Eaten Up With Anxiety.

My poor little dog has really been through the mill lately - first with the operation to have the lump removed from his leg, and then with a big hot spot on his nether regions. Half an hour after the cone was removed, he'd chewed himself a big raw spot, oozing blood. I was horrified, and he was anxious and distressed.
I got some calming pills, and a skin spray, and that seems to be working.

I got this dog from a pet store, before there was much education about where pet store puppies usually originate - puppy mills. He has always been a bit on the anxious side, and is a high-energy little dog. I think 3 weeks of not being able to express that energy in walks, or on the treadmill, because he had to be kept quiet to allow the rather large incision in his leg to heal properly, also played a part in the hot spot.

We're going for our usual Sunday afternoon walk with a program friend in a couple of hours, and I'm looking forward to it. She's great company, and we've been helpful to each other; we offer an alternative point of view, give encouragement, and we make each other laugh. That's a gift. I've learned more good life lessons through having them presented with humour, than any other way.

Last night I was looking at my little dog, and thinking about the destructive effect of stress and anxiety upon all of us, human and animal alike. I've had times in my life where I too, have been consumed with anxiety, with no ability to get out of that state. I was too proud to admit to what I was feeling, and too stubborn to be willing to try living my life differently. I had to be brought to my knees by a drinking alcoholic before I would accept help.

That was the first time. Since that capitulation to reality, I've had others. I've been having one in the last while which has been difficult to choke down, and resistance has been rising and falling with my moods. Someone joked at a meeting recently about "the three D's - Denial, Delusion, Defensive."

Life is not always as I would wish it to be. I must let go of my denial, and face facts squarely, without flinching, without complaint, without fear. It is what it is.
I must give up my delusions about having any control in so many areas of my life. I'm not the one in charge - my Higher Power is.
I must let go of my defensiveness, and sit quietly, that I may be in a teachable frame of mind. I need to be willing to let it all go.

I pray for the continued ability to practise this.

If You Don't Swim, You'll Just Float.

Someone asked if I could please elaborate upon my remark yesterday that I seem to be hearing a lot lately from people who don't work the program, and say they "don't get much out of it."

Nobody would go out into their yard, start to dig a bit, clear perhaps a foot or two of sod down to the bare soil, then put down their tools, sit down in despair, and say they don't get anything from gardening. We can all see how silly that would be.
Yet this is what happens with 12-Step. People clear a bit of grass, get down to some dirt, then sit down, give up, and say they "don't get much out of Al-Anon." (Or AA, or any other program.) Or they come into 12-Step from a place of desperation, and do work the program at first, until they start to feel better, and that's where they stop. And rest. That rest can go on for years, until the parts are rusted together, and it takes monumental effort to unseize the brain.

I had one sponsee ask why she was so stuck, when another person who'd come to Al-Anon a month or so after she had, and whom she wasn't aware I sponsored, was moving in leaps and bounds? "Why?" she wailed to me, "I just don't get it!"

Why? Because she had never surrendered, never admitted her powerlessness or insanity - she was determined to be a victim, and any suggestion that she wasn't, or that she work to change herself, met with a fierce resentful resistance: "Why should I? It's not fair!"

Damn right it isn't. Let's move on, shall we?

I need to do regular digging and weeding, or my plot of self can quickly become choked with the buttercup of  resentment strangling my newer, less-established plantings. I need to be going out every day and doing an inventory, or nature will take over - untended gardens revert to the wild.  I don't want to have to start all over from the beginning.

I'm going out to the garden, are you coming? No, you're going to watch from here? Ok, but don't complain when a month from now, you can't tell you'd ever started to dig.

Forgive the analogy, but that's how it is - you don't get the result without the effort. Stop doing the work, or never begin, and you won't get anything but more of what you have now - packets of seeds, and a vague intention.

One place we lived, we had a neighbour who used to walk past our front garden, and stop to sigh, "I wish my garden looked like this." Finally, my husband could bear it no longer, and replied with a smile, "It could, if you put in the time and exertion that my wife does."

Question

"A friend, sober for 15 years, very active in AA, has suddenly decided that he's "not getting anything out of it anymore," and has stopped going to meetings. I'm really worried that he's going to drink again, and throw away all that he's got going for him. How can I help him?"
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Anyone who's been around 12-Step programs, and alcoholics, for any length of time, will have heard about something like this, many times over. Perhaps the alcoholic has reached a point of wanting to prove to themselves that they can "handle it alone," even though all of their personal experience has proven time and again that they cannot. The Big Book of AA speaks to this, in the passages describing the alcoholic's inability to remember the terrible results of their drinking.

Or maybe they've been in a relationship with someone who frequents the same groups; when the romance ends, not wanting to have to see the person, they stop going to the meetings.

I've seen alcoholics who have had sobriety and a good life, drink again for no reason that anyone, including themselves once they sober up, can readily explain. It happens, and it's out of our hands.

You mentioned in your email, that he'd told you his own sponsees were telling him they thought he was doing the wrong thing, and it only had the effect of making him more stubborn in his defense of his choice. An alcoholic friend of mine, once commented ruefully that she was at her most intransigent, when she was fully aware that she was heading for disaster.

