As Is.

Our culture tends to promote the idea that if we just try with enough concentrated effort, we can change another person to fit our specifications. This may involve trying to change behavior of small importance, such as the way someone washes dishes, or it may involve trying to "fix" a loved one's addiction. That was one of the first lessons I didn't want to learn in Al-Anon - I can't change anyone but myself. I have to accept the other person "as is." I can speak up regarding behavior I find unacceptable, and I can remove myself from an unacceptable situation, other than that, I am powerless - I cannot force the other person to behave differently. In friendship, if we are not willing to accept "as is," we can be in a state of ongoing exasperation, judging harshly for their failure to meet our expectations, or for behaving differently than we would choose to. I've had to let go of friendships when I sadly realised that my friend couldn't allow me to think from a separate viewpoint. When new to program, I had a friend who would make statements, and then finish off with "...right?" To begin with, if I didn't agree, I'd say so. I quickly learned that wasn't worth the hassle, it was easier to sidestep her with a noncommittal remark. After a short while, she caught on to that, and she wouldn't accept those - her insecurities demanded complete agreement. I used to arrive back at home after visiting with her, and feel exhausted. I was in Al-Anon for quite a few years before it dawned upon me why I found this friend's company so tiring - it was because she couldn't allow me to be myself, with my own opinions, personality quirks, and human frailties. When I was with her, I felt evaluated and reproved. That understanding made it possible for me to choose to let the friendship go. I felt a strange mixture of sadness and relief. This guided me to pay closer attention to when I may be doing this same thing to a friend - requiring that they agree with me about whatever it is I'm feeling het up. I also had to seek out the reasons for which I'd allow myself to become involved with a person who couldn't accept me "as is." If I'm in a conversation, and I begin to feel irritated because the other person doesn't agree with me, I now know to stop talking, sit back, and listen carefully. I don't want my own ego to be creating barriers between me and another human being. I want to be accepting.

An Open Mind.

A reader very kindly wrote and suggested I try doing a fear inventory, similar to a resentment inventory as laid out in AA's Big Book, but with my fears listed in the first column.

I found this enormously helpful. (Thankyou, Mitch.)

I will be forever grateful to Al-Anon, for having made me teachable. When I am offered the precious gift of a suggestion about how I might deepen my understanding, of 12-Step, and of myself, I am well-disposed to listen, and to try putting it into practise.

My little blurb on my home page about "feel free to write to me" isn't just lip service - this has been my recurring experience in 12-Step - my Higher Power offering me a solution, through the words of a fellow member.

When I came into program, if you didn't fit my narrow definition of "normal" I'd shut you out. I may have been outwardly courteous, because I'm in that age group - we were taught to be polite to strangers - but inwardly, I'd be writing off anything said to me, because look who was saying it. I wanted to reject you first, before you got a chance to reject me. That felt safer. It was a lonely way to live, and I missed a lot of wisdom I could have learned from. I'm trying to make up for that now.

Reasoning Things Out With Someone Else.

This phrase, from our suggested closing to an Al-Anon meeting, was not an accurate description of how I dealt with life when I was a newcomer to 12-Step. I was not a reasoner when I entered program - that had fallen overboard eons past. I had one of two ways to deal with stress - ranting and raving, or shutting off my anger like the flicking of a switch. (I had a little phrase I used for this, almost like a mantra, repeating, "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter" until...click! I'd go numb.) Since the only emotion I could feel by that point was anger, this worked for me. Let me rephrase that - I suffered from the illusion this worked for me. What it truly did, was make it possible for me to endure for years, a situation from which I'd remove myself after about 5 minutes, were I to be faced with it nowadays.

I didn't like the idea of reasoning things out with someone else; my ego was sorely offended at the mere hint of my own reasoning powers being unreliable. No matter that my own reasoning had led me into a marriage with an alcoholic, who was the male version of the adult who had battered me so severely in my childhood. My ex battered with words rather than his fists, but he kept me in the same state of reduction.


My first sponsor once said, (kindly but with a hint of something else beneath) "If you can stop being offended long enough to see clearly, you might be able to change your behavior, and steer around this obstacle in future."

Stop being offended? How dare she suggest I was offended? Why, I found that thoroughly offensive of her! ...........Oh.

I recall looking at her rather sheepishly, and she looking back at me with such affectionate humour in her gaze, it brought the sting of tears to my eyes.

