Organizations use mission statements to guide the decisions of the company, and it works for individuals too. For example, if you have established a vision and then find yourself in a situation that threatens it, your subconscious mind automatically warns you that you are drifting off course. You can learn to recognize this signal. You still have to make a choice, but you'll get a reminder. This is one way of understanding what conscious connection to a Higher Power means.
The following process will connect you with your vision and give you an image to help keep you on course as you venture into the world of clean-and-sober dating. Later, when you move from dating to developing a special relationship with a partner, come back to this exercise and create a vision statement together. It will help guide the relationship.
1. In a sentence or two, describe what you are planning to do.
I am: (Example: learning how to date clean and sober, staying with my program, continuing to grow and develop spiritually)
2. Identify the feelings that come up for you as you read the statement you just wrote.
I am feeling: (Example: anxious, frightened, excited, hopeful)
3. Describe what you imagine would be an ideal outcome. Another way of approaching this is to ask yourself what you imagine your Higher Power wants for you as you begin the process of clean-and-sober dating.
My ideal outcome: (Example: I would meet new people, have fun dating, and eventually have a healthy romantic relationship while continuing to develop my spiritual life and grow in my recovery.)
4. Imagine how this will feel when it happensusing posi- tive terms only.
Note: You don't know how it will feel; it hasn't happened yet. You're creating something new for yourself. The point is to imagine how it will feel. You want to get into your imagination because that's where the new image comes from. Sometimes you have to list all the negative stuff that's running through your head to get rid of it, but the negatives don't go in your vision statement. You're creating something new and don't want it cast in the old image. The old feelings are bringing the past back; in program talk, you're not letting go.
Completely let go of your fear and imagine having a brand-new experience. What do you imagine it feels like to live without this fear? What does it feel like to succeed in your goal of dating, having fun, having a relationship, and growing spiritually? Remember, if you can imagine it, you can create it.
I'd feel: (Example: grateful, happy, joyous, and free entitled, like I deserve it)
This was Lisa's "aha" moment. Not feeling deserving was the hidden factor that sabotaged earlier attempts at healthy dating for her. As long as she didn't feel deserving, her choices reflected her low self-esteem. As you go through this process, you will find your hidden factor too.
5. What is a symbolic image of what it feels like to deserve?
Image: (Example: Lisa's symbolic image was a picture of her at the beach, walking in the sunlight. The sand in front of her was washed free of footprints. She felt like she was literally walking into new territory and deserved to do it.)
Lisa's final step was to ask her Higher Power to remove anything that kept her from feeling deserving so that she could be of greater service.
This process offers a way to gain insight and self-understanding and, ultimately, to have more awareness in making conscious choices. Healing comes in spiritual time, not necessarily according to your clock, as Mart's story shows:
Matt realizes he isn't ready to date yet. He has worked closely with his sponsor for two years. His rage had taken him almost to the point of murder; he entered recovery after a six-month stay in a locked treatment facility.
Mart's father was an active alcoholic, and his drinking binges terrorized the family on a regular basis. Mart's mother would hide him and his brother under the bed while she distracted their father to keep him from attacking them. It usually ended with her getting beaten and Matt and his brother screaming in fright. Matt felt a deep sense of guilt about not being able to protect his mother and brother. He began drinking at twelve years of age to quiet the screams in his head. He quit school and joined the army as soon as he could. His disease progressed, taking him through a series of bad relationships, which always resulted in threatening his girlfriendsas he had learned to do at home. He eventually married, and when he lunged at his wife with a kitchen knife, she called the police and brought charges against him. The army gave him the ultimatum of going into treatment or doing time in the stockade. He took the treatment option.
During his Step work, he saw that his relationships were all tangled up with guilt, fear, and angermodeled on the one he grew up with. He partnered with women he felt needed "saving." He always became violent, couldn't stop, and psychologically couldn't leave. He felt like the little boy trapped under the bed again.
Matt realized he had learned about relationships from his family as a frightened youngster under the bed. He felt guilty about hiding and for not being able to defend his mother against his father's rage. His pattern of saving women became his way of rescuing her.
Matt is choosing not to date until he has healed from those childhood wounds. He attends meetings regularly and is receiving additional therapy. He's a volunteer at an abused women's shelter, where he works with children. Matt finally found the perfect way to rescue himself, his brother, and his mother and feels it may be exactly what he was born to do.
Summary Points
Another Fourth Step specifically on past relationships brings new insight.
Symbol and ceremony help heal past trauma by unlocking your spiritual power and transforming negative patterns.
Forming a clear vision about your decision to date (as well as anything you are planning to do) helps keep you on course and gives you a warning signal if you start to stray too far off the path. You still have to make a choice about what to do when the "bell" rings.
Recovery is about making conscious choices. The more we clean out the past, the more self-awareness we bring into the present, and the better the chance of having a new experience.
Healthy relationships depend on each of the two partners being whole people; this means having boundaries. In the next section we'll look at the importance of boundaries in all aspects of your life and as a must have for all of your relationships. Boundaries: don't leave home without them.