It can be agonising to watch someone making what may seem to us, to be insane choices, and say nothing. When we care for another human being, we want to help. But when we start trying to steer, or control, an alcoholic, we are setting ourselves up for failure, resentment and anger.

We all have to learn our own lessons, in our own time.

Some of us can forget those lessons when life has been good for a long while, and the only way to reinforce them, is to "go back out" and relearn them.  The terrifying truth about addiction, is the very real possibility that the person may not make it back to sobriety. People die when they go back out.

So we listen to the rationalisations, and watch the behavior choices, and we cringe in fear and trembling, for the denial demonstrated, and the willingness to lose all the ground so painfully gained. I wish I had something helpful to offer, but I really don't. Look after yourself, and try to detach from your friend's choices - you have no control over what he decides to do.

Halo-Polishing.

One aspect of being involved with a charming alcoholic with an excellent social facade, is that I have people telling me all the time how wonderful they are. For most of the marriage, rather than say anything to the contrary, and regardless of how poorly they may have been treating me at the time, in the privacy of our home, I would smile weakly and agree.

I heard someone at an Al-Anon meeting recently, refer to this behavior as "polishing the halo" of a passive aggressive spouse. This person's spouse isn't their qualifying alcoholic, a parent is, but their spouse has some serious problems, none of which are ever displayed in their public persona. And this Al-Anon member has, as I did for so many years, gone along with the public facade, and agreed when people talk to her about how lucky she is to be married to such a great guy! He's so laidback, and so mellow!

When alcoholics have such a great public face, we spouses can feel that we have no-one at all who can understand, believe or relate, to the truth of the matter.

We polish the halo from shame, pride, embarassment, unwillingness to indulge in conflict or argument, many reasons. For me, it's been a lot about pride, and shame.

I've decided I'm not going to do this anymore. Next time anyone suggests that I'm married to the best of all possible spouses, I'm going to politely comment that as a human being, they have their own faults and frailties, just as we all do.

And if, (as has often happened if I've not responded with immediate eagerness to a comment of that sort praising them,) the speaker keeps nudging me with words, wanting me to agree that my spouse is just the most perfectly amazingly wonderful person, I'm going to reply sweetly that actually, the shoe is on the other foot; they're lucky to have me.

Other People's Anger, con't.

Those who have never been exposed to domestic abuse of any kind, can have great difficulty in understanding the dynamic involved.

Most of us don't start out with our partners shrieking ragefully at us, we start out with a small trampling of our boundaries, perhaps only an apparently offhand hurtful commet, which we excuse and minimise. This gives the abuser the information that they can "get away" with at least that much. The next time, it's a little bit worse. Again, we excuse, minimise, forgive, deny. Gradually, in this way, does the cycle progress, with the abusive behavior slowly gaining ground, and the victim slowly being backed away from an position of equality with the spouse.

Denial plays a big part in this. It's our own denial which makes us turn our faces away from the truth, and refuse to gaze fully upon the fact that we are being treated cruelly, with a complete lack of respect.

Also, in between the explosions of verbal, emotional and/or physical abuse, is the "honeymoon phase."

That's the time in which the abuser sets out to smooth away our understanding of the reality, to charm and lull us into believing that which we want so desperately to believe - he will never ever do this again, things are going to be different from now on, that was the last time, he's come to his senses, he truly understands now, he sees the light, he doesn't know what came over him, he is under stress from the business, but that is going to change, he adores us, he is yada yada yada.

We are like fish, and he is slowly, gently, lovingly, carefully, reeling us in.

When we love, we want to believe.
When we love, we want to be generous and forgiving.
We want to give another chance.
We want to offer room to move and grow.
We acquiesce in our own destruction.

At some point we reach our internal Rubicon, cross it, and there is no way back to what was. The abuser often senses this, and will redouble his entreaties to be given just one more chance, don't we love him? Don't we care about our families? How can we just throw away all these years together?

When we have made a decision, we will not stick to it, unless we accept ahead of time that we are going to be bombarded with efforts to change our mind, and decide that nothing the abuser says will make us decide otherwise.

Sometimes the only way to stop this, is to remove ourselves from the room, or our home - take the dog for a walk, take the kids out, go out ourselves.

Sometimes we need to explain to our partner that if he is willing to seek help to stop the abuse, we will entertain the possibility of us living together again in future, but that for now, we are going to be living separately. That's what I did - I left the door slightly open. Once I was out, and living alone, the relief and feeling of safety from those verbal attacks was so great that I knew I would never be willing to live with him again, regardless of how he changed, and I sought a permanent end to the marriage.

The "honeymoon phase" is a classic sign of abuse, and I've heard counsellors speak of how some women couldn't classify their marriages as abusive by what was said during the explosion, but recognised the honeymoon phase immediately when it was explained to them. They'd heard the promises, seen the demonstrations of loving sincerity, dismantled their boundaries in that phase, and found themselves quickly back in the cycle again.

With no lasting consquences, the abuser will not change.

The victim of the abuse can affect change in an abusive relationship, and we do that, when we decide that we have had enough.

Until that time, we will go around endlessly on that downward spiral of tension, explosion, honeymoon/tension, explosion, honeymoon.

I had to reach a place where I could remember the abusive phase with utter clarity, and superimpose his raging face, upon the soft loving face turned towards me during the honeymoon phase. I had to choose to remember, rather than choose to forget.

