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Hi family. I'm new here. Have been carrying around 55 lbs of inflammation on my body for over year. It started in my stomach (gut). I believe I am very sensitive to what some call "narcissistic" abuse. I get inflamed when I've been exposed to too much of it.
I looked up the word "inflamed" and it said "angry".
I've been dealing with systemic abuse in my family, scapegoating, horrible abuse where my parents "triangulate" strangers into helping them abuse me, and I have felt a tremendous need to speak up VERY loudly for several years now. I have always been a very integral part of my family, the eldest in my generation, and I am a very strong woman. I never realized my family's dysfunction and that I was the scapegoat. When I started getting well through the 12 Steps, they started shunning me. I haven't been allowed at any holidays or seen them in 7 years.
I am not a victim. I believe I need to say something, and I can send a letter to people in my family who are sort of around the fringes of those who've been abusing me. I'm also going to include some longtime family friends for accountability. I don't expect or want anything from anyone. I just need to say my piece and then move on. I don't want a relationship with them again. I think that would be a world of healing for me, and I'd get some of my self-esteem back.
But I also feel a 'sick" feeling in my stomach where most of the inflammation is. It's incredibly overwhelming. It's "stuck grief". Waves of depression will hit me out of nowhere, and it feels so bad. The hurt, the pain, of the mental abuse for 5 decades and probably the sexual abuse as a child... it's just too much. It is all stuffed down in my gut, and this inflammation will kill me if it I don't get rid of it. It's turned my hair grey.
I asked God how to get rid of the inflammation. The next morning, I woke up with a vision of a "string" of pain I must sit through and let come up. It was so disturbing I jumped out of bed :(
I don't want to do it. I don't want to sit with the pain. I keep moving and "doing" to not feel it.
Any feedback about sitting with pain or speaking up or inflammation from grief and stuffed emotions are welcome. Thank you.
-- Edited by anewdayeveryday on Friday 23rd of October 2020 08:54:08 AM
Welcome, anewday!! I am glad you found us and sorry for the pain you are in.
While my situation was not exactly the same as yours, I did have anger, fear and grief due to the effects of others' alcoholism. I felt on the edge of insanity and did my best to stuff or evade those feelings.
I got individual therapy, and I also worked the 12 steps of Al-Anon with a sponsor, and here on the MIP Steps Board -- and I'm now in the process of going through the steps again because they are so life-enhancing. They brought a sense of freedom and lightness.
What made the steps work for me, I think, is that they are "baby steps" ... each one is a small tiny shift in understanding and awareness, and in self-care. Some steps feel steeper than others, perhaps -- but I didn't have to do those "hard" steps until I had completed the steps leading up to them, so I was ready. I guess I would say, for me the steps were not about sitting with pain, but about walking through it, and not walking alone, but with people who have taken that journey before and have found a way out.
Best wishes to you. I know you will get more great feedback here, so please keep coming back.
My name is DavidG and i am a proud member of Alanon.
Shall I call you "Anew"? Welcome to MIP Alanon. Miracles in Progress.
I am with you on two counts. The deep sense of dread in the gut.
And secondly- I was the oldest in a family of five kids.
I am past the worst of my dread. But I thought that my body and bodily functions were disintegrating
and that I was going to die of cancer- a reality.
A disclaimer. I don't live in the USA and do not have access to some resources- for geographical and economic reasons.
It would be wise to consider seeking professional help. And seeking more involvement in Alanon Family Groups,
and/or possibly Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families.
I had a huge psychosomatic load- including migraine. Like you I had to deal with wider family politics- and for which there seemed to be no resolution. No responsible form of authority.
I think I had become the responsible form of authority- or tried to be. And at a young age.
This is serious. This, for Alanon, is about Step One.
I do believe that I had symptoms of Auto Immune Disease.
Welcome to MIP Anew....so glad you found us and glad that you reached out to share. I arrived at Al-Anon as I was affected by the disease of alcoholism/addiction in those I love. What I have found/discovered is that Alcoholism is a family disease, and almost all who live with or love one with this disease are affected.
What I've learned is that the disease has no cure. Those with the disease can treat it through abstinence and some type of treatment/recovery effort. For the family and friends of the disease, Al-Anon is offered. The only requirement for membership is a concern about the drinking of a family member or friend. We don't have to assess their consumption, their behavior, etc. We just have to accept that we have been affected.
Al-Anon gave me a program to help me deal with and heal from these affects. The program suggests we be gentle with ourselves, and begin to explore how we've been affected - directly & indirectly - and then work through these 'things'. A sponsor was/is so very helpful when we are new as they can listen, relate, offer ESH & more.
As far as sitting with feelings, when I was new, that wasn't a good place for me to start. Simply because I had my own deep denial going as well as my own insanity. I also really had no idea what I felt, beyond defeated, broken, angry, sad, etc. My view of life was jaded by my own insanity. It was suggested to me that I set aside time each morning/evening for prayer & meditation. It was suggested that I limit my time here just so I could begin to change me, my habits, etc. Part of my insanity was a pattern of obsessing over people, places, things, events, the past, etc. In time, I have learned that this is not a good or healthy habit for me.
We each are affected in different ways, yet relate more on feelings, efforts, etc. My best suggestion is to take it easy, be gentle, focus on just one day at a time and explore stories and experiences with how recovery in Al-Anon works. With the pandemic, meetings might not be an option, yet there's a variety of speakers on the web and there's a ton of shares here. I can't speak for you but do know that any 'hope' I felt/found was a vast improvement over my 'before' experience.
Please know you are not alone and there is hope and help in recovery. Keep coming back!
__________________
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
The first is detachment. That is finding the way to.set distancd between yourelf and your family
Then there are ways to minimize the stress in your life
Christmas snf the holidays were a profoundly difficult time for.me. Now it is a far different atory. A story I never thought possible. Never in a million yeaes
I have hsd to.work really hard in that issue. So in essence I nade #failur my fuel#
I would feel profoundky kess than. At bthis time of yeae. I had deep shame about vny fanily of origin. Then I.tried to be in a relationshio to make up for what I did not have. Thar vecane an obsession. I have had to.work pretty hard to derach from that series of abandinments.
Of coyrse yiu feel abandoned a great sense of loss abd extremely frustrated when yiu are dealing with your family of origin. Their atttitude has nithing to do with you.
Of course it feels extremely oersonal. However they do not knuw the real yiu and are oriojecting all over you
My teansifirmation from someone who felt comoletely 9stracized has been a long one ..
You have to #demand the ball# and put your focus on yoursrlf