Anxiety is one aspect of being co-dependent that I have found to be universal - I hear people share at meetings about anxiety, old and new, and every sponsee I've ever had, has been well aware of the level of anxiety they carry. I used to get regular panic attacks before program.
People-pleasing is another character trait that seems common. I learned in childhood that if I could please someone, I had a much better chance of getting what I thought I wanted or needed.
Denial is rampant among those of us who deal with alcoholism. My denial was so thick at first that I was completely unaware of its existence.
Self-loathing is a phrase I've heard many times in the 30 years I've been in Al-Anon. I know I felt self-loathing because I'd been trained by abuse to think of myself as "less than." I considered myself to be a terrible person, and incompetent because I couldn't make my first husband stop drinking. I believed that had he just loved me "enough" he would have stopped. Al-Anon taught me that this kind of thinking was akin to believing that if he'd just loved me enough, he wouldn't have pneumonia. Alcoholism is an illness.
Judgementalism - I still struggle with being judgemental at times, although nowadays I can hear myself thinking that way, and will respond to my own thought with a correction, or reminder that most of us are doing the best we can at any time, I'm not the thought, activity, clothing, or behavior police; I need to keep my side of the street clean, and not be meddling in the affairs of others; even if that meddling is only inside my own head, it's still a loss of focus.
Fear is another emotion with which so many of us in program have had a long-term connection. I feared my own fear, which led to panic attacks. I feared other people, which led to loneliness. I feared authority, which led to my doing what I didn't want to do, in an effort to ingratiate myself.
Mistrust was my major defense against closeness with others. I can recall going around muttering to myself, "I hate people!" From a very young age, other people had caused me a great deal of physical and emotional pain, and I feared getting close to anyone, because I feared yet more hurt.
Al-Anon, and a zealous and impassioned working of the Twelve Steps, is helping me to lead a more peaceful, satisfying and enjoyable life. I can revel in the delights of a friendship, I can feel enormous gratitude for the gift of my partner Robert, I can greet a new day with happiness for the sight of the sun lighting my way. Any winter day with sun, rather than being overcast and cloudy, is a good day in my book.
If we stay in program, and work our program, the Promises will begin to come true, and we will be amazed at how different our lives can look and feel. Bless you.
Showing posts with label inventory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inventory. Show all posts
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
What Qualifies as "Gossip or Criticism."
I was raised in an adoptive family in which the major form of humour was sarcasm. I picked it up along with some other bad habits, and used it right into the doors of Al-Anon.
Before progam, I used sarcasm as a weapon, as a rebuttal, as a defense, and to score points in an argument.
I spoke to my first sponsor about it, and she reminded me that in our closing, we read, "Talk to each other, reason things out, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love and peace of the program grow in you one day at a time."
I define "let there be no gossip or criticism of one another" very narrowly. Many times, a new sponsee will ask me who my other sponsees are. I don't tell them, because that runs up against my strong belief in keeping confidences. If one sponsee wishes to break that confidence by talking about who their sponsor is, that's up to them. Nobody is going to hear it from me.
I'm not comfortable in hearing about who irritates or bothers you at a meeting, because they are too this or that. I am not at a meeting to sit and fume because someone has a personality quirk I find irritating. I am at a meeting to share the experience strength and hope I have to offer, to bask in the atmosphere of love and acceptance, and to learn.
My experience in this program has taught me right from the start, that it would invariably be the person who was irritating me the most, who had the lesson I most needed to hear at that time.
In my second group, which was a home-group meeting, we went to a member's apartment, and we were no further that just inside the door, before I was silently judging her for her décor. (I was a supremely shallow person 30 years ago, I lived in anger, fear, and judgement.)
During the meeting, I was judging this same woman for the way she spoke, her choice of clothing, her speech patterns; everything about her, got my goat. The meeting ended, I went home, and found that one thing she'd said, was getting more and more powerful the more I thought about it. It applied to my own character defects, and it stuck in my head all week, like a cocklebur seed to a sock. It poked, prodded, and needled at me day upon day. I finally called my sponsor to complain about this obsession, and we had a very interesting and to me, madly infuriating discussion, in which she suggested, not for the first time, that what most annoyed me in another person, often turned out to be a character defect or personality quirk of my own that I disliked.
I swallowed and muttered and grumped while she explained this idea in greater detail. When she was finished, I didn't have much to say, I was too offended, so I said a stiff goodbye, thanked her, and hung up.
Talking to her hadn't helped me in the way I'd hoped or wanted. I didn't get what I thought I needed from that discussion; instead I was, as so often in the early days with my sponsor, mightily offended. I took offense very quickly when I was new to Al-Anon. My self-image was so negative and so shaky, that even the slightest suggestion that I was wrong could send me into a tailspin for days. After a few months of dealing with this aspect of my personality, my sponsor suggested that perhaps by being offended, I didn't have to hear what she was saying?
That hit home with a thump, because it was simply, and undeniably true. A large part of my judgement, when it wasn't about allowing me to feel superior, because I didn't do that at meetings, was about being to cut that person out, as someone I didn't need to listen to very carefully.
This woman taught me to listen carefully when anyone speaks during a meeting, because I've learned that the most (to me) unlikely person, may be the one person at the meeting who is carrying the message from my HP, that I most need to hear.
Before progam, I used sarcasm as a weapon, as a rebuttal, as a defense, and to score points in an argument.
I spoke to my first sponsor about it, and she reminded me that in our closing, we read, "Talk to each other, reason things out, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love and peace of the program grow in you one day at a time."
I define "let there be no gossip or criticism of one another" very narrowly. Many times, a new sponsee will ask me who my other sponsees are. I don't tell them, because that runs up against my strong belief in keeping confidences. If one sponsee wishes to break that confidence by talking about who their sponsor is, that's up to them. Nobody is going to hear it from me.
I'm not comfortable in hearing about who irritates or bothers you at a meeting, because they are too this or that. I am not at a meeting to sit and fume because someone has a personality quirk I find irritating. I am at a meeting to share the experience strength and hope I have to offer, to bask in the atmosphere of love and acceptance, and to learn.
My experience in this program has taught me right from the start, that it would invariably be the person who was irritating me the most, who had the lesson I most needed to hear at that time.
In my second group, which was a home-group meeting, we went to a member's apartment, and we were no further that just inside the door, before I was silently judging her for her décor. (I was a supremely shallow person 30 years ago, I lived in anger, fear, and judgement.)
During the meeting, I was judging this same woman for the way she spoke, her choice of clothing, her speech patterns; everything about her, got my goat. The meeting ended, I went home, and found that one thing she'd said, was getting more and more powerful the more I thought about it. It applied to my own character defects, and it stuck in my head all week, like a cocklebur seed to a sock. It poked, prodded, and needled at me day upon day. I finally called my sponsor to complain about this obsession, and we had a very interesting and to me, madly infuriating discussion, in which she suggested, not for the first time, that what most annoyed me in another person, often turned out to be a character defect or personality quirk of my own that I disliked.
I swallowed and muttered and grumped while she explained this idea in greater detail. When she was finished, I didn't have much to say, I was too offended, so I said a stiff goodbye, thanked her, and hung up.
Talking to her hadn't helped me in the way I'd hoped or wanted. I didn't get what I thought I needed from that discussion; instead I was, as so often in the early days with my sponsor, mightily offended. I took offense very quickly when I was new to Al-Anon. My self-image was so negative and so shaky, that even the slightest suggestion that I was wrong could send me into a tailspin for days. After a few months of dealing with this aspect of my personality, my sponsor suggested that perhaps by being offended, I didn't have to hear what she was saying?
That hit home with a thump, because it was simply, and undeniably true. A large part of my judgement, when it wasn't about allowing me to feel superior, because I didn't do that at meetings, was about being to cut that person out, as someone I didn't need to listen to very carefully.
This woman taught me to listen carefully when anyone speaks during a meeting, because I've learned that the most (to me) unlikely person, may be the one person at the meeting who is carrying the message from my HP, that I most need to hear.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Helping or Enabling?
How do I know the difference between helping my alcoholic, and enabling them?
One dictionary defines enabling as: "to make possible or easy." When I lived with active alcoholism in my first marriage, and hadn't yet heard of Al-Anon, I enabled the alcoholic. I made runs to the liquor store so he wouldn't drive while intoxicated. I made excuses for him. I "explained" him to family and friends. I did it because I was fearful of the consequences, and also because I wanted to be a good wife.
In this marriage, because the alcoholic had been sober for many years before we met, and I was fairly new to Al-Anon, I imagined him cured, and let go of all the teachings of the program about enabling - I was under the mistaken impression that enabling was part of active drinking, and not alcoholism as a whole. I can still have some difficulty distinguishing between helping and enabling, especially when I'm asked to "do a favour" and either I forget to say "I'll get back to you on that" or :"Let me think about it" because the person asking the favour is pressuring me for an immediate answer, or because I'm in HALT - hungry, angry, lonely, tired. When I'm vulnerable, I'm less likely to resist manipulation, because I don't have the energy to stand my ground against repeated verbal pressure. That's when I need to remove myself - by leaving the room, and sometimes the house, even if all I do is wander outside to look at my garden.
For me, enabling has almost always been driven by fear - fear of financial insecurity, fear of what others may think, fear of the future. At some point in my recovery, I found that I can ask to have my fear removed, and it will be, as long as I am willing to also let go of the coping mechanisms which have arisen around that fear, and learn a new way to be. If I try to ask to have the fear removed without any willingness on my part to let go of old patterns of behavior, and old coping mechanisms, I will be asking again 5 minutes later, because I'm not doing my part.
