about, and I am very interested in helping the reader to keep that word, that concept, that important reality in mind. DISENTANGLE is about finding our “self” when we have lost it in someone else. It is about learning how to connect with our “self” and then knowing how to respond to it in ways that make us stronger, clearer, and more serene.
I find my self unable or unwilling to try to express specific acknowledgments for help with this book nor do I choose to dedicate it to any one person. So many people have been involved in my life and in the writing of this book, both directly and indirectly, that I could not adequately list them, thank them, or offer a narrowed dedication.
With this in mind, I will say that this book is gratefully offered by me to each of you who have an interest in making your life better by taking the time and energy to look at your self and make the changes that will help you to be centered and happier as you interact with people in your life. This book is not about changing them. It’s about changing you so that you can enjoy life, others, and especially your self.
And so my friend and I continued on our walk by the river, leaving the fallen tree and making our way back to the path through the woods. The dogs knew the way home, and so did we. The path was fresh and clear. Our spirits were bright and energized. I was glad to be where I was, I knew where I was going, and I felt very content.
I trust that the ideas in this book can similarly offer each of us a path to a peaceful and centered self.
Nancy L. Johnston
January, 2003
Preface
Many seasons have passed since I wrote the first Preface. Much water has flowed down our river. Many walks along it have occurred. Many trips down the river on tubes and in canoes have been enjoyed. Our children have been raised and are now out in the much bigger world. We have aged and wear glasses and get discounts for being senior citizens. We are well and strong.
I am well and strong. And so is DISENTANGLE.
DISENTANGLE, in fact, has reached such a level of good health that a dream of mine has come true: DISENTANGLE has been picked up by a traditional publisher aka “real” publisher, and I am very pleased to say that it is Central Recovery Press. You know that already, because if you now have the book in your hands and are reading this, it has been released by CRP. This is a major success for me and my book.
It has been seven years since I wrote the first Preface after walking with my friend, Sally, along the river. That day we were speaking about my releasing the book through various forms of self-publishing. Much has happened with DISENTANGLE since that day to develop and support the book’s success and bring it into this broader, professional market. There are many stories and people along the way who have supported and fostered the growth of this project and to each of them I am extremely grateful. And I am amazed at how this book and its contents have blossomed into more ideas, tools, and opportunities. Here is some of this story over these years.
When I finished writing DISENTANGLE, I sent it to several traditional publishers for consideration for publication. One publisher expressed strong interest in it twice but never chose to accept it. I found their near-acceptance very encouraging, and of course, I believed very strongly in the value of this material, so I pursued self-publication. I let go of the desire and need to have someone else publish the book and went about my business of helping to relay and teach this information to interested others.
Initially the book was printed by an office supply store and had a plastic spiral binding. A local bookstore owner was more than willing to put it on her shelves, and we had a successful book signing for the public. People bought it in her store and in my office. I realized that the form of the book lent itself easily to conducting workshops on it, and I began to do just that in my office as an additional aspect of my clinical practice. All sorts of individuals found the book and came to these workshops. I started to see that what I anticipated was true: that the book has very broad appeal and application. The list of people I write about on the second page of the book are the people who were drawn in by its title and who became excited about the way the Disentangle approach is constructed.
By March 2004 I upgraded the form of the book by working with a professional self-publishing company that helped me to design and construct a bound copy of the book that could be ordered on demand. That worked very well, and over these years, around 1,200 copies of DISENTANGLE were sold in that self-published version. The local bookstore owner again sponsored a book signing for this new release and interest from readers continued to show up: individual-by-individual.
With a professionally bound book in my hands and a history of conducting workshops based on its concepts, tools, and techniques, I decided to branch out beyond my wonderful and receptive community to the broader world. I was accepted to present some of the book’s material at a state-wide conference. The response by attendees was very strong; so strong that I was surprised. I had standing-room-only in the session, sold all of the books I had brought, and had a number of people speaking with me after the session. One person in particular, who worked in an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) setting, was so positive and eager for the material in DISENTANGLE that she connected me with a regional level EAP conference at which I presented shortly thereafter.
I presented the Disentangle approach at numerous other conferences over the next three to four years. I learned that one successful presentation builds on another, that I would meet people at one conference who would connect me with another opportunity to present. I presented to mental health counselors, addiction counselors, guidance counselors, EAP counselors, doctors, nurses, and unit staff for hospitals, treatment centers, and prisons.
