I was about five years old the first time I saw the Olympics on TV. And wow! I was enthralled. Gymnasts defying gravity, runners approaching the speed of sound–performing feats I’d never seen anyone do, and making it all look easy. They had superpowers! Just like Mighty Mouse, Spiderman, and all my other cartoon friends!

I spent days jumping off furniture and dashing around the house, trying hard to imitate my heroes. In my imagination I could twirl, leap and sprint just like them. But soon the glamor of pretend wore off. Whatever superpowers they had, I didn’t. Plus, I got in trouble for jumping on the couch. So I gave up.

My childish mind had no idea, of course, of the years of training and effort that go into becoming an Olympic athlete. I thought they just woke up like that. Some people are born that way, and some aren’t. I definitely wasn’t. Case closed.

I spent the next few decades avoiding physical effort of any kind, firm in the belief that I belonged squarely in the category of “un-athletic.” (Then I discovered that exercise makes it easier to Not Be Crazy, and I went from couch to triathlon at age 48. But that’s another post.)

Where I was

I entered the rooms like most of us do: desperate and broken. At my first meeting, I had no idea what to expect. I wanted someone to tell me how to fix my alcoholic kid, Kid Qualifier #2, the one who’d been in the ER three times in six weeks. (“Actually, yes, he does have a current tetanus shot. He got one the last time he was here, ten days ago.” Ugh! It’s amazing what you can laugh at after living with this disease.)

How confused I was when, instead, people started discussing…their feelings. What?? I had never heard anyone talk like these people talked. They talked about what was going on inside them. I mean, what was really going on inside them. No smokescreens, no posturing, no manipulation. None of the sick games that were my whole social skill set.

I had no clue how to take this. Ever since I could remember–probably ever since I could talk–the goal every time I opened my mouth had been to control others. Whether using outright lies or more skilled tricks, I was pretty much never, ever honest. I couldn’t have told you this at the time; I wasn’t aware of it, any more than a fish is aware of water. Emotional dishonesty had been my whole environment, my whole life.

At my first meeting, I managed to choke out a few sentences about my problems. Everyone nodded and smiled and told me to keep coming back. And by the grace of God, I did, even though the things I heard that day made no sense to me.

A whole new language

Listening at meetings was like learning a foreign language. Not the Al-Anon vocabulary; chameleon that I was, I picked that up quickly. The strangeness was in their candor.

Hearing people tell their stories so simply and directly stunned me. Where was the drama? The exaggeration–you know, just for flavor? The hidden motives? The defensiveness? The one-upmanship? The only reason I ever told stories was to influence outcomes. These people didn’t seem to be doing that. I’d never heard anyone just, you know…tell the truth.

Sharing was impossibly hard at first. Introverted by nature and beaten by the disease of alcoholism, I had no idea how to talk about my feelings. In fact, for a long time I didn’t even know how I felt, and didn’t have names for the few things I did feel.

Listening to other members share their recovery journeys, I felt as if I were five years old again, watching the Olympics. These people were doing the hardest thing I could imagine–sharing honest feelings out loud–and making it look easy. They had magical powers far beyond that of any mortal. They were superheroes!

I was sure I’d never be in that special class of human beings who could talk honestly and make sense. That was just one more gift that other people had been born with and I hadn’t.

Many times I declined to share. I always went home feeling like a failure on those days, ashamed because I couldn’t force myself to talk. When I did speak, I spent days afterwards beating myself up, rehearsing how stupid I sounded. I felt like a hopelessly defective human being.

It never occurred to me that the people I so admired had learned how to share. I never dreamed that it cost them any effort or that I was seeing the results of a long process. I thought they woke up like that.

Made, not born

About that time, the Summer Olympics came around again. By then I had dipped my toes into the world of triathlon, and I was training, training, training, for the first time in my life, more to stay sane than anything else. Partner Qualifier and I settled onto the couch with popcorn and snacks to enjoy the Games.

And the Olympics looked completely different that year.

I was a baby beginner in the fitness realm, but I’d sweated and suffered enough that I felt some kinship with the athletes on the screen. Instead of superhuman demigods, I saw human beings–very talented ones–who had worked their butts off, day after day, month after month, to develop their skills.

They were exceptional, for sure; that’s why they’re Olympians. But they didn’t wake up like that. They woke up and practiced and trained and improved, and became like that. And something clicked.

My vision shifted. At the next meeting, I saw the members I so admired as human beings–as program Olympians. Yes, they’re exceptional; that’s why they have so much recovery. But they didn’t wake up like that, either. They kept showing up and kept sharing and kept learning, and became like that.

Suddenly I saw sharing as a skill that I could learn, instead of an innate ability I’d always lack. I could keep showing up and practicing and learning, too. Even if I never got to the Olympics, I could improve. Maybe I wasn’t defective after all. Maybe I was just new at this.