Fear used to make me angry, and in my anger I would lash out at the alcoholic, saying hurtful things, and blaming him for all the problems in our life.I wanted relief from the awful fear I felt, but I wasn't changing the way I behaved as I asked to have my fear taken. I didn't understand at that point, that to be at peace, I need to be loving. I can't get relief from my own fear while being mean to someone else.
As is the way with so many of these realisations I've been granted, on this side of it, I'm amazed that I didn't get it earlier. In effect, I was saying to my HP "Please make me feel different, (no fear) while I do exactly what I've always done in this situation. (lash out in blame.) I would do it, make an amend, then do it again the next time. I didn't get the correlation between my unhappy feeling about behaving that way, and my fear about whatever it was. I always had a good reason for my behavior, and felt justified because if it weren't for the alcoholic, I wouldn't be feeling so awful. On this side of the realisation, I have discovered that the fear was a smaller part of my feeling that I had thought - distress about being a person who acted that way when she was afraid was the major part of it.
When I let go of who I have been, and try my best to be more loving, I feel better about myself. When I feel better about myself, fear doesn't have the same ability to grab me by the throat the way it once did. When I am more loving to others, I am more loving to myself. I pray to be always more loving.
One dictionary defines enabling as: "to make possible or easy." When I lived with active alcoholism in my first marriage, and hadn't yet heard of Al-Anon, I enabled the alcoholic. I made runs to the liquor store so he wouldn't drive while intoxicated. I made excuses for him. I "explained" him to family and friends. I did it because I was fearful of the consequences, and also because I wanted to be a good wife.
In this marriage, because the alcoholic had been sober for many years before we met, and I was fairly new to Al-Anon, I imagined him cured, and let go of all the teachings of the program about enabling - I was under the mistaken impression that enabling was part of active drinking, and not alcoholism as a whole. I can still have some difficulty distinguishing between helping and enabling, especially when I'm asked to "do a favour" and either I forget to say "I'll get back to you on that" or :"Let me think about it" because the person asking the favour is pressuring me for an immediate answer, or because I'm in HALT - hungry, angry, lonely, tired. When I'm vulnerable, I'm less likely to resist manipulation, because I don't have the energy to stand my ground against repeated verbal pressure. That's when I need to remove myself - by leaving the room, and sometimes the house, even if all I do is wander outside to look at my garden.
For me, enabling has almost always been driven by fear - fear of financial insecurity, fear of what others may think, fear of the future. At some point in my recovery, I found that I can ask to have my fear removed, and it will be, as long as I am willing to also let go of the coping mechanisms which have arisen around that fear, and learn a new way to be. If I try to ask to have the fear removed without any willingness on my part to let go of old patterns of behavior, and old coping mechanisms, I will be asking again 5 minutes later, because I'm not doing my part.
Fear used to make me angry, and in my anger I would lash out at the alcoholic, saying hurtful things, and blaming him for all the problems in our life.I wanted relief from the awful fear I felt, but I wasn't changing the way I behaved as I asked to have my fear taken. I didn't understand at that point, that to be at peace, I need to be loving. I can't get relief from my own fear while being mean to someone else.
As is the way with so many of these realisations I've been granted, on this side of it, I'm amazed that I didn't get it earlier. In effect, I was saying to my HP "Please make me feel different, (no fear) while I do exactly what I've always done in this situation. (lash out in blame.) I would do it, make an amend, then do it again the next time. I didn't get the correlation between my unhappy feeling about behaving that way, and my fear about whatever it was. I always had a good reason for my behavior, and felt justified because if it weren't for the alcoholic, I wouldn't be feeling so awful. On this side of the realisation, I have discovered that the fear was a smaller part of my feeling that I had thought - distress about being a person who acted that way when she was afraid was the major part of it.
When I let go of who I have been, and try my best to be more loving, I feel better about myself. When I feel better about myself, fear doesn't have the same ability to grab me by the throat the way it once did. When I am more loving to others, I am more loving to myself. I pray to be always more loving.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Assumptions Keep Our Viewpoint Narrow.
A sponsee called last night to ask how I was doing, and we talked for a while. I had reached and passed the level of fatigue at which my brain goes on "standby" (if asked a direct question, I can reply, but I'm unable to generate new topics, or a new element of the existing one) so the conversation was sort of limping along. She was very surprised by my answer to one of her questions, and said so; she'd "assumed it was the opposite." I was too tired to take it up with her, but it crossed my mind this morning as a good topic for our next meeting, because these sorts of assumptions keep our viewpoint narrowned down so that we only see what we expect to see. We have our assumptions, and we can operate from that starting point for a great deal of life, never realising that there is so much more than is visible through our narrowed viewpoint.
If I limit my life to "this is only possible with that prerequisite" I am closing off great sweeps of possibility. There's so much more to life than what I am capable of imagining.
A long-timer in Al-Anon jokes that this is one of the reasons that meetings are set up so that we don't interrupt or crosstalk, because we need to be forced to sit quietly and listen to a viewpoint differing from ours. I think for some of us, myself included, I could have gone on sitting in meetings and listening, without having much of a change in my thinking - I needed to work the Steps with a sponsor who gave me very little wiggle-room. My assumptions were all about keeping me safe in the world, so the roots ran deep in my character, and needed concerted, sustained time and effort to dig up, haul out into the light of day, examine closely, and eventually, realise that I could let them go. I needed that shared time, talking and laughter to be able to discard my outmoded notions.
If I limit my life to "this is only possible with that prerequisite" I am closing off great sweeps of possibility. There's so much more to life than what I am capable of imagining.
A long-timer in Al-Anon jokes that this is one of the reasons that meetings are set up so that we don't interrupt or crosstalk, because we need to be forced to sit quietly and listen to a viewpoint differing from ours. I think for some of us, myself included, I could have gone on sitting in meetings and listening, without having much of a change in my thinking - I needed to work the Steps with a sponsor who gave me very little wiggle-room. My assumptions were all about keeping me safe in the world, so the roots ran deep in my character, and needed concerted, sustained time and effort to dig up, haul out into the light of day, examine closely, and eventually, realise that I could let them go. I needed that shared time, talking and laughter to be able to discard my outmoded notions.
Friday, February 10, 2012
"Get Off Your Own Back!"
I love to sew, and have been trying, in the last while, to find a good t-shirt pattern to fit me. After several atttempts with purchased patterns, I gave up and did what I often seem to be doing when it comes to clothing - took apart one of my older ready-to-wear garments to use as a pattern. Tonight I was downstairs in my sewing room, putting the finishing touches on my first shirt made with this pattern, and listening to a talk given by one of my favourite 12-Step speakers, Father Tom W, who is a member of AA and Al-Anon, and wonderfully funny. (A talk of his from 2011 can be heard here.)
I'd been listening to one of his earlier talks, he was speaking about how we members of Al-Anon can be "viciously critical" of ourselves. That hit home with an audible thump - I realised that I'd been feeling disturbed and unhappy over the last 24 hours, because I've been engaged in vicious criticism of myself. (I had a conversation yesterday in which I reacted rather than responded, with predictable results: I've been giving myself a royal bollocking ever since.)
Father Tom went on to describe what that vicious criticism of himself sounded like, and how depressed he felt after bashing himself for a few days, and then after a short silence, he said, "Get off your own back!"
I started to laugh. I've been in program for a long time, but every now and then, I can still forget to give myself a break. If I get caught up in that vicious criticism of myself, I can't detach enough to be able to realise that 's what I'm doing - I'll be convinced that I'm "taking my inventory - working Step 10."
No. Inventory doesn't last 24 hours; it takes about two minutues. No, I've got the mental sledgehammer out, and I'm whaling away.
If I walked around behind you for an entire day constantly telling you what a piece of crap you are for having made a mistake, you'd end up feeling angry, frustrated, raw, and depressed. Precisely the way I feel, when I do the same thing to me.
Forgiveness is a gift we can give to ourselves. Take inventory, make the amend, and then let it go, don't use the knowledge of our mistake as a club with which to rob the day of its pleasure. Let's all get off our own backs.
I'd been listening to one of his earlier talks, he was speaking about how we members of Al-Anon can be "viciously critical" of ourselves. That hit home with an audible thump - I realised that I'd been feeling disturbed and unhappy over the last 24 hours, because I've been engaged in vicious criticism of myself. (I had a conversation yesterday in which I reacted rather than responded, with predictable results: I've been giving myself a royal bollocking ever since.)
Father Tom went on to describe what that vicious criticism of himself sounded like, and how depressed he felt after bashing himself for a few days, and then after a short silence, he said, "Get off your own back!"
I started to laugh. I've been in program for a long time, but every now and then, I can still forget to give myself a break. If I get caught up in that vicious criticism of myself, I can't detach enough to be able to realise that 's what I'm doing - I'll be convinced that I'm "taking my inventory - working Step 10."
No. Inventory doesn't last 24 hours; it takes about two minutues. No, I've got the mental sledgehammer out, and I'm whaling away.
If I walked around behind you for an entire day constantly telling you what a piece of crap you are for having made a mistake, you'd end up feeling angry, frustrated, raw, and depressed. Precisely the way I feel, when I do the same thing to me.
Forgiveness is a gift we can give to ourselves. Take inventory, make the amend, and then let it go, don't use the knowledge of our mistake as a club with which to rob the day of its pleasure. Let's all get off our own backs.
Friday, November 4, 2011
The Alphabet of Common Denominators - "B"
A reader asked "what would 'B' stand for?" in a list of shared characteristics of many of us in Al-Anon. First word that sprang to my mind was: blame. Right after that, boundaries. I've written quite a few posts on the subject of boundaries, they can be found in the topics list, so I'm going to write about blame today.
