I have picked excerpts in the book that seem most important. It would be too much to type everything, so here it goes.

Book: How Al-Anon Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics

Becoming Aware

We come to Al-Anon seeking change. We want to end our pain, and we turn to Al-Anon in the hope of finding out what to do. But we aren’t yet ready to take action, not matter how eager we are or how impatient we feel. Change is a process, and we in Al-Anon recognize that becoming aware is the first stage of this process. This involves taking an honest look at our circumstances and ourselves. Although it sounds simple, after years of hiding the unpleasant aspects of reality from ourselves as well as others, most of us find an honest appraisal to be a struggle.

Sometimes we don’t recognize alcoholism even when it is staring us in the face. Having lived with drinking for many years, we may have accepted it as normal and never felt overly concerned. It never occurred to us that reactions to a long-forgotten alcoholic relative could have an effect on our everyday lives years later, or that we could be adversely affected by a relationship with a sober alcoholic. Illusions about alcoholism abound, and most of us simply were not aware of the nature of the disease or of its impact on us, the families, and friends of alcoholics. Ignorance is neither a sin or nor a crime, but it is an obstacle to seeing our situation realistically.

Then, too, we may see the problems in our lives and yet fail to recognize alcoholism as the source. Perhaps we attribute these problems to finances or employment, or blame lack of time, education, or opportunity for our troubles. We may consider them merely the vicissitudes of life, struggles that everyone has to deal with. Because we have already attributed our problems to one source or another, we fail to notice that each one fits neatly into the grand scheme of alcoholism, the family disease.

Few of us managed to survive the chaos, confusion, and pain of an alcoholic environment without developing coping mechanisms that enabled us to protect ourselves emotionally from situations we didn’t feel capable of handling. When our circumstances or our feelings seemed too painful or frightening to bear, we may have distorted, suppressed, rationalized, or ignored them altogether.

Perhaps we were aware of an alcoholic’s denial, but never realized that it could be characteristic of everyone who is affected by the disease. Just as many alcoholics insist that they don’t have a problem and refuse to talk about their drinking, many friends and family members do not acknowledge that any problems exist. We truly cannot see, hear, feel, or otherwise perceive what may be readily apparent to others. Ironically, because our entire lives are wrapped up in the disease of alcoholism, we can fail to notice its presence.

Emotional survival skills also can alter the way we see past events and relationships. When memories of horrors from the past are too shocking or painful, we may unconsciously block them out. We simply don’t remember. Even if we fervently wish we could remember, these memories remain locked away, continuing to control our lives by limiting or altering our behavior. Without being aware of it, we continue to react to the traumatic events of our past rather than to reality of our lives today.

When life went from loving and peaceful one minute to chaotic and dangerous the next, so that we never knew what to expect, many of us coped with the resulting sense of helplessness and confusion simply by choosing to believe only one of these realities. For example, those of us who dealt with sporadic, alcoholic bouts of verbal abuse at home might have wanted to believe that we lived in a wonderful family environment because it seemed true some of the time. By choosing to acknowledge only one portion of reality, we explained away the random verbal attacks by treating them as exceptions, mistakes, or one-time occurrences. Each such episode devastated us as if it were the first, yet we soon reverted to the reality we chose to see, once again painting a picture of bliss and harmony that was bound to let us down.

Or we may have latched on to the opposite reality, perceiving that life was chaotic and that moments of peace or good humor were not to be trusted. In this case, we denied ourselves the enjoyment of kindness, love, pleasure, and good will. We remained perpetually on guard.

Living with alcoholism caused us to suppress or ignore our emotions, our desires, our hopes. We hid our real feelings in order to survive, and in time we forgot we ever had feelings. We succeeded in insulating ourselves so well that we no longer participated enthusiastically in life. In attempting to protected ourselves, we let our personalities slip away until we were emotionally numb.