He Called Me a Liar

- Then I Found My Self -

He called me a liar.

It seemed like a little thing at the time. It hurt, and it wasn’t true, but I was pretty sure it said more about him than about me. Now, two years later, he’s irrelevant to my story, but a lot has changed for me. Almost everything.

I won’t use his name, respecting his privacy, and the 12 Step guidelines about confidentiality and anonymity. I’ll just call him ‘Jerry’. I haven’t seen or spoken to Jerry since that day. He’s just a guy from my past. It took some deep work, help from friends, and big changes for me to become who I am today.

I’d been in a 12-step group (not AA) with Jerry and another guy for eight months, reaching Step 10 (“Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it”). We met every week for 2 1/2 hours. (I’d been sober for years, and was still doing nine different meetings a week. I’d worked the Steps before, in two other programs.) Jerry and I had had a discussion in email leading up to this particular meeting. Jerry and I were probably arguing in that mail thread, but we were both pretending to explain our positions dispassionately, as if this was just a harmless exchange of ideas. He’d written, “The 12th Step says we practice these principles in all our affairs, and there’s a principle associated with each Step, and Step 1’s principle is Honesty.” He went on to say that this can never be conditional.

I replied that I consider the impacts of my actions before saying something. I ask myself questions such as “Is it necessary, is it true, is it kind, is it harmful, does it improve upon silence?” This means that while I won’t lie, I will sometimes keep quiet.  Jerry was angry, perhaps even disgusted, that I make such distinctions. He said it’s not up to me, that only God can offer the proper guidance, and that requires always saying what is true, not deciding that I have some special insight or calling that allows me to make my own decision.

I ended the email conversation with “That doesn’t mean that truth and principle are always automatically the best path. Sometimes silence works.”

Our meeting that week opened with Jerry saying that we all needed to talk about the purpose of our group. He asked me to say more about how I make decisions. I offered an example, saying I won’t say something that might hurt people who are close to me. Jerry called those “white lies” and said they’re just as bad as outright lying; that God’s will means we always stick to the 12 Step principles; that we can’t decide to do anything except what God wants us to do. (Jerry capitalizes God; I do not.)

I was surprised, because while I knew that Jerry believed in some form of God, he’d said before that it’s not a Santa Claus god, not a magic god, not a god who gives gifts or solves problems. It was just some form of guidance that Jerry turns to when he needs help.

I explained again that I don’t turn my will and my life over to the care of a higher power, that I choose in the moment what is the right thing to do, and that I might sometimes make mistakes driven by ego, fear, or emotion, but I work to become more aware of these slips and make better choices. Jerry called me a liar and said he’d wasted eight months of his life with me.

This was not an AA group. I had started and worked the Steps in AA, then added AlAnon and CoDA (Codependents Anonymous), and finally “graduated” to ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families). I considered ACA to be a more advanced program because it looked at childhood patterns, conditioned behaviors, codependent reactions, unconscious choices, grandparents, children, and what it means to be (and not to have had) a loving parent. I enjoyed the openness and complexity of the ACA program, its general lack of the heavy god message, and its focus on identifying and addressing the trauma caused in our childhood. Jerry had thirty years of sobriety, but this was his first exposure to ACA. His approach to god was presumably conditioned by his many years of AA.

ACA does not have the usual AA and AlAnon 12 Step inventory lists. Those programs have us create a “moral inventory of ourselves”, creating a list of “the exact nature of our wrongs”; another list of all those we have harmed, and a step to make amends for those wrongs; and then an ongoing personal inventory, including “when we were wrong, we promptly admitted it”.

Working the steps in ACA produces a larger and deeper set of lists. Step 1 is identifies the alcoholics or addicts in my family, as well as the hypochondriac, abusive, harsh, ill, or perfectionist family members. (It is called “Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families for a reason.) Then there is a discussion of the Laundry List traits and how they resulted from growing up in a dysfunctional home; an examination of how those traits are affecting my behavior today, particularly my role in the ongoing dysfunction of my own family; and times when I play the victim or the codependent “fixer”. Eventually this step results in 45 questions, most of which require a paragraph or more to answer. Then we draw a family diagram, as detailed and far back as we can remember, and list all the family messages that were taught to (or forced upon) us. That’s all just Step 1. It’s a lot more than a quick “admitted we were powerless, that our lives had become unmanageable”.

In step 2, we list the ways in which our behaviors had become erratic, self-defeating, or unpredictable, and then how we could fix these in order to “restore us to sanity”. The higher power is referenced here, but the lists are so long and detailed that I lost all track of any call to a higher power, perhaps because I was looking so deeply into my past and my behavior, and not thinking about asking some magical higher power for help. Step 2 is 44 questions; again, many of the answers are a paragraph or more.