Now I don’t want to sound like I was out on a full-time circuit by any means. At the most, I would present five to six times per year at various and very wonderful places on the east coast. I continued to be a full-time counselor in my private practice, a mother, and a wife. I had no agent or staff, and so I did what I could produce by my self. And it was plenty.
As I said above, I was surprised by the strong and positive interest in DISENTANGLE at these presentations. I know the importance of its material both personally and professionally. Importance is actually an understatement. Imperative is more the word for me, to be able to disentangle is imperative for my serenity and growth. It was true then when I wrote the book; it is still true now. But what I have been writing about and presenting on is called codependence, and that word and its meaning can be controversial and often under-treated. Thus, when I find out that my workshops and presentations are full even though I am not a “known” presenter, I realize that it is the topic itself of codependence and tangled relationships that has brought people into the room. I am very glad about that. We may not want to look at our relationship tangles, our codependence, but not doing so leaves us vulnerable to others and to our self in a chronically unhealthy way.
In doing these workshops and presentations, I found another way to apply the material in DISENTANGLE: I have used it to help my self as a presenter and teacher. I have had to see the reality of how much I can and can not present in a workshop or conference session, the reality of how people may and may not respond to the material, and the reality of how the session may or may not go as planned. I have used detachment to listen and observe when people are expressing a view or idea different than mine. I constantly have to employ boundaries as I consider the time allotted for the session and the material I have to present. And spirituality is there with me as I deal with my anxiety about being up in front of people, as I let go of my attachment to wanting to make something happen for each person there, and as I settle into the flow of when and where I will be asked to present again, not forcing solutions but doing my part and letting go.
Now Central Recovery Press has made it possible for you to have this book, for it to be available to a much broader world. How did this happen? Well the flow of life, of course. I was simply minding my business in the fall of 2009, seeing clients and returning phone calls. One of those calls was a client wanting some information about the use of medications to treat addictions. I said I had just seen an article in a professional magazine on this topic. I said I would look it up and get back with them about that information. I immediately did so. In the process of looking through the magazine, I found an announcement about Central Recovery Treatment and specifically about Central Recovery Press. I thought, “I don’t know this press. What is this press about?” I made a note to look it up on the internet that night. And I did.
I was immediately excited about the possibility of submitting DISENTANGLE to them for consideration for publication. I had not done such a submission since the early years of the book. I was not looking for a publisher. I had just gone ahead and proceeded with my work and my work with the book over these years. And then, when the time was right and when I was ready, the publisher appeared and accepted.
Thanks to Central Recovery Press’ willingness to publish DISENTANGLE, you, too, are now in the flow of this project, a project which offers each of us the opportunity to not lose our self in someone else but rather to connect with our self, strengthen our self, interact with others in ways healthier for our self, and gain greater serenity for our self.
Yesterday I was again tubing on the river with my husband and some of our close friends, among them Sally. And once again, at the end of our ride down the river, we were walking back on the river path carrying our tubes and talking about the soon-to-be release of DISENTANGLE by Central Recovery Press. As my husband and friends spoke with me about this wonderful evolution of the book, I felt their love and support. And I felt my own love and support, grateful for all that I am learning and loving the flow of the river and my life.
Nancy L. Johnston
July, 2010
Epilogue
Ten of The Next Twenty-or-so Years have already passed since I first completed DISENTANGLE . It is now June, 2010, and I have been tasked with writing an epilogue to bring you, the reader, up to date in the present. Central Recovery Press and I thought this may be useful since I have had the opportunity of having some years of presenting, teaching, and living with the material in DISENTANGLE.
I am glad to continue this story. Some of this story, the parts about marketing, development, and presentations and DISENTANGLE’s publication by CRP, are told in the second Preface. I will continue the story here looking at my work with the book’s material with individuals and with my self.
In addition to professional presentations and extended workshops in the broader world, I have, over these years, offered DISENTANGLE in rich and more intimate settings ; settings in which its material continues to be used and developed. These would be the settings where I can comment on Others on this Journey over these ten years. These Others include individuals in an on-going DISENTANGLE Group as well as participants in a Codependence Camp inspired by the book.
I have continued to offer a DISENTANGLE Group through my private practice. This group meets once every two to three months and provides continuing support for its members who have studied and worked with the DISENTANGLE material. The format for each group is open and yet known. Initially I present either some new ideas to enrich our work in developing a healthy self, and/or I review or have us practice something we have learned in the past. The members then each have time to talk, clarifying what they need and want from our time together and venting and sorting and gaining insight.
