ok.  I am afraid to start the step work.  What if it doesn't work? What if I don't work it?  What if I don't do it right? I don't have a sponsor.  Do I need one? 

I know I need to realize down into my cells that I am powerless over other people's habits, other people's lives.  I know that today because I feel physically ill and can't stop the tapes repeating in my head obsessively worrying about my partner's actions.  But but but, doesn't love conquer all?  Yeah, I know.  That hasn't worked for me so far. 

The woman who's life I am trying to control isn't technically my qualifier.  She seems to me (after about a year of being in a relatively drama-free relationship) to be solid, honest,  kind, compassionate, together and all around good.  She acknowledges her addictive personality and openly talks about her internal struggles.  She has been clean from her drug of choice for many years, drinks in moderation (alcohol wasn't an issue with her), and is alltogether the most stable person I have ever loved.  I am afraid of ruining my relationship with her, and that fear overtakes my fear of starting the step work. I want to be the best person I can, and right now, that means, living my own life and giving her the freedom to live her own.  Not questioning her incessantly, and not being afraid that she is doing something she isn't supposed to in my world.  When her actions fall outside of my comfort zone, I withhold love. My comfort zone is very narrow.  I have MAJOR issues with her smoking cigarettes and basically go ballistic when she does.  Yes, I do have a problem.  I need help.  I treat her smoking as if she's shooting up heroin.  No difference in my reaction.  I'm not stable, this kind of stuf is all I know how to do.  How do I open up new patterns?  Make new efforts. 

Tonight she was out with her sister and I feared that she had relapsed into smoking again.  She didn't call me when I expected her to, and I thought the worst.  She recently called me, and had been out buying me a birthday gift.  The spiral into hating myself was quick and fierce. 

Am still reeling from (2 years ago) ending a 15 year marriage to an addict/alcoholic who hid his addictions from me for 10 years, stole money and lied to me daily.  I have two children who have weathered the storm well. We are close and honest with one another, and in fact, their father is still a part of our lives.  Lots of forgiveness work and I have realized that I don't have to like him to be a capable and friendly co-parent with him. I have also recently admitted to myself that my mother is sick in the head, abusive and toxic.  Talk about waking up!

I have been going to alanon meetings for about a year, hardly talking, being reluctant to get a sponsor and start the step work......because.....it seems that doing the steps will be my last hope to pull myself together and detatch myself from people in a healthy way. Therapy isn't that helpful, and exercise is a bandaid.

 Where do I start?  What do I do?  There was a woman in my weekly alanon meeting that I had considered using as a sponsor, but I never called.  Would it be possible to do the work here, online?  in writing?  For starters?

Thank you.  I do believe it's time.  I'm scared s**&#less.

wow, leigh! I actually saw you online last night,,, but I left before you posted.  I would have invited you to meet me in a chat room to 'talk' if I'd realized that you seem to be in a kind of crisis.

Well,  as I was reading I wondered if you come from a dysfunctional family, and then you said that your mother is dysfunctional. This qualifies you for the ACoA groups,  Adult Children of Alcoholics (and other dysfunctions) , which may be very enlightening and helpful to you. It certainly was to me when I first went and discovered the commonnesses among us and the solutions that there are. It is a little different from straight alanon, since most of us have to admit that we are messed up too.

now,, to answer your questions:  It is very helpful to have a good sponsor who is not into codependencies and who 'gets' the program enough to teach it to someone else. But it is not essential. My motto is one of the 12 Step principles - 'do your best and God does the rest'.  There is no absolutely 'right' way to do the 12 Steps, as everyone has a unique perspective and recovery path,,,  but there are traditional understandings of what the Steps are and mean, and the slogans and key tools,,, and this is where it is very important to learn somehow from those who have gone before and have learned well. There is good literature for each of the 12 Step groups. Our ACoA board and meetings are pretty good right now, and you can learn and share and get some support both on this board and on that one. We don't give advice, but we give you tools to make wise decisions yourself.

The answer to whether or not love conquers all depends on the definition of 'love' in use, and what we mean by 'conquering'.

amanda

Thank you Amanda for taking the time to respond.  I loved your last insight!  Really made me think.  Gawd, conquer~!  Love.  Conquer.  I am humbled by my unconscious awareness of my need to control.  I thought that love conquering all meant love prevails.  But now that you mention it......I've got to think a little deeper about my own propensities.

Today I'm feeling a little better. I had read someone's post earlier and it sugg. when one is in crisis, to get busy doing things for themselves.  I forced myself to get outside of myself and decided to play with my two kids (ages 15 and 12) outside and in the pool and soon realized I was actually having fun, and not obsessing about things outside of my control.  That was a huge step.  I feel I failed a tiny bit (if failing a tiny bit is possible) because I was trying my best to not ask my partner if she had smoked today.  I was telling myself over and over to NOT ask her because her actions cannot be tied to my well being.  Well, after hours and hours of trying, I fell flat on my face and ended up asking her.  But told her not to answer me.  I gleaned from her response that she hadn't smoked today, or yesterday, and I was disappointed that I felt relieved.  I have to separate from this tangle of my sanity being tied to her actions.  I think I need to start doing some steps.  Or something.

