Pain, the Conditioned Mind, and Awareness

D and K came to me for help with their relationship. D has been the identified alcoholic in the marriage. K has been the identified co-alcoholic. They have both identified themselves as a couple in recovery--each of them has been active in 12-Step programs for many years.

As so often happens, marriage counseling has brought a major unidentified issue to the fore. In this case, that unidentified issue is K's alcoholic drinking. After weeks of denying that reality, K agreed several days ago to go to treatment after K was fired for being drunk at work.

D is emotionally out of control, saying "How can I stay married to an alcoholic?" This seemingly outrageous statement (what about the reality that K is also married to an alcoholic?) makes sense in light of D's childhood. D's mother was an alcoholic who abandoned D and her other children. D is terrified that K's alcoholism means K will abandon D and their children.

Despite years of sobriety and recovery, D has no serenity at the moment. The activation of intense emotional pain stemming from D's childhood abandonment is overriding D's ability to think and act rationally. D wants to get a lawyer and file for divorce immediately, believing that will remove the pain.

D is totally caught up in what Buddhist's call the conditioned mind. The conditioned mind begins to form in childhood as a child develops beliefs about him/herself and the world. These beliefs combine with feelings and behaviors to create various subpersonalities, which allow the child to adapt and survive. When a situation arises that feels similar to the childhood experience which created a particular subpersonality, that subpersonality takes over, hijacks the ego, and demands immediate attention.

Both Buddhism and 12-Step programs suggest a practical tool for keeping this process from wreaking havoc in our lives. That tool is meditation. Meditation teaches us how to meet pain with awareness. Rather than trying to avoid the pain by distracting ourselves or trying to find something which will remove the pain, we meet the pain in meditation by paying close attention to it. We learn to observe it; and in doing so, learn about an accepting, conscious, compassionate part of ourselves. The Buddhists call this part Buddha nature, and 12-Step programs refer to it as our Higher Power.

As Jon Kabat-Sinn, founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program has written, if you move into pure awareness in the midst of pain, even for the tiniest moment, your relationship with your pain is going to shift right in that very moment. It is impossible for it not to change because the gesture of holding it, even if not sustained for long, even for a second or two, already reveals its larger dimensionality. And that shift in your relationship with the experience gives you more degrees of freedom in your attitude and in your actions in a given situation, whatever it is...even if you don't know what to do.

So right now I am encouraging D to spend a lot of time using Step Eleven's guidelines to help
D return to center. D doesn't have to make any decisions about the future of the marriage at this time. D doesn't have to try to figure out where the relationship is going. What D does need to do is to find an emotionally calm place and give K the space to come to terms with being an alcoholic and achieving sobriety. More will be revealed.