She IS Stuck in the Past

Audio version now available.

“You said we would only be there for a little while. A couple of beers, you said. The kids and I left you there at almost midnight. When you stumbled in at 2am, fell up the back stairs, and started calling my name, I was afraid you were going to wake the kids. I didn’t want them to see you like that. I didn’t want them to see me as angry as I was.” My wife brought up that memory more than once.

I used to ask her why she couldn’t get out of the past. “You are stuck, Sheri. That was years ago. I’ve been sober for a long time. Why can’t you be proud of the man I’ve become?”

I didn’t understand what was wrong with her. I didn’t understand why she kept bringing up traumatic memories from the darkest period of our lives. Did she want to make me feel guilty? Was she hoping I’d feel so bad about myself that I would relapse, and then she would be justified in divorcing me? Why did she insist on reminding me of my shame?

Now I understand. When Sheri brought up the alcoholic traumas of the past it wasn’t about my shame. It wasn’t about me at all, really.

It was about her shame.

I learned years ago that trauma doesn’t go away with time. Nor does trauma dissipate just because the traumatic experience is no longer being repeated. Trauma takes work, and no matter how hard we push trauma down, the effort it takes to ignore it is effort that would be much better spent trying to process it.

Trauma is not the story. Trauma is not the experience. Trauma is the wound left behind. People can witness the same event, and yet some are not traumatized while others will take years to heal. The Epstein files are a visceral example. Some of us are shaken to our core that such barbaric and unforgivable human behavior is still taking place. Others are unfazed, willing to chalk it up as the unfortunate byproduct of an accumulation of wealth and power.

Likewise, I can remember with regret getting drunk on Halloween and leaving my pregnant wife with all the parenting responsibilities for our three young children on the dark, crowded streets of our neighborhood full of buzzed drivers and costumed people we didn’t know. I can remember with regret, but I am not traumatized by the experience. I was drunk. Drunks are often unfazed by faze-worthy things. That same memory is seared into Sheri’s memory, and the trauma is an open wound that requires healing. Not time. Not sober Halloweens in the present and future. Not dismissal and down-pushing. Healing. Positive-effort healing.

As I said, I have for years understood how trauma works, and why I have to listen with patience as Sheri processes my transgressions whenever she is triggered, even if it is the same story, over and over.

But here’s the part I didn’t understand. Here is what I have just recently learned–the thing that brings the trauma processing home and makes it more important than I previously understood.

Sheri is not processing my shame. She is processing hers.

I got drunk. I broke promises. I drank more than I said I would. I stayed out too late. I started irrational arguments. I called her names. I became irresponsible and shifted all the parental burden to her. I did that. I did so much about which I felt deep shame when I sobered up.

But Sheri was ashamed, too.

She was ashamed that she missed the red flags as my drinking progressed. She was ashamed that she tolerated so much emotionally abusive behavior. She was ashamed that she believed my bullshit when I tried to put rules around my drinking or promised that it would be different the next time. She felt deep shame that she let her anxiety about my drinking and alcoholic behavior impact her mothering of our four kids. She was ashamed that she stayed in our alcoholic marriage.

We are the success story, aren’t we? We made it through alcoholism and through recovery, and we have a thriving marriage and family. We are the example of what it looks like to survive, right?

Imagine the dichotomy for Sheri. Her husband is sober, and we are telling our story for all to hear. She hears from people, full of envy, asking her for the secrets.

And all the while, she is full of shame, carrying the wounds of trauma, and wondering why the hell anyone would want to be in her shoes.

So when Sheri brings up Halloween, or the times I stumbled home late, or the mornings when she found me passed out in front of the TV surrounded by beer cans, or the night I slept in the passenger seat of her car, covered in my own vomit, or the time I jerked the car 180 degrees squealing tires while the kids panicked in the back–when Sheri brings up her trauma, it is not to make me feel shame. It is because she is trying to process her shame.

It is well documented that addiction is a disease of selfishness. I chose alcohol over my family for years. Then, in early sobriety, and out of necessity, I prioritized recovery work over the same people I traumatized. If you are reading this essay, you probably understand the selfishness of alcoholism, and also the selfishness of early sobriety.

But like me, maybe you are open to considering a new aspect of the selfishness of alcoholism and recovery. If you have ever asked your partner to stop bringing up the past, and to accept your, “living amends,” please consider this.

When my wife asked me to be a listener, to help her heal from her trauma and to help her deal with the shame, I selfishly assumed we were talking about my shame. I selfishly assumed that we had to go there again–that I had not yet taken enough of a beating, and we had to talk again about how I was a bad husband and a bad father and a bad man. I thought that she needed me to take more lashes, and she needed me to feel more shame. Selfishness runs deep for me. I assumed her healing process was about my shame.

But it was about her shame. We have to talk about it, over and over, me listening without denials and deflection, and her feeling increasingly safe to express her experiences and receive acknowledgement that she was in an impossible situation, because she is trying to feel better about her navigation of my alcoholism. It isn’t about what I did. It is about how she reacted.

We aren’t reliving my shame. We are releasing my wife from hers.

I learned this critical lesson from our SHOUT Sobriety and Echoes of Recovery think tanks. Are you ready to learn and heal and grow? Please take this brief survey and consider joining us.

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