I was browsing around Target the other day, when I came across the most fabulous book I have seen in a long, long time: How to Change Someone You Love: Four Steps to Help You Help Them. I laughed the kind of laugh that ought to have sent flocks of birds scattering in alarm. Instead just startled me, and I quickly ducked behind the shelves in embarrassment as I grabbed the book.I wavered a little over whether it was more morally wrong to skim the book in the store without buying it (is that the literary equivalent of downloading music without paying?) or to actually buy the book, in essence rewarding the author for his cheesy charlatanism (however entertaining). After a quick look at the first chapter, I decided it would definitely be more wrong to buy the book.
Like many books of the self-help genre, the first few chapters contain don't actually contain any helpful information, but are instead dedicated to telling you (aaaatttt gggrrreeeaaattt lllleeennngggttthhhh) how much helpful information you will find later in this book if you just keep reading.
This is to discourage people like me from doing what I was doing. Most people just break down buy the book after skimming the introductory marketing material. Only the persistent skimmer will stick through those self-promotional first few chapters about how Al-Anon is wrong and you are not powerless and you totally can change people if only you follow the four easy steps laid out in this book, which, trust me, are coming, right after a few more of these chapters about how this book is right on the money. (And speaking of money... But I bravely pressed on, both because I was eager to see where I had gone wrong on the whole fixing-my-husband's-sex-addiction thing and because knew this was totally blog fodder.
It turns out that the right thing to do is to gather together people who love the addict and stage an intervention. You are all, unlike what those suckers in 12 Step tell you, to use lots of "I" language to communicate your message. (Oh, "I" language is a fundamental part of 12 Step? Well, ok, moving on...) The message you are supposed to communicate is that you really love and are concerned about the addict, so much so that you want this person to enter recovery, which includes 12 Step meetings (in spite of the fact that powerlessness is for suckers).
At this point, by the way, your loved one is supposed say yes, you're supposed to set some very non-12 Step boundaries (damn, that's 12 Step too?), your loved one is supposed to enter rehab and — with continued loving detachment (oh, wait, loving detachment is a 12 Step concept too?) — is fixed forever. Ta da! You've effected change! See how awesome you are!
Of course, there's this little, tiny section, buried somewhere deep in the book about what to do in the (really, very highly unlikely event) that the addict refuses to admit to having a problem and says "no" to recovery or storms out or tells you you're crazy. (But really, don't worry too much about that, because addicts almost never do that kind of thing. That's why this section is one 200th of the entire book. The chances are that small. But you know, just in case.) The answer? Keep trying. Eventually, one day, if you keep at it, your addict will enter recovery. Because you are powerful, and you can change people. Don't give up! If it's not working, you're probably just not doing it right and should study the book harder.
It's as simple as that.
Or is it? It's probably not entirely fair for me to mock this book for repackaging powerlessness as powerfulness and selling it. After all, it does trick people into reading about some concepts that they might not otherwise be willing to explore. Maybe it's the codependent version of putting a free beer sign on the door of an AA meeting. It's false advertising, but it still gets them through the door.
This post originally published at The Second Road...
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