"Shouldn't You Be Able To Avoid A Meltdown, If You've Been In Al-Anon For Some Time?"

Good question. I can and do, if I keep my focus firmly upon myself, and detach from the alcoholic craziness.

If.

I've heard long-term members in Al-Anon talk as if they soar serenely above the fray in all circumstances, in all areas, never having the slightest upset or annoyance, and if they aren't exaggerating even slightly, I applaud and respect them.

I can't do that. I backslide. I forget. I become hungry, lonely, or overtired, or my temper rises, and, I fail to catch myself at the "stop and detach" stage of the proceedings, and instead, I go with my annoyance, and pretty soon I'm on that gerbil wheel running like a mad thing, completely unaware that this is what I'm doing.

Now, I grant you, that these times are few and far between, because I have long experience in program, am surrounded by friends who also practise program, and work to immerse myself in the wisdom of Al-Anon. But it does happen now and then.

I've given up shaming myself for it. It is what it is. Once I realise that I've been doing this, it only prolongs the agony, to then pick up a mental cudgel and begin to belabor myself with gusto, telling myself I should have done this, and I should have known that, and what is the matter with me, that I would still climb onto the gerbil wheel of obsessive thinking when I've been in Al-Anon for so many years, blah blah...doing that only made me feel much worse.

I've learned to sigh, laugh, and feel a powerful gratitude for the serenity of today, off that wheel. I've learned to do an inventory, searching for my character defect which came into play in this particular instance, and ask my Higher Power to remove it. I work to figure out what was the precipitating factor, in the hopes that when a similar event arises in the future, I can be aware: I can accept: I can respond differently.

That's all I can do, and I can do all of that.

Generating Trouble.

From  ODATIA, page 52:

"Mental sobriety is a state of reasonableness, rational judgement, balance. It is emotional sickness when we continue to be apprehensive and anxious when we really have no reason to doubt.
I will pray today and every day, for healthful, wholesome thinking, so that I may not generate trouble for myself."

Before Al-Anon, I had no concept of how I generated trouble, I was under the firm impression that all trouble in my life came from outside me, and I was just reacting to it.

Practising the Steps has taught me that I caused much of my misery by hopping up onto the gerbil wheel at the slightest sensation of unease, and giving it a good workout. I ran as though all the Furies of Hell were after me: as if I were training for a new speed record.

I could take a minor situation and through obsessive thinking, turn it into something which occupied my thoughts to the exclusion of anything pleasant, and had a physical effect upon me - making it impossible to sleep, eat, relax.

I was a master at generating trouble. I couldn't let anything go, I couldn't detach, I couldn't enjoy my life. I can see now that these were lessons learned in early childhood - that was how the adults in my life dealt with their environments, so that must be the way it's done.  I added years, without maturing in mindset: a fearful angry person. Before I could achieve any perspective on my own internal dialogue, I needed to deal with my resentments, and martyrdom - until that happened, I accepted whatever sentiment wandered across my mental horizon, as the truth, not understanding it was the truth only according to me.

My first sponsor set me a task - for one week, I was to question all of the editorial comment from my internal dialogue, and to act upon none of it. I was to work towards achieving a state of relative quietude inside my own head.

Right. Sure. I'll start that immediately.

I must have been gazing at her with a snarky disbelief upon my face, for she reiterated her directions in her "brook no argument" tone, and finished with a rhetorical question about those who are negative about each and every suggestion or idea offered to them, and how was that expressing willingness, could I tell her that, please?

I slunk off home feeling hard done by, woke up the next day, and decided in my stubborn fashion, to prove to her that it couldn't be done, it was ridiculous, it was asinine, it was a waste of time....oops, that's editorial comment, isn't it, and I'm supposed to be allowing life to flow past like a tinkling stream...

By the time I met up with my sponsor again, had I used a water allusion, it would have been more of the "natural disaster" and "swept all before it" or "engulfed completely" sort, than her choice of a gentle stream. I'd been shocked to discover just how much of my thinking was driven by anxiety and apprehension, and how similar to bailing the ocean with a teaspoon it had felt, trying to achieve peace and quiet in that madhouse between my ears.