My choice.

Choosing Healthy Friendships.

When it comes to my own relationships, I'm a "slow learner." (I love that phrase, first heard in a meeting.)

I've been having a strong sense of deja vu lately, with one friend, and haven't been able to figure out why that is. Yesterday, while out walking the dogs, I was wandering along the shores of a lake, admiring the brilliant plumage of the male ducks, and it hit me with a jolt - I know where this is headed, because I've been here before.

I've been on the receiving end of precisely this same kind of behavior, and I decided at the time that it was unacceptable to me, and I was not going to tolerate it in future. I can recall talking to my spouse about it, saying I had found it very stressful to deal with, and it was not my idea of a good friendship. Their reply? "You'll know better next time, because you'll recognise it."

Well, it took me quite some time to get there, but I did recognise it finally, and have ended the friendship. Ouch. Very difficult to do that, because I didn't want to hurt this individual, but I also do not want those behaviors in my life anymore.

What was causing the sense of deja vu with this person, was the strong feeling I kept getting, that they couldn't see me, they could only see themselves as reflected back to them from me. This is a disconcerting experience - it goes something like this:

Me: When you did that, I felt this.

Them: Yes, I was feeling this and that and this.

Me: I hear you, and understand you, but what I'm trying to point out to you, is what I was feeling, when you behaved that way.

Them: I didn't think about you feeling anything, really, I was feeling this and this and that, and I think it's because of this in the past, and that in my family of origin and...

Me: Right, I get that, but my point is that when you said/did whatever it was, I didn't like it. You were overstepping my boundaries.

Them: You know, I wonder if I feel what I feel, because of what happened to me when I was in my first marriage, because I've noticed that...

Me: Do you think that the behaviors you choose in a relationship affect the other person?

Them: (bewildered) Other person, what other person?

Me: The other person in the relationship with you.

Them: There's another person?

I exaggerate, but those of you who've been in a friendship or any kind of a relationship with someone like this, will recognise what I'm talking about instantly - it's like we don't truly exist for someone like this - we're vague shadowy figures in the mist, holding up a mirror in which they can see themselves.
We could be a cardboard cutout, with a tape recorder behind it, and that would work, too.

There's a bland disregard for anything that isn't directly related to them and their wants/needs/demands/expectations. They can behave outrageously, and if we protest, we'll be dismissed with a comment about "Aren't you over that yet? Let's talk about something interesting - ME!

My last experience with this, was someone in program, who if pushed, could parrot a program sentiment, and then go right back to talking about herself. It was eerie.

What I'm learning in Al-Anon, is that I don't have to befriend anyone who won't respect me. It's not up to me to show them the error of their ways, to love them into behaving differently, or any of those misguided things I used to think before program.

My responsibility is to myself first. I need to do whatever it takes to keep me healthy, and in active recovery. When I begin to get that uneasy feeling, I need to pay attention - to listen carefully to the voice of experience whispering into my ear: "Um, can I just point something out here?"

The last couple of years have been rocky for me in some ways. I'm having to deal with aspects of my personality hitherto hidden, (although most likely, only to me.) How I accept unacceptable behavior from other people - how I give loyalty to those who do not give any back, and why do I do this?

It can be confusing and tiring, wading through the knee-deep detritus of my co-dependent thinking, but I know that if I make the effort to keep slogging forward, I'll get there eventually.

What Does A Spiritual Awakening Look Like, Anyway?

Almost two years ago, a sponsee and I were out walking the dogs and talking, and I asked a question regarding a choice she was making. I could see her recoil, and then the wall came slamming down. After that day, she was courteous at meetings, but she cut me loose as her sponsor.

I really wrestled with this, swinging back and forth between lashing myself for having phrased it the way I had, and being able to let go of it. I finally achieved an uneasy peace, realising that I could have phrased my question differently, so as not to offend her, and still stimulated her into thinking about why she was making that particular choice. From a sponsor point of view, it was obvious that one of her character defects was driving it; my mistake was in not realising how my question would sound. I was too direct, and  my question was shaming. I had been, in my clumsy way, oblivious to her feelings.

Recently, this sponsee has begun to contact me again, and we have been discussing this mistake of mine, and her response to it. I have found it freeing to be able to be completely honest about where I was when I asked the question, what was going through my mind at the time, the aftermath, etc.

I was thinking about it today, and realised just how far I've come in Al-Anon. This is how I "practise these principles in all our affairs."
I'm willing to admit to my character defects, and discuss them openly and honestly, even when they are making me cringe and writhe.  I'm willing to sit quietly and hear how I have caused another person pain through my actions, and when they finish speaking, make amends. No justifying, no rationalising my behavior, just listen, and make an amend.

My spiritual awakening has been, in part, to realise that I am going to continue to make a mess of things in my dealings with other people - I am a flawed human being.

If I don't make the necessary amends for the mistakes I continue to make, I will begin again to feel ashamed. If I lash myself rather than work through whatever it may be, using my program tools, I will start to backslide.

If I cannot admit to, ask forgiveness for, (forgive myself for) my character defects, I will once again be lost inside a misery of my own making. I may be easier to deal with now, than I was before Al-Anon, but my character defects are going to keep tripping me up until I take my last breath. That's a given.

