The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
I have spent my entire life being over responsible. Especially for the A but for everyone in my life. I saw this and vowed to change this behavior because I didn't want my kids to do this too. I have since spent all my time trying my hardest to be healthy and balanced. In doing so, I very rarely let the pendulum swing all the way towards blame. Even when I am out loud blaming someone else, I am making excuses for them in my head or out loud. I can't say with any ease "This is yours and I will NOT take it." So, I am going to let it swing and to heck with being fair, balanced and healthy.
There is NO excuse for what the A in my life has done to me and the kids. I don't give a flying fig if he is an A or mentally ill or was just raised poorly. He is evil and does not deserve to walk the face of this earth much less in the same vicinity as me. I could care less that he has a disease. If he had cancer and behaved the way he has I would feel the same exact way. I have no more compassion or sympathy for him. I will not compare his disquisting life with all of it's mistakes with mine any longer. I will not qualify every negative statement about him with "but I have made mistakes too....." Screw that. In comparisson, I haven't even made a mistake besides ever having anything to do with him. That's it. If a cancer patient beat, raped and stole from a beloved family member would we all just say "Well, he has a disease..." No, I wouldn't. I won't. I am pissed and I am going to use this anger to fuel my desire to live a good, normal, healthy life far away from drug addicted freaks. I wish my mother had told me that life was good. All she ever told me was that life was not fair and I shouldn't expect anything good to happen, ever. I am DONE with SICK PEOPLE! I despise them. Because with today's awarnesses there is NO FRICKIN REASON that ANYBODY has to walk around making others suffer because THEY are MENTALLY ILL or an A. There are no more excuses for them. NONE. If I can do it, and I know I can and I am, then they have no more excuses as to why they are the way they are. I have removed myself from my A and my mother. Screw them both. They can have each other and I will be serene and happy without their constant abuses. The disease model no longer works for me as a fact or an excuse. Whoopie! Aism is a DISEASE! Who cares? Imagine how awsome it was when they realized that cancer was a disease and not just something someone was "pulling" to get out of picking corn or taking care of babies. What a relief! And then there were the treatments. SWELL! But they only work if you actually admit that you have cancer and seek the help. TADA! Aism is a disease. SO WHAT! Who cares? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! What? AA? Sure, that is a great treatment. Take your "pill" and shut up. They are either going to drink or not what am I going to do? I am going to treat them accordingly. When the act like a selfish monster, I will treat them as I would ANY selfish monster. I am filled with rage for the things I have excused in the name of Aism. They need to pay for it. I am. I am paying for it all. I am done shirking MY responsiblity for holding the "sick" people accountable. They are hence forth accountable for every sick, horrifing thing they have done to me, my kids and society at large. And I will do my very best to see they get what's comming to them. I WILL do the footwork and they will KNOW the price.Sick of them and sick of turning the other chhek or letting it go and getting NO justice. If I have to pay for their consequences they will pay too. God love the next idiot who chooses to mess with me or mine.
You know... for a long time I have known that what my wife was doing was out of control. Maybe even out of her control. I didn't feel entitled to be angry for the reason you state, she was more obviously sick than many I suppose.
What I have found over the last year or so is that I am entitled to be angry when I am wronged. My reaction to that however, is up to me.
I don't have to be a floormat and allow anyone to run all over me. I don't have to ignore unacceptable behavior if it is directed at me or the kids. I also don't have to let the anger turn me into someone I don't want to be.
I know I don't want to be afraid or feel guilty about feeling my own emotions, but I don't want to waste my time being the kind of person I don't want to be around any more either.
I totally understand your awareness of your own anger... boy have I been there. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
My F2F this week we focused on Awareness, Acceptance and Action. I used anger to describe my experience with the 3A's. Because for me it took a little trial and error to get me back to really using the 3 A's and not my own (improved) version.
I tried Awareness, Reaction and Guilt. That didn't work well. You know that one... "you made me mad and now you are going to pay!"
I tried Awareness, Avoidance and Repeated Awareness. That one almost had 3 A's in it... but didn't work either. Said to myself "that made me mad", then I ignored it... low and behold it happened again.
So for me and Anger... here is where I ended up. I am aware X makes me mad and I ride that out until I can at least accept what part of it needs to be comunicated to someone. Then lay it out without blowing my stack.
