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.

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

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

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