I had an inkling of the depth and breadth to which the floodwaters of my pessimism and fear could spread, given any encouragement whatsoever. Trying to curb my "editorial comment" gave me a grasp of just how entrenched it was.

I felt powerless, and I knew unmanageability; I had seen it in action in my life. I had, instead of wandering through my day while living in resentment about the past, or dread of the future, spent some time in the here-and-now, and didn't like it one bit. "Why would anyone want to live in the now?" I asked, when we met again. I laugh writing that, but I wanted an answer that would make sense to me.

As I saw it at the time, my sponsor failed me, giving me the feel-good reply, "Because the now is all you get, my dear." What a patient woman she was, putting up with being bombarded with carefully-thought-out justifications for staying stuck in my unhappiness, which had been bad enough to drive me into Al-Anon, but once there, I didn't want to have to exert myself making any real changes. I wanted a fast solution to my ex-husband's drinking.

Give me the secret code, I'll plug it in, he'll be recovered, and we'll live happily ever after. Or not. Even now, with all that I've learned and know, I can still get stuck in that place of "Why should I have to..."

I shouldn't have to. In the best of all possible worlds, I wouldn't have to. But this isn't, and I do, if I want to get anywhere. I was washing the dishes tonight, listening to my silent, internal, editorial comment, and sighing to hear how childish it was. I like to tell my sponsees, when they get into the "But why? Why?"  drawer,

"It is what it is."

"Yes, I realise that, but blah blah, and I just need to know why it is."

"What if you can't find a reason? Are you going to predicate your recovery upon getting reasons you find acceptable? Life doesn't always give us nice tidy reasons. It is what it is."

I can hear their teeth gnashing together in frustration, and think with great affection of my first sponsor, who listened with such warmth and love to all my tooth gnashing.

That's how program works; we receive it, and we pay it forward.

Self-Obsession.

This was the topic at my home group last night, and Mr. SponsorPants has a good post on it today. When I was new to Al-Anon, I found it rather puzzling that we were warned against self-obsession, while being told to practise the Steps, which require rigorous self-examination - what's the difference? Either way, I'm thinking about myself, aren't I?

Yes, but it's what I'm thinking about myself. In self-obsession, I'm on a negative path, which spirals ever downward - I've never yet surfaced from 4 hours of self-obsession feeling refreshed or energised. Self-obsession focuses only on the negatives in my life, and has running through it, a strong vein of resentment, frustration, anger, and self-pity.

In contrast, self-examination does leave me feeling more positive and hopeful. I've got the experience of my years in Al-Anon, to remind myself, that if I can set aside all my judgements about my own behavior or thinking, and just see it for what it is, without having to lash or shame myself for it, I can let go of what doesn't work, keep what works, and plow forward on my great adventure.

When I let go of shame about my character defects, I can share them with my sponsees, and perhaps allow them to realise that what they are thinking/feeling/wanting is only their human frailties, not evil and contemptible.

When I'm not obsessing about myself, I can share myself freely with others. I can give the gift of my experience, strength, and hope. I can offer my love to the members of my Al-Anon groups, and to the larger world outside them.

I know it sounds like a gooey greeting card to say this, but love really does grow as we share it. There is always enough to go around - a limitless supply - the very act of giving love replenishes the spring.

Fear, and Trees.

I love trees. All trees. Slender, elegant birches, with silvery shimmering leaves: willows with delicate weeping branches encasing their massive gnarly trunks: enormous pines reaching into the sky, rustling God's message in the wind.


When I lived in the city and rode my bike to work, I always went a certain route, so that I could ride under the canopy of monumental chesnut trees that lined both sides of one street, even though it meant I had to ride up one of the worst hills in the city.

I can still remember feeling upset, when I rode my bike to work one day, and saw that two enormous oaks had been chopped down to enlarge a music store's parking lot. The store went out of business in a short time, but those trees had been there almost 100 years, and they were gone forever.