Normally that kills two birds with one stone. I don't say things I regret, and I normally wait until the are sober enough to hear some parts of it. Even if they say they don't agree.
I hope you find some peace with your kiddo's. You certainly deserve it. And I am really glad you posted this here, it really made me think.
Know you are in my thoughts and prayers.
Take care of you!
-- Edited by rtexas at 18:39, 2007-10-05
__________________
"Good judgement comes from experience... experience comes from bad judgement" - unknown
We are all allowed to feel what we are feeling...no matter what. Only we get to decide how long we want to stay in that place, in that stew pot that keeps us in circular thinking. When you get sick of feeling angry, when you get tired of saying "but look at what HE did/does" cause you can't change the past and you really can't change stupid people, then maybe you'll see that what you can change is your focus.
Ever wonder why you end up in the same place over and over again? I did, for the longest time I did. For me it was because it was easier to blame someone else for not doing what I wanted them to do. They were the focus and the reason for all my woes. I gave them my power, I gave them my energy ..... I never realized that it was harder living like that then taking that step to change my life. Living my life, controling what I actually had power over (myself) is where I found my peace.
There have been so many time I wished I could send my A to hell in a ball of flames. There is still very real pain in my life from things that have happend...real things. That part doesn't go away. But it doesn't consume me either. My heart feels for you. Never forget you have power, it's yours to give away or to keep. You are strong ... incredibly strong, you've been fighting this crazy battle for a long time, that takes strength.
Remember that what you do and how you feel is more a choice than it is happenstance.
UUGGHHH OK, I hear you! Rtexas that cracked me up...your version of the 3 A's. But I heard the truth in that thinking and yes, that is about where I am. And Luna, I do believe it is my choice of how long to stay here in this thought process. I am thinking that I haven't stayed here long enough in the past to really work thru this. I have used my tools to change myself, my reactions and my life...FAST because I hate being this person. But letting go of this crazy anger has let me tolerate things I should have never tolerated. I guess for now I have to be this mad. I have to be this crazy angry to make the mistakes and learn where my boundries are. Or maybe that is all an excuse to wallow in this awful feeling of hate and rage for things that I cannot change. But I am going to go thru it, not avoid it or pretend to deal with it. I am going to go with it. It is part of who I am, who I forgot.
Someone was saying that when they had to re-invent them selves it was like growing up again and they went thru similar stages as when they were growing up the first time. So, I might just be at that "ftw" stage again. The first time around it really protected me, that attitude. That is probably a big part of it too. I have to protect myself and my kids and this anger is the best way I know how to. This is hard work. And Maresie, your strength really inspires me. Even if I have to go back and start from scratch, I will be ok.
I keep trying to respond to this post but can't quite put it into words, maybe this time around I can. Gee, I wonder why? Because this is just a little too close to home for me too.
I wasn't angry enough when I needed to be, and I was enraged when it was not appropriate. Furious when people didn't do what I thought they *should* and passive when I was being abused or putting up with BS. Isn't that one of the definitions of codependence?
I didn't get really angry with my exA until about a month after I got the RO. I was angry and scared enought to GET the RO, but I still saw him as this super sick addict/alcoholic and thought I "shouldn't be angry with him, he's sick".
That did not last very long, I must say. As the fog cleared, he'd been gone for a few weeks, I saw what went on in our relationship in a new light. I was not seeing it clearly before. I wasn't really holding him accountable in my heart, he has a DISEASE after all.
He may be diseased alright . . . but that doesn't absolve anything. My anger flared and erupted and it felt different, like it was finally aimed in the right direction instead of at myself. I stopped trying to be Miss GoodyTwoShoes Sweetness and Light (I don't think I was every very good at it anyway :D ) , and just let'er rip.
In my secret soul I felt like an Alanon failure. Here I was MAD as hell and could care less that I was doing a big NO NO. I'm still angry as hell. Well, only as "heck" now, it is beginning to mellow :D .
No one at meetings was telling me to stop being angry, though. They just listened, even the alcoholics. Nobody avoided me or told me I needed to get over it. I was doing all that myself in my head, and rebelling against myself. My mind was (and still can be) like a bad neighborhood at night.
