"Backslides"are points of integration
Once again I'm asking you to trust your life.
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Twice over the past two weeks, the theme of “backsliding” has shown up in our Tuesday night community call space. It happens more often than you might think (sometimes it’s near eerie) that a theme emerges over the course of an hour long call, but it’s rare that something shows up twice in such a short period of time so today I’m going to ramble on a bit about how I’ve come to view the idea of “backslides” and offer some thoughts of how we might work with this phenomenon rather than fight against it.
A “backslide” can be a slip into drinking after a period abstention. But it can also be a slip back into unhelpful—or even harmful—patterns of behavior or thought, like when, say, we’ve been working diligently over time to increase and fortify our own self worth, and then we start dating someone and we realize we’re carrying over a bunch of insecurities from past experiences that up until that moment we thought we’d finally fucking vanquished (speaking for a friend here).
(Quick caveat: I don’t mean to minimize backslides, particularly when it comes to drinking again. It would be silly of me to conflate the consequences and potential implications of slipping back into drinking and the experience of returning of a shitty thought pattern, but the range of “backsliding” runs the gamut and ultimately we can work with them the same way no matter the flavor, quality or intensity.)
I invite you to reconsider backslides as points of integration rather than evidence of failure.
A backslide is hard enough, isn’t it? It’s its own punishment and disappointment. And then we make it harder by telling ourselves all kinds of stories about what it means about who we are as a human being. The sooner we accept that “backslides” are part of the path, rather than indicators that we have gone astray, the sooner we can learn from the experience and continue on stronger and smarter than before.
When we are changing, transforming, healing, we expect linearity, an ever upward trajectory, nonstop growth and expansion (hello, internalized capitalism; hello, a rant for another day). But we are not machines. We are dynamic systems that are always growing, adapting and evolving, each with our own rhythm and timing.
If we look to nature, nothing is ever in continual expansion. There are seasons of growth, and seasons of stillness. The same goes for us. We are not meant to be constantly expanding. We begin the work: We shift and change and extend and reach and grow, but only for a period of time. Then there is a recoil, a pulling back to a perceived sense of safety. And it’s inside the recoil that so much information becomes available.
When I backslide—which I do all the time, because I am a human alive and not a fucking robot (same as you)—I recognize it as a call to tend to myself. To be still, and see if I can get underneath the slip. What is it signaling? What do I need to learn, still? How might I trust the backslide, to pay attention and sit in the discomfort until I discern what it’s pointing me to?
Yes, it’s annoying to return to familiar thoughts and behaviors over and over and over. When you take responsibility for your life, it can really suck (and you can see why marketing is so hard for me, ha). We want it to be glamourous. We want clean breaks, stark lines in the sand. This is not how it works. Change is beautiful and exciting, and it’s ugly and messy. Our job is to tend to ourselves through the frustrations and disappointments, and to find our people so we stay close to the truth of what Kristin Neff calls our “common humanity,” —so we don’t have to traverse the backslides alone.
I will never pretend that any of this is pretty. This is a subterranean process, not meant for public consumption. It happens in the dark, and our job is to let it. Because the truth will come for us, maybe in big, impossible to ignore ways that bring us to our knees, but more often than not in that quiet, low-grade sense of something isn’t right here.
If we listen. If we view backslides as signals that something needs tending and attention. If we allow ourselves the space and grace to explore, be with, allow…everything we need is right here.
This is a difficult practice.
Shame is not the way. Nor punishment. Berating ourselves when we falter might seem like a motivating way to keep us from fucking up again, and maybe it does for a time. But if I know anything, hating ourselves into changing ourselves is an unsustainable practice.
If backslides are a given. If they means that nothing is wrong at all. If backsliding is the path, rather than a sign that we fucked up the path, how might we interact with the stumble in a way that fosters curiosity, an expanded self-awareness, and the resilience to not get stuck in shame or failure, but to simply get back on course and continue apace?
From the archives ~ this time last year:
⭐️ Darkness and Illumination // Does everything seem extra hard right now?
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, coach, and recovery advocate based in San Francisco, CA.
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I just sat on my couch doing nothing for 2 hours because that was what I needed after a couple productive weeks and not bringing guilt and shame to the couch with me is allowing me to see all the gems in the recoil: awareness, insight, inspiration, clarity. 🖤