I grew up in a very blaming household, and I internalised the message that whenever you're unhappy, frustrated, angry, find someone on whom you can lay the blame, and if they are within earshot, let them have it! If not, berate them vigorously behind their back.
I have a friend who is going through some problems of her own making right now, and she can't see this, yet. She will rant and rave to me about it, and if I suggest that she has the choice of changing her attitude, since she can't change the situation without making some rather drastic choices, she will reply, starting each time with those two words (which when I utilise them, I've come to realise mean I'm justifying,) "Yes, but..."
She's becoming more and more unhappy with her blaming of another person, demonising them, sliding out from under any idea that she has control over how she deals with that which she doesn't want to change. She's starting to become rather annoyed with me continuing to suggest that she adjust her attitude. I remember how irritated I became when I was new to program, and people would offer the same suggestions, and I'm swept with a powerful feeling of gratitude that they continued to repeat themselves for my good, and I repeat myself to my friend, with lashings of love and encouragement.
When I'm blaming, I can't see clearly. As MrSponsorpants writes so beautifully today, I'm determined to be a victim. When I've been in that headspace, I've been in a box of detemined misery, crunched uncomfortably in there, yelling and screaming about how miserable I am, meanwhile, I'm the one who taped the box shut from the inside, with blame.
When I'm blaming, I am handing my power, and my very life, over to another person, and saying, in effect, "You decide whether or not I have a good day, I'll wait here for your decision."
Last night, I'd made new curtains for our livingroom window, and when I brought the first one upstairs from my sewing room, my husband said, "I broke two branches off your favourite plant." I said, "Doesn't matter in the slightest; can we hang this and see if it's okay for length?" When I went back down and was working on the second curtain, I realised that at one point in my life, I'd have been really angry with him for breaking the branches off the plant - I'd have blamed him, labelled him careless for not thinking to move it out of the way, and ruined the evening for both of us. Over a plant. That confounds and amazes me, now. I felt almost gleeful to realise that what I'd said was nothing but the truth, it hadn't mattered one little bit - such freedom! The more I seek my Higher Power, the more I feel comfortable inside my own head.
It's a signpost of how far I've come with the help of this wonderful program. Let go of blaming. Pick up the reins of your own life, and take responsibility for it - only you can change your mood. Nobody "makes me feel" anything. I feel what I feel, and then I decide whether to nurse a grievance, lay blame and stew in that poisonous feeling, or let it all go, and be happy. Lighthearted, and content. Serene. If you can't let go on your own, ask your Higher Power to take it.
Blaming others kept me feeling victimised and desperately unhappy. When I stepped back from that, looked at it, and decided to go another, more loving way, I was rewarded with serenity and peace. The more often I chose this way, the less of a choice it became.
I grew up in a very blaming household, and I internalised the message that whenever you're unhappy, frustrated, angry, find someone on whom you can lay the blame, and if they are within earshot, let them have it! If not, berate them vigorously behind their back.
I have a friend who is going through some problems of her own making right now, and she can't see this, yet. She will rant and rave to me about it, and if I suggest that she has the choice of changing her attitude, since she can't change the situation without making some rather drastic choices, she will reply, starting each time with those two words (which when I utilise them, I've come to realise mean I'm justifying,) "Yes, but..."
She's becoming more and more unhappy with her blaming of another person, demonising them, sliding out from under any idea that she has control over how she deals with that which she doesn't want to change. She's starting to become rather annoyed with me continuing to suggest that she adjust her attitude. I remember how irritated I became when I was new to program, and people would offer the same suggestions, and I'm swept with a powerful feeling of gratitude that they continued to repeat themselves for my good, and I repeat myself to my friend, with lashings of love and encouragement.
When I'm blaming, I can't see clearly. As MrSponsorpants writes so beautifully today, I'm determined to be a victim. When I've been in that headspace, I've been in a box of detemined misery, crunched uncomfortably in there, yelling and screaming about how miserable I am, meanwhile, I'm the one who taped the box shut from the inside, with blame.
When I'm blaming, I am handing my power, and my very life, over to another person, and saying, in effect, "You decide whether or not I have a good day, I'll wait here for your decision."
Last night, I'd made new curtains for our livingroom window, and when I brought the first one upstairs from my sewing room, my husband said, "I broke two branches off your favourite plant." I said, "Doesn't matter in the slightest; can we hang this and see if it's okay for length?" When I went back down and was working on the second curtain, I realised that at one point in my life, I'd have been really angry with him for breaking the branches off the plant - I'd have blamed him, labelled him careless for not thinking to move it out of the way, and ruined the evening for both of us. Over a plant. That confounds and amazes me, now. I felt almost gleeful to realise that what I'd said was nothing but the truth, it hadn't mattered one little bit - such freedom! The more I seek my Higher Power, the more I feel comfortable inside my own head.
It's a signpost of how far I've come with the help of this wonderful program. Let go of blaming. Pick up the reins of your own life, and take responsibility for it - only you can change your mood. Nobody "makes me feel" anything. I feel what I feel, and then I decide whether to nurse a grievance, lay blame and stew in that poisonous feeling, or let it all go, and be happy. Lighthearted, and content. Serene. If you can't let go on your own, ask your Higher Power to take it.
Blaming others kept me feeling victimised and desperately unhappy. When I stepped back from that, looked at it, and decided to go another, more loving way, I was rewarded with serenity and peace. The more often I chose this way, the less of a choice it became.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Cherishing Opinions.
From Courage to Change, page 288:
"Do not search for the truth," said an ancient patriarch, "only cease to cherish opinions." For me, ceasing to cherish opinions is part of the Tenth Step. Much of what I find wrong in life is related to my opinions - that is, my prejudices, assumptions, self-righteous stances, attitudes."
I love that.
Which of my cherished opinions am I able to drop today? Can I let go of this? How about that? Oh, there's an old one, fling that sucker into the round file!
So much of this is mental fluff, presented to me as truth when I was a kid, or an adult, and which I dutifully adopted to please - a teacher, a partner, a friend. The more of it I manage to clear out, the more loving and accepting I am able to be, and the more people I can be of service to, in program. Some of my newer sponsees don't get it yet - I can see in their faces that they don't understand how I can be accepting of them, but also of this other person whose opinions differ from theirs in every conceivable way. Sometimes they will try to pin me down on what I think, and I can see their frustration when I reply that I don't have an opinion on that.
"But you must!" one said to me, the other day.
"Why must I?"
"Because everyone does!"
"Why is it important to you?" I asked.
"I need to know where you stand." Her face was wrinkled with frustration.
"I stand right smack dab in the absolute middle - I could see all sides, I could agree with all sides, and I could disagree with all sides, so I decided to let that one go."
"But what do you think when you think about it?" Her voice was beginning to take on a note of irritation; perhaps she imagined I was teasing her.
"I don't think about it."
She leaned back in her chair, and looked at me for a bit, then said flatly, "I don't believe that."
I smiled at her with love and affection, and replied, "That's okay, too."
Her next question made me burst out laughing: "Was your first sponsor this irritating?"
Oh, easily. I was strongly opinionated, and it was beyond me that a person could be any other way but full to bursting with opinons, ideology, attitudes. I had that thinking of "I am this way, so everyone is this way, and anyone who says they are not this way, is trying to pull a fast one on me." It's why I had so much trouble with the concept of letting go - I thought I needed all of it. I belived that the mental stuffing was what made me "my own person." I had to be in program for quite some time before it began to dawn on me that I was anything but my own person.
It wasn't until I started trying to examine those parts of myself most strongly affected by people-pleasing, that I began to see any of this clearly. And as I go along in program, I find it happens all the time that I will come around a corner in my thinking and stop short, amazed to see yet another pile of bits and scraps taking up space in my head. I sift through, and some of that stuff is ancient, got shoved in there when I was just a kid, and never looked at closely again. It was put there and forgotten, but was still taking up space, and collecting dust.
I pray for the increased ability to stop "cherishing opinions." It started out being a painful exercise, but now it's like spring cleaning - feels so good to get rid of that stuff.
"Do not search for the truth," said an ancient patriarch, "only cease to cherish opinions." For me, ceasing to cherish opinions is part of the Tenth Step. Much of what I find wrong in life is related to my opinions - that is, my prejudices, assumptions, self-righteous stances, attitudes."
I love that.
Which of my cherished opinions am I able to drop today? Can I let go of this? How about that? Oh, there's an old one, fling that sucker into the round file!
So much of this is mental fluff, presented to me as truth when I was a kid, or an adult, and which I dutifully adopted to please - a teacher, a partner, a friend. The more of it I manage to clear out, the more loving and accepting I am able to be, and the more people I can be of service to, in program. Some of my newer sponsees don't get it yet - I can see in their faces that they don't understand how I can be accepting of them, but also of this other person whose opinions differ from theirs in every conceivable way. Sometimes they will try to pin me down on what I think, and I can see their frustration when I reply that I don't have an opinion on that.
"But you must!" one said to me, the other day.
"Why must I?"
"Because everyone does!"
"Why is it important to you?" I asked.
"I need to know where you stand." Her face was wrinkled with frustration.
"I stand right smack dab in the absolute middle - I could see all sides, I could agree with all sides, and I could disagree with all sides, so I decided to let that one go."
"But what do you think when you think about it?" Her voice was beginning to take on a note of irritation; perhaps she imagined I was teasing her.
"I don't think about it."
She leaned back in her chair, and looked at me for a bit, then said flatly, "I don't believe that."
I smiled at her with love and affection, and replied, "That's okay, too."
Her next question made me burst out laughing: "Was your first sponsor this irritating?"