Over the years, these Others have definitely improved in their sense of self. Each of them seems to have a clearer sense of self and a stronger sense of self. Yes, they still can get entangled. So can I. Their mission, though, is to notice their entanglements and respond with less reactive behaviors and more centered behaviors that reflect their true self. Our gatherings continue to help them to hear and know that true self. “I” statements abound in our sessions as do statements of reality of their particular situations and boundaries they need to continue to assert. Frequently we use mindfulness practices to quiet our selves and so that we can better access our spiritual self. Group members often cite twelve-step programs and their churches as continuing sources of spiritual development.
In addition to this group, I have had the deep pleasure of working with individuals on this material at what we call our Codependence Camp. Shortly after DISENTANGLE was first released, a mental health therapist visiting my community found the book in the local bookstore. After reading the book, she was so excited about it contents that she contacted me to see if I was willing to come to her part of Virginia to do a workshop on the book. Of course I was! And I did. The day there with the participants was lovely.
After the workshop, that therapist, and now very good friend, said that she had always thought of having retreats there at her home where we had done the workshop. It is a charming place in the spirit of a bed-and-breakfast. She said, “Maybe we could have something like a Codependence Camp.” I thought the idea was just great, and we have pursued it quite compatibly. We have now had 10 camps. We offer them twice-year and are able to have 8-10 campers each time. We have developed a regular following of campers who intentionally save the camp dates and return to work on their self. These campers are also Others on this Journey.
The camp has been a wonderful place for me to deepen and extend my work with DISENTANGLE. I love preparing the agendas for camp. At the end of each camp it is usually pretty clear what we want to focus on in the next camp, and I get to consider those topics, find additional resources for us, and learn lots more my self. Once we are at camp, I facilitate most of the sessions, and I get to experience how the campers are working with the material presented and how it applies to them. Camp is designed as a place to actively practice self-awareness and self-care. If you need time for your self, please take it. If you have something you need to share, please do so. Be mindful of trying to please others to the exclusion of your self. Over and over come back to you and respond accordingly, using the skills and resources you have been learning.
And camp is good for me – not only because of all the ways I get to work with my DISENTANGLE material, but also because I get to practice it my self as a presenter and as a human being. I try to do all of the exercises and assignments I give to the campers, and each time I leave camp with new insights and goals.
You may be thinking, “Be specific, Nancy, exactly what has happened for you, Nancy, over these ten years? What is it that you are working on for your self?”
I’ll start by giving you a snap shot of my life since I wrote Chapter 9, The Next Twenty-or-so-Years, in 2000. My husband and I continue to be together, and we each continue to be in recovery. Some days our relationship is challenged by differences between us and the ways we each present and pursue those differences. Some days when this happens, my own recovery is challenged, and I can regress to unnecessary neediness or anger. And we have survived as a couple. And sometimes we can even thrive as a couple. There are many ways we are compatible and many ways we learn things from each other. I know I have grown tremendously by having a marriage with Monty. This book speaks to many of those things learned.
Our daughter, Grace, is now twenty-one years old. She just graduated from college with a degree in sculpture and extended media. She is also a fashion designer. She combines all of these interests and talents into making wearable art. She is highly skilled in her designs and construction and has already won many awards. She plans to enter graduate school in Chicago in these fields of fashion and wearable art in the summer of 2011.
Grace is a lovely soul, and Monty and I and Grace still really enjoy being together when we can. Monty and I have been able to work together as parents of Grace. We have valued consistency, fairness, and good communication among all of us. We have really tried to help Grace grow into the person she is, not the person we think or want her to be. To this end, we have used many of the ideas in this book to raise her, encouraging her to think for her self and to be able to assert her self in acceptable ways. I have always said to Grace, “You can say anything you would like to me. It just has to be in a tone that I can accept.” I have wanted her to know and develop her self, and I am sure that is happening.
And in the year 2006, we connected with my step-daughter/Monty’s daughter, Ava. She is forty years old. Actually, Grace, then a college freshman, made this possible by finding Ava through the internet. I can not tell this story of losing and finding Ava here and now. It is a story of its own. I will say that Grace and I had only met her once previously when Grace was four years old. Ava came to visit us for several days. We had had no contact with her prior to that visit and subsequently had no contact afterward until Grace and Ava re-connected in 2006.