Step 3 is 29 questions about becoming willing (or not) to turn our lives over to the care of a higher power, and it was clear from my lists and answers that I never tried to bring in a higher power for help. I was looking at ME. I was working on ME.

Step 4 is twelve mostly amazing worksheets: the many events that caused me to develop laundry list traits as a reaction; when and how I was shamed and abandoned by my family; how I learned to store and repress anger; how I had harmed others, and the generational trauma that led me to these behaviors; my failed relationships (often because I was trying to “fix” people, particularly alcoholics, who did not want to be fixed); denial behaviors, first those things my parents and grandparents had done that I had repressed, and then the things I in turn had done to my children; feelings, and how to let them in (which I had not done for many years); a practice of self-praise and acceptance; and two lists that I chose not to do, one on sexual abuse inflicted on me as a child, and one on PTSD. I did not recall any sexual abuse, and while I clearly suffered from PTSD, I did not want to look at those causes.

This is most of the step work in ACA. The remaining parts are looking at those lists and making plans to change those conditioned behaviors, including reaching out repeatedly to my children to apologize for and stop these behaviors.

That’s where our step group had gotten when Jerry blew up at me for not allowing god to make decisions for me. I felt that all my work to this point had been on me, and had been groundbreaking and transformational. I had gone deep into my past, sharing many stories with Jerry and the other guy, ranging from what my dad had done to me, to how I married people who needed to be rescued, to how I had unknowingly passed on some of these behaviors. I communicated regularly with my kids, sharing examples from some of the ACA meetings and readings. On several occasions they had thanked me for being the first in my family line to break the generational cycle of trauma and abuse. (They seemed more aware of and grateful for my changed behavior than concerned about whatever I had done to perpetuate this dysfunction in their childhoods.)

When Jerry called me a liar, I pulled up these lists from all our meetings and showed how I had never lied. I had said numerous times that I wasn’t turning my will and my life over to a higher power, that I asked myself for right action and guidance; even when I had twice shared examples of putting my hands out wide and asking for strength, I had clarified that I wasn’t asking god, that I didn’t know or care who I was asking, that the action of quelling my own ego was enough for me. I had even written several times that I looked within for right action, rather than to a mysterious magic answer outside of me. I felt confident that I had never lied to the group and been forthright and detailed in my lists.

Jerry said I was still a liar because I had led him and the other man to believe that I was looking for God all along, and since I now clearly wasn’t, he couldn’t talk to me any more. He asked the third man to follow him in leaving (because Jerry loves sponsees and followers and leading people to his way of thinking). I asked if he thought he was doing “God’s will” by calling me a liar, and he said he always does God’s will.

Our meeting ended. I haven’t seen him since. I asked the third man once, the only time I’ve seen him since then, if Jerry is now his sponsor. He said of course not, no one is his sponsor. I asked if Jerry thinks he is his sponsor, and he admitted that yes, Jerry believes that.

I called an old friend who had been in AA for many years, who I had recently introduced to AlAnon (to help him accept and stop trying to “fix” an active drinker in his family), and he told me that Jerry was right, that I couldn’t be in a 12 Step program unless I was actively trying to find God. He even said that if I don’t find God, I would drink and die. I wondered: I’d been sober for a decade without god—at what point was I going to fail, to “drink and die”?

Was it imminent?

Or was it perhaps not going to happen?

I was still doing nine step group meetings a week in the four different programs. A thought hit me hard: had I been pretending all along? Was I in fact lying? Not in terms of telling falsehoods, but by going along with things I didn’t believe?

That led me to a larger, harsher question: had I been placating bullies all these years? Was I repeating my childhood experiences with my father?

My family had an alcoholic absentee dad, six children, and a “rage-aholic” mom who blamed all her problems on my dad while taking them out on us. Most of the children stayed out of their conflicts. I sat to my father’s right at the dinner table, on the occasional nights when he was home for dinner, and he loved to torment me. If I put my elbow on the table, he’d wait until I wasn’t paying attention, then slap it off so my face fell forward to the table or in my food. We would be served meat that was surrounded by fat and he would insist that I swallow it all, even the large chunks of fat; I was not allowed to slice it off, and if I headed to the bathroom, he’d insist that the fat still be in my mouth when I came back, to make sure I didn’t spit it out. He would ask me about school and tell me he disagreed with me. He would drink and smoke and talk with food in his mouth; when I asked why he could do these things that I could not, he’d say, “My house, my rules”. When I disagreed with him, or expressed any kind of opinion that he didn’t like, he’d say, “You’re too young to have an opinion” or “No one asked you”.

I learned to keep quiet, except when I felt so belittled and minimized that I had to speak out. (That never went well.) I learned that I was not allowed to have feelings; feelings belonged to mom and dad. When she got in a rage, he loved to watch it, and we had to accept it.