Oh, easily. I was strongly opinionated, and it was beyond me that a person could be any other way but full to bursting with opinons, ideology, attitudes. I had that thinking of "I am this way, so everyone is this way, and anyone who says they are not this way, is trying to pull a fast one on me." It's why I had so much trouble with the concept of letting go - I thought I needed all of it. I belived that the mental stuffing was what made me "my own person." I had to be in program for quite some time before it began to dawn on me that I was anything but my own person.
It wasn't until I started trying to examine those parts of myself most strongly affected by people-pleasing, that I began to see any of this clearly. And as I go along in program, I find it happens all the time that I will come around a corner in my thinking and stop short, amazed to see yet another pile of bits and scraps taking up space in my head. I sift through, and some of that stuff is ancient, got shoved in there when I was just a kid, and never looked at closely again. It was put there and forgotten, but was still taking up space, and collecting dust.
I pray for the increased ability to stop "cherishing opinions." It started out being a painful exercise, but now it's like spring cleaning - feels so good to get rid of that stuff.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Personal Etiquette, or Character Defect?
Before Al-Anon, I had an attitude common to many people - that my personal rules of etiquette were the "correct" ones. So if you did things differently, I'd respond in various judgemental ways, but the end result was that you were wrong, I was right, and why wouldn't you change to fit yourself to my rules?
We all have various things we consider "rude." It's rude to read at the dinner table. It's rude to eat in the livingroom. It's rude to say "I don't feel much like talking right now, but I'm happy to listen." It's rude to wear shorts to church, not to remove your hat indoors, to walk in front of me, to cut in front of me when driving, to 'steal' my parking spot, to fold towels differently than the way I showed you way back when we first got together...
The list is endless, and varies wildly from one person to another. If a friend, partner, or family member does something which contravenes our personal rules of etiquette, we have several ways in which we can respond. We can say, "I wish you wouldn't wear your hat inside the house," and then engage in a power struggle, trying to force them to remove it; they'll most likely be equally as determined to keep it on. We can harp and yarp along those lines each time they enter the house and don't remove their hat, and by doing so, create a major issue between us.
We can look at this "rule" and ask ourselves, "Where did this originate? Is this a rule I learned in childhood, or did I make this one up by myself? What is this about? Why do I care? How Important Is It?"
We can decide that we are going to let it go, stop taking it personally, stop allowing ourselves to extrapolate from that hat, all sorts of stories inside our own heads about what that means with regard to their respect for us and our living space, wishes, wants, blah blah blah.
When I decide to make a big deal out of the fact that another person's rules of etiquette differ widely from my own, I am creating a problem where none exists. Now, understand I'm not speaking here about someone stomping all over personal boundaries set to keep myself safe and comfortable - I'm talking about the wider range of etiquette rules such as "Towels must be folded in thirds lengthwise, then in half." "Cups go into the cupboard with the bottoms up." "Never put into the sink, anything which can be fitted into the dishwasher." "Never put anything into the dishwasher without rinsing it first." "This is how you fold a fitted sheet. It's rude not to make conversation first thing in the morning. People should sit at the kitchen table to drink their first coffee, not at the computer, or the tv. You should never interrupt when someone else is speaking."
Some of us, (and I include myself in this group) have a tendency to rigidity in our personalities. If not carefully paid attention to, this character defect can cause problems for us, by insisting that everyting be done "our way." Why? Well, because that's the right way, of course.
When I learned that I could let go of all of this, and nothing major would happen, the house didn't disintegrate into a slum, the dishes still got clean regardless of how they were loaded into the dishwasher, (and if they didn't, that didn't matter either, they could be rewashed) that I was "taking offense" where none was ever intended, and I was doing it around these rules of etiquette, that was enormously freeing.
I'll share something which I suddenly realised about 10 years into practising this wonderful program of ours: I've never yet worked to let go of something, only to wish I had it back. Never. Those rules and regulations of mine kept me a prisoner in my frustration. When I let it go, and it's gone, and I can look at whatever is happening with no need to take offense or get all worked up, I feel delighted.
We all have various things we consider "rude." It's rude to read at the dinner table. It's rude to eat in the livingroom. It's rude to say "I don't feel much like talking right now, but I'm happy to listen." It's rude to wear shorts to church, not to remove your hat indoors, to walk in front of me, to cut in front of me when driving, to 'steal' my parking spot, to fold towels differently than the way I showed you way back when we first got together...
The list is endless, and varies wildly from one person to another. If a friend, partner, or family member does something which contravenes our personal rules of etiquette, we have several ways in which we can respond. We can say, "I wish you wouldn't wear your hat inside the house," and then engage in a power struggle, trying to force them to remove it; they'll most likely be equally as determined to keep it on. We can harp and yarp along those lines each time they enter the house and don't remove their hat, and by doing so, create a major issue between us.
We can look at this "rule" and ask ourselves, "Where did this originate? Is this a rule I learned in childhood, or did I make this one up by myself? What is this about? Why do I care? How Important Is It?"
We can decide that we are going to let it go, stop taking it personally, stop allowing ourselves to extrapolate from that hat, all sorts of stories inside our own heads about what that means with regard to their respect for us and our living space, wishes, wants, blah blah blah.
When I decide to make a big deal out of the fact that another person's rules of etiquette differ widely from my own, I am creating a problem where none exists. Now, understand I'm not speaking here about someone stomping all over personal boundaries set to keep myself safe and comfortable - I'm talking about the wider range of etiquette rules such as "Towels must be folded in thirds lengthwise, then in half." "Cups go into the cupboard with the bottoms up." "Never put into the sink, anything which can be fitted into the dishwasher." "Never put anything into the dishwasher without rinsing it first." "This is how you fold a fitted sheet. It's rude not to make conversation first thing in the morning. People should sit at the kitchen table to drink their first coffee, not at the computer, or the tv. You should never interrupt when someone else is speaking."
Some of us, (and I include myself in this group) have a tendency to rigidity in our personalities. If not carefully paid attention to, this character defect can cause problems for us, by insisting that everyting be done "our way." Why? Well, because that's the right way, of course.
When I learned that I could let go of all of this, and nothing major would happen, the house didn't disintegrate into a slum, the dishes still got clean regardless of how they were loaded into the dishwasher, (and if they didn't, that didn't matter either, they could be rewashed) that I was "taking offense" where none was ever intended, and I was doing it around these rules of etiquette, that was enormously freeing.
I'll share something which I suddenly realised about 10 years into practising this wonderful program of ours: I've never yet worked to let go of something, only to wish I had it back. Never. Those rules and regulations of mine kept me a prisoner in my frustration. When I let it go, and it's gone, and I can look at whatever is happening with no need to take offense or get all worked up, I feel delighted.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Respect - From Others, And For Ourselves.
I've been having some staggering realisations in the last while, and they've been transforming the way I see myself.
When I allow another person to define me, I am limiting my choices. Family members (and partners) may have a vested interest in my remaining in the category or space, into which, they've mentally placed me.
I have only this one life. I want to live it fully.
My vista of possibilities increases with a wider perspective. How do I attain a wider perspective? By praying, listening, learning, and being open to hearing what's being said to me by those I trust. This most recent realisation came when I was out walking, and trying to honestly examine a fear of which I'd become aware. It was so stunning a recognition, it tilted my entire worldview, and that tilt has acted like a wide angle lens for viewing my life.
I've started asking those whose counsel I respect, for their viewpoints, and have received strongly positive responses. I can feel the power of my dream pushing me along, and I can feel myself evolving. (One aspect of blogging, is that one has to try to write about one's life happenings while not giving out too much information - so one occasionally ends up with this sort of post, which says not much, while trying to say everything)
I pray for courage, wisdom, patience, and clarity.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Am I Aware Of My Own Character Defects?
A newcomer asks: "Isn't it hard to figure out your own character defects, because aren't you naturally in denial about them?"
An excellent question, and timely, since our Step Group is working Step Four right now. The writer went on to ask, how could she find out what her character defects were?
Ask your family and friends! All kidding aside, it can be an interesting exercise to do this, because our friends and family can see us with more objectivity than we see ourselves. When we've been in Al-Anon for a while, we can ask members with whom we feel comfortable, and whom we trust, to discuss this with us, if they're comfortable doing so, because there again, we can be viewed with more objectivity.
Al-Anon's Paths to Recovery is a good resource, and Blueprint for Progress is a helpful book to work through, with sponsees doing their first Step Four. Both have good thought-provoking questions.
Try not to worry too much about how you are doing your inventory, and please, try not to bash yourself. No point in making it more difficult, right? We all have human frailties.
An excellent question, and timely, since our Step Group is working Step Four right now. The writer went on to ask, how could she find out what her character defects were?
Ask your family and friends! All kidding aside, it can be an interesting exercise to do this, because our friends and family can see us with more objectivity than we see ourselves. When we've been in Al-Anon for a while, we can ask members with whom we feel comfortable, and whom we trust, to discuss this with us, if they're comfortable doing so, because there again, we can be viewed with more objectivity.
Al-Anon's Paths to Recovery is a good resource, and Blueprint for Progress is a helpful book to work through, with sponsees doing their first Step Four. Both have good thought-provoking questions.
Try not to worry too much about how you are doing your inventory, and please, try not to bash yourself. No point in making it more difficult, right? We all have human frailties.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Don't Fear The Inventory - It's A Gift.
Many of us struggle with the idea of examining our character in depth - what horrors might we encounter, down there in the muck and mire of our crazed thinking? When we've been raised in families of dysfunction, we can have a self-image fragile and wobbly; I know I was afraid that I'd find out even worse things about myself than I thought I "knew" already.
What I discovered, was that much of my shame and guilt were assigned, and not deserved: that I had coping mechanisms which got in the way of my having a peaceful and serene life: that I was worthy of love simply for the fact of my existence - I didn't have to "earn" love.