Whether or not I work to sustain this different, more honest, more peaceful way of life, is up to me. I am faced with the choice a hundred times a day - I pray to continue to make the right one - to continue to practise these principles in all my affairs.

Coded Communications.

I'm reading a book about codemaking and breaking during WW2. I've reached a point in the book ,where the author is convinced that the Dutch agents have been taken and turned, because they have stopped making mistakes in their Morse code transmissions. He finds this impossible to accept - it isn't "normal."

The agents have to quickly code, and even more quickly transmit their messages while exhausted, stressed, and terrified that at any moment they may be discovered by the Germans, with the inevitable result. It isn't remotely realistic that they'd make not one mistake in coding or sending, under those circumstances. (The author can predict the type of mistakes each agent is likely to make, based upon the ones they made in training.)
His superiors don't want to hear it. They're very proud of their Dutch agents, things are ticking along very smoothly, and they won't even consider the possibility that the Germans are in control.

It's an interesting book, both for the story, and for the way it gets me thinking repeatedly about the incredible power of denial.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I've been familiar with that little gem since I was a kid, but before program, only had a vague idea of what it meant.  I'll never forget sitting in the lunchroom, at a place I worked eons ago, listening, for the zillionth time, to the lady from the front office complaining about her husband's drinking -  how it was affecting her life, and the life of her kids. Someone suggested she get counselling for herself, and her two little boys, to help them cope. She replied, "Oh, they don't know their dad drinks." When asked if he only drank after they were in bed, she laughed shortly, and replied, "No; all day, every day."
"How old are your boys?"
"Seven and nine."
"Well then, they know he drinks."
"No, no, they don't know that."

Various people tried to get through to her that this was highly unlikely, with stories of their own alcoholic parents, and how they'd known from a very young age, that something was seriously wrong. She was adamant - the boys didn't know.

At the time this discussion took place, I judged her for her denial. Today, I feel compassion for her awful struggle and unhappiness. When I recall that conversation, I wonder how her boys are doing, all these years later. I realise how many times I must have had the identical sort of conversation, with friends trying to get through to me, and me adamant about whatever it was.

I've learned in Al-Anon, that I cannot puncture someone else's denial. I've learned to respect that denial is a coping mechanism we use when the truth is just too painful to face squarely. I've used it many times myself, knowingly, and unknowingly, and will again, I have no doubt.

My part is to work my program honestly, so that I may be granted the ability to recognise and admit to my own frailties. I pray for sufficient open-mindedness,  to hear the help others may offer to me, whether deftly, or clumsily. I pray to be granted the ability to see behind the message to the person transmitting it, and not to get  lost in the "coding mistakes."

Stop Poking At Me, Already!

One foundation of the Al-Anon program, which seemed impossible when I started, yet over time, has become a deeply ingrained habit, is making amends.

I've come to believe that the Steps are written as they are, in an effort to overcome the ferocious desire to justify ourselves, present in so many of us. I know I can always find a knee-jerk reaction as to why I was perfectly in the right to say/think/do whatever it was. That kind of thinking keeps me separate from others. It creates distance, and walls of rigidity.

Getting over the first monstrous hurdle of "Made direct amends to all persons we had harmed, except when to do so would injure them or others." allowed me to realise that it wasn't so bad to admit I was in the wrong; on the contrary, it was hugely freeing. I woke up the day after each early amend, and realised  - that was one less stinking, putrid hunk of ancient guilt to lug around.

I carried so much guilt with me; it stabbed and slashed at me in quiet moments: kept me from sleep: poisoned my self-image. Even so, when first offered the chance to relieve it through the making of amends, I was doubtful. And terrified. What if someone rejected an amend? My sponsor worked me through the process of "Well, what's the absolute worst that could happen?" each step of the way, until I came to the realisation that even if that was the outcome in one or more cases, I'd survive.

Making amends clears the slate upon which we write our relationships with others. It's a powerful statement of shared humanity. I've made amends I didn't want to make, to people I didn't much like, and achieved the  same result as with the amends I was willing to make, to those I love. It's the process that matters. The humility.

I was joking to a friend recently, that now instead of being poked and prodded by guilt, it's my conscience sticking a finger into my side and saying, "Um, excuse me, can we talk?"  I've had times where I've tried to pretend I didn't hear it, but that just increases the force of the fingerpokes, until my ribs hurt and I'm completely exasperated, and whirl around to say, "All right! I hear you! I'll make the cursed amend!"

I'm not going to pretend I'm always melting with the force of my willingness, right from the start. I have times when I feel like a recalcitrant child, being pushed forward by my conscience, with mulish expression upon my face. Somehow, someway, most likely through the grace of my Higher Power, when I reach the point of speaking my amend, I will find that I am willing. I may say whatever I have to say stiffly, and with much mumbling and fumbling, but I will say it, and for that, I am truly grateful.

Resentment Isn't The Best Operating Principle.

Once upon a time, many years ago, in another city and far, far away, I had a friend in program, who used to make pithy little comments which always seemed to land a direct hit. One day I was blathering away about my first husband, and his latest drunken rampage, and my feelings about it, him, and our marriage, and my friend broke in to remark, "Yeah, well, resentment isn't the best operating principle."

