I Valued Honesty, Until I Had To Practice It
While I was in treatment, one of the things we had to do was complete assignments. Assignments varied from writing letters to people in our life to filling out different types of worksheets that they had prepared. This assignment in particular was a worksheet that helped me determine what my five core values were. The idea was floated after my therapist had asked me the question who I was without drugs and alcohol. I had no clue. Figuring out what my core values were was a step in the direction of figuring out what my identity was, who I was.
Once I completed the assignment, I was sitting in her office and read to her the core values that I had come up with. Number one on my list was honesty. Immediately, she started laughing. I asked her what was so funny? She told me that the person I was in that moment and the behaviors that I was partaking in were the furthest thing from honest. I was constantly breaking rules and being dishonest about it. In that moment, I realized she was right. Embarrassed, I said "I know, but I want to be honest." Honesty was one of the values I was raised with and it was very important to me yet from as young as I can remember, I didn't follow this value.
She told me that the only thing I needed to do to be honest was to start being honest. It was as simple as that. I was either being honest or I wasn't. There was no in between. I was either telling the full truth, not withholding information that I knew other people wouldn't approve of and following the rules, or I wasn't. I learned that being honest was a lot more than just telling the truth when someone asked me something. Being honest includes integrity, doing the right thing even if nobody would ever find out.
It was in that moment that I realized how far away from my values I had gone.
Up to that point, one of the many rules that I was breaking in treatment was that I had been hiding a phone. I had access to social media where I was messaging my dad, going on the internet to watch Netflix among other things and was no longer disconnected from the outside world. I kept trying to justify my behavior to myself. I mainly told myself that it wasn't compromising my treatment. After getting honest with myself, I realized it was. I realized it was compromising who I wanted to be as a human and continuing to bring me further from my values. Still, I didn't want to give up the phone. I wasn't ready. I wasn't willing.
A few weeks later, I was talking to my therapist about boundaries that my father had planned on placing in our relationship once I left treatment. My therapist said "If you are unwilling to respect the boundaries that we have set up for you here, what makes you think that you are going to be able to respect the boundaries that your father and others set for you when you get home?" I was in a highly controlled environment with people imposing rules on me for my best interest and I was unwilling to follow those. What made me think I'd be able to follow the boundaries imposed by my father when history suggested that I had never been able to do so before.
That was when I realized that if I didn't make a change while I was in treatment, then I wouldn’t be able to do it when I left treatment. If nothing changes, then nothing changes and I would find myself having done three months of intensive inpatient treatment just to be engaging in the same behaviors that I was before I went there. That was only if I wasn't willing to make changes. And so finally, I was ready. I handed in my phone.
That day, I decided to surrender the outcome of what the consequences may be if I handed in my phone. I knew that I needed to start living in accordance to my values and that I needed to make changes if I wanted to stay sober and continue on this path toward spirituality and a fulfilling life. It wasn't just about wanting these things, it was about engaging in behaviors that would bring me closer to these things. It was about practicing the principles that I had learned and that I wanted to be apart of my life.
It goes along with the idea that in order to gain self-esteem, I needed to do esteem-able acts. Well, if I wanted to live a life of honesty, I needed to start being honest. Just because I wanted something and it was important to me, it didn't mean that it would happen. For so long, I wanted a miracle to happen in my life without actually putting in the work. When my therapist laughed in my face, it was a turning point for me where I realized this miracle required me to work alongside it for it to come true.
