How Has My Thinking Changed In Al-Anon?

Yesterday, before returning a phone call to someone in need, I asked for help from my Higher Power, closing my eyes for a moment, and saying quietly, "Please make me worthy of this person's trust." And then, in one of those wierd little detached-from-self moments, heard what I was saying, and was for a moment, astounded at the ways this program has changed me.

And then, as is the way of these things,  this topic came up in the coffee meeting-after-the-meeting last night - the ways those of us in Al-Anon for many years have changed so dramatically from the person we were when we walked through the door of our first Al-Anon meeting.

Al-Anon may be presented to us at the start as a way to become healthy whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not, but it will also, if we truly take it up and work it, bring about massive changes in our personalities. I was a woman distant from others, carefully locked away in my shame and my secrets. trusting no-one and nothing, with no hope for the future. I was unremittingly negative in my worldview - resentful, frustrated, anxious.

I still get those times, but the difference is that they are periods in my life, now, not my life. I may be feeling like that for an hour or two, or even a day or two when I do some backsliding and don't work my program or forget the wisdom I've been offered, but that is not the essence of me anymore.

Peace has become more important to me than getting my own way in all things. I might be talking to someone, and hear one part of my mind insisting upon being right - perhaps I feel that little rush of irritation I've learned to recognise as a road sign to my character defects. A sign that reads, "Don't go this way, or you'll regret it!"

When I get those messages from myself, I can do the mental equivalent of pushing the complaining insisting part of myself into another room, and gently closing the door, so that my better self can respond with love, respect, and encouragement.

Al-Anon brings out the best in us. Together, we are a powerful force for personal change. Last night, as we stood to say the Serenity Prayer at the close of the meeting, I got a shivery rush up my spine with the combined power of all our voices asking for acceptance, courage, and wisdom.

Old Dogs, New Tricks, and Fireworks.

Our little male dog was always utterly terrified of fireworks, thunder, any loud noise, but fireworks were the worst, they'd send him to his bed to shake for hours. It was a dreadful sight, and we tried everything to comfort him, but nothing worked. Our little female dog wasn't afraid when we adopted her, but followed his lead - if he was so afraid, there must be something to fear, and she became terrified of fireworks herself.

One day I was watching the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan, and he spoke of distracting a dog when they are afraid. I thought - how do I do that? I decided to get my dog a new toy, and keep it until the night of the fireworks. When the first one went off, I reached behind the couch cushion, brought out the new toys, and handed them out. He didn't know what to do - his fear was telling him to rush down the hall to cower in his bed, but he had just been given a new toy - he compromised by taking his new toy into his bed, and huddling with it there. Over time, we've worked on distracting him with retrieving whenever there's a loud frightening noise. He's a crazed retreiver dog.

Last night I was overjoyed when the first very loud firework exploded, and he rushed into the livingroom, grabbed his newest toy, brought it to where I was at the kichen sink, dropped it at my feet, and stood eagerly waiting, tail waving, ears up. He has learned to associate fireworks with play. It brought a lump to my throat and the sting of tears to my eyes - his terror was gone, as if it had never been.

If a 10 year old dog, (that's 70 in human years,) can learn to get over a life-long fear, can't we do the same?

Common Denominators - Judgement, and Joy.

This morning I was thinking that for many of us, if we do not work against it, our character tends to solidify and become more rigid the older we get. Left unchallenged, our basic beliefs will harden like cement curing, setting into an impermeable foundation for our character defects.

Had I not been bailing against the tide for the last 26 years, I would be a very different woman today.

So much of my old judgement of other people was an effort to protect my insecure self - I kept people at a safe distance by judging, classifying, rating, labelling...it was an exhaustive and time-consuming business, but it felt necessary.

When I was new to program, and began to slowly grasp the concept that it wasn't the world that was so cold to me, it was I who was cold to the world, and the world responded in kind, it felt like a formidable challenge to try to wrest my thinking around to that viewpoint. I didn't like the view from that particular outcropping, it made my self-pity an unwieldy and sharp-edged garment to don, rather than the soft comforting blanket it had always been for me.

Judgement, I thought, kept me safe. What it did, was keep me isolated. And when we're isolated, we don't get the necessary input to effect a change in our thinking; it becomes ever stronger, self-reinforcing.

I still have times when my internal dialogue is less than loving, and I most likely always will as long as I'm upon this earth. Al-Anon has taught me to be aware of that internal dialogue, and when I can't get up out of that rut, to seek help, whether that's to call my sponsor or a program friend, read some literature, or pray. I've evolved a little shorthand phrase for those times: "No judgement - God's love."