I stopped to clarify: "You mean him."

She shook her head. "I mean you."

I was puzzled. "I'm not resentful."

Her eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared into her hair, and she was, for the first time since I'd known her, struck dumb. She looked at me, with her head tilted backwards slightly, as if to get a better view through her reading glasses, which always slid to the end of her nose and perched there, precariously. She had a look on her face I couldn't read, and just sat there gazing at me, until I began to feel like a bug on a pin. I rather nervously reiterated my statement, "I'm not resentful."

My friend sighed heavily, and said, "It's a good thing you found Al-Anon, honey."

I was still very new to Al-Anon, and my defenses were powerful; her remark was quickly shoved to the back of my mind and forgotten. A few years later, the place I worked was bought out by a corporation, and we began to have to attend endless meetings.  Staff would sit, slowly becoming more and more stupefied with boredom, while someone in management from back east would give lectures on various things which seemed to have zero relation to anything we'd ever been doing in our workplace.

I was in one of those meetings one morning, on a hot and sticky sort of day, and I was as close to sleep as one can get with eyes open, when the the speaker said, "Blah blah blah is our only operating principle."

A co-worker leaned over and muttered into my ear, "The acquisition of money is our only operating principle."
Poor speaker, he'd given us a phrase which lent itself perfectly to sarcasm. When we finally escaped the meeting, for the rest of the day, and part of the next, staff would meet in the halls, or walk into the lunchroom, and give each other laughing fits with variations upon his pronouncement; everything from, "The tormenting of staff with long boring meetings..." to "Soulless acquisition and destruction of previously sucessful businesses..." always ending triumphantly, and often in unison with anyone else in earshot, "...is our only operating principle."

We were all very young.

I was out walking the dog that first evening, thinking about some of the funnier comments made that day, and suddenly remembered the conversation with my friend a few years earlier. I went to my meeting a few days later, and the topic was...."Resentment." This was one of my first introductions to the synchronicity of meeting topics to our states of mind, and it was a little eerie.

I tried honestly to decide if what my friend had said about my "operating principle" was true - was I resentful? (From this vantage point, I'm amazed at my ability to deny; I seethed with resentment like a boiling kettle.)

Accepting that piece of truth about my character was not easy; it meant I had to forego my victimhood, and allow for the fact that it wasn't the alcoholic who made my life a misery, I did that perfectly well all by myself.

Through Al-Anon, and working the Twelve Steps, I am learning to be more honest about what's happening inside my head. Before I can change anything, I must admit to it. What Al-Anon has given to me, is a safe place in which to do this. Getting this stuff out of the cave into the daylight, makes it possible for me to see that I am only human. You aren't a monster, and neither am I. We are both just people trying to make it in a sometimes painful and difficult world. Giving up blaming of others frees me to look towards the one small area of life I can change - my own patch.

Through program, and the help of my friends in program, and my Higher Power, I can work to make sure that resentment isn't, (all together now) my only operating principle.

Righteous Indignation.

I just read MrSponsorPants post for today, then sat for a moment,  lost in recollection of my own past coping mechanisms.
I was an exceptionally angry woman, when I began attending Al-Anon meetings. I'd had a rough time of it as a kid; I'd been abused in every way possible.  I grew into an adult brimming with resentment, and seething with rage. I was furious from the time I awoke until I drifted off to sleep at night, and only the subject of my fury changed; my rage was constant, and it was set on "high."

I was lonely, having been taught from a toddler that people couldn't be trusted. I desired intimacy, and feared it. I couldn't handle letting anyone get too close to me, terrified that they would discern the deeply flawed individual I perceived myself to be, and reject me. I was a strange mixture of no boundaries in some areas, and unassailable battlements in others.

I'll never forget a conversation with my first sponsor. We were in her kitchen, preparing a meal, and talking. (From this vantage point, I'm sure it was more that I was talking, and she was attempting to get a word in edgewise, no easy task when I was at full throttle) I was ranting on about how another person had let me down, and my feelings about this, and when I paused to draw breath, she interjected quickly, "Yes, well, righteous indignation is delicious, but it's not very useful as a way of dealing with the issue..."

I stopped short. I was offended that she would label my feelings as righteous indignation. I was offended that she would suggest that I had anything to do with it, the other person was wrong, couldn't she see that? (Years later, we had a laughing fit over the look on my face, and how she had, with that one gentle comment, completely ruined my enjoyment of righteous indignation for all time. It was just ... never the same afterwards.)

I have a choice. I can choose to work to make my time on earth worthwhile through my own efforts, or I can expect/demand that other people fufill my wants and needs, and pronounce them lacking when they fall short. (I seem to be harping on a theme this week.)

My first sponsor taught me that perspective is everything. Where is my focus? Outside myself, narrowed in to the details of the other person's alleged crimes and misdemeanors? What can I hope to achieve by that? I can't change other people; all I ever managed to do was to make two of us miserable, instead of just me.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen in a couple of years.  He was furious that his son had asked him not to come over for a while, didn't he have the right to see his grandchildren? Gentle exploration of what had taken place before that request, elicited the information that this guy had become angry about something his son had said to him, and had hurled an object across the room. Narrowly missing one grandchild.