In this way did I slowly learn to listen to what another member had to offer me. I don't have to substitute their judgement for my own, but if I don't utilise the collected wisdom of my group and of Al-Anon, by reaching out when I am stymied, I shortchange my recovery. I almost guarantee my continued misery.

I was anxious all day yesterday, and finally called a program friend, who offered me ways to see my problem that had escaped me in my own obsessive pondering.

What a gift this program is, so freely and generously given.

The Many Faces Of Fear.

What do I fear, and why do I fear it?

I've lived most of my life in fear - as a child, and as an adult - sitting in the bottom of the closet inside my head, quivering with foreboding, waiting for that door to swing open to reveal....

...I'm not sure what, but I just know it's going to be ugly and painful.

I've wasted great stretches of my life in the bottom of that proverbial closet, too riveted by fear to be able to think with any rationality, vibrating like a tuning fork to the single note of panic. On my particular road in life, the deepest rut, and the one into which I can fall with the slightest of lapses of attention, is - fear. I can slip it on like a worn old coat from a hook beside the door, when I step out to face the world, and returning from the outside, I can step into it in the same way I would some ancient, comfortable, but dispreputable footwear meant for indoor use only - the garments of fear are always there waiting for me to choose them. Before Al-Anon, I wasn't aware that I had a choice as to whether I wore them or not. I believed, without ever having stopped to consider it, that this was my lot in life - to live with a permanent knot of fear chewing at my gut.

I can recall feeling pure fury the first time I heard the phrase "The opposite of fear is faith." Oh, right! And it's just that simple, too, just put down my fear and pick up my faith, sure, no problem. Except that for me, fear was so inextricably entangled and enmeshed in my experience of life as an unsafe and dangerous environment, that I couldn't see how faith could be attainable for anyone with half a brain. My terrors were not imaginings, they were real possibilities. I'd seen what life can do to those who are weak or even inattentive; I wasn't going to relax my vigilance for even a nanosecond.

I sometimes think of my first sponsor as ever-so-gently, but inexorably, pulling open my terror-stricken steely grasp, finger by finger, all the time speaking softly and lovingly of how much better it would be when I let go, and let God. I wanted to believe her, oh how I wanted to believe her! I wanted to live as she described life to me - doing my part, and then turning the rest over to my Higher Power to deal with, going about my day safe in the knowledge that He was looking out for me, but I just couldn't get there.

For me, fear feels like an old friend, one I know intimately, and don't like very much, but almost feel obliged to move over and allow to share my seat, if for no other reason than our long acquaintance. It can be quite the effort to muster my resolution enough to say, "Sorry, no room here!"

Some days the only way I can avoid sharing my seat with fear is to go in, kneel down, and pray to God to make the seat narrower.

Music

All my life, I have had a very strong emotional response to music. There are some classical pieces I can't put on while driving, because I can't hear them without wanting to stop, close my eyes and listen. I get goosebumps all down my arms, and my eyes flood with tears. (This can be embarassing. I once went to a Black Watch concert with a friend when I lived in the city, and had to keep wiping my eyes - with Scottish heritage from both of my birth parents, this doesn't surprise. We have a bagpiper who comes to the field down the road to practise, and each time he does, there will be a few of us, standing a bit apart from each other, silent in the dark, listening reverently.)

This powerful reaction to music, is a gift from God that I cherish. I know that there are people who don't have this - I've had friends for whom music never rises above the level of "nice." They can take it or leave it - go for a month without using their cd player.

I find this amazing. I need music. It feeds my artistic creativity. It allows me to believe in the beauty of the human spirit, when doubts assail me. Music can carry me when I am stumbling and tripping over the reality of what people are capable of doing to each other.

There have been many times in my life when the only way I have been able to feel my Creator, was through music opening the route in to where I live, behind my defenses. Music can blast through the obstacles of disquiet and skepticism.

I have the strongest reaction to classical, but I love all music. I'm impatient with musical snobbery - it feels like another way to create those false categories of "us" and "them."

I love the human voice in music - if I've heard a singer once, I can recognise them ever after, whether or not I'm at all familiar with the music they are singing. To me, singing voices are incredibly distinct from one another. I had this happen just recently - heard a Joan Armatrading song I'd never heard before, but knew it was her with the first word.