Once I had a reasonable idea of my character, and my presumptions, conclusions, projections and assumptions, many of which I'd been unaware, prior to my first Step Four, my real self-improvement could begin. Without the inventory, I was a woman with no sense of direction, trying to find true north. Before Al-Anon, my deficits infuriated and distressed me, because they seemed to prove my unworthiness. In program I learned that I'm not unworthy, and that my mistakes, if I allow it, can be instructive.
Last night I was gathering the waistband of a dress I'm making, and laughed to realise that I was trying to get the gathers exactly perfectly distributed - unaware, I fall easily back into that lunatic perfectionism first acquired, when shame was a constant companion. I catch myself, because I know now how I operate, and I recognise my patterns of thought.
I know that when I have a sense of irritation rising in my chest as someone gives me feedback about myself, it's because I'm feeling defensive. I only feel defensive when I'm hearing the truth - so now, when I feel that irritation rising in that situation, I take a few deep breaths, and pay attention. My Higher Power is using this person as a conduit to teach me.
I do not have to like the lesson.
I don't float about my life, never feeling sad or bad or pissed right off - life is the way it always was, it's my response which has changed. It's the changed response which leads to serenity and peace.
The only way to a changed response, is to find out what my original response was, and why I had it - for that, I needed and still need, Step Four. I'm not afraid of myself anymore. I can be frustrated with my inability to grasp a message, but even that has paled and faded over time. I ruefully accept that I can be a very slow learner when I'm not thrilled with the reality of "It is what it is" and I can joke of this to my program friends, who will laugh with me, and give examples of their own dragging heels.
Some of the best laughing fits I've ever had, have happened while discussing character defects.
Pray for courage, and plunge into Step Four. Trust long-timers. when we tell you that you will be glad you did. Some things you just have to take on faith - this may be one.
What I discovered, was that much of my shame and guilt were assigned, and not deserved: that I had coping mechanisms which got in the way of my having a peaceful and serene life: that I was worthy of love simply for the fact of my existence - I didn't have to "earn" love.
Once I had a reasonable idea of my character, and my presumptions, conclusions, projections and assumptions, many of which I'd been unaware, prior to my first Step Four, my real self-improvement could begin. Without the inventory, I was a woman with no sense of direction, trying to find true north. Before Al-Anon, my deficits infuriated and distressed me, because they seemed to prove my unworthiness. In program I learned that I'm not unworthy, and that my mistakes, if I allow it, can be instructive.
Last night I was gathering the waistband of a dress I'm making, and laughed to realise that I was trying to get the gathers exactly perfectly distributed - unaware, I fall easily back into that lunatic perfectionism first acquired, when shame was a constant companion. I catch myself, because I know now how I operate, and I recognise my patterns of thought.
I know that when I have a sense of irritation rising in my chest as someone gives me feedback about myself, it's because I'm feeling defensive. I only feel defensive when I'm hearing the truth - so now, when I feel that irritation rising in that situation, I take a few deep breaths, and pay attention. My Higher Power is using this person as a conduit to teach me.
I do not have to like the lesson.
I don't float about my life, never feeling sad or bad or pissed right off - life is the way it always was, it's my response which has changed. It's the changed response which leads to serenity and peace.
The only way to a changed response, is to find out what my original response was, and why I had it - for that, I needed and still need, Step Four. I'm not afraid of myself anymore. I can be frustrated with my inability to grasp a message, but even that has paled and faded over time. I ruefully accept that I can be a very slow learner when I'm not thrilled with the reality of "It is what it is" and I can joke of this to my program friends, who will laugh with me, and give examples of their own dragging heels.
Some of the best laughing fits I've ever had, have happened while discussing character defects.
Pray for courage, and plunge into Step Four. Trust long-timers. when we tell you that you will be glad you did. Some things you just have to take on faith - this may be one.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Step Groups.
When several members of a Al-Anon group agree to meet once a week in addition o their regular home group meeting, for a mutually agreed number of weeks, to discuss the 12 Steps, it's commonly called a "Step group."
Last night was the first meeting of our new Step group, and it was wonderful. I love Step groups. I love the intimacy, the learning, the trust. I've been in groups which have started out rather raggedly because of clashing egos, but through assiduous practise of "principles above personalities" have melded into powerful rooms of change for all involved. That's something to see.
I remember every Step group in which I've taken part.
I was participating on a fairly shallow level at the beginning, because I was new to them, and new to trust, and found the revealing of myself to be quite frightening. But, just as it does in a regular meeting, the honesty and willingness to share being demonstrated by the other people at the table, showed me that it was safe to do so. Nothing terrible was going to happen if I was honest about my thinking, and my feelings.
There have been times when I haven't realised the effect of a Step group upon my growth, until long afterward. My thinking may have altered ever so slightly in one area - which shifts my perspective, and my perceptions. When I think differently, I see differently. In turn, when I see differently, I think differently. When I'm able to stay open to this process, it's a self-perpetuating movement towards a healthier way of life.
I encourage any of you who haven't yet joined a Step group to make the committment to the next one available to you. It's an experience difficult to articulate with clarity, but unremittingly positive for all concerned.
Last night was the first meeting of our new Step group, and it was wonderful. I love Step groups. I love the intimacy, the learning, the trust. I've been in groups which have started out rather raggedly because of clashing egos, but through assiduous practise of "principles above personalities" have melded into powerful rooms of change for all involved. That's something to see.
I remember every Step group in which I've taken part.
I was participating on a fairly shallow level at the beginning, because I was new to them, and new to trust, and found the revealing of myself to be quite frightening. But, just as it does in a regular meeting, the honesty and willingness to share being demonstrated by the other people at the table, showed me that it was safe to do so. Nothing terrible was going to happen if I was honest about my thinking, and my feelings.
There have been times when I haven't realised the effect of a Step group upon my growth, until long afterward. My thinking may have altered ever so slightly in one area - which shifts my perspective, and my perceptions. When I think differently, I see differently. In turn, when I see differently, I think differently. When I'm able to stay open to this process, it's a self-perpetuating movement towards a healthier way of life.
I encourage any of you who haven't yet joined a Step group to make the committment to the next one available to you. It's an experience difficult to articulate with clarity, but unremittingly positive for all concerned.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
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."
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."
Monday, May 30, 2011
Disagreeable and Lonesome.
"The question is not what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate."
John Ruskin.
Many of us have had so many years of frustration with someone's drinking by the time we hit the rooms of Al-Anon, that it can be quite the project to begin "loving, valuing and appreciating" our alcoholics.
We may treat our partner with a scornful disdain, while complaining that they no longer give us the affection we need and want. Someone once asked me, after I'd been complaining about the way I was treated by my first husband, "How do you treat him? With respect?"
I fell silent, unable to reply in the affirmative. I had lost all respect for him, with my loss of trust in him. I was new enough to Al-Anon to still be quite skilled at dismissing anything which didn't fit my world view, but that was one of those questions that would not be dismissed, it kept arising in my internal dialogue.
When working my first Step Four, I had to admit that I treated my first husband with contempt, disdain, rudeness, and cruelty, while at the same time complaining of the way he treated me. We were horrible to each other, it was just that his nastiness was delivered at the top of his voice, and mine came in quiet cutting remarks dropped into silences.
I could not begin to grow until I was able to admit where I was at the moment. All of my blaming and demonising of him may have satisfied the more childish element of my character, but it gave me no peace, and negatively affected my self-respect.
I have become a person I can love and respect, through my slow (so slow!) willingness to see my own character defects as affecting my experience in the world. If I am disagreeable, I will most likely be lonesome, because who wants to be around a chronic complainer who is full of scorn for the things others treasure?
When my husband was graduating from college, I somehow ended up sitting in the audience beside a woman who leant over and tried to fill my ear with disparaging remarks about the college, the courses, the instructors, the students...she was the girlfriend of a man who'd been in one of my husband's courses, and who he'd tried to avoid, because this man and his girlfriend shared a worldview unremittingly negative.
Before Al-Anon, I considered happy people to be fools who either didn't understand the realities of human life, or lucky bastards who had somehow escaped what the rest of us had suffered. It was unimaginable to me that anyone could suffer, and come through that suffering with an ability to "love, value, and appreciate."
From Courage to Change, page 148:
"After so many disappointments, it seemed too painful to continue to hope. We shut our hearts and minds to our dreams, and stopped expecting to find happiness. We weren't happy, but at least we wouldn't be let down anymore."
We may start out using a negative attitude as a way to protect our inner selves from the blows of disappointment, but it can become habitual, and then we're in real trouble, because our inner dialogue stops offering us the positive side, and we forget that there is one.
The reading goes on:
"I will not let fear of disappointment prevent me from enjoying this day. I have a great capacity for happiness."
I have found this to be nothing but the pure truth. I do have a great capacity for happiness, and that's a glorious thing.
John Ruskin.
Many of us have had so many years of frustration with someone's drinking by the time we hit the rooms of Al-Anon, that it can be quite the project to begin "loving, valuing and appreciating" our alcoholics.
We may treat our partner with a scornful disdain, while complaining that they no longer give us the affection we need and want. Someone once asked me, after I'd been complaining about the way I was treated by my first husband, "How do you treat him? With respect?"
I fell silent, unable to reply in the affirmative. I had lost all respect for him, with my loss of trust in him. I was new enough to Al-Anon to still be quite skilled at dismissing anything which didn't fit my world view, but that was one of those questions that would not be dismissed, it kept arising in my internal dialogue.
When working my first Step Four, I had to admit that I treated my first husband with contempt, disdain, rudeness, and cruelty, while at the same time complaining of the way he treated me. We were horrible to each other, it was just that his nastiness was delivered at the top of his voice, and mine came in quiet cutting remarks dropped into silences.