He had no concept of how his own behavior had precipitated the request to stay away - he was too busy feeling righteously indignant about being denied access to his beloved grandchildren.

I asked him, "Does your son have the right to his feelings?"
He replied, "Of course he does!" (frowning at me, for the ridiculousness of the question.)
I asked, "How did you feel when your father became angry and threw things around?"
He looked at me, not wanting to reply - he can't lie in response to that sort of direct question.
Finally, grudgingly, "I hated it. I was afraid of him."
I asked, "Is it possible that your son is feeling that same way about you and your anger?"
Long pause. Really long pause. Then, "Absolutely."
He seemed deflated. I suggested he call his son, make an amend, and take it from there.

After saying goodbye to this gentleman, I couldn't help but relate to the way he had conveniently erased his own unacceptable behavior from his short-term memory, and was only concentrating upon the way he felt his son had wronged him - asking him to stay away. Before Al-Anon, this is just how I operated. It was what kept me from achieving what I wanted most: intimacy with others - close loving friendships, and a healthy marriage.

"We are quick enough at perceiving and weighing what we suffer from others, but we mind not what others suffer from us."

         Thomas A'Kempis

More on "Normal."

One of the biggest reasons we are moving, is the climate here - too much rain, not enough sun. I find it depressing.

Some folks who've lived here all their lives, don't think this town gets any less sun than anyplace else - this is staggering, as the federal website for weather states this place is the second rainiest of 100 cities studied over a period of 30 years!

When discussing this with my spouse, they made the point that if you haven't lived anywhere else, this is normal weather.

That got me thinking about the ways in which we learn to tolerate conditions, and "normalise" them. Since we decided to move, we've had people ask us in all seriousness what exactly is it that we dislike about the climate? (After being asked that for the twentieth time, my souse replied pleasantly, "Oh, you know: the spring, the summer, the fall, the winter.") We've seen people take offense at the suggestion that this climate leaves something to be desired: the same people who, on another day, will bend one's ear with their own weather complaints.

I've been seeing a lot of parallels with my own thinking in times past - refusal to accept reality, in favour of turning my face away, and telling myself it isn't that bad, this is just the way life is.

The weather here is that bad. The town sits in a valley, and gets socked in with cloud cover, year round. One can drive up and over the pass, and it will be sunny on the other side of the mountain. I've been entertaining myself looking at the highway cameras for the city we're moving to, and it will be beaming sunshine over there, while we sit under a cloud of grey. I can't wait to move.

Before we'd made the decision to relocate, I had pretty much resigned myself to not complaining, trying to be positive. Now that the decision is made, and I can see an end to living here, I'm no longer repressing my feelings about the climate in this town. I'm realising just how negatively it has affected me.

This has been a pattern for me all my life - tolerate the intolerable while stuffing my true feelings about it, until such time as I decide to stop - then the reality of it pours over me, and I wonder how on earth I stood it for so long? One way, was to substitute other people's judgment for my own. I permitted others to tell me that it wasn't so bad, and tried to force myself to believe it. After all, we'd bought a house here, we had to stay, right?

I'd just learn to live with it, that's all, other people did. Until a night about two months ago, when we were having a really intimate discussion, and the truth of my feelings about living here burst out, and surprised us both. We discussed it over a week or so, and then decided to call the realtor, put the house on the market, sell up, and move.

Yesterday, we accepted an offer on the house, subject to a home inspection. Today, the sun is shining, like a promise. My little dogs were lying in patches of sun on the kitchen floor, while I stood gazing out the window, overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude.

Justification.

It seems to be human nature to want to justify our own behavior with excuses, while excoriating another person for theirs. We make judgements about how someone should act, dress, think, pray, or even work the program, and then set them at a distance from ourselves with this tidy little labelling that drops them into a category of "not like me."

We assure ourselves and others that we'd never do that, would you?

It requires considerable, sustained effort to see each person we run into in our daily round, as a child of God. Most of us have to work very hard to shut off that internal measuring system which is continually judging other people for what we perceive to be flaws, obvious or assumed. If we don't learn to shut it down, or at least reduce the volume, we keep our world small, controlled, and stagnant.

I have wrestled with this aspect of my personality since I was new to program, and even though I've come a long way from the person I was way back when, it still comes up for me. I will be congratulating myself for my tolerance, not aware that over here, in the shadows, I'm doing the same thing again - setting myself up as the authority on how another person should behave, and if they don't, dismissing them.

Some folks rub us the wrong way - those most like sandpaper to my psyche, are those who share my own character defects. Seeing them arrayed in full colour, like a fall banquet, means I cannot pretend that they are not just as annoying and irritating as the character defects I don't happen to own.

I have a choice in this instance - I can squirm and writhe with discomfort, push that knowledge away with heated denials, or I can sigh and accept this as a lovely moment of clarity, delivered by my Higher Power, for my sure and certain benefit.

"The Wisdom To Know The Difference."

Most Al-Anon meetings I've attended, close with the first stanza of the Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."

That last line takes quite a bit of mastering. If I don't have clarity about what is out of my control, I can expend enormous energy, (and develop a nasty little resentment) "tilting at windmills."