So now here I was, more than ten years sober, wondering if I’d simply found a different group of people to bully and minimize me.

I’d gotten plenty of benefit from doing the steps. AA had saved my life and taught me the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It took me a year of sobriety to realize that the things I *can* change are ME, and the things I can’t change are everyone else. (ACA has a MUCH better form of this prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the PEOPLE I cannot change, the courage to change the ONE I can, and the wisdom to know that one is ME.) After a while, I switched from the “grant me” form to the “I seek” form: I seek the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me.

AlAnon and CoDA showed me that I can’t change other people, that their shit is their shit and not my responsibility, that trying to fix or rescue other people is exhausting and an intrusion on their choices. CoDA also showed me that boundaries are not something I can make the other person accept: boundaries are MY responsibility to enforce, which often means leaving the situation. I don’t get to decide what the other person will do or demand they treat me the way I want to be treated. I am responsible for me. And ACA took all that to a completely different level, what I think of as the PhD level: unearthing my buried memories, seeing how much time I spent avoiding people and confrontations, recognizing that my childhood programmed me to shut down my feelings, to disrespect or deny my identity, and to rescue other people.

As I was processing my reactions to Jerry and my old AA friend, I considered all these lessons I had learned—or “earned”, given how hard I’d worked for them. It seemed like I had learned to take care of myself, to work on myself, to be responsible for myself. Where was the higher power part, “turning my will and my life over to the care of God as we understood God”? Thinking about it, it almost disgusted me. Am I so unimportant, am I so much my father’s son, that I can’t be trusted to do anything right, to have a valid opinion, to fix myself? Do I need other people, whether it’s the old-timers in 12 Step programs, or memories of my father, or a magical god, to tell me what to do?

I realized that even when I’d done the steps before, I’d danced around the higher power idea. I’d admitted a couple of times that I was asking myself, not god, and no one had objected (possibly because I had been careful with whom I worked and what meetings I went to). I had become aware of my mistakes and my defects (though I had come to refer to them as behaviors or reactions, rather than as defects of character). I had reduced their impact on my life. I’d been to meetings in Switzerland, Spain, Chicago, Florida, California, New Mexico, New Jersey, and throughout New England. They had seemed like such friendly, welcoming, helpful groups—a feeling I never had growing up—that I mostly went along. To please them. To fit in.

I had been open and honest with these groups. I always told the AA groups that I was in AlAnon, and told the AlAnon groups that I was in AA. I usually identified myself as a pot addict rather than an alcoholic. On those rare occasions when a group would read the 7th Step Prayer (My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding), I would not read it, and I did not return to those groups. People often thanked me for speaking up, and sometimes a group would say they were surprised at how I was accepted, and pleased to see that their group was evolving or maturing. I don’t remember anyone ever asking me to leave.

No one had ever called me a liar.

I had not turned my will and my life over to something outside of me. Was I a liar? Did I not belong in recovery programs? I sat with that thought for a couple of days, and I went inside to ask my body. The certainty I felt was deep, solid, and almost blissful. Yes, I had been pretending, trying to fit in. No, I was not going to change. I had found ME, and I was going to be ME. It’s even a foundational principle of ACA, learning to love the Self. There’s a new workbook on just that topic, and I was in a weekly group working through that book. I’d heard people say, “Self cannot rid Self of Self with Self,” but I’d never expressed my disagreement with that, or spoken up about my choice to trust and respect my own Self.

I felt like all the wonderful work I’d done to get to this point was now somehow false—all because Jerry called me a liar.

I then called two other old friends, both of whom I had met in CoDA, who had been sober and in AA for more than thirty years. They told me that groups are different depending on geography, that you get more or less acceptance (and higher power stuff) depending on where the group is located. They’d gotten sober in New York City without any god pressure. They didn’t believe in god, and they told me that the phrase “Take what works and leave the rest behind”, which we’d discussed before, was common in NYC and had probably saved their lives. (I had used this phrase with my second sponsor, eight years earlier, and he blew up at me, almost yelling that it’s not part of the program, just because someone said it in a meeting didn’t make it true, and it wasn’t my choice to make. I dropped him, though it was a bit of a cheat: he was moving away anyway so I used that as an excuse, rather than challenge him with my opinion.)

I decided to stop six of my nine meetings, partly because of my new awareness that I had been unconsciously placating the self-righteous old-timers who saw things the way they’d been trained, and partly because it was time to start making choices for myself.

