FAQS

I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to write with your questions and comments. Now, we can start the Frequently Asked Questions for real.

You've been mentioning MelodyBeattie.net and something about pictures, and memorials, and a grief site. Can you tell us about that, and when it's going up? But we can be
I can't find your books on CD, at least not many of them. Am I not seeing them, or are the stores not carrying them?
Where can we reach you for speaking requests?
How do I ask a question?
(Added May 20, 2009) "I married my husband. He has a teenage daughter. I get along with my stepdaughter--kind of. However, I disagree with many of his parenting techniques. I think he's enabling her, not helping her. She's spoiled, gets whatever she wants, and runs all over him. I can see why: it's his guilt. I went to a therapist. The therapist suggested I tell him how I feel, then work on letting go and living my own life. So that's what I've done. I've been doing it for three weeks now. It has seemed like three years. How much longer do I have to keep leeting go? When will this situation change?"
What can we do so we don't feel so guilty all the time?

You've been mentioning MelodyBeattie.net and something about pictures, and memorials, and a grief site. Can you tell us about that, and when it's going up? But we can be

Good question. I wanted to have it up by now. Of all three sites, I'm most excited about that one. I haven't seen anything like it, except through The Compassionate Friends, and this one will be different than theirs. First, it will be a site dedicated to people going through grief about anything--whether it's losing money, a job, or a beloved person, or even a pet. It's about how hearts really do ache, break, and hurt and how left out we feel while everyone else is going on with their lives. It's the only site that will require registration--and that's not because I'm going to email you or do anything with the information. It's to keep the site a safe, secure place for people to grieve--to tell their story one hundred times if they need to, to integrate what happened into their lives. It's what I wished I would have had when my son died--a place that understands, doesn't judge, and most of all doesn't ask, "Aren't you over that yet?" I'm going to let people put up memorials to someone they loved and lost--and the loss could be from death or any of the many ways relationships end. Although I do require registration, I'll ask people to use anonymous names--at least for themselves--because of how vulnerable we are when we grieve. You'll be able to write your story, tell us what hapened, how you feel--whether it's numb, angry, or nothing--all at the same time. I'm also going to devote space in there to teaching people how to comfort people in grief--how to be a friend. The majority of people don't want to comfort the grieving person; they want to comfort themselves. They feel uncomfortable seeing someone they care about in pain, which is normal. But if we're to comfort someone, we forget about how we feel, and we nurture them. The third focus of that site is going to be to teach us how to surrender to each moment, and nurture and comfort ourselves when we're in pain. I spent so much time resisting what I felt. That always, always, makes things worse--but again, it's a normal reaction. Hazelden Publishing Company has generously agreed to let me post the entire book, "The Grief Club: The Secret To Getting Through All Kinds of Change," for free. You won't be able to download it. I am only allowed, due to copyright restrictions, to post one chapter at a time and not archive the rest. But it's still a tremendously generous gesture on their part. There are so many losses we go through in life. Even good change brings loss. And we live in a world that doesn't want us to grieve. Unresolved grief is the biggest barrier to joy and a open heart that exists. Some of us don't even know what we lost, because it's something we never had--but our hearts do (know what we lost). And they need to be healed. We may never be happy about what we lost. We don't have to be. But we can and will be happy again -- in our own timing, in our own way. Grief changed me tremendously. It was meant to. We're so raw when we grieve; we're like putty in Life and God's hands. We're also vulnerable, and need protection during those times we're not strong enough to protect ourselves. I hope the site can offer some of that too. I will ask for a commitment not to hurt yourself or anyone else to be part of this site. What I'm about to say scares people, but those of you in grief will understand: for years, I just wanted to be dead. I wasn't going to kill myself; I don't condone suicide. But I didn't want to be alive. I wanted to be where Shane was and is. I couldn't tell anyone because it scared people too much. (Shane is my son; he died when he was twelve.) I chose dot net for that site because I like to think of it as a "security net" for people in grief. it will be up as soon as I possibly can get it up. I have a few more things to do on this site (well a lot but a few more that need to be done before I can move on and work on the grief site). When those are done, I'll get to work on it next. It should (famous last words) go much more quickly than this one has. That's what MelodyBeattie.net is. Thank you for asking. I hope that everyone who needs what it has to offer stops by. There won't be any avatars there; it's not the place. I hope that if you know someone in grief you'll be comfortable--when that site goes life and it realistically should be in the next ten days--that you'll feel comfortable recommending it to people you know who are in deep pain. Like this site, I'm not going to wait until it's complete to go live. It will be another work in progress. But people will be able to take advantage of what's there, and look forward to the other pages that are "to come."