I shudder to recall the hours I've spent, plotting to change my ex-husband's alcoholic behavior, through various forms of manipulation and coercion. Here I am, all these years on, and as far as I am aware, he's still drinking. It's a disease. If the alcoholic themselves cannot change their own behavior, am I not arrogant in the extreme to imagine it within my powers? Can I change the course of a disease by browbeating the sufferer, blasting him or her with contemptuous assaults, and dissertations upon the low nature of his character?

Desperation can turn many of us into unpleasant company. We become "irritable and unreasonable without knowing it."

The Serenity Prayer offers us a shorthand method of reminding ourselves - we have limits, and we have choices. When we refuse to admit to our limits, we feel trapped and hopeless. It's an interesting paradox: accepting our limitations, opens before us, a vista of heretofore unseen possibilities. Our lives expand - from cramped obsession with the alcoholic, to satisfying abundance and variety - if only we are willing to accept.


Why do we ask God to grant us the wisdom to know the difference between our limits and our possibilities? I believe it's because most of us come into 12-step with our lives so compressed and compacted and minimised, we are unable to see the larger picture. We need help to remove our blinders of denial. We've worn them for so long, we're terrified at the prospect of removing them - what horror will be revealed?

We need our Higher Power to grant us wisdom, so that we may remove those blinders, and looking around us, blinking a bit at the brightness of the sunshine, see that which was always there, in our peripheral vision, hidden by our denial.

When I am granted the wisdom to know the difference, I do not waste my energy on a hopeless endeavor doomed to failure - I don't try to change another person. I turn my attention and my focus to my own character, and work upon that. It's always in need of maintenance - some major, some minor, but always sufficient to keep me well-occupied.

"I Didn't Like It When You..." - Setting Boundaries.

My ideas regarding just what this involves, have changed considerably, over the time I've been working 12-step. I started out seeing it as something I needed to do, in order to stop other people from taking advantage of me. I've slowly come to believe that I need to do it for that reason, yes, but I also need to be on top of this, in order to avoid my own bad habits of getting myself into emotional confusions.

As a co-dependent, my own triggers have caused me endless misery, and I would struggle and suffer and fume and fret, all the while thinking this was the fault of the other person. 12-step teaches me that I'm responsible for my own mental and emotional health, and if I don't want to get wet, I need to come in out of the rain. Standing outside in a bucketing downpour and railing at the clouds for soaking me, is a senseless waste of my time.

I've done the emotional equivalent a few too many times in my life. My desire to fix/help/solve/find a solution has caused me grief I needn't have felt, had I only been aware of the pre-storm smell of ozone. When I see the clouds slowly gathering and darkening, that is the time to set a boundary, excuse myself politely, and find shelter.

As a result of Al-Anon, I'm more likely to realise, at an earlier stage of a friendship, that this isn't healthy for me. I'm going through this right now, and I'm trying to stay open to it, instead of doing what I've chosen to do so many times in the past: deny the reality, make allowances for unacceptable behavior, because I'm uncomfortable, and my discomfort is such that I'd rather pretend it isn't happening, because if I admit it is, I have to take some kind of action.

I'm trying to accept reality, admit my feelings - some sadnesss, that this person whose company I enjoy, has problems/behaviors/beliefs to which I am unwilling to subject myself to regular exposure, because doing so triggers my own bad habits and thinking. It's like alcoholics not hanging out with friends who drink - it's not healthy, and it can undercut my serenity.

I need to set a boundary for myself, not the other person. I cannot change anyone but myself. I'm endeavoring to learn this lesson earlier in the process, so that I don't have to suffer so much when the inevitable happens, and my recovery demands detachment. I'm trying to be aware more of the time, because denial never, ever, works, on a long-term basis.

Analysing Too Much.

I've always been one of those people who had the belief that if I just knew "why" something happened, I'd be able to accept it more easily. This never proves to be the case; when I know why, I only know why, it doesn't ease the pain one jot.

I've used this, in my recovery, to put off trying to accept whatever it may be, telling myself that once I figure out why, then I can work upon acceptance. This is pure unadulterated nonsense, and when I'm thinking with clarity and detachment, I can see that. But let me be in HALT, and my faulty logic can easily lead me astray. (A program friend recently remarked upon the way our faulty logic always seems to make perfect sense at the time - I believe this is why Al-Anon suggests we "reason things out with someone else" - so we have an objective listener - someone to raise an eyebrow, purse their lips, nod uncertainly, or if we are fortunate, say outright, "Bullshit!)

How can I tell whether or not my thinking is judicious? Write it down, leave it overnight, then go back and re-read it the next day. I find this works like a charm - the next day, I will bring up whatever I wrote, begin to read it, and find the preposterous thinking practically leaping off the page and giving me a good smack upside the head. I've had times, doing this, where I've even started to laugh, because whatever I wrote in the heat of the moment, was so...misguided. (Nice little euphemism for full-out co-dependent looniness.)

Sometimes the only way I can tell I've lost it, is in hindsight. Such is the power of our disease.

Step Four - And The Point Of This Is?

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves.

Those of us who have had our lives ravaged by someone else's drinking, are often very well defended emotionally. We have so many ways of deflecting, denying, and avoiding, that the road to our internal self is akin to a luxury car commercial - great swooping turns, it's always moonlight, and it's a "professional driver on a closed course."

