"Healthy Relationships", Peggy Walton

Your partner wants you to realize your dreams and will do anything to help achieve them.

They are self-sufficient and complete human beings. If not, then you must neglect part of yourself in some way to compensate for their deficiency.

They take responsibility for their own happiness. It is not your job.

They don't use negative tactics for getting their own way or dominating you. Criticism, put-downs, guilt, shame, intolerance, neglect, combativeness, aggression, and threat; the list goes on. Silence can be a negative tactic, if there is communication that needs to take place, and so can defensiveness.

When they speak to you, it is always with love, acceptance and approval.

They support and respect your ideas, beliefs and wishes no matter how different from their own.

Your self-esteem improves when you are together.

Your circle of friends grows.

They do little things to please you.

When something bothers you, they are truly concerned.

They help resolve problems.

They help you find time for yourself. Without this you will never grow.

They share in responsibilities, even with things that are unpleasant or mundane.

Your time is just as valuable as theirs.

They give you freedom to try new things, take chances and to make mistakes. Human beings are constantly evolving and are not meant to be caged physically, emotionally or psychologically.

In short, they provide the security, love and nurturing that is required for you to soar where life itself is wonderful and the relationships are an added bonus. Because you are willing to do the same for them, the relationship will continue to scale new heights while love, honor and respect grows deeper and broader.

From: http://www.soberrecovery.com

Relational Paranoia

"You wouldn't worry so much about what people really thought of you if you knew just how seldom they actually do."

-Unknown

Just attended a women's meeting this morning, and one of the topics discussed was the tendancy to worry about what other people think of us. It was surprising (and comforting) to hear so many women accurately describe the insanity that has been going on in my head lately:

"They must think I'm such an awful, terrible monster ... they're probably right."

"They must talk about me and laugh at how stupid I am."

"They probably all think that I'm a hopeless loser who's going to end up in a gutter somewhere. They'd just LOVE to walk by so they could laugh and throw rocks at me."

"They've probably made a voodoo doll just for me so they can torture it until it falls apart. Then they'll torture the parts ..."

But the fact is, "THEY" (whoever that is) are most likely not thinking of you at all. That's a hard concept to grasp, especially when you look back on your past and all you can think about is what you did and how it affected others.

"They" have been hurt by your past actions and don't believe your intentions for improvement. So you start to identify yourself by what you DID, not who you ARE and who you are trying to BECOME. And you slip into this state of near-paranoia, developing increasingly irrational judgments that "They" must have against you.

Soon it's not about what "They" have against you -- it's about what "Everyone" has against you. You feel like you're not the same as everyone else. You feel you've been rejected from the entire world, and your only source of comfort is isolation. You feel that you're different, that you're defective, that you're a disease, and that you need to be quarantined away from everyone else.

So you isolate.

Unfortunately, isolation only serves to fuel these irrational feelings about yourself and others. And for the alcoholic, the combination of isolation and obsession is a death sentence to drink again.

These irrational feelings have been addressed in many of my own blog entries. I've been struggling with them for a long time.

So ya know what? Screw it. I'm going to stop caring about what people think of me and remember that they probably never actually think of me anyway. It is so egotistical to assume that I've been sufficiently influential as to cause others to hate me obsessively -- as if they don't have better things to do than relive my own pain. How completely absurd!

And to everyone else out there who shares similar struggles, I hope you find a way through them. You may not think much of yourself, but WHO YOU ARE is not what you DID. And you ARE a person who has a unique light and presence to share with the world. Please don't withold your unique gift from the world, especially out of fear for what "They" think. Chances are, your assumptions are wrong anyway.

Regret, Guilt, and Waking Up "30"

I just watched the lighthearted comedy "13 Going on 30" for the first time in a long time. It's a great movie -- and if you haven't seen it -- you should! It's cute and very entertaining, but it also contains a great moral for alcoholics -- if you cut out the last five minutes of it.

In the movie, 13-year-old "Jenna" rejects her best friend "Matt" to pursue a position in the popular crowd of kids. Wishing for popularity and beauty on her thirteenth birthday, she magically wakes up 30 years old, immersed in a new life that she has no memory of living.

Her entire life after her thirteenth birthday had been blacked out from her memory, and she soon discovers that the life she had lived up to that point was a very bad one. She had apparently treated people terribly and had done horrible things. She was shocked to find out what an awful person she had been during that time. (Seeing this reminded me of myself. I feel the same way right now.)

