How many of us can honestly say that we respond to our daily lives with a mature attitude? I know I struggle sometimes, because the sulky teenager rises within me, and I want to have a hissy fit, it would relieve the stress and my feelings. But I've learned from long experience that hissy fits make everyone feel worse, the one having it, and those around her.
Today my brother sent me an email I found disturbing. He's a professor at a major university, and we write back and forth with great regularity, sometimes two or three times a day. He'd asked about my meeting at the treatment centre, and Al-Anon in general, so I sent him an email containing a light description of what happens at meetings, and in return received a reply insulting the program.
I haven't shared much with him about program, for fear of just exactly the kind of sneering response I got from him today. It's sad that I can't share such a meaningful part of my life with him, but I don't want to give him opportunities to mock Al-Anon.
It's not easy to respond to his email with maturity. I'm feeling that I should have known better than to trust him, I knew he would probably react the way he did, but I think I hoped he would not, that he would be respectful, because he knows I've been in Al-Anon for 28 years, and that I consider it to have changed my life in a myriad of positive ways.
I took a chance, and it didn't turn out well. The mature way to deal with this is just to accept it, and let it go. Learn from it, and keep my program to myself, don't give him a chance to make fun of what I hold dear. Don't, as a friend would say, offer my throat for the tiger to bite, and then complain when he sinks his teeth in. Live and learn.
I sometimes take the risk by revealing my Alanon program to
ReplyDeleteothers who fear intimacy, the response is usually unskillful.
This tiger reference makes sense to me I have been bitten several times. I forget.
My sister is married to someone that is addicted. She did go to Al-Anon once because she was helping her nephew. She thought it was silly and pointed out just how messed up they were and how she knew just what they needed. We all live in denial of what is obvious to everyone else. Attraction not promotion is what I have to go with.
ReplyDeleteI don't mention the program to those outside anymore. As Grace says, it is attraction, not promotion. I know even on the blogs, there are so many who would benefit from Al-Anon but say that it wasn't for them. I wonder what it was about the 12 steps that convinced them of that. Did they give it a chance? Some people go to Al-Anon thinking that it can cure the drinker. I'm just grateful for those who do have the courage to walk in the door and who have the willingness to stay.
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