Active Listening.

In one of his July emails, my brother mentioned that when his father (my adoptive father) was a small child, he thought there was a holiday by the name of "Forchuly." He was raised in the Bronx, and that's how everyone sounded to him, when they were talking about the Fourth of July.

It started me thinking about how difficult it can be to understand someone at a meeting, when they have a very soft voice, or don't enunciate well. Over the years, there has been the odd person who may as well have been speaking another language, for all I was able to understand a word of their share. At first, this annoyed me. Why didn't they speak clearly, or raise their voice a bit? Time and experience has taught me that for some people, that is all they can manage; fear, or a wobbly self-image, inhibits them.

I may not be able to hear what they say, but that doesn't mean I can't project the same acceptance and love towards them as I would to anyone else - we are equals in the rooms of Al-Anon. 

When I chose many years ago to volunteer for the local Crisis Line, I was trained in what they termed "active listening." It requires effort to learn to listen with our focus and attention solely upon the other person, and not upon what we want to say next, what we need to get for dinner, what happened at work to cause us anxiety.

I'm grateful that I did my stint on the Crisis Line before I joined Al-Anon; I think it helped me to listen more carefully than I may have been able to otherwise. When I was a newcomer, I had no concept of how to go about implementing the wisdom imparted to me, and, many times, I was in such a state of anxiety, anger, depression or frustration that I heard what was said at the meeting, then forgot it all the moment I walked out the door to go back home to the alcoholic.

But that early training in focused listening has stood me in good stead. I believe it has helped me in my sponsorship, in relating to others at meetings, and in being empathetic to those who still suffer.

Listening to newcomers takes me sharply back, to the terrified and confused woman I was when I was new.

I try to extend a warm welcome. I don't leap upon them to fill their ears with all the advantages of Al-Anon, because I was so shy and self-conscious that I found all that warmth and love a little too much to take at first, and would rush out the door after the Serenity Prayer, so as to avoid being hugged. I had no trust, and hugging relative strangers made my weird meter leap to "overload."

Listening well is an art. I think many old-timers in program are good listeners. We all need a safe place, and someone with whom we can speak, knowing that our privacy is assured, our sorrows are shared, and we can unburden ourselves in the knowledge that we won't be interrupted.

 An Al-Anon meeting is a safe place.

The Many Facets of Fear.

When I was in my early twenties, I began to have panic attacks - my heart would feel like it was going to pound right out of my chest, my entire body would shake, and, utterly transfixed by fear and an overwhelming claustrophobia, my singleminded focus was: get outside now!

I would walk out of the grocery store, leaving a full cart: pull over to the side of the road and get out of the car: be found out on the back porch/in the yard/walking my dog, no matter what the weather, or time of day.

I will be forever grateful to an emergency room intern, who, after listening to my heart, showed me how to calm myself through the use of shallow, slow breathing, and affirmations that this was just an anxiety attack, I wasn't going to keel over, I was fine. I learned to talk myself down.

I learned that anxiety attacks follow a pattern - once we've had one, we then worry that we'll have another,  and we become afraid of feeling afraid.

This intern explained to me that with the initial feeling of anxiety in a panic attack, comes a physical response - a little spurt of adrenalin, which causes our heart rate and breathing to speed up, our senses to sharpen, our hands to shake, perhaps we get a feeling of nausea. We then think, "Oh NO! I'm having an anxiety attack!" and then we get a big dump of adrenalin into our system, and the full flight-or-fight response kicks in, rational thought falls by the wayside, and we are in full panic mode.

I learned to head off physical panic attacks, but it wasn't until Al-Anon that I gained any control over my mental panic attacks - the gerbil wheel of obsessive worry and awfulising. I learned to deal with these quite effectively, most times.

Until menopause, and insomnia. When I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, not only is it difficult not to worry and obsess, but my sleep debt begins to negatively affect my daytime mental state, and I become far more likely to do that same worrying and obsessing during my waking hours.