I have never been to Adult Children of Al. because I don't think my mother was alcoholic.  My dad didn't drink, and was a wonderful, loving man. But my mother is definitely and without question a narcissistic (sp), volative, verbally abusive, inconsistent, mostly mean person who everyone around her loves and says is wonderful.  Her abuse of me is her little secret that she denies whenever I bring it up.  but I just keep on trying to find my mother in there somewhere(and I'm 46 years old).  I am certain that my relationship with her is at a root of my problems in harmony seeking and fixing everything around me except for myself.   I've never considered that program.    I don't understand what you meant when you said it's different from straight Alanon...could you tell me more?

Again, thank you for your time.

 

hi Leigh welcome to the board , you sound ready to participate in Alanon ... our desire to try to help others with their addicitons is one of the main reasons we would want to use the programme I'd say. If you are reacting like that to someone's smoking maybe think of it like you would alcohol , that we are powerless over someone elses patterns. Thing is we are also powerless over our desire to help in this way but using the programme and the meetings is what helps us to move out of that space in time. I would ask myself whether a friend or partner is generally serious about their recovery and if they are then the details of it would work themselves out in their own time. Although we don't actually cause it it's something they need to work out for themselves by surrendering to their own programme . Alanon does not make recommendations either about whether we should stay , leave or jeaopardise a friendship - that's all down to what we feel is best for us , and in a way all friendships are at risk in recovery when people are in their own process ,

Its not compulsory to get a sponsor although I would say generally that some f2f contact with Alanon members is preferable where possible . Amanda you are entitled to your opinion about Alanon athough I feel also that I need to say I disagree that Alanon members don't focus on themselves , it's all about ourselves ... the reason some people say 'my A' is because thats their primary addiction is trying to fix As although I know what you mean to an extent and I personally try to avoid using that phrase alot ! Alanon and ACOA are very similar focus and with the same goal in mind I think to ease our obsession with other peoples addicitons primarly drinking , the qualifyer is an A but the programme can also be used to help us with many other issues as well , probably you will be fine Leigh , try not to worry about doing it all right , just keep contact with the programme and you can even enjoy the process as alot of it takes care of itself I find ,

llol Vickyr x

Vicky, it's fine if your experience and perspectives and opinions are different than mine. We have attended different groups, and have different problems and therefore different experiencesz.  My experience has been that alanoners don't generally consider that their problems are of their own making, but that their lives would be fine if it weren't for their 'a'. There are exceptions, and it may have been the personalities of the particular groups that I've attended.   Leigh ACoA groups are not just for children of alcoholics,,,  in fact, many of the groups have dropped the word 'alcoholic' and just call themselves 'adult children'. The first groups were specifically adult children of alcoholics and were spin offs of alanon, and so had the same format and principles, etc.  But then it was discovered that most of the experiences that these people had were so similar to the experiences of other people who came from dysfunctional families that they broadened the scope. The dysfunctions caused by alcoholism are similar to the dysfunctions caused by mental illnesses, chronic physical illnesses, etc.  Some people say that 12 Step support groups work for almost any situation where self-improvement is a goal.

It is important to note that 12 Step support groups are not therapy groups and cannot substitute for therapy,,  we are just peers who are muddling along like everyone else. And we need to avoid codependencies that tend to develop if we start leaning on others to make our decisions for us. In fact, opposite, we are learning to have healthy boundaries and develop our abilities to participate in healthy relationships.

So, you are encouraged to explore all the rooms on this site, face2face groups of various kinds - and even in the same type various groups do have different 'personalities', and to decide for yourself what groups are best for you.

The thing about what 'love' is.  In my family my mom used the word 'love' and she meant 'enmeshment' and attachment, which was very hard for me to deal with and establish my own life. My boyfriends meant " I want you' when they said 'love', and some people meant that they were pleased with me....  all emotional type of things. I never believed anyone actually cared about other people for their own sakes,, until I came into recovery and did Step 3, and my understanding of God started to change. My new definition of "Love", with a capital L, is 'to make a commitment to do and work for what is truly best for the beloved'.  If there are more than one beloved, then for all.

love in recovery,

amanda

OK thanks then Amanda , you maybe went to a 'bad group' that can happen , most of them are not like that , Alanon has been successfully helping friends and relatives of Alcoholics for nearly 100 years and is a massive international fellowship , but some people might well prefer ACOA and there's nothing wrong with that either. Looks like my post has come out multicolored again ! perhaps I'll have to stick to the black ink , shame I liked the purple though , it was definitely all purple when I left it there , llol Vickyr x

How do you get the font to be a different color? Maybe you have a better program than I do, cuz I can only do black, I think.