Step Four is about setting off down that road in daylight, for a change, and with a companion - our sponsor.

We come into our first meetings with so much resistance accumulated, our minds slam shut like clapping hands, the minute any suggestion is made that we bear any responsibility for our own misery. I was fine, thankyou very much, just tell me how to make the drinker stop drinking, and I'm outta here.

I heard this nonsense about taking my own inventory with disbelief - what did that have to do with making the drinker quit?
I can take no credit for my initial learning on this step, it happened in spite of me. I was lucky enough to have a sponsor who could dodge around the end of my barricades like one of those cars at a railway crossing, plant herself in the middle of the road, and hold up a sign reading, "Realisation Ahead - Slow down! Pay attention!"

That woman offended my pride so many times, I lost count after a while. But something in me hungered for change and growth, and also, she made me laugh so hard at myself, I'd be sitting at her kitchen table clutching my stomach and barely able to talk.
I slowly learned that I could use Step 4 as leverage to open my own defenses enough to slip inside, and walk around, picking up the odd wierd-looking thing, and saying "Oh. Oh my. Well, isn't that strange. Hmm. I didn't know this was in here, that's for sure. What is that?" Having my sponsor beside me on these initial forays, kept me feeling safe, ordinary, and only human.
I learned that I wouldn't vanish in a puff of smoke if I said "I was in the wrong."

I learned that the more I discovered about my own mental workings, the easier it became for me to effect change in my life.
I learned that the more I understood myself, the more compassion and understanding I felt for all of humanity, alcoholics included.
I learned that I had reached my early thirties without ever having matured in many areas of my personality - in some areas, I was still stamping my foot and screaming "No! No! NO! It's not fair!"
And it wasn't fair, and it still isn't fair, but "fair" is a fantasy in life. Fair is for sports, and portion sizes at the dinner table; anywhere else in life, if we are insisting on "fair" before we will accept it, we will go to our deathbed resisting.

Step Four felt so strange when I started trying to practise it, and has become of one of my favourite steps over the years. (Favourite doesn't mean I love it at all times, there have been plenty of times I've cursed it with great heat and inventiveness. Favourite means I see the value, and treasure the outcome - the process, not so much some days.)
Step Four I had to take on trust, from those in my meetings who personified the change I was so desperate to achieve.

Here, Catch!

I've decided to start this blog, because I find myself wanting to talk Al-Anon, at times when there isn't someone around who is willing or able to listen. I thought I could be pouring this out into what I picture, with some trepidation, as the giant ear of the Internet.

I've been in Al-Anon for about 20 years now, came in when I was still with my first husband, who was pretty far down the road by the time I met him, although in my innocence and naivete, (I was raised in a completely dry home) I didn't realise it, I thought he was just an exaggerated social drinker. We were together for quite a few years before I could ever begin to admit to myself the nature of his addiction to alcohol. I wanted the relationship to work, because he provided me with a measure of security, in his own messed-up, saturated, nasty way. I tried every way I could to get him to quit, and even guilt-tripped him into it for an amazing nine months one year. When he fell off the wagon, he fell in a spectacular fashion, and that was the impetus that brought me to Al-Anon for the first time. I used to visit my doctor and sob and wail and carry on, and he would suggest Al-Anon to me, and I would ignore him, and a week later, there I'd be in his office again, moaning about my husband's drinking, and my misery, and he'd suggest Al-Anon, and I'd be too busy wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness to hear him, and...you get the picture. Very tolerant man, my doctor was, and I will always have enormous gratitude to him, for steering me in the direction of recovery. He didn't lecture, or rant or shame me, he just continued to make the same suggestion week upon week until at last it penetrated my fog of pain, and I decided what the heck, what did I have to lose, anyway?

My first meeting, I looked around and thought "I have nothing, but nothing, in common with these people." I'm sure my Higher Power (hereinafter to be known as HP) got a good laugh over that one. I cried through the first few meetings, just sat there gently pouring tears, like a weeping hose, so I don't recall much about them, just that there seemed a lot of jargon, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what these women were laughing about, with the lives they described.

Fast forward twenty-odd years, and here I am, once again dealing with "alcoholism in a family member or friend." Up until just last night, if you'd asked me how I was doing, I'd have given you a resolutely positive picture.

But last night, my HP decided I was ready for a realisation. (Today, I can see that he's been working me up to this for quite some time, a couple of years, in truth; it's just that he's been giving me the information in small, easily digested increments, like little tender bites of steak, and last night, I don't know if he got impatient, or considered it necessary to break my denial, but last night, he wound right up, and hit me in the chest with the entire cow - WHAM!

Over I went, backwards, and smashed my head, and when I got my breath back enough to talk, said "Ok, ok, I get the message, geeeez."

Kind of hard not to get the message, when it's attached to 800 lbs of cow, which is now sitting on your chest. So today, I'm a little shaky. And I promise you, it really, really hurts to get hit by a cow-sized realisation.

From: COURAGE TO CHANGE, One Day At A Time in Al-Anon, page 191:

"I can't cope with something unless I acknowledge its reality.When I am willing to look at the whole picture, I take the first step toward a more manageable life."

I got the cow to at least move over and sit beside me, and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.