Other people on my street complain about the mess of the ornamental cherry trees - I wait all year to see that glorious bloom, and to enjoy the dance of the dropped petals swirling down the road in a light spring breeze.

Yesterday, driving home, I saw that one of my neighbours had taken down a huge pine tree which graced their property. It lay in pieces in a dump truck. (This was a big pine, the cones it dropped were some of the largest I've seen outside of a first-growth forest.) I've always enjoyed listening to that tree when the wind is blowing - it murmured and sighed. That tree was growing before any of us were even born, and now it's nothing but pieces of wood lying in a truck's bed.

My neighbour has always been afraid of that tree. When I walked under it, I felt communion with my Creator, awe, and peaceful in the shadow of its branches. My neighbour felt it "loomed threateningly" over her house. She's a very fearful sort of person, completely unable to enjoy life, consumed with worries. Her worry caused her to destroy a thing of beauty for no other reason than to set her mind at ease. But that won't last, she'll just clamp onto something else, and within a day or so, will be in a frenzy over that, unable to sleep, and frantic.

The tree died for nothing. I stood on our back steps last night, and felt sad, looking at the big empty space of sky that used to be filled with that glorious tree.

Fear is only and ever, a destroyer.

Obsessive Thinking

One question I've heard repeatedly from sponsees, is, "How do I stop thinking about this stuff? It's driving me crazy, I go around and around and around and just get more and more upset, but I don't know how to stop!"

It makes me shudder, to remember just how out of control my thinking was, when I was new to 12-step. I could start out in a relatively pleasant mood, then a stray thought would wander across my mental landscape, and I'd be off in pursuit like a pack of hounds after a fox. And chase it I would, over the proverbial hill and dale, through forests, streams, thickets, wheatfields, across four-lane highways, back into the fields, staggering down the valley on legs shaking from exhaustion, still drawn inexorably to follow, by my own compulsive nature.

I would wake up thinking about something, chase it all day long, then collapse into bed at night, still on that same subject. It was an appalling way to live.

I've developed several ways to deal with this aspect of myself, and as I've slowly gained some control, I find it becomes less of a struggle, most times, to get myself off one subject and onto another.

First, I had to become aware of my internal dialogue. The parental tapes that stop and start, the voices chiding me for my imperfections, my own voice yarping away about what someone else is doing/not doing. A friend calls it "the stories I'm telling myself." I love that. My stories used to be great sweeping dramas along the lines of "Gone With The Wind" - now they tend to be more in the "3-page, ironically-rueful-commentary-on-human-silliness" category.

So, ok, now I'm more aware of my internal dialogue, now what?
Practise what was taught to me as, "thought-stopping." This means that the minute the fox comes out from his burrow, and looks like he's going to start trotting away, I turn myself ruthlessly in the opposite direction, and begin to admire cloud formation, and the treeline. I don't check back over my shoulder with quick glances "just to see what he's doing," I don't pretend that I'm not going to run, all the while retying my shoelaces "just in case."

I force myself to think of something different. I love gardening - all righty then, I start planning what I'm going to do when the too-many plants I've got ordered start arriving.

Where should I put that plant? I could put it beside the delphiniums, but they get so tall they might shade it, so I could put it in the other garden beside the rudbeckia, but they reseed like crazy, and could choke it out...

My thinking may be just as obsessive, but I'm obsessing over a topic that doesn't cause me pain and suffering; on the contrary, it gives me hours of pleasure. (Mad gardeners are more socially acceptable than foxhunters, anyway. Marginally.)

I may have to force myself off the one topic, onto the other, a dozen times before I'm eventually successful in rerouting my thinking, but I've learned to just keep at it, and eventually, I will realise I've been lost in happy delirium over my garden for half an hour, the fox has disappeared, and I'm safe once more.

Thought-stopping - it works, I promise. It will most likely feel awkward and foolish the first few times you try it, but like most things in life, if we just keep at it, we start to gain some measure of skill, our self-esteem rises, and we like ourselves more. And that's always a good thing.