Anyway,,,  I don't think the integrity of alanon ever came into question,,, I certainly didn't question it,,,  but then not ev eryone who participates in an organization participates with the same spirit that the founders intended. So you are right that it was the particular group and the particular people who were not focussing on their own self-improvement.

I have seen that many alanoners have been people who had normal families of origin and grew up normally and were normal people until they happened to hook up with an alcoholic and that messed them up. They first tried to 'fix' the alcoholic and couldn't and so joined alanon for solution to this problem.  Adult Children of Alcoholics didn't grow up normally. As Janet Woititz says,  Adult Children of Alcoholics and dysfunctional families don't know what normal is, and that is what we need most in our recovery,,,  not just to solve the problem of another's dysfunction affecting us, but in re-educating ourselves, reparenting ourselves to learn for the first time what healthy living is in each one's particular life.  That's why ACoA groups went separate,,, so we could spend time on learning things that the others already knew,,,  discovering our selves for the first time, wherein many alanoners knew well who they were but felt lost.

I remember my first alanon meetings, and I remember my first ACoA meetings. The alanon meetings were about how to cope with my parents and siblings who were dysfunctional.  The ACoA meetings were about discovering that I wasn't a freak of nature after all, but that the coping skills that I learned in my family didn't help me now that I was an adult and out in the world,, that my attitudes and behaviors were common for adult children,,  but that I needed to learn new skills that were healthier and to connect to people in the world in new ways.

Well,   back to the 12 Steps, eh?

God bless you all,

love in recovery,

amanda

hi Leigh and Amanda , Leigh sorry if your thread seems to be hijacked ! I hope this is the last thing I'm going to say on this topic for now. Yes its true that people don't always use a programme as well as the founders ... and I have my own frustrations sometimes about what's going on in the meetings ...What I learned though is that if you need Alanon it doesn't even matter if you have a top quality group or not you just need it , many members swear that they would not be alive without this programme as I'm sure ACOA members do too. ACOA is a bit like the Alateen programme but that is fantastic though ... yes it can be more emotion-focused ... what I got from Alanon is that the emotions are only one part of recovery and for me this programme draws things together and is grounding in a way that nothing else seems to be. Alanon is not about focusing on the alcoholics , there is much in the literature about getting away from that , I've appreciated all your views on this and presented in an open minded way , and I'm inspired to see if I can find an ACOA group to go to as well to get a different angle ... often a good thing I like visiting different groups , how you do the color is bracket color=purple bracketx2 /color bracket llol Vickyr x

well, see now?  I think we have well demonstrated how to dialog positively in sharing perspectives in positive ways, and respectively, while also listening to the other shares and all learning from each others' perspectives.  This is one of the main goals in all of the 12 Step groups, and why they have most of the meetings about sharing experience, strength and hope.  Each person learns how to share,, and how to listen, and how to learn and grow. 

I also attend AA meetings, and find a focus there that is good for me, because there..  the focus really is on ourselves and how to do really necessary self-improvement. Having also abused drugs I have attended NA meetings with great benefit. I attend NA here mostly during the holidays when they do the marathon meetings, while AA nor alanon do them and I am welcomed there as alcohol is a drug too. Those meetings are special to me as it seems that there is a real sense of coming out of the darkness and into the light and the work it takes to grow, and discipline.  

 The difference with alateen is that adults can make legal contracts and have rights to be independent,, but teens have legal guardians,,, except for now the states where adulthood is reached at 18.  So we cannot be involved in suggesting things that need majority age to do. I remember going to an alateen meeting with my sister waayyyy  back a long time ago and it being a learning experience for me. It was so good to get some outside perspectives on my parents' behavior and our feelings and reactions.

I've also been to sex addicts anonymous type meetings, and there is another perspective on addiction and how it affects our lives and relationships. The people there come in with much more a feeling of shame and embarrassment,, and feeling of being personally out of control. There was a woman here who was posting from their literature for awhile, but she felt not encouraged and so discontinued.

So I think we all agree that the Steps are the Steps, and basically the same in any group, and that the same 12 Steps can be done in any group, or independently while participating in any group, and that all the 12 Step umbrella organizations are highly respected..  overeaters anonymous, and coda (codependents anonymous) too. We also agree that any individual local group of any type can be a 'good' one or a 'bad' one according to whether or not the particular people are carrying out that group according to the spirit of its type.  So that it is good if people shop around a bit to find what suits them best.

love in recovery,

amanda

-- Edited by amanda2u2 at 05:12, 2006-07-20

thanks Amanda , yes I agree shopping around for the right group sounds like a great idea because for sure people will feel most comfortable in some of them and not others. I would say that all 12 step fellowships have a goal of personal recovery but yes the way that is reached can vary alot. And the search can be fun too as you get to visit different places isn't it ,

it's been very interesting sharing on this and hearing about your experiences ,

llol Vickyr x