I can't find your books on CD, at least not many of them. Am I not seeing them, or are the stores not carrying them?

You're seeing all there is. To the best of my knowledge, "Codependent No More" and "The New Codependency" are the only two that are available in CD. Personally, I love books on CD. Listening to them gives me something productive to do while I'm sitting in traffic. Suggestion: write to the publisher of that particular book and make your request known. I've done the same.

Where can we reach you for speaking requests?

I'm sorry, but I'm not able to "go on the road" speaking anymore. It doesn't leave time for writing (and now tending to this site) and for having a personal life. However, after I get this site finisihed and the other two up, I intend to include "Webinars." You'll be able to watch me from the comfort of your home; I'll be able to talk to you from the comforts of mine.

How do I ask a question?

You can either go to the Contact Us page and send an email to melody@melodybeattie.com or to sharon@melodybeattie.com and your question and answer will appear in the written text section of this page. Or, if you'd like, you can type a question in the above screen, and then wait. Before long, you'll be able to click on or highlight the question, and you'll hear me answer it. Sometimes, I'll get an email and the question will be one I think is either so important or applies to so many of us, I'll extract it from the email and use it in the FAQS. I'll be sure to disguise your identity and guard your anonymity if I do that. Nobody will know it was you--promise--except maybe you. I'll never use your name, so be assured your privacy will be protected. I'm still learning all the different functions of the avatars--in FAQS, using artificial intelligence, and the other things they do. I hope you're having as much fun with the characters as I am. If they start to annoy you, remember you can always click on "stop" and they'll either hush up or disappear. It'd be nice to have that in real life, wouldn't it?

(Added May 20, 2009) "I married my husband. He has a teenage daughter. I get along with my stepdaughter--kind of. However, I disagree with many of his parenting techniques. I think he's enabling her, not helping her. She's spoiled, gets whatever she wants, and runs all over him. I can see why: it's his guilt. I went to a therapist. The therapist suggested I tell him how I feel, then work on letting go and living my own life. So that's what I've done. I've been doing it for three weeks now. It has seemed like three years. How much longer do I have to keep leeting go? When will this situation change?"