That little sentence blocks the negativity, and reminds me that I'm seeking to become more loving, and to have that loving be a pure and unconditional sort - no strings attached, no qualifications, no requirements. Love for the sake of love. Which brings me to the other topic - joy.

I believe that within each of us is a powerful expansive joyfulness, and we can tap into that joy through working 12-Step. You can see it in the faces of those who've realised that joy is an inner resource, not the result of the perfect exterior happening. It makes daily life a very different thing when we get there, because we become the spiritual equivalent of a self-righting boat. We aren't immune to the storms of life, and we may be swept under the surface by a wave of circumstance, but that inner buoyancy brings us back to the surface, and the "sunlight of the spirit."

Happy New Year, all.

The Many Uses of 12-Step.

I'd forgotten what a bulldog arguer my brother can be. It slipped my mind, just how much he likes a rip-snorter of a debate.

Today in an email, I'd dodged one of his attempts to solicit an opinion from me, with a comment about not feeling comfortable making judgements about other people's beliefs. I'm sure it's very strange for him to be writing to me now, as I've said earlier in this blog, because when he knew me last, I was a very different, very opinionated woman.

He responded to my attempt to dodge the topic, with a strongly worded epistle about how if we don't judge and condemn other people when they are wrong, we are falling down on our job of protecting our fellow humans, upon whom they might prey.

I replied that I was only speaking for myself, about my discomfort with judging. I got another email in response describing the many ways in which I was wrong to not judge other people, because of this, and this, and that!
I read it and sighed heavily, wondering how I'd managed to elicit such a strong repsonse with my mild comments about my own discomfort with judging. I looked down at my little dog arranged in comfort upon my lap, and asked her, "How on earth did we get from me not being comfortable judging other people's beliefs, to whether or not it's ok to stone someone?" I know perfectly well how we got there - riding the tsunami of my brother's debating skill.

Sitting there, gazing at the screen, at a loss as to how I might reply,  I received the loveliest little nudge from my Higher Power. I wrote:

"You could be right."

and sent it off. I had been feeling slightly distressed by the force of his argument, (and his insistence upon having one) but after I sent that, I felt lighthearted, and free. I went to have a shower and go to a meeting. I don't have to argue just because he likes to. I don't have to step into the loop of rope lying on deck, and be swept over the rail into the ocean to wrestle with sharks. I can stop, detach, and avoid the "bite of the line."

I don't have to fall back into my old ways, not out of habit, nor to please my brother.

When I returned home from a wonderful Al-Anon meeting, his reply to my "You could be right" email was in my inbox; it read:

"Yes, but only partly."

That made me laugh, and wish that I could hug him. He's a dear man, my brother. I don't share his love of debate and argument anymore, but I do love him. I hope my love comes through clearly when I write.

Happy Christmas

We're having some "orphan" newcomers in AA over for turkey dinner tomorrow, and the last few days, I've been madly burning cd's of AA speakers for them, so each one can have a little travel cd holder with a starting collection of 14 cds, and some empty slots for more later. It's been great fun.

Then I cleaned the house from stem to stern, had a nice long soak in some luxurious lavender foaming bath -with the most intoxicatingly heavenly fragrance. My little female dog kept standing up to peer over the edge of the bath and try to get me to give her some suds to eat. (What is it with some dogs and soap? My last big dog would nibble any bar soap left within reach.)

Now, I'm feeling utterly relaxed, joyful, and deeply grateful for all of the blessings in my life.

Happy Christmas to all of you.

Accepting What I Can't Change.

Earlier tonight, I was feeling angry, frustrated, and knew that I needed some input from a rational mind in order to calm myself down. I called my sponsor, and sitting in my office looking out the big window at the lights on the hill opposite, talked to her until I could feel my irritation and annoyance slipping away, and serenity returning.

I am so grateful for this program. Without it, I'd have spent all the rest of the evening, and most of the next day, seething and roiling with my anger and frustration. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy my own life for the next 12-24 hours, because I'd have been totally focused upon the source of my frustration. I'd have chewed the conversation over until I was in a livid boil of raging aggravation.

I used to begin by feeling mildly annoyed, work myself up into a fury, then go "deal with the problem" while I was in that state of rage, rationalising any bad behavior on my part by pointing to what the other person had said or done as my justification.

Al-Anon was the first place where someone suggested that perhaps what I was doing was having a temper tantrum. Or, to quote my first sponsor, a "hissy fit."

