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Good morning MIP and happy Thursday! Today's reading suggests that feeling our feelings is good and real and healthy! So many of us arrive @ Al-Anon in a numb state. Denial takes on many forms, and many of us had denied any hint of anger, joy, sorrow or similar through years of living with alcoholism.
For most, recovery brings about feelings and many of us believe we are getting sicker! What we come to discover is that we had feelings all along, we had just lost touch with them. The ESH of others reassures us that this is part of the recovery process. 'Feeling' is just part of the process, the discomfort will pass and we continue to become whole.
Expressing feelings in a healthy way allows healthy expression while keeping them trapped inside is akin to poison.
Today's reminder: Today I will stop from time to time to see how I feel. Perhaps the day will bring joy or perhaps sadness, but either will remind me that I am very much alive.
Quote from Kahlil Gibran: "I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes; nor would I be content with converting my tears . . . into calm. It is my fervent hope that my whole life on this earth will ever be tears and laughter."
When I first arrived, I was so full of anger, resentment and self-righteous anger that my mind was closed to the suggestion that Al-Anon could be a solution for me. After returning to the chaos, insanity and denial of my mind, heart and home, I did get numb and truly felt that how it was is how it was always going to be. I returned to the rooms with a general feeling of numbness, defeat and failure. One small change I made was I practiced listening and looking for the similarities vs. differences.
Like the author, in time, while practicing recovery, some feelings returned and I always wondered if I was sicker than most/others. I am grateful I had a sponsor and others who came before me that just kept telling me that feelings were real and healthy yet they're not facts. I don't have to take any action for my feelings beyond going thru them. What was suggested is I not obsess over them, but instead grab a tool to better embrace them.
I am better tooled today to embrace my feelings. That doesn't mean I always like what I am feeling nor does it mean I am always good at identifying them - yet I am better, making progress, which is all I can ask of my recovery effort and journey.
Happy Thursday MIP - my mom had a really bad day yesterday so I'm a bit worried this morning. Any prayers you have would be appreciated. Make it the best day possible!
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Practice the PAUSE...Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you are about to react harshly and you will avoid doing and saying things you will later regret. ~~~~ Lori Deschene
I never realized that I "swallowed" my feelings... all to be the "good" person. Al-Anon helped my to identify my feelings, understand that I had a right to them and they were valid, but I didn't have to be ruled by them.
New thinking!
I asked my HP to visit your mom... for health and support and to lend you support as well!
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"The wolf that thrives, is the one you feed." - Cherokee legend
"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields... Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness." Mary Oliver
IAH, thanks for your service and ESH. I was stuck in depression for much of my life and it's only through program that the fog lifted. Certainly Betty helped me see the good in myself and life. For the last few years I felt happier than I ever have before. Although the virus has thrown me a bit of a curve ball, I know I will be restored to my former better self when this passes. Now I'm OK if I have a few hours or a day or depression, because I never had it balanced with serenity and joy.
Thanks IAH for your service. Feeling my feelings was a big thing for me in this program. It's something my sponsor encouraged and prompted along. I spent so much time pushing down my anger and sadness and hurt and disappointment I didn't know what I was feeling. I did however seem to walk around a lot angrier than I realized most of the time. I remember a day I felt really angry and I told my sponsor I felt angry and I felt guilty for being angry and she just gave me permission to feel angry. She told me to be angry if I wanted to be angry. For someone like me that was freeing. She told me I could feel angry but I couldn't take it out on other people. So I let myself feel angry I even told my AH that I was angry and took a break by myself and it dissipated more quickly than I had anticipated. It's funny how I lived my whole life with people who expressed and even took out their feelings on other people but I didn't feel I could ever express mine. Feeling my feelings was overwhelming at first but I no longer fear them anymore I know it is better to feel them than to stuff them down. There is something freeing to be able to do this. It is all part of me being able to live my own life instead of living my life focused on someone else's life.
Thanks for today's c2c reading and your share ((Iam))) Prayers for your mom and dad.
I remember arriving at the doors of Alanon with one mission.. how do I get my husband to get sober and stay sober. All of my energy had been spent focusing on be hyperfocused on his actions and moods and adjusting myself to however he was that day. I was controlled by his disease and living in reaction to it. I was always in survival mode and voluntarily took on the role of rescuer of him. It was a great gig for awhile. I had low self-esteem and suddenly felt valued and purposeful and he continued using knowing he had a safety net, someone who would get him into bed, call the parmedics, rehab etc. I chose not to make time for my own wants and needs. In fact, my wants at the time were limited to his getting sober and my needs were noted by me but quickly dismissed to attend to his. I was total caretaker and thought any good wife would do the same.