I could not begin to grow until I was able to admit where I was at the moment. All of my blaming and demonising of him may have satisfied the more childish element of my character, but it gave me no peace, and negatively affected my self-respect.
I have become a person I can love and respect, through my slow (so slow!) willingness to see my own character defects as affecting my experience in the world. If I am disagreeable, I will most likely be lonesome, because who wants to be around a chronic complainer who is full of scorn for the things others treasure?
When my husband was graduating from college, I somehow ended up sitting in the audience beside a woman who leant over and tried to fill my ear with disparaging remarks about the college, the courses, the instructors, the students...she was the girlfriend of a man who'd been in one of my husband's courses, and who he'd tried to avoid, because this man and his girlfriend shared a worldview unremittingly negative.
Before Al-Anon, I considered happy people to be fools who either didn't understand the realities of human life, or lucky bastards who had somehow escaped what the rest of us had suffered. It was unimaginable to me that anyone could suffer, and come through that suffering with an ability to "love, value, and appreciate."
From Courage to Change, page 148:
"After so many disappointments, it seemed too painful to continue to hope. We shut our hearts and minds to our dreams, and stopped expecting to find happiness. We weren't happy, but at least we wouldn't be let down anymore."
We may start out using a negative attitude as a way to protect our inner selves from the blows of disappointment, but it can become habitual, and then we're in real trouble, because our inner dialogue stops offering us the positive side, and we forget that there is one.
The reading goes on:
"I will not let fear of disappointment prevent me from enjoying this day. I have a great capacity for happiness."
I have found this to be nothing but the pure truth. I do have a great capacity for happiness, and that's a glorious thing.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Fighting Other People's Character Defects....
...instead of our own, is the way to ensure that we will continue to live in frustrated despondency, for years to come.
Sound bleak? That's the outcome to which we sentence ourselves, when we are unwilling to examine our own characters. We can take another person's inventory, itemise each time they trespass against us, decency and the world, but at the end of our (probably extensive) list, we will be no further ahead.
I can't change other people.
I can't manipulate them into changing, I can't talk them into changing; they are beyond my control. That leaves me with myself. Before I can be willing to attempt change in myself, I need to discover the ways in which I have gone wrong. This is what the Fourth Step is all about - figuring out what motivates us, and why we do the things we do.
If I cannot or will not accept that I too, have made mistakes, chosen to behave badly instead of well in some instances, then I'm not being honest with myself, and that lack of honesty will continue to trip me up. It may be satisfying to enumerate another person's character defects when we're annoyed, hurt, or frustrated, but where does that get me? My experience has been that whatever I concentrate upon tends to intensify - if I focus upon another person's character defects, soon that's all I can see or hear when I'm in or out of their company - what's wrong with them.
Meanwhile, I can be excusing the selfsame behavior on my part, by giving it a different label, or pretending that I'm not really doing what I'm doing, no, I'm doing something else completely, see?
I once heard an AA speaker, say something which has stayed with me:"You know how to distinguish mature people from those who are just adult? By their willingness to admit, make amends, and work for change."
I pray for maturity.
Sound bleak? That's the outcome to which we sentence ourselves, when we are unwilling to examine our own characters. We can take another person's inventory, itemise each time they trespass against us, decency and the world, but at the end of our (probably extensive) list, we will be no further ahead.
I can't change other people.
I can't manipulate them into changing, I can't talk them into changing; they are beyond my control. That leaves me with myself. Before I can be willing to attempt change in myself, I need to discover the ways in which I have gone wrong. This is what the Fourth Step is all about - figuring out what motivates us, and why we do the things we do.
If I cannot or will not accept that I too, have made mistakes, chosen to behave badly instead of well in some instances, then I'm not being honest with myself, and that lack of honesty will continue to trip me up. It may be satisfying to enumerate another person's character defects when we're annoyed, hurt, or frustrated, but where does that get me? My experience has been that whatever I concentrate upon tends to intensify - if I focus upon another person's character defects, soon that's all I can see or hear when I'm in or out of their company - what's wrong with them.
Meanwhile, I can be excusing the selfsame behavior on my part, by giving it a different label, or pretending that I'm not really doing what I'm doing, no, I'm doing something else completely, see?
I once heard an AA speaker, say something which has stayed with me:"You know how to distinguish mature people from those who are just adult? By their willingness to admit, make amends, and work for change."
I pray for maturity.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Questions.
"I'm new to Al-Anon, (about a year) and I'm getting wierded out because I never thought of myself as an angry person but I'm getting angrier all the time. Now when I look at my partner, that's all I can feel, p_____d right off at her for still drinking, and me for staying with her. What's going on?"
--------------------------------------------------------------
I came into Al-Anon an angry person; it wasn't even slightly underground in my case. I woke up angry, went to sleep angry, and muddled and stomped through my days with my level of anger intensifying to a boil, and decreasing to a simmer, but the burner was always turned to "on." Anger was my main coping mechanism, instilled in me when I was a very young child, through years of extreme physical battering and abuse. When my anger became too much to bear, I could shut myself down, much like flicking a switch, with a mantra of "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," repeated a few times, and then - blessed numbness.
Others come into Al-Anon feeling distressed and upset, but not particularly angry. I've heard members speak of bewilderment and confusion - where is all this anger coming from? Why can I no longer control my feelings?
I think the operative word is "control." We may feel as though we are losing control, frightened at the strength of the emotion, or the thoughts which arise.
This is perfectly normal.
When we have been hiding our feelings even from ourselves, and denying reality, it is no easy matter to begin the slow process of hauling it all out into the light and trying to take a dispassionate look at just what is there. I have heard many members share about a similar slow building of anger, as they continued to come to meetings. When feelings have been blunted through denial, the re-awakening can be agonising. No strength of feeling is lost through being stored, and when the coping mechanisms fail at last, and the emotions burst through the wall of numbness, a complete emotional breakdown can be the result.
We come into Al-Anon at various stages of various processes, but the one thing we have in common, is our need to be validated, to feel heard. And the one person by whom we need to be heard most, is not the alcoholic, but ourselves.
Al-Anon meetings are a safe place to speak, and to hear. A part of us will recognise this, whether our conscious mind can or does, and that part will begin to loosen the bonds holding our denial so tightly tied. That can be the catalyst for change, if we are willing and able to sit through those awful, painful feelings, and allow ourselves to feel them. Recovery is not always a sunny cheerful place - we may arrive at that destination finally, but the journey requires a willingness to suffer just a little bit more. If we've been frozen up in our feelings, then the suffering is going to be considerable.
Behind my great anger was pain - the pain of a child, and that of an adult, all the stages of my life's sorrows, disappointments, and griefs, all shoved behind the backdrop of rage, and left to molder unspoken and unrecognised. When I began to sort them, I'd pick one up and it would rush through me like adrenalin dumped into the bloodstream, and it would have been too much to bear, had I tried to do that by myself. I needed the comfort of my sponsor, and my Higher Power. I needed someone who could reassure me when I faltered, that it would get better, that this was necessary, that I would come out the other side of my first Step Four changed, and it would be good. And it was, but I had to take that on faith, I couldn't believe it.
Anger is a normal part of recovery; if we are not accustomed to allowing ourselves this feeling, it may be frightening. Get a sponsor, use your phone list, call someone with whom you can "reason things out." If you are not comfortable sharing details, that's fine, too - you can say, "I'm feeling really angry today, and I'm uncomfortable with it." That's information enough to be going on with, you can get comfort merely from hearing youself say it aloud. Treat yourself with loving kindness, and don't get into the whole "I should be doing this, I shouldn't be doing this" cycle, which drives us crazy, by making us feel even worse about ourselves, while accomplishing nothing helpful.
Remember the golden rule of recovery: "Treat yourself wih the same care and attention you've been lavishing upon everyone else on the planet."
--------------------------------------------------------------
I came into Al-Anon an angry person; it wasn't even slightly underground in my case. I woke up angry, went to sleep angry, and muddled and stomped through my days with my level of anger intensifying to a boil, and decreasing to a simmer, but the burner was always turned to "on." Anger was my main coping mechanism, instilled in me when I was a very young child, through years of extreme physical battering and abuse. When my anger became too much to bear, I could shut myself down, much like flicking a switch, with a mantra of "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter," repeated a few times, and then - blessed numbness.
Others come into Al-Anon feeling distressed and upset, but not particularly angry. I've heard members speak of bewilderment and confusion - where is all this anger coming from? Why can I no longer control my feelings?
I think the operative word is "control." We may feel as though we are losing control, frightened at the strength of the emotion, or the thoughts which arise.
This is perfectly normal.
When we have been hiding our feelings even from ourselves, and denying reality, it is no easy matter to begin the slow process of hauling it all out into the light and trying to take a dispassionate look at just what is there. I have heard many members share about a similar slow building of anger, as they continued to come to meetings. When feelings have been blunted through denial, the re-awakening can be agonising. No strength of feeling is lost through being stored, and when the coping mechanisms fail at last, and the emotions burst through the wall of numbness, a complete emotional breakdown can be the result.
We come into Al-Anon at various stages of various processes, but the one thing we have in common, is our need to be validated, to feel heard. And the one person by whom we need to be heard most, is not the alcoholic, but ourselves.
Al-Anon meetings are a safe place to speak, and to hear. A part of us will recognise this, whether our conscious mind can or does, and that part will begin to loosen the bonds holding our denial so tightly tied. That can be the catalyst for change, if we are willing and able to sit through those awful, painful feelings, and allow ourselves to feel them. Recovery is not always a sunny cheerful place - we may arrive at that destination finally, but the journey requires a willingness to suffer just a little bit more. If we've been frozen up in our feelings, then the suffering is going to be considerable.
