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.
Growing up as a I did in a family where chaos, volatile emotions, crisis were the norm there was no emphasis on stability. I sometimes want to go into long long texts of how complicated my life is. I do not want to embrace simple tenents like learning emotional intelligence. I of course did not get to do that as a child.
Sometimes I just need to spend the day managing my Hungry Angry Lonely Tired aspects. And of course I included emotional hunger in my slogan. I am always it seems emotionally hungry. I spend a good part of the day online. I go to a counsellor now which helps and I would like to go to a support group and ftf groups eventually. I am not at the next step of making it so my life is not always in the HALT red zone. I think I need to be. I could do with taking steps to make myself healthy and feel better rather than hiding and isolating as a way to manage.
I think my way past step one is to work on HALT solidly for a month or so. I could then move onto to the steps which I swear I know how to work and work and work. Then I can get into all the things I have not come to terms with yet but I don't remember that I have a lifetime to do that.
Of course I always felt that HALT was much too simplistic for me. The truth is that I could not imagine have the self reflection, discipline and self care to practice it.
Well I think the concept of HALT was made before they really came up with the concept of emotional intelligence. AA and Al-anon were at the vanguard of some of the concepts that now lie in cognitive psychology. HALT is based on and this is my feeling of managing one's emotions so that you do not go overboard. The trouble is for me as someone who shuts down or is flooded since I have ptsd that I don't have a concept of what being in the middle is. I am either shut down in that I feel very little and really exist in this place of feeling I am okay (when really I am not) or totally flooded with stuff. This past December when I joined Al-anon I was so flooded with issues regarding my mother's death (which was traumatic but everything but everything regarding my family was traumatic). I was totally flooded and really had to work very hard to come out of the flooded state which means that I am really not able to live life on life's terms because I am always reeling from being triggered.
So these days I am trying to live more in the middle and one of the things I am dealing with is not to allow myself to be too hungry (that is emotional hunger too) angry (very easy for me to get to a place of rage) lonely (I am chronically bitterly lonely) or tired (that is also easy for me to do as my middle name is over-extend).
I want to live differently rather than reeling from one thing to the next or being shut down or totally worn out from being flooded.
Hi Marisie -- There is so much in your posting ... for me sometimes what seems like a simple tenet, well it isn't really simple. Or what I'm trying to say is that sometimes what seems as an overly simplistic approach can actually have very profound meaning for me when I finally get it.
It makes sense to me that taking care of the basics is a good place to start, and HALT sounds like the basics to me. Only you know what connects the issues together for you so that you can get to where you want to be.
I like the f2f meetings -- some more than others really click for me in terms of what I need to hear to get past the log-jams in my brain. I also like this on-line group -- it is a brilliant option to f2f mtgs that John founded (and I am grateful for it).
We each have our own path that we forge at our own speed.
Your post helped me understand what I do alot. The weekends are hard for me because I run out of groceries and I am usually alone. So when I call my A I unlease my HALT. And I operate in the extreme - lots of emotions or numb. I need to take care of myself and find that middle.