What is most important about this Ava story is that she is now in our lives in a rich and involved way. I have said that I sent one daughter off to college and two came home. What a great sentence! What a great experience! What a dream come true!
Another important aspect to this story is that her absence over these years and our not knowing her does reflect family dysfunction and alienation in many of the characters in this story. Again, I won’t be continuing to tell this story now. This is only to say that our recovery here in this house has involved slowly coming to understandings of what happened, allowing feelings to be expressed and heard, and getting to know each other in honest, meaningful ways. I can not imagine how we could be growing so well as a re-united family without our recovery.
All of this family action continues to happen at our home on the river here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Dogs and cats abound with us. Occasionally we do some work on this old house which we love, and occasionally we simply argue about the work that needs to be done on it. I garden, play in the river, and marvel that I have been given the opportunity to live in such a simple, charming get-away place.
For all the personal and interpersonal challenges I meet daily, I can say that I have truly been blessed with my home and my family. My mother is now eighty-six years old and is able to still live on her own in the home in which I grew up. She enjoys good health and a strong spirit for life. She is helped by my brother who lives near to her and who is able to be with her on a daily basis. He is a kind soul who loves taking care of her and our family’s land. I visit them as often as I can and have come a long way in being comfortable with the ways we are all different from each other. I am able to listen to them and not lose my self in their beliefs and ways ; which are not wrong, just different from mine. And I am able to share my views with them. I know what I can and can not control and can and can not fix: I can control me. I can fix me.
I am fixing me day-by-day.
I am careful to notice if I am falling to some illusion. Am I not seeing the reality of something? Of someone? Of my self? Am I carrying hope too far? Am I expecting things to be different and still am getting the same results? Can I live with the reality I am finding? If I keep getting mad or sad about something, have I slipped back into believing something that isn’t real? These are very important questions I ask my self. I want to see things as they are in real time and not fool my self. This level of honesty can be grim and disappointing, and I know it can be freeing. I have felt that freedom and I like
I detach whenever it is necessary, whenever I am aware that I could fall into reacting rather than conscious acting. Now I don’t get this perfect every time. Sometimes I do just react to something said or done. Right after I have reacted, I am aware that my serenity is now gone, and I don’t like that feeling. So I try to pause, breathe, and listen before I respond.
The line-down-the-page that I present in the section on Detaching is infinitely useful to me. I am a visual person, meaning I do well to have at least a mental picture to help me understand something. The line-down-the-page helps me in this way. I imagine this line between my self and the other person. It is a vertical line drawn through space that separates us. The line is not a wall. It is simply a demarcation between where I end and the other person begins. We are, in fact, different people. With this in mind, when I go to suggest, offer, or ask something of this person on the other side of the line, I know that it is important for me to go to the line and leave my suggestion, offer, or request there on the line. The other person then has the space and freedom to come to the line, examine what I have put there, and then respond for their self. Any efforts I make to push my agenda across the line or pull the other person across the line into my court leave me at increasing risk of losing my self. I have come a long way in learning to stay on my side of the line and not press, as much, into your side of this boundary.
I work on boundaries all of the time: boundaries with time; boundaries with people; boundaries with ideas and plans for the day; boundaries with what I can and can not accept from others; boundaries with self. I am a handful for me to manage. I am full of ideas, hopes, dreams, conversations, inspirations. I have become aware that I will never in this lifetime be able to do all of the things I want to do and to create. I am not discouraged by this at all. It just makes me more aware of the importance of my paying attention to the choices I make about how to use my self and the time I have.
For several Codependence Camps we worked on boundaries. I had thought we would have one camp on this topic. We ultimately had three camps on boundary setting. That was very telling in terms of how important and challenging this area of work is for disentangling. At one of those camps we were using creative arts to help our self define our boundaries. Using felt, I made a small banner on which I made a collage from magazine pictures and words of what I want my life to look like. The pictures and words conveyed: Good Marriage; Good Deals; Taste of Home; Traveling with Good Taste; and Break.
What was more important to this creation, though, was that I set up some numbers to help me with my limit-setting so that these dreams of mine were more likely to become reality. I certainly did not want to fall into some illusion about living such a fine life. So interspersed in this collage are the numbers 1, 5, 6, and 8. Each number has its own meaning to me: I want to get 8 hours of sleep each night, see only 6 clients per day, and spend at least 1 hour each day with my husband talking and being together. To this day, I can not remember what the 5 stands for. What does that tell you about my mental health? Well, it tells me there is some boundary out there I am not yet willing to see, absorb, and take seriously. In the meanwhile, I have plenty to keep working on with my 8, 6, and 1. I regularly keep these numbers in mind as I make my boundary decisions daily.