I've had a bad few days with this, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to get out of the hand-dug pit. I've read program literature, prayed, reasoned things out with someone else, prayed, practised thought-stopping, all of my usual ways of dealing with worry, and the moment I've relaxed my guard, I will find myself right back into it, full-bore.  I'm feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.

No wisdom today, apart from the knowledge that if I keep working my program, this too shall pass. I'm reminding myself to be grateful for the blessings in my life, and not to give this difficult period too much weight. When I wake up in the wee small hours, I read; this occupies my mind enough that I can't imagine various scenarios, all negative, with which to torment myself. When I become sleepy again, I say the Serenity Prayer, or pray to be granted sleep. I'm listening to a lot of program speaker tapes during the day, and going to as many meetings as I can.

I also find it's important for me to admit to my mental state to those who are safe, in program and out - only then do I escape the isolation of hidden worry and stress. Fighting the truth of where I'm at doesn't work - acceptance does. I'm not alone; I have a partner who loves me, friends who love me, dogs who love me, a Higher Power who loves me - these are my life gifts, and I treasure them all.

Other People's Opinions.

I remember one meeting I attended, the topic of which I've long forgotten, but one member's comment stays with me - she described talking to her brother about Al-Anon, and how much it had helped her, and he interrupted her to say, "I don't want to hear any more about your sect."  She was laughing somewhat ruefully as she spoke about his inability to see past the jargon of the program, to the deep and positive changes it had wrought in her.

 When I was new to program, I didn't tell anyone I was going to meetings. I didn't for a long time, not until I was sufficiently secure in my recovery, to have reached a place where it wouldn't matter what the opinion of other people might be - I could see the wonderful changes working 12 Step was having on my life, and I wanted more of the same.

Now, I couldn't care less who knows, but I've been going to Al-Anon for 24 years, so I've loosened up quite a bit in that regard. I do try to keep the jargon to a minimum, if asked about 12 Step by someone who knows nothing about it but the name.

I've become secure enough in myself to have been able to let go of what others may think about me going to Al-Anon - if they judge me and find me wanting as a result, that's their problem. Al-Anon is my solution, and I'm powerfully grateful for it.

Anonymity.

MrSponsorPants has an excellent post on this topic today. I've known those who could wear a t-shirt emblazoned "Grateful Member of Al-Anon" and be comfortable, and I've known others who wouldn't acknowledge me if they met me walking my dog out in the woods, with no-one to see our mutual recognition but the occasional chipmunk.

If I run into a member of Al-Anon outside the meeting rooms, I let them set the tone. If they ignore me, I ignore them. I've had people come up to me and throw their arms around me for a hug in the grocery store, and I hug back with the same amount of warmth. I'm comfortable either way, so I allow them to choose.

MrSponsorPants did cause me to wonder if I should be writing prefaces to the posts which appear to describe what was said inside a meeting, to explain that just as he does, I take artistic license to make my point. Wikipedia describes artistic license as:

"..a colloquial term, sometime euphemism, used to denote the distortion or complete ignorance of fact.."

So when it appears that I've come home from a meeting, and am describing what took place in it, I'm not. You wouldn't recognise yourself, because you aren't in here; anyone written about is a compilation of people I've met in the years I've been in Al-Anon, and what they say is a compilation of the things I've heard. I thought I had better make that point clear.

I am of the opinion that anonymity was important when AA and Al-Anon were founded, and it is of equal importance today. It is only with an assurance of complete anonymity that many of us are able to speak up in meetings. I take this very seriously, and I make this point to my sponsees, especially the new ones, most likely to the point of boring them senseless on the topic. I know how distrustful I was when I was new to program, and how I slowly became able to trust, because of the member's adherence to this founding precept.

This may run contrary to the psychobabble phrase "You're only as sick as your secrets." I've had that particular gauntlet hurled at my feet. My reply is that it isn't my secret I'm keeping, it's the secret of the others around the table, and they get to choose whether or not they broach their anonymity, just as I get to choose to broach mine. It's a personal decision, and not mine to make for another.

It isn't up to me to decide that someone else's life would be healthier if they were less secretive. That's between them and their God.