Behind my great anger was pain - the pain of a child, and that of an adult, all the stages of my life's sorrows, disappointments, and griefs, all shoved behind the backdrop of rage, and left to molder unspoken and unrecognised. When I began to sort them, I'd pick one up and it would rush through me like adrenalin dumped into the bloodstream, and it would have been too much to bear, had I tried to do that by myself. I needed the comfort of my sponsor, and my Higher Power. I needed someone who could reassure me when I faltered, that it would get better, that this was necessary, that I would come out the other side of my first Step Four changed, and it would be good. And it was, but I had to take that on faith, I couldn't believe it.
Anger is a normal part of recovery; if we are not accustomed to allowing ourselves this feeling, it may be frightening. Get a sponsor, use your phone list, call someone with whom you can "reason things out." If you are not comfortable sharing details, that's fine, too - you can say, "I'm feeling really angry today, and I'm uncomfortable with it." That's information enough to be going on with, you can get comfort merely from hearing youself say it aloud. Treat yourself with loving kindness, and don't get into the whole "I should be doing this, I shouldn't be doing this" cycle, which drives us crazy, by making us feel even worse about ourselves, while accomplishing nothing helpful.
Remember the golden rule of recovery: "Treat yourself wih the same care and attention you've been lavishing upon everyone else on the planet."
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Unchallenged Beliefs About Ourselves.
Our ideas about ourselves are formed in early life; we internalise negative messages received from without - from parents, or parental figures. We fold those messages about our nature into our own sense of self, and go on to carry them virtually unchallenged, often laced through with feelings of shame.
That shame is a powerful force working against self-knowledge - we may fear that if we reveal those beliefs about ourselves to another person, they will respond with, "Yes, I know that about you."
In reality, I have never yet seen anyone reveal a core belief of this kind, which has the slightest attachment to the reality of who they are as a person.
I like to look "well put together" when I'm going out of the house, and I like my house and car to be neat and clean. It's a testament to the ability of the human mind to hold two opposing beliefs simultaneously, and somehow rationalise that holding as completely reasonable, that for 53 years of life, I could tidy and clean my surroundings, while carrying a core belief that I was slovenly by nature. (untidy or unclean in appearance or habits)
I cleaned my kitchen until all surfaces shone, while believing that I was a terrible housekeeper. I dusted the top of the hot water heater, and cleaned individual slats of blinds, while feeling intrinsic shame about being such a slob. I got down and picked out pine needles which the vacuum couldn't remove from the back door mat, firmly in the grip of that core belief.
It wasn't until I was granted awareness of the fact that I held two opposing beliefs - I like my self and my surroundings to be clean and tidy/I'm a slob - that I began to remember remarks which at the time of hearing, had slid past relatively unnoticed.
I'd shown someone a picture of my cute little dog, and she'd sighed, "Look how clean your kichen floor is! How do you keep a white floor looking like that?"
In conversation with another friend, she'd asked what was the noise in the background, and I'd replied that I was washing dog dishes before feeding them breakfast. When she'd asked how often I did this, and I said every morning, she said, "Good grief, I only wash mine every two weeks!"
I gave a friend a ride, and when getting into the car, she exclaimed, "Your car is so clean!"
It was my husband who pointed out to me, "If you like a clean house all the time, you aren't a slob." I was dumbfounded by that realisation. I had a total disconnect between the fact that a slob is messy and sloppy in home and appearance - I was neither, therefore, I wasn't a slob.
That core belief about who I was, had been folded in to my sense of self when I was so young, all along I'd just accepted it to be as real as the fact that I have brown hair. In Step 4, I would list that as of my character defects - the way I viewed it, because I had this as a fault, I must be aware of it, and work to overcome it, by keeping myself and my home nice and neat. Intrinsic in this core belief was the idea that were I to relax my standards in this regard, I'd imstantly fall into squalor.
It took a very silly conversation with my husband, in which he suggested I try not cleaning any part of the house for a month, and then fell over laughing at my immediate and involuntary expression of revulsion, for me to begin to question that which I'd accepted as truth for so long.
When our core beliefs are challenged, and shown to be untrue, it can leave us feeling rather unsettled afterwards - we need to reorient in a new and different landscape. I find prayer, and conversations with my Higher Power and my program friends, are of great help in smoothing my way.
That shame is a powerful force working against self-knowledge - we may fear that if we reveal those beliefs about ourselves to another person, they will respond with, "Yes, I know that about you."
In reality, I have never yet seen anyone reveal a core belief of this kind, which has the slightest attachment to the reality of who they are as a person.
I like to look "well put together" when I'm going out of the house, and I like my house and car to be neat and clean. It's a testament to the ability of the human mind to hold two opposing beliefs simultaneously, and somehow rationalise that holding as completely reasonable, that for 53 years of life, I could tidy and clean my surroundings, while carrying a core belief that I was slovenly by nature. (untidy or unclean in appearance or habits)
I cleaned my kitchen until all surfaces shone, while believing that I was a terrible housekeeper. I dusted the top of the hot water heater, and cleaned individual slats of blinds, while feeling intrinsic shame about being such a slob. I got down and picked out pine needles which the vacuum couldn't remove from the back door mat, firmly in the grip of that core belief.
It wasn't until I was granted awareness of the fact that I held two opposing beliefs - I like my self and my surroundings to be clean and tidy/I'm a slob - that I began to remember remarks which at the time of hearing, had slid past relatively unnoticed.
I'd shown someone a picture of my cute little dog, and she'd sighed, "Look how clean your kichen floor is! How do you keep a white floor looking like that?"
In conversation with another friend, she'd asked what was the noise in the background, and I'd replied that I was washing dog dishes before feeding them breakfast. When she'd asked how often I did this, and I said every morning, she said, "Good grief, I only wash mine every two weeks!"
I gave a friend a ride, and when getting into the car, she exclaimed, "Your car is so clean!"
It was my husband who pointed out to me, "If you like a clean house all the time, you aren't a slob." I was dumbfounded by that realisation. I had a total disconnect between the fact that a slob is messy and sloppy in home and appearance - I was neither, therefore, I wasn't a slob.
That core belief about who I was, had been folded in to my sense of self when I was so young, all along I'd just accepted it to be as real as the fact that I have brown hair. In Step 4, I would list that as of my character defects - the way I viewed it, because I had this as a fault, I must be aware of it, and work to overcome it, by keeping myself and my home nice and neat. Intrinsic in this core belief was the idea that were I to relax my standards in this regard, I'd imstantly fall into squalor.
It took a very silly conversation with my husband, in which he suggested I try not cleaning any part of the house for a month, and then fell over laughing at my immediate and involuntary expression of revulsion, for me to begin to question that which I'd accepted as truth for so long.
When our core beliefs are challenged, and shown to be untrue, it can leave us feeling rather unsettled afterwards - we need to reorient in a new and different landscape. I find prayer, and conversations with my Higher Power and my program friends, are of great help in smoothing my way.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Negativity Is A Choice.
One of the aspects of living with (or being closely related to) alcoholics, which can be crazy-making if we get caught up in it, is their inability to deal with their painful feelings, and their desire to punish anyone within reach, when they're hurting.
We feel what we feel, and we have a right to our feelings, but sometimes, watching an alcoholic's dramatic posturing, I can find myself wishing that we could have the information about the feelings, without all the rest of it. I don't know if perhaps they feel that without the drama, the feelings wouldn't be either recognised, or validated? My wondering why they do what they do, is a path to madness.
My part is to maintain my boundaries when the drama is trespassing upon them, and to detach, when it all gets a bit loud and overwhelming. I used to feel obliged to sit still for the performance, because I was afraid the alcoholic would feel unloved if I didn't. Somewhere along the line in my recovery, I had a realisation that by showing up for these performances, I was contributing to their continuation. Now, when I hear the opening bars, I try to remember to politely excuse myself.
Alcoholics can be the most endearing people on the planet when things are going well for them, and some of the most tiring, when life isn't working out the way they'd wished/hoped/planned. They can be vociferous in their complaints that they are in pain, and wanting out of it. They aren't just having a bad day, they're having the worst day anyone has ever had. Ever. Since the dawn of time.
At one time, I could easily be caught up in circular, insane talks, which went 'round and 'round, with me trying in my co-dependent way to fix whatever ailed them, and them sucking me in to their personal whirligig.
These talks would start with them throwing out a challenge: "Make me feel better, tell me something positive, improve my mood, help me get out of this awful state!"
If I took that bait, then there would be a declaration that life was shit, they were unhappy, they were always going to be unhappy, life sucked, 12-Step was useless stupid and annoying, they wanted proof of a Higher Power, they wanted a miracle...
Arguing against this sort of negative declaration, used to involve me in discussions which could have been rehearsals for a Monty Python sketch.
It never worked. I'd give up, finally, exhausted and frustrated, and they'd seem almost satisfied, in some perverse way, to have maintained their negative attitude.
I cannot change other people. Another person's state of mind is not my problem, regardless of what they might say. If they throw out challenges which seem to suggest that it's up to me to make them feel better, I can courteously sidestep the challenge, and let go of the outcome. I can offer a program tool which has been helpful to me and some others, I can gently or sometimes directly state that they seem determined to be miserable, and then let it go. If they are open-minded, they'll come to that realisation on their own, if they aren't, doesn't matter what I say, they won't hear me.
How do I know this? Because this entire post also describes me when I was new to Al-Anon.
We feel what we feel, and we have a right to our feelings, but sometimes, watching an alcoholic's dramatic posturing, I can find myself wishing that we could have the information about the feelings, without all the rest of it. I don't know if perhaps they feel that without the drama, the feelings wouldn't be either recognised, or validated? My wondering why they do what they do, is a path to madness.