And as for spirituality, I feel so much more connected to my spiritual self than ten years ago. A primary reason for this growth is that my earlier work in recovery awakened me to the presence and importance of a power greater than my self. In my day-to-day life, prior to recovery, I had not even thought of letting go of things beyond my control. I had not thought of including my higher power so consciously in my thoughts and activities. I was just busy running my own life and the lives of others. This spiritual awakening has truly remained with me and grown.
The practicing of mindfulness has continued to help me a great deal in this spiritual growth. My ability to quiet my mind and return, over and over, to the present moment is quite a wonderful gift, a gift obtained through the regular practice of paying attention to the activities of my mind and returning my focus to the sensations within me and around me. This mindfulness then enables me to feel more spacious and lets in many wonders, including the wonders of understandings and experiences I could have never created for my self. When I am tangled and intent, I am tight, closed, and hanging on. When I practice mindfulness, I am open, loose, quiet, and free. This freedom is the door that opens me to increased spirituality.
In the spirit of this calm openness, I am living more and more in the flow of life. I am not always there, and I sure know when I am. When I am in the flow of life things go smoothly and easily. I am not trying to make something happen. I am not trying to make someone do something. Instead, through my quietly being and quietly seeing, the next thing happens or not and opens or not. I do my part and let go. I quietly be and quietly see some more, and on my life goes, connecting with and trusting my spiritual self.
As part of my spiritual path, I also choose to attend church on a semi-regular basis. Most of my life I have been searching for a church in which I feel at home. I can have trouble with some of the doctrine I hear, and I don’t always agree with the positions churches take on particular issues. And yet I still keep being a seeker. For the past twelve years I have attended a protestant church in my community. I am recently encouraged about it as an additional source of my spiritual growth. There is realness about what is being said and done there now, an increasing sense of inclusion and community, and an excellent weekly opportunity to intentionally quiet me and connect with my higher power.
Without any doubt, both DISENTANGLE and I continue to be works in progress.
After coming off the river here in front of our house several days ago with Monty, I realized that my progress showed through to me by the way we had spent time together there. Our twenty-eight year relationship has often involved being on the river whether that is tubing or canoeing or swimming or just hanging out there. We have always had a canoe and have used it for trips of various lengths. Over the years, Monty has periodically proposed that we get two kayaks instead of one canoe. A major reason for this suggestion is that kayaks are much lighter and thus easier to get down to the river.
Until recently, I have never really liked the idea of the kayaks. I did not want to be that separate from Monty. I am not afraid to handle a canoe or kayak by my self. I can do that. I have even been in the stern of a canoe for a couple of river races. My deal had to do with my entanglements, my not wanting to be separate from Monty and his experiences even there on the river. He might get ahead of me; he might have fun without me; he might even “leave” me. So I have never jumped on the kayak bandwagon. That together-and-yet-separate experience was not what I was wanting.
And yet here, the other day, that is exactly what I realized we have evolved to without any effort on each of our parts. Last year I gave Monty an inflatable kayak for his birthday. I must openly acknowledge that I wanted it for me as much as anything. Last year I also bought this ridiculously comfy lounge float for my self. It is the type usually used in a swimming pool with its own back rest and drink holder. This is not the type of floatation device you usually see on the river.
So the other day, Monty and I left the dogs in the house and took time for our selves on the river, Monty in the kayak and me on the lounging float. We traveled together. We traveled separately. We talked. We were quiet. I explored places of interest to me. He did his own exploring. It was an extremely pleasant time for me. I loved my separateness and freedom, and I loved his company. I was not afraid of missing out or losing. I was happy with my world and my experiences which included him but were not based on him. The sky was blue, the mountains clear, and spirit flowed. What a picture of health for me in those moments.
As I let DISENTANGLE out into the bigger world where it can reach more people like you, who knows what will happen? And that question raises the very question that I pose at the end of Chapter 9 and to which I respond. I like that question and my response so much that I have often quoted my self and now, still standing by it strongly, I choose, ten years later, to end again with the same words:
Who knows what the next twenty-or-so-years have in store for me?
I do know I am looking forward to how my life unfolds over those years, living one day at a time, quietly being, quietly seeing, keeping conscious contact with my higher power, and then with all of this in mind and heart, doing what I have come to know is best for me.
