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by Vicky Jeter
Recently, during a conference call discussion that my
husband and I had on the phone, one of the participants posed a question about
the Penn State sexual abuse scandal last November. It seemed to her that there
isn't any "right" or "wrong" anymore. She asked me what I thought about it.
While it may seem obvious that there are moral absolutes
with regard to what a person and/or a society would know are wrong, such as
unprovoked malicious injury or violation of another person or their life space,
there is a more pertinent question. If there are moral absolutes, how do we go
about bringing them to high functioning as active guides for behavior in
relationships? Let's break the question down to the foundational keys: First,
even with moral absolutes in consideration, "right" and "wrong" are intimately
subjective concepts, not only in exactly what is determined to be right or
wrong by a person or in a society, but especially what considerations go into
determining something to be right or wrong. What is good for the goose may or
may not be good for the gander, as the adage goes. In short, answering this
question is effectively determining our own limits and knowing why we have these
limits – such as our personal values and the influence of the values of the
groups in which we are part of, such as family, societal or religious. Each
person eventually needs to decide for themselves what is right and wrong and
this is where the answer to the question and the solution to the problem for
society begins. As more and more people begin to learn about their own personal
limits and are determined to put healthy boundaries into practice for
themselves, the healthier and more balanced society becomes as a whole,
naturally. This is an evolving process as more and more people take personal
responsibility to reflect on their own limits and boundaries.
By now you may well be asking what all this has to do with
addiction. The ability to determine personal limits and exercising boundaries
with others to set personal limits, or more accurately, the lack this skill has
everything to do with the disease of addiction and the addictive process in
relationships. It sounds like I am referring to limiting the use of addictive
substances, here. In the strictest sense, I am. But, understanding that
knowing ones internal limits is crucial is not just about addictive substances; knowing our internal limits and exercising them is crucial to health in
every relationship we have. Our internal limits expressed become our
external boundaries. For example, a woman who knows she is not a victim
internally, with her beliefs, carries herself as unapproachable when walking
down a city street. On the other hand a woman, who never stops to think about
this one way or the other, walks with far less discretion regarding what's
around her and is much more vulnerable to be targeted by predators.
When we are new to this world as children, our developing
systems require stable environments with places and people that feel safe in
which to grow. If that environment is extremely unstable, such as I
experienced with parents openly acting out their addictions, with
unpredictable, volatile moods and behaviors, the child will look for ways to adapt
by finding things he or she "believes" can be depended upon to fill the need
for the feeling of stability. This imaginary stability, that is not real
stability, ends up being an attempt to control situations and people.
This process of the very real need for stability becoming
the adaptive need to control can lead to what I call, "All white or all black
thinking." This is a big part of the disease process of addiction. For
example, when I was a little girl, I learned by the age of four or five that as
soon as I woke up in the morning I saw my parents were up and fixing breakfast,
going to work, etc., it was going to be a good day all day, and I could
behave certain ways. If, on the other hand, when I woke up and my parents were
holed up in their bedroom either sleeping, brooding or fighting, it was going
to be a bad day all day, and the very best thing I could do was be as
quiet, i.e. invisible as possible in an attempt not to do something for my
parents to keep fighting about. The part about my chosen indicators predicting
the quality of the entire day was important because knowing what to plan for felt
so much safer than the actual reality of the unknown, which was that
anything could happen, good or bad, either way. It is this drive to create a
feeling of safety or feeling "good" where there is none that drives a great
deal of the impulse to addiction to substances and/or to excitement and drama.
Immature as it was, this system worked very well for me in establishing with my
system the idea that I had some control over an environment which was truly
subject to chaos at any moment, throughout my growing years in my parent's
home.
This basis for adapted patterns of relationship that emerge
are dysfunctional when applied anywhere outside the addictive family system.
In early adulthood, I emerged into a conglomerate world, where every person I
met had differing expectations and ways of approaching me and relating to me. This
being true for most of us, given the "melting pot" society we live in, it is
very important to understand how to communicate our own boundaries and how to
read the boundaries of other people. And, perhaps one of the most vital
qualities of this skill for vital, healthy relationships is that things being
"all good" or "all bad", "totally black" or "totally white," is not at all the
way life works. I was called to learning about the reality of relationships
being more gray. For example, some parts of a day I spend with friends can be
good, while at the same time, maybe some part of the day was bad. It took me a
very long time to learn that just because some "bad" things happen in my
relationships with people, that does not color the whole relationship bad,
necessarily. I learned to imagine having shutters on my boundaries so I could
learn to open and close them partially. To accomplish this, I had to get to grow
in self-awareness and I know myself very well. It was important to understand
and come to accept that my outer world responds to how I am doing in my inner
world. If I don't know where my limits are on the inside, I absolutely can not
expect people not to invade my boundaries. To take care of myself on the
outside I had to be clear and strong on the inside.
The key to my learning was to realize that I do not have to control
circumstances or the behavior of the people around me. Instead, I had to
understand that when I know my limits about what I believe or what I am
comfortable doing, I have very little challenge in setting a boundary and
keeping it out in the world. And, when I experience strong boundaries for
myself, I create the safety that allows me to move through this ever-changing,
often chaotic world freely.
In response to the original question, I believe foundationally
that people who commit grievous violations against other people have no concept
of limits, either internally or externally. We must return to learning and exercising
the skills of setting limits within for ourselves because it is critical to
re-establishing some degree of agreement about living morally "right" or
"wrong" within expressed human decency in relationships.
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