There have been periods in my life when the only real pleasure I've had has been music. People will test and disappoint us, but people can be a conduit for our Higher Power through music. I can recall a very dark period of my life, when I was living in a basement apartment in a major city to which I'd recently moved. I knew no-one there, (this was before Al-Anon) and the loneliness was overwhelming. All that kept me going, some long sleepless nights, was music -it was my connection to humanity. That apartment was a recipe for depression - new, but dark and gloomy. I hated it, I hated the city, I hated myself...some nights, I'd lie in bed with my headphones on, feeling so hopeless at the start of a well-loved piece of classical, and by the last chords, I would be calmed, restored, and finally able to sleep.

Music is yet another aspect of life, for which I am humbly grateful.

Anonymity.

MrSponsorPants has an excellent post on this topic today. I've known those who could wear a t-shirt emblazoned "Grateful Member of Al-Anon" and be comfortable, and I've known others who wouldn't acknowledge me if they met me walking my dog out in the woods, with no-one to see our mutual recognition but the occasional chipmunk.

If I run into a member of Al-Anon outside the meeting rooms, I let them set the tone. If they ignore me, I ignore them. I've had people come up to me and throw their arms around me for a hug in the grocery store, and I hug back with the same amount of warmth. I'm comfortable either way, so I allow them to choose.


MrSponsorPants did cause me to wonder if I should be writing prefaces to the posts which appear to describe what was said inside a meeting, to explain that just as he does, I take artistic license to make my point. Wikipedia describes artistic license as:

"..a colloquial term, sometime euphemism, used to denote the distortion or complete ignorance of fact.."

So when it appears that I've come home from a meeting, and am describing what took place in it, I'm not. You wouldn't recognise yourself, because you aren't in here; anyone written about is a compilation of people I've met in the years I've been in Al-Anon, and what they say is a compilation of the things I've heard. I thought I had better make that point clear.

I am of the opinion that anonymity was important when AA and Al-Anon were founded, and it is of equal importance today. It is only with an assurance of complete anonymity that many of us are able to speak up in meetings. I take this very seriously, and I make this point to my sponsees, especially the new ones, most likely to the point of boring them senseless on the topic. I know how distrustful I was when I was new to program, and how I slowly became able to trust, because of the member's adherence to this founding precept.

This may run contrary to the psychobabble phrase "You're only as sick as your secrets." I've had that particular gauntlet hurled at my feet. My reply is that it isn't my secret I'm keeping, it's the secret of the others around the table, and they get to choose whether or not they broach their anonymity, just as I get to choose to broach mine. It's a personal decision, and not mine to make for another.

It isn't up to me to decide that someone else's life would be healthier if they were less secretive. That's between them and their God.

Stress.

Woke up this morning already running full-tilt on the gerbil wheel before I even got my eyes open. I hate those mornings, it's a fight to get myself off the darn thing in time to be able to enjoy my day. I don't get these very often anymore, and when I do, I find I have a tendency to lash myself for them. So, not only do I wake up feeling stressed and grumpy and out-of-sorts, but I then proceed to give myself hell all day for being in that negative head space. What's wrong with me that I can't get my equilibrium back? Why can't I let this go? Yada yada yada, until I feel as tender and irritated as a brand-new sunburn.

(Make sense to you? Doesn't to me either. But it happens.)

My better half was out, and when he arrived home, I spoke to him about it, which slowed the momentum enough that I could step off the gerbil wheel, look around me, and ask if he wanted to take the dogs out into the deep woods for a nice long hike. When I'm in this state, I find the only thing that helps is sustained physical effort - housecleaning works very well, but the house is so spotless right now, from having been made ready for the realtor's tour, and the first viewing, open house, etc, that there is nothing I can do in that area. Gardening is out this time of year, and yoga is too mellow - I needed something that felt like work. Hiking fits the bill.

We had a lovely walk in the fall woods, kicking through a layer of huge leaves, maple keys, pine cones, and other detritus decorating the path. It was quiet, soothing, and I felt the presence of God out there. An hour in the woods with my pack, and I felt calmed and rebalanced. Then we returned home and rearranged the livingroom, for about the fourth time since we listed the house.

I'm hoping I manage to get a better grasp on myself next time this happens. I think I should have an Al-Anon daily reader on my bedside table, and read a few pages when I wake up running on that gerbil wheel of worry and fretfulness. If the dog will allow me to postpone her breakfast long enough to do so.