Then I did a little math. Someone who shared at one meeting a week for 20 years would have shared approximately…one THOUSAND times. That is practice. That’s enough practice to turn someone into an Olympian. And I realized that they probably didn’t sound as smooth then as they do now. They developed the skill of sharing. And if they could, maybe I could too.

Watching the Summer Games, it didn’t cross my mind to compare myself to the Olympic athletes; I had just started, and they’d trained for years. Of course I couldn’t do what they did! But in meetings I’d compared myself, with my decades of illness and few months of recovery, to old-timers who had 20 or 30 years of program under their belts.

No wonder I felt discouraged! It would be much longer before I figured out that I had even more unrealistic expectations of myself than I did of my alcoholics. Expectations are always the problem!

The training program

So, like any good compulsive fixer, I began a training program of my own. I started to think of sharing at meetings as being like physical therapy.

When you’re recovering from an injury or surgery, to regain full function, you have to do exercises that make it hurt a hell of a lot more. My ability to open myself up had been seriously injured by alcoholism. It wasn’t going to get better by itself. And I had to accept that the recovery exercises were going to be pretty damn uncomfortable for a long time. Willingness came from the realization that being crazy hurts way worse.

I pledged to share in at least one meeting a week, no matter how awkward it felt. And it did, every freaking time. Calling it uncomfortable is like calling drowning uncomfortable. It felt like death. I learned to start accepting awkwardness as the price of my recovery.

Lots of practice later, I figured out that those horrible feelings are a symptom of my disease, not a reflection of reality. Thinking of them as symptoms that will pass, instead of proof that I’m irreparably damaged, makes me a little more willing to tolerate them.

My sponsor helped me learn some strategies for quieting the Instant Replay Committee in my head. I used visualization and I wrote about it, a lot. I learned to tell the demons to shut up. And little by little, they started making slightly less noise.

For literature meetings, I discovered that if I did the reading ahead of time and journaled about it, it was possible to say a few semi-coherent sentences. In general, it’s way easier to share about things I’ve already processed through writing. Impromptu sharing tends to go sideways.

I learned to consider any share a win, even if it didn’t meet Olympic standards. Short? Disjointed? Embarrassingly random? Whatever. I opened my mouth today, and that counts as victory. Shut up, demons! I was scared out of my mind and shared anyway. So there!

And I imitated my heroes–not by jumping off the couch, but by listening as they shared. Soon I knew the names of some feelings, and I studied how they talked about them. I learned what honesty sounds like. I saw people let their guard down. I saw vulnerability met with kindness and learned it was safe to be real.

One of the most helpful things I learned: much of my anxiety comes from trying not to look anxious. When I stop trying to hide my nervousness and admit that I’m struggling, the pressure lifts. It’s such a relief to quit trying to look normal!

And the rejection I dreaded? It was all imaginary. Every time I admitted it was hard for me to talk, I was met with encouragement and support. People went out of their way to thank me for my shares, and they meant it, even though my shares usually sucked. They saw past my awkwardness. They saw my effort and my progress, and their acknowledgement gave me courage to keep practicing.

The hallway

The turning point is always acceptance. Accepting that I feel scared and incompetent, accepting that I sound awkward, and accepting that I have no control over how others perceive me.

Introversion is not a character defect. Cowardice is. So in asking God to remove this from me, I have to learn what my part is, and what I can change, and what I have to accept. That’s a work in progress.

I still have to do all these exercises, all the time. My injury was severe, and if I don’t keep up my exercises, I’ll become disabled again. Without constant practice, my gains slip away. Resting on laurels kicks my butt every time.

That’s hard to accept. But the alternative is the hell of isolation. I’m not willing to go back there. Whatever I have to do to stay out of that black hole, it’s worth it.

And some days I still give in to cowardice and stay quiet. So how do I know I’m getting better? Because that old armor doesn’t fit anymore. It feels less like a safe hiding place and more like a trap. There’s no serenity in it.

That leaves me, lots of days, in the hallway: stuck between the old outgrown behavior and the new behavior that I haven’t quite grown into. The hallway is an uncomfortable place. But it’s the pain of growth, not of sickness. I’m learning, little by little, to tell the difference. And my recovery depends on my willingness to tolerate that in-between space.

The monster that lives under my bed is fear of rejection, and he still makes a lot of noise every time I have to choose whether to show up and let myself be seen. He might always make noise. That’s something I have to live with. The goal is to show up anyway.

I’ll probably never make the Olympics, and that’s okay. When I share, it’s practice. All my Higher Power wants from me is willingness and effort. With His grace and your help, just for today, I can do it.

Keep coming back!