Growing Past Pain and Chaos

According to author Rita Mae Brown “a controller doesn’t trust his/her ability to live through the pain and chaos of life.” Brown then goes on to say that “there is no life without pain just as there is no art without submitting to chaos.”

Anyone who has ever suffered from codependency knows the fear of facing pain and chaos. And we codependents certainly do a masterful job of trying to control life in regards to emotional pain and daily chaos. My question, however, is this: Do we try to control life to avoid chaos and the pain it causes, or do we try to control life to ensure chaos and the pain it causes?

I think we are often trapped between both the need to avoid and the need to create chaos and pain. After all, many codependents willfully choose to engage in relationships with people who are toxic for them. We invite chaos and pain into our lives based in our need to repeat the childhood patterns of chaos and pain that we are so familiar with. And yet once we have engaged a toxic person, we will do our best to control him/her in order to avoid the inevitable chaos and pain that we subconsciously know he/she is going to bring into our lives.

I never considered myself to be a great seeker of chaos and pain. I could see that pathology in my sister, but not in myself. More and more, however, I do now see it in myself. There are many days when I wish I had no toxic people or problems in my life. I’ve even screamed to God “Can’t I have just one problem-free day? Just one?!!!” And yet, I don’t know if I could stand to have a problem free day. If chaos doesn’t find me, I’ll find it.

Recovery has given me the awareness I need to see that I sometimes work just as hard to ensure chaos and pain as I work to avoid chaos and pain once it’s at my doorstep. It’s thus taught me that I need to let go of the people in my life who are toxic for me and who are certain to cause chaos and pain. It’s also taught me that I need to stop seeking-out these people. Sometimes they simply walk into my life, but I think I more often than not seek them out in a blind attempt to repeat childhood patterns of (sick) normalness. Either way, I definitely need to stop engaging in relationships with people who guarantee my life will be chaotic and painful.

Now, when I meet new people I watch for the red flags: negativity, drama, broken promises, cancellations at the last moment, talking in extremes, blaming others, etc. These are all signs that a person promises the same old chaos I grew-up thriving on. It may be familiar, and that has its benefits, but the harm of it all greatly out-weights any possible benefits.

Life truly does offer its own fair share of chaos and personal pain. We can’t control the chaos and pain that come our way as a matter of fate or chance. It’s true that we have to face them, learn our lessons and grow from them. But we can avoid the chaos and pain that we have long created for ourselves. We can learn to recognize our self-defeating patterns of behavior and change them. And recovery meetings, like CODA and Al-Anon, help us to do so.

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