Out of Control: The Fixer's Curse

How I Stopped Trying to Fix the Past & Started Healing

“Out damn’d spot. Out!”

You heard Lady Macbeth’s cry in one of my recent articles echoing my favorite HS English teacher. I remembered him fondly pacing to all corners of the classroom as we read parts in our various studies. It might have awakened some memories for you too, if you were lucky enough to have a teacher like him. (Story Linked Here if you missed it.)

But why does this quote resonate so much?

You probably know that Lady Macbeth compulsively washed her hands as she spoke these words, trying to clean the imaginary blood from the murder for which she was guilty.

The guilty washing

Of course, I’m not guilty of any such thing, yet in HS, the words stuck with me; and today, I still hear them in my head too often. Maybe you do too?

Do you know any compulsive hand-washers?

The obsessive washing is never logical, is it?

It may not be (or is most certainly not) to remove blood but, instead, maybe to remove invisible germs. Germs we think will harm us if we don’t scrub them off.

As if the dirt is waiting to convict us of not being thorough enough. Not getting ahead of it and eradicating its danger.

Not being in control.

Now, that’s a scary spot to find yourself in—out of control.

Many times, these compulsions come from some trauma in our background, and the irrational method of ridding ourselves of the problem sticks, making it difficult to break the behavior.

In my family, I was a fixer.

If you come from addictions, you know what that role entails.

Always trying to stop the “problem” in its tracks; in my case, alcoholism.

How many times I poured out half of the whiskey and filled the bottle with water, I can not count. As if I could cure the addition this way. Make my parents unable to get drunk on their nightly libations.

Not logical, I know.

What I thought would keep them temperate probably caused them to drink more to achieve the desired effects.

Yet I kept doing it. As if I could fix them. As if I could erase the addiction.

Kept “washing.” Kept “scrubbing.”

“Out damn’d spot.”

But, certainly, their addiction wasn’t mine to control.

I needed to let it go, and I finally did once I stepped outside of it & matured a bit.

I realized I could only control myself. How I reacted to the drinkers.

I wrote about this in Chapter 8 of my nonfiction book, 🔗 My Father’s Daughter.

When I created a protective edict—that my extended family could no longer drink in my home, it caused some anger to be sure. They thought I was trying to control them. That I was judging them.

I planned my script, though, and explained how it was about me alone.

I was finally surrendering and simply protecting my own environment.

I would stop all the washing. All the dumping out of whiskey. All of the behaviors that mixed a toxic drink of control and fixing.

In fact, I wouldn’t say another word about it to them. I would not judge them, especially what they chose to do in their own environments.

A few family members stood in front of me, folding their arms across their chests like sentries. “You can’t do this to us,” they said.

But you know what? My dad jumped on board with me.

He didn’t stop drinking, no. Of course not. That wasn’t the point.

He respected my decision about my home. He purposely came to my house without his typical brown bag to visit with us alcohol-free, just to show the rest of the family that this is how we honor each other.

He made me relax my own compulsions and rest from all that scrubbing of the past.

The raw skin on my hands healed.

{I didn’t change my family. I changed my boundaries — and found peace in the process. We can’t fix others, right? But surrendering your own compulsions will bring healing, and that’s what we want. ❤️ & Share so we can encourage each other. }