During the next three weeks, I kept two of my AlAnon meetings. One day a reading for newcomers included “Find and read everything you can about alcoholism”, and I said we’d all die before we could meet that goal, that there are many wonderful lessons in AlAnon that don’t require years of study, and that there are other sources for guidance as well. There was also a line in that guide, “Turn yourself over to your Higher Power right away”, and I said that worked for a lot of people, but don’t let it turn you away from the serenity and self-worth to be found in AlAnon if you aren’t comfortable doing that. An old-timer grabbed me after the meeting and said it was entirely inappropriate for me to speak out against the AlAnon program, that she had discussed my behavior with her sponsor, and that others in the program agreed with her about my behavior. I had been chairing this particular meeting for months and I told her that newcomers came up to me after almost every meeting to express their gratitude and ask questions, and often called me outside of the meeting to talk. She said that was even worse, that I was harming their recovery, that I had no right to tell them things that aren’t in the official program and literature.

I sat on that for another couple of days and decided to drop the rest of my AlAnon meetings. I wasn’t welcome. I wasn’t “behaving”. I regretted not being available to the newcomers, but if people were talking about me outside of meetings, perhaps I was doing more harm than good. (I still don’t believe this but I am not willing to engage in that conflict.)

Two weeks later, I was feeling unsettled. A decade in 12 Step meetings and suddenly I’d gone from nine meetings a week to one. I kept the CoDA meeting because it was with close friends and we stayed away from the Steps and the higher power, read other types of codependency literature including Melody Beattie’s wonderful Codependent No More, and dedicated 15 minutes to Eckhart Tolle and meditation, but I felt adrift. Someone suggested a men’s group meeting where people were sober but not in formal recovery. Men’s groups had never been my thing, but I tried it out. It turned out the men weren’t sober in daily life, but the agreement was to be completely sober for each meeting. I went to my first meeting, outside in a calm forested waterside setting.

As part of my introduction, I told them how I’d gone from nine meetings to three to one, and that led to a discussion about why, and I talked about the old-timer god bullies and how I just didn’t feel comfortable placating them anymore. I was shocked when they asked if I wanted to “work a process” to address this. It was my first meeting and I had no idea what a process was, or why they wanted to work one with me. They said I didn’t have to understand it, or do it; that everything is optional, but it might help me.

I tried it. It did help. A couple of men stood in for the two religious bullies, “Jerry” from ACA and “Bill” from AlAnon, and I was encouraged to talk TO them. Not talk with them; they would’t say anything back, they would just stand there. I told them what I wanted them to hear, and they stood there listening. That was new to me: speaking up to someone who can’t sneer back at me! The group then asked me questions and got me to see that it was all my dad stuff: both the bullies looked like my dad had looked, they belittled me as he had, they were absolutely certain about their beliefs as he had been, and they felt called to mold me as he had tried to do. I had given up my power, and my resentments, to them.

Then one of the process facilitators asked, “Do other people in these groups like these men?” That stopped me cold. I had always known they were admired and respected. Jerry had many sponsees and followers; Bill had dozens of sponsees and hundreds of active followers on social media. But my relationship with them had been personal and I ignored what others saw. The “process” got me to see that these men were wrong FOR ME, and perhaps dangerous for some people who don’t need to be patronized and bullied, but that didn’t mean they were bad people. In fact, more people in program liked them than disliked them (though a few people actively did not like them, I realized when asked). I wasn’t smarter than everyone else. I wasn’t right while they were all wrong. I was free to make decisions for myself, without having to convince anyone else. Sometimes what works for one person is not right for another person.

I felt free. Free from the years of trying to fit in where I didn’t belong, and free from hating and blaming these religious bullies. I didn’t quite feel free from my dad’s influence, but now I know that when I react to authority or feel disrespected or minimized, it’s usually my dad’s voice reminding me that I have no right to my feelings or opinions, that he knows best, that I’ll never live up to his expectations. That I’ll never be him. His influence has faded dramatically since then.

That freedom, that identity, is a pretty great feeling.

This all started with Jerry calling me a liar. I knew I hadn’t lied, that I’d never pretended to be following him or seeking out god, so I didn’t think his insult mattered. But it has led me to something new: a sense of freedom and self-empowerment, my eyes open, with a firm belief that I’m not inadequate, that I don’t need other people to tell me what’s “right”, that I am “enough”. I’ve found my Self.

John O’Donahue wrote, “There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you.” I find joy in this quote. I’m not useless. I’m not defective. There is a beauty inside me. It’s been covered up for years, by being belittled, by my insecurity, by my addiction, then by me placating others who think they know better. It’s been hidden by trauma and false shame. It’s been covered by a lot of my step work constantly reminding me that I need a higher power to fix me.

But that sureness, that seamlessness, is still inside me. I see it now.

I find myself in a good place today, doing real work with my inner parts (Internal Family Systems, based on No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz), learning to speak up for myself, respecting others’ boundaries while enforcing my own. And it all started with that one small moment: being called a liar when I knew it wasn’t true.