Anger is an emotion, a very primitive one, so primitive there is a nodule in our brains soley devoted to anger (the amygdala). Like any emotion or feeling, we can't help having it. It just is what it is, it comes and goes in response to external events that appear to threaten us.
What we DO when we are angry, that is different. We can just sit there with steam coming from our ears. We can get a golf club and go after our enemy, or we can turn it against ourselves. All of those are choices, but feeling angry is not a choice, we do or we don't. The danger of anger comes in what we choose to do with it.
My anger at my exA? I can't do anything with it. What's there to do? I could call the prosecuting attorney in Spokane and offer to be a hostile witness in his trial in December. I could tell people around town about the horrible things he did to me and others while pretending to be Mr Rich Californian. I wrote a couple of unsendable letters but even that didn't do much of anything.
It's very hard to have a lot of anger at someone who is nowhere around, who I do not speak with or interact with at all. So I spend a lot of time on this site, on other related forums I'm involved in, get my butt to meetings every week, and do something physical every day. Lately it's been splitting and chopping wood.
Whoa boy, I certainly put it into words this time! Like right now, the anger is an energy that I feel, it doesn't feel good or bad, it's kind of motivating. I don't really understand what I mean either. But it feels OK right now. I feel OK.
Seren, I understand your post completely. You have every right to be angry. I will not give you a lot of bull about changing where you are or moving away from the anger. Nope, not me. Instead I will say that anger serves a purpose. It is as human as a reaction can get, and we experience it for a reason. Anger is not an emotion to be slipped under a rug, or analyzed to death. Feel your anger. And while you are doing that, watch it work wonders for you. Some of our most important accomplishments are attained through anger.
"If I get mad enough, I'll do something about it." Anger is what it takes for some people to function at their optimum ability. And when they accomplish the goal, the anger subsides.
So, don't deny yourself; don't feel guilty; and most of all, don't allow some idiot who is not qualified tell you that you must control yourself, work through it, and and "get to another place." Instead allow some idiot, like me, tell you to go with it. LOL!! Now remember, there is a big difference between anger and violence. No violent response allowed.
Why is it that everyone accepts emotions like passion, love, happiness, serenity, joy...but not anger. Because anger is a negative feeling? Well that depends.
Enough. Enough. I am getting mad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Best wishes,
Diva
__________________
"Speak your truth quietly and clearly..." Desiderata
I agree with Diva - we feel what we feel. We're human beings. Sometimes the anger I have gets transferred into other people and situations. Bad drivers on my way to work, frustration on the job, the A using my house like it's a public storage facility...but I digress (yes, I watch "The Golden Girls"). Will I let those things ruin my day or my mood? YES - sometimes I will, dammit. I'm angry, and eventually I'll get over it, but for that moment (or hour, or day) I'm gonna stay angry. I do realize though, that sometimes the anger that I direct at other people is really anger with myself, because I don't know how to stop being a 'victim' of other people's bad behavior. Neighbors having screaming fights late at night, loud booming music at 3:00 in the morning, someone butting in line at the cash register...I don't want to become one of those neighborhood busybodies who yells "Get off my property, you hooligans!" at 6- and 7- year-olds, but I don't want to be some meek little person who can't stand up for myself because I'm afraid people won't think I'm "nice". I've got to get to the point where I truly believe that "what other people think about me is none of my business", but after 49 years of being nice, the anger scares me a bit. I'm with you Seren, and I'd like to know when it became okay for someone to subject all of the rest of us to their bad behavior - for whatever reason (Aism, mental illness, etc.). Yes, I understand these are diseases, but the symptoms of those diseases are affecting the rest of us, so DO something about it already! Great topic! Take care, Marion
__________________
Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit ("Bidden or not bidden, God is present") - Erasmus
I know for a long time I was angry, I was resentful of his "happy" (in my mind) little carefree responsibility free life, etc. It took me a long time to get to the point of just accepting what has happened, and moving forward. I know you will too at some point. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the WHAT of what you are thinking but maybe the how? Feeling that way steeped in anger and resentment is a different feeling inside than feeling that way out of love for yourself. I still have some resentments, but I'm busy doing other stuff and don't have time to dwell on it. It gets better, and I totally know what you mean about holding onto the anger to give you strength to resist him. I did that too, now I don't really have to anymore, you won't either at some point.