This question is such a common reaction to letting go that I used it at my last speaking engagement. The first time I let go was when I discovered the an I married and thought was sober was still drinking alcoholicly and lying about it. I thought I'd have to let go once, with him, and then I'd get what I wanted and that included him sobering up and no more letting go. Wrong! My ex was my teacher about letting go and that incident was an introductory course to a behavior I'd be using more, and at deeper levels, the rest of my life. True letting go isn't something we do in our minds, or do intellectually, or do while we're tapping our foot and waiting for the letting go period to end. It's a combined process of reasoning and emotions. We feel whatever we need to feel; we reprogram our thinking about our relationship to others, and what kind of power--and how much of it--we have in our relationships. On a deeper level, we're learning about surrender and true love. Does that mean we're doormats, that we have to tolerate and put up with whatever comes our way? Absolutely not. When we stop trying to control others, they lose their grip on our lives. We're set free to make the decisions we need to make about doing what we want to do, and making the choices that are right for us. Does letting go mean we need to end a relationship? We can end a relationship and still not let go; we can stay in a relationship and have truly let go of the other person, set him or her free to make the decisions that person feels are right for him or her (whether we feel the decisions are right or not). Letting go is a behavior we get better at the more we practice it--like any other skill we undertake learning. We practice it, we improve. We get better at discerning what we can and cannot change, what's our business and what isn't, and we learn to do it more quickly each time. We integrate the behavior into our life. The downside is, this may take years. I can now do something in half an hour that it might have taken me three to five years to do before. That's because I practiced it over and over--not because I wanted to, but because I found myself in situations where letting go was essential if I wanted to survive and have a life. When we've truly let go, we'll know it. We'll stop asking when we can stop letting go. When won't matter--the letting go part is what's important. Most of the time, we won't even be aware we're letting go. The behavior of detachment will be so deeply programmed that it will just be the way we live our lives, interact in our relationships. Does letting go mean we don't care? No. It means we know what is our business and what isn't, what we can and cannot do, and what we need to do to take care of ourselves. True love means we set the other person and ourselves free to make our own decisions and grow at our own pace while setting and enforcing healthy boundaries. Be patient with yourself. This is the ultimate behavior to learn and master. Just when we think we have it down pat, a newer and more challenging situation will pop into our lives. Accept the challenge. Reember, letting go is not a one step process. It involves feeling each feeling we have, being gut-wrenchingly honest with ourselves, letting go of the desire to manipulate another human being, and truly living our own lives with love and respect for ourselves and others. Now that's a big job. Trust what you're going through. It is a classroom; it's not an accident. Life wants you to learn something. While Life is a gentle teacher, She is also relentless. She won't stop until we learn. Good luck, and I know you can do it. You are stronger, more loving, and wiser than you think. And yes, you can trust yourself. In my most recent book, "The New Codependency," I talk about my new understanding of what a large percentage grief is of what we call codependent behaviors. Letting go is closely related to moving out of resistance and denial, and moving into surrender and acceptance.

What can we do so we don't feel so guilty all the time?

Great question. When you figure it out, write a book and you'll make a million dollars. (I'm not being flip.) Guilt is one of the hardest emotions to work through that exists because 1) it's often not a real feeling--it's a stage of grief and loss; and 2) when it is a legitimate emotion, it's not a feeling like sadness, fear, or rage. It's vague, yet it permeates our cells. Or we can be unconscious of how guilty we feel because we've felt that way for so long. Although we've been raised with the five stages of grief and loss, I believe there are three more: obsession, guilt, and fear. Maybe more. If guilt is a stage of a loss you're grieving, let it be. Acknowledge it. Be aware of it. But don't sit and stare at it. Look someplace else. If the guilt it real, make amends. Ha! Like that helps. Work on actively forgiving ourselves. Every time we look in the mirror, look in our eyes and say, "I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you." Do this every day until some of the guilt disappears. Another technique is to sit down and force ourselves to feel guilty. It's like worrying or obsession: if we try to stop doing it, we can't. But if we turn it around and try to force ourselves to do it, often we can't do that, either. It's like the old Chinese finger cuffs trick. The harder we fight it, the more stuck we get. Understand that guilt isn't always a bad thing, and not just because it keeps us behaving according to our ethics. We all want and need to feel a sense of manageability or control in our lives. When something happens that makes us feel like our lives are out of control, feeling guilty--thinking we caused it--gives us a sense of control. It helps us make sense of things--sometimes terrible events that make no sense at all. Having this sense of manageability helps us move forward in our lives. I'm probably one of the most guilty-feeling persons I know. But I've gotten better at not feeling guilty. It's taken over thirty years, though. healing from learned patterns takes a long time. Be patient with ourselves. Try to stay out of resistance, because that just makes it worse. "Guilt, the gift that keeps on giving," said a friend of mine. We don't have to accept everthing we're offered. If someone tries to hand us guilt, give it back if it isn't ours.