I was terrifically offended. I had been provoked! I had been mistreated! I had been offered the perfect excuse to "lose it" and had taken that excuse and run with it, as I so often did. I couldn't see that in doing so, I was damaging my own self esteem, because on some level, I knew that behaving that way wasn't acceptable, provocation or no provocation.

When I focus on someone else's behavior, and how they choose to behave, I am handing them my serenity on a plate. I am offering up my peace of mind, my ability to enjoy life,  everything which makes my life worth living I'm handing over, and for what? The momentary satisfaction of  of stating my own unsolicited opinion, or chewing over the wrong I decide that someone else has done?

It's counterproductive to spend my life that way. I want peace, and I want serenity, and I can find both of those in the same place they always wait - within me, when I'm in conscious contact with my Higher Power. I can't get there when I'm feeling angry or frustrated. I have to sit quietly, offer it all up, and be willing to have it removed.

I have to want to let it go, more than I want to be "right." Being right never did give me more than a bit of fleeting satisfaction - nothing like enough to sustain me in serenity.

Common Denominators - Impatience & Intolerance.

For me, these two character defects are closely linked. Intolerance leads to impatience. When I'm not being convinced by intolerance that I know better how someone should think, feel, or behave, I've got endless patience. Conversely, when I'm feeling impatient, it's because I'm viewing another person through a lens of intolerance, and deciding that, measured against my standards of behavior, they fall short.

I was told by a sponsor, that whenever I would exclaim "I'd never do that!" I was demonstrating  intolerance. I remember sitting thinking to myself that "all I was doing" was pointing out that my choices were vastly superior to those of the person against whom I was comparing myself. At some point, perhaps after repeated reminders, I vocalised this thinking. And was, as I was so often at the beginning, supremely annoyed to see my sponsor fighting a smile, as she explained that it was somewhat arrogant to describe my choices as "vastly superior."

I've been asked by sponsees how I can describe myself as filled with self-loathing, when I was such an arrogant little snot individual. My arrogance was driven by insecurity, a secret belief that I was "not enough." Not tall enough. Not smart enough. Not pretty enough. Not rich enough. My car, clothes, house, none of these were expensive enough. Absolutely nothing in my life was enough. The only thing which ever escaped this incessant measuring-and-falling-short, was my dog. The dogs I've had through the years, were, to me, perfectly beautiful, and perfectly loving.

I had big dogs back then, not mini dachshunds, as I do today, but I've learned that the size of the canine package matters not, even the smallest of them have that amazing dog capacity for love; I think a dog is one of God's greatest gifts. I'd sit on the floor, hugging my dog, and my heart would swell with love and gratitude. I'd walk behind my dog through the woods, or beside the ocean, and feel a grateful contentment in that moment, long before I could identify that feeling.

I had what I once heard described in an open AA meeting as, "low-to-no self-esteem." The only way for me to deal with this, was to pretend first to myself, and then to others around me, that I was superior. I hid in plain sight, since the only person I managed to convince of this was myself - it seems as though it's fairly easy to identify low self-esteem in other people.

So, sneering at the choices of other people was the only way that I could feel a modicum of good feeling about who I was. But that passed off so quickly that I was always trying to find another way in which I could feel better than, superior, far above in knowledge, taste, attitudes, yada yada yada.

Intolerance led to impatience. Impatience tells me that I am being intolerant. And intolerance is never driven by a good feeling, a happy feeling. So when I feel impatient, I've learned to step back from the moment, detach, and ask myself, "What's going on? Am I hungry, angry, lonely, tired? If none of those apply,  what's lurking behind the impatience/intolerance? What am I not dealing with, elsewhere in my life?" 

It's never about the person cutting in front of me in traffic, or elbowing me out of the way to grab the last item on sale, or snatching away the precise head of lettuce I was aiming to get, or being rude in any one of the myriad ways of which we humans are capable. When I'm in a state of serenity, I can let that rudeness slide right on by, and just - notice it, without an accompanying rush of hot feelings. In serenity, I can wave them in front of me, get that lettuce for them; I can say with a giddy delight to my friend, "Guess I wasn't meant to have one of those sale items today, let's go have coffee," I can respond to rudeness with a calm courtesy that is sincere.

My state of mind affects the way I view my world. My world doesn't change - there's still the same percentage of lunatic misguided drivers on the city streets as any other day - but I'm driving with my Higher Power's love sweetening the air in the car, and I'm at peace with the world.