To make a long story short (without giving away the movie), she is faced with decisions for handling her mistakes. When she found out that she had wronged someone, she didn't deny it or beat herself up over it, but instead focused her efforts on making things right. Good people she had previously rejected, she now befriended. Bad people she had previously accepted, she now rejected.

As for rejecting Matt years ago -- she is given the opportunity to make things right with him. She realized how wrong she was to reject him, and she was desperate to do ANYTHING to reverse what she did. But even so, her past mistakes created agonizing conditions that simply could not reverse the wrongs she had done to him.

Of course in Hollywood, every story must have a happy fairy tale ending. But in real life, we cannot make wishes with magical pixie dust and wake up with "everything okay again". We cannot go back in time. For our lives, the story ends in the excruciating realization that "You screwed up and you can never make it better" -- and a new story begins from that point.

And for alcoholics especially, we find ourselves in similar situations. We find out that we said or did terrible things that we don't even remember. We find out that we hurt people. Sometimes we are aware that our actions hurt people, but we were so drunk at the time that we didn't realize the specific effects or extent of the damage. Sometimes we had a vague idea of the damage, but we were too drunk and ashamed to face the truth. So we immersed ourselves in MORE alcohol to escape feelings of guilt and futility (which only made things worse).

The Big Book describes the alcoholic as a "tornado" sweeping though the lives of all around. Imagine the sun rising upon a city that was destroyed overnight. During the night time, we can estimate damage -- and even deny it. But once the sun comes up and the destruction is brought into the light, there can be no more denial or escape. So it is with the alcoholic who still drinks -- they can only estimate the damage they have caused until sufficiently sober to view the true destruction "in the light".

In sobriety, we will sometimes agonize over the destruction we have caused others in our alcoholism. Without the numbing shield of alcohol, we are forced to finally acknowledge the exact details of the destruction we have caused. And it is often painful enough to send people back to the drink. Seeing no hope for repairing the damage, we want to escape far away. Back to the bottle some will go: some to cause more damage, others to disappear into death. But those who do not resort to drinking again have hope of making amends -- of trying to make things as right as possible, but it will never be perfect.

Things are as they are, and if we are honest, we recognize that we made them that way. We can blame it on the alcohol. But in the end, the responsibility lies with us -- we CHOSE to drink. We CHOSE to live that way. We made bad choices that hurt people we love.

There is no way to go back in time and do things differently. Instead, we are faced with more choices. The choices of today influence the choices we will make tomorrow. But the choices we made yesterday are completely out of our hands. We will still experience the consequences of those choices, but there is no sense in excessively mourning over them. Beating ourselves over the head for things we cannot change accomplishes absolutely nothing. Which is why the serenity prayer is so important:

God, Grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Some past mistakes can be amended -- and those amends should be made whenever possible. But some past mistakes cannot be amended. THOSE mistakes are the ones that produce and magnify guilt to the point that we feel we cannot go on. THOSE situations are the ones we cannot change and need to make peace with for our own sanity.

Being completely dumfounded right now, I think a good way to make peace with such situations may be to:

1) accept responsibility for what happened;
2) pray for the person we hurt -- not that they would forgive us, but that they would heal from the pain we caused and experience true freedom and happiness in their lives;
3) learn from that mistake and never repeat it again;
4) decide to accept the situation as one of the things we "cannot change";
5) forgive ourselves.
Forgiving ourselves can be a terribly difficult thing to do. I have not forgiven myself of a single thing yet. I do not feel like I should be forgiven. But it is necessary for healing and continued spiritual growth. Resentments of any kind will bring recovery to a grinding halt.

Which is where I find myself today.

But I think I am finally finished with looking for a way to "undo" certain past wrongs. I realize that I cannot go back in time to do things the right way -- nor can I say or do ANYTHING to remove the hurt I caused. And I am learning to accept that. (Such a seemingly trivial lesson ... but for me, it is a BIG one worth sharing.)

In the mean time, watch the movie! It's good! You'll laugh, you might cry (tears of joy) -- and you will get your daily dose of 80's music. What more could you want?

Losing Temper

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence.

Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence....

Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there."

A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one. Friends are a very rare jewel indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us.

From http://www.recoverylane.com




If I had been doing this over the past couple of years, there would be no fence left. It would disintegrate from all the holes.

Anybody need an old fence taken down? I'm hirable!