My part is to maintain my boundaries when the drama is trespassing upon them, and to detach, when it all gets a bit loud and overwhelming. I used to feel obliged to sit still for the performance, because I was afraid the alcoholic would feel unloved if I didn't. Somewhere along the line in my recovery, I had a realisation that by showing up for these performances, I was contributing to their continuation. Now, when I hear the opening bars, I try to remember to politely excuse myself.
Alcoholics can be the most endearing people on the planet when things are going well for them, and some of the most tiring, when life isn't working out the way they'd wished/hoped/planned. They can be vociferous in their complaints that they are in pain, and wanting out of it. They aren't just having a bad day, they're having the worst day anyone has ever had. Ever. Since the dawn of time.
At one time, I could easily be caught up in circular, insane talks, which went 'round and 'round, with me trying in my co-dependent way to fix whatever ailed them, and them sucking me in to their personal whirligig.
These talks would start with them throwing out a challenge: "Make me feel better, tell me something positive, improve my mood, help me get out of this awful state!"
If I took that bait, then there would be a declaration that life was shit, they were unhappy, they were always going to be unhappy, life sucked, 12-Step was useless stupid and annoying, they wanted proof of a Higher Power, they wanted a miracle...
Arguing against this sort of negative declaration, used to involve me in discussions which could have been rehearsals for a Monty Python sketch.
It never worked. I'd give up, finally, exhausted and frustrated, and they'd seem almost satisfied, in some perverse way, to have maintained their negative attitude.
I cannot change other people. Another person's state of mind is not my problem, regardless of what they might say. If they throw out challenges which seem to suggest that it's up to me to make them feel better, I can courteously sidestep the challenge, and let go of the outcome. I can offer a program tool which has been helpful to me and some others, I can gently or sometimes directly state that they seem determined to be miserable, and then let it go. If they are open-minded, they'll come to that realisation on their own, if they aren't, doesn't matter what I say, they won't hear me.
How do I know this? Because this entire post also describes me when I was new to Al-Anon.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
"I've Decided Not To Go Tonight, Because ..."
I like to say this to my spouse, who will make noises of agreement and support, knowing full well that all I'm doing, is giving myself permission not to go to my meeting, on nights when it's hard to pull myself out the door. This doesn't mean I'm staying home; it's being said in the minute before I haul myself to my feet, and walk down the hall, to go get ready.
This may sound silly, but it works for me. In doing Step Four: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," I've discovered that I have a secretly rebellious streak. Just let me get the idea that I'm being expected to do whatever it is, and that (childish) part of me will begin to mutter darkly in the background, insisting that I don't have to do anything I don't want to, and nobody can make me do anything, and all manner of variations on that theme.
I've learned that rather than argue with my sulking inner child, it's much better to just agree with her, and continue along my adult path. (Do I sound as though I've got multiple personalities, here? Just an analogy - no actual voices arguing inside my head.)
I've learned that if I give myself permission to not do whatever it is that my rebellious streak is up in arms about, whether that be my yoga exercises, walking the dogs in the rain, cleaning the bathroom, or going to a meeting, I can sidestep all that mulishness.
MrSponsorPants has a good post today about making sure that we are listening to others, and truly hearing them. I've discovered through working my program, that I need to do this for myself, as well. I cannot ride roughshod over myself, insisting that my responsibilites require that I ____, and if I were truly mature I would ____, and I am bloody well going to do ____, whether I like it or not. This may work for some, this taking of self firmly in hand, but it often will not work for me.
It sets me up for failure, because the rebellious part of my nature will begin to place roadblocks in my path, trip me up time and again, anything to assert my independence, no matter how self-defeating the result.
I think of the years I spent pre-Al-Anon, trying and failing to force change upon myself, and in the process, waging an internal war. I recall how confused I was about my own behavior; I didn't know myself. I didn't understand that the abuse in childhood, had robbed me of my ability to feel as if I had any rights at all in life, so when I reached adulthood, all I had left to sustain me was my silently livid, internal rebellion.
I have learned that I need to listen to myself grumbling away: allow that part of me to feel heard: agree that yes, it is within my rights to not do this thing. In the strange alchemy of self-willfullness, the moment I do this giving of permission, is the moment that the internal resistance melts away, and I can get up and go do it. Strange but true, and I'd never have figured this out, if I hadn't been willing to do a Step Four. And then another and another, as I work my way down through the levels of excavation of self.
I love this program, for all that it has given me, in so many areas of my life.
This may sound silly, but it works for me. In doing Step Four: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," I've discovered that I have a secretly rebellious streak. Just let me get the idea that I'm being expected to do whatever it is, and that (childish) part of me will begin to mutter darkly in the background, insisting that I don't have to do anything I don't want to, and nobody can make me do anything, and all manner of variations on that theme.
I've learned that rather than argue with my sulking inner child, it's much better to just agree with her, and continue along my adult path. (Do I sound as though I've got multiple personalities, here? Just an analogy - no actual voices arguing inside my head.)
I've learned that if I give myself permission to not do whatever it is that my rebellious streak is up in arms about, whether that be my yoga exercises, walking the dogs in the rain, cleaning the bathroom, or going to a meeting, I can sidestep all that mulishness.
MrSponsorPants has a good post today about making sure that we are listening to others, and truly hearing them. I've discovered through working my program, that I need to do this for myself, as well. I cannot ride roughshod over myself, insisting that my responsibilites require that I ____, and if I were truly mature I would ____, and I am bloody well going to do ____, whether I like it or not. This may work for some, this taking of self firmly in hand, but it often will not work for me.
It sets me up for failure, because the rebellious part of my nature will begin to place roadblocks in my path, trip me up time and again, anything to assert my independence, no matter how self-defeating the result.
I think of the years I spent pre-Al-Anon, trying and failing to force change upon myself, and in the process, waging an internal war. I recall how confused I was about my own behavior; I didn't know myself. I didn't understand that the abuse in childhood, had robbed me of my ability to feel as if I had any rights at all in life, so when I reached adulthood, all I had left to sustain me was my silently livid, internal rebellion.
I have learned that I need to listen to myself grumbling away: allow that part of me to feel heard: agree that yes, it is within my rights to not do this thing. In the strange alchemy of self-willfullness, the moment I do this giving of permission, is the moment that the internal resistance melts away, and I can get up and go do it. Strange but true, and I'd never have figured this out, if I hadn't been willing to do a Step Four. And then another and another, as I work my way down through the levels of excavation of self.
I love this program, for all that it has given me, in so many areas of my life.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
What Would Happen If I Didn't _____?
That question is one that we do well to ask ourselves. So much of our behavior is by habit, by rote, by unquestioning following of the same track round and round. So it has been done ... so it always will be done - plod, plod.
Al-Anon was the very first place where it was suggested to me that I could choose a different way. Instead of doing the same things over and over, hoping for a different result, I found sufficient relief from the pain, to be able to stop and consider: was this rational? Was this even possible? I think I moved through all the stages of grief in the ending of my first marriage - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
I had to let go of all my old ways of thinking, seeing, and doing, and be willing to try something new - Step Two:
"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
I didn't have to try the new at that stage, I only had to have reached a place where I believed it possible that a power greater than myself existed.
Arrogance is one of the normal human frailties, and one with which I've grappled in close personal contact; I like to be right. (No, be honest, I love to be right.) My maturity has been a slow progression:
- from denying my arrogance, heedless of the pain dealt to myself and others by my being oblivious to this character defect,
-to awareness of my arrogance, and the shame and remorse which ensued,
-to working to "practise these principles in all our affairs", meaning that I strive to catch myself much earlier in the proceedings: let go of my arrogance and desire to be "right",
- to finding a different way to be satisfied.
If I am satisfied only if I "win" an argument, I have no motivation to stop fighting. I have had to choose another definition of "satisfied" - one in which I accept my powerless over other people, and am satisfied when I see that this time, I have chosen the healthy way to deal with conflict. I can feel self-love and self-respect when I make these different choices. I can then save up the energy which would have been expended upon the conflict, and splash out with it, on a pleasurable activity, whatever that may be for me.
I pray to be paying attention more often, and to decide that this time, I am not going to ____, I'm going to work my program.
Al-Anon was the very first place where it was suggested to me that I could choose a different way. Instead of doing the same things over and over, hoping for a different result, I found sufficient relief from the pain, to be able to stop and consider: was this rational? Was this even possible? I think I moved through all the stages of grief in the ending of my first marriage - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
I had to let go of all my old ways of thinking, seeing, and doing, and be willing to try something new - Step Two:
"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
I didn't have to try the new at that stage, I only had to have reached a place where I believed it possible that a power greater than myself existed.
Arrogance is one of the normal human frailties, and one with which I've grappled in close personal contact; I like to be right. (No, be honest, I love to be right.) My maturity has been a slow progression:
- from denying my arrogance, heedless of the pain dealt to myself and others by my being oblivious to this character defect,
-to awareness of my arrogance, and the shame and remorse which ensued,
-to working to "practise these principles in all our affairs", meaning that I strive to catch myself much earlier in the proceedings: let go of my arrogance and desire to be "right",
- to finding a different way to be satisfied.
If I am satisfied only if I "win" an argument, I have no motivation to stop fighting. I have had to choose another definition of "satisfied" - one in which I accept my powerless over other people, and am satisfied when I see that this time, I have chosen the healthy way to deal with conflict. I can feel self-love and self-respect when I make these different choices. I can then save up the energy which would have been expended upon the conflict, and splash out with it, on a pleasurable activity, whatever that may be for me.
I pray to be paying attention more often, and to decide that this time, I am not going to ____, I'm going to work my program.
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