Thanks to the Alanon program, sharing with my sponsor and a long rehab separation from my now exah; I was able to put to use the tools I was learning from listening at Alanon meetings and working the steps. Time I would have spent continuing to try to fix my husband's addiction could now be spent on identifying what I was feeling, needing and wanting. The denial was lifted in many ways during that time.
The reading speaks about laughter. I remember my first sponsor telling me that I had a cute laugh. She had said something funny, I'd laughed and was actually surprised by the sound of my own laugh. It had been such a long time since I'd laughed. Even now, I feel a bit sad when I remember that moment but incredibily grateful to be living so comfortably within my own skin today, so emotionally available. The program made all the difference in enpowering me to be fully present and make my own life my first priority. We use the term feel, deal, heal in the program and it works when you work it. It's so true!
Today, I know what minding my own business really means for me concerning the Alanon program. It's about taking responsibility to meet my needs, about offering loving care in support of myself first and then working outward from there to others if I so choose in ways that don't devalue myself or disrespect others and their right to make choices for themself. ((hugs)) TT
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Surround yourself with people and elements that support your destiny, not just your history.
Mahalo Sister for the service and ESH. I have not done my readings as of yet and will. Prayers, ((((hugs)))), thoughts and very loving feelings to you and your mom. This isn't good weather to be feeling sick about anything. Feelings ?? I crawled into the program with nothing, not even an understanding about what alcoholism was. I couldn't say it or spell it and I had no idea what anyone in either program was talking about. My simple understanding which I got when I was growing up in it came from the elders in both sides of my family who were alcoholic and addict. What I heard and then carried until I got here was, "If you can't drink don't"!! "If you've had to much. Stop" !! Easy...but lots of stuff about the disease was left out until I stopped fighting and complaining and blaming the program and listened with an open mind. When I first heard and then accepted that my spouse was a sick woman and not a bad one I started to come to understand.
My first lessons on emotions/feeling came from my VA alcoholism counselor who replied to me after I told him I felt like shit when I was hurt by what a girl friend was doing, "so you feel like a warm, smelly, clump of dog crap left out in the yard"? That made me angry because it was so far away from my understanding and I told him so. "Jerry your anger is an emotion not a thing" was how he replied and I got the picture for the first time and still I do. I love most the pictures of happiness and the sounds and touches.
Feelings...an inward response to an outside reaction...(from the program).
Thanks for the support girl. Love that you are still keeping on. ((((hugs))))
-- Edited by JerryF on Thursday 23rd of April 2020 03:06:28 PM
Thank you Iamhere for your service and very needed share
you said Expressing feelings in a healthy way allows healthy expression while keeping them trapped inside is akin to poison.
Today's reminder: Today I will stop from time to time to see how I feel. Perhaps the day will bring joy or perhaps sadness, but either will remind me that I am very much alive.
I have to check in with my feelings and YES....I CAN feel and I DO feel, but that was not most of my life...I was so numbed out, the only emotion that surfaced and this would be after YEARS of self medicating and numbing out, was ANGER.......anger was absolute rage...i mean out of control....i scared my own self.....when I got into recovery , I was finally allowed to feel, to know that it was OK to feel and years of venting my anger, years of releasing grief, sadness came next, but the anger was the first emoiton I dared to share and to feel......Lord!! My anger was so bad, it was frightening...No wonder I scared people away from me....It was so bad, I would not harm another or a pet, but I did harm me.....I would hit me and scream at the top of my lungs if I did something stupid, (proving the monster right) I would scream and yell and pull my hair, cussing me out, I hated me and for what??? why???? I was programmed to hate me......victims of sex abuse are typically like me....full of rage....fear.....self loathing....suicidal.....harming self.....All do to my hate and anger that for so long, I could not direct at him because Lord forbid if I did, a pet woudl die....a child would be beaten horribly, my mother would be beaten to a pulp.....I just had to cope and as the years went by, the anger grew, the outrage grew.....the loathing of myself because I was so powerless and helpless to protect me.....I used to think I was a defect.......now I see that there was, IS nothing wrong with me...just what happened to me....
as I slowly peel down to the CORE of me, I see a kind, gentle, feisty as needed...no victim here, but when with healthy, nourishing people, I see in me a kind and caring very acceptable human being with short comings, but who hasn't got them.....I am waaaaaay more kind to me because I am allowed to FEEL and to be with my feelings....feelings are not factts they are just my body emoting....and now I allow it to...then its one to step 10 as to why, if any negatives...I even review the positives so I can practice more of it
I thank God each day for this wonderful program and all of you I share it iwth........BE SAFE and BE WELL...........
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