Excerpt about relationships from "A Woman's Way ..."

From "A Woman's Way through the Twelve Steps", by Stephanie S. Covington, Ph.D.:

Even our relationships themselves may have become addictive. We may have become so enmeshed in our relationships ... that we lost our own identity. We became intensely focused on "protecting our supply" or avoiding "withdrawal" from the attention, sex, status, companionship, or whatever else we received from the relationship.

This sense of desperation -- Why hasn't he called? Is she thinking about me? How can I be more pleasing, more likely to get what I want? -- does not allow for genuine relationships, for true intimacy and mutual caring.

As long as we stayed in a self-shaming state, disconnected from our true value and worthiness, we continued to seek relationships that gave us the same message that we gave ourselves: that we're hopeless, inept, and lacking in some elusive quality that everyone else seems to have. It was a vicious circle that ended with out journey through the Steps.

The source of our suffering and often of our addition was in our attachments, the relationships in which we hoped to find satisfaction and a sense of worth. But it is one of the paradoxes of recovery that while our relationships caused us pain and sufering, our relationships are also going to heal us.

I don't know about other lady alcoholics, but that section hit me like a train. It accurately describes the relationship problems I faced as an alcoholic and in early recovery. I did lose my identity. I was in a self-shaming state. I did think I was helpless and inept. And I did seek satisfaction and a sense of self worth through my relationship ... which suffocated it. None of that was his fault -- it was something that I developed over time. (WARNING: Ladies, regardless of how terrible or lost you feel, never ever mention a word of it to your significant other. Be "sunshiny and perfect" around them 24/7. Of course, this is difficult to do if you've lost your identity in your relationship and feel like a worthless piece of crap. But listen: If you absolutely must confide in someone, then find another female alcoholic who understands your situation, and confide in THEM. If you weigh your burdens on your significant other, you will freak them out and they will leave you -- which will make you feel like an even MORE worthless piece of crap. Just my advice ... I learned the hard way.)

But you won't see this addressed in the Big Book. Most 12-Step programs were built for men, who tend to have completely different psychological struggles than ladies do. Women have different relationship issues and face a different set of social and cultural judgments than men do, and most 12-Step programs often neglect to address these differences. This book relates these 12-Step programs to women's needs. I highly recommend it to all of the lady alcoholics out there. You can get the book here.

Grace and Dignity?

It was brought up in an AA meeting today, that it takes many months and even years before we regain a sense of "who we are". The first several months of sobriety are like having amnesia. They also said the people with only a few months of sobriety are the most at risk for relapse. It's difficult (if not impossible) for an alcoholic to handle stress without drinking when they have no sense of who they are, and no sense of pride or self esteem. (As proven by yours truly. Yippee. I got to learn the hard way.)

One girl told about how when she was 30 days sober, she really wanted to get out of a relationship, but someone had advised her to wait a few more months. The advisor said that as an active alcoholic, we lose our sense of grace and dignity, and that it takes many months and years to gain a sense of it back. (Of course you lose your sense of grace and dignity when you repeat the cycle of "drink > get sick > swear to never drink again > drink > get sick > swear to never drink again > drink > get sick > swear to never drink again > drink > ... " for years. You lose confidence in yourself as that cycle wears on.) So the advice was to wait, that breaking up immediately would most likely result in relapse or an embarassing or distateful "breakup".

Well, the girl didn't take that advice. Ready to end the relationship and confident in her 30 days of sobriety, she was fortunate to end it without relapse, but the actual breakup itself turned out quite nasty due to her own immature behavior. At that time, she had no sense of grace or dignity, so she handled herself with neither. And when she looked back on it months later, she was humiliated of the way she handled herself. She wished that she had waited to break up, so that she could have left the relationship with some grace and dignity on her part.

I feel much the same way now. I know what grace and dignity are, and I know that I don't have them. So months from now, when I start to regain a sense of esteem, will I look back on MY recent breakup in embarassment? While breaking up, we offered to "be friends" and he says he wants to help me through this, which is very sweet. But I've already relapsed, and I have no idea how to prevent further humiliation. I have no dignity right now. I want some.

Now that the breakup is over and done with, but we're still "friends", I wish I knew what to do to scrounge up some dignity and grace somewhere. On one hand, I just want to get in my car, find a cave somewhere, and hide away there until I get better. On the other hand, I know I shouldn't run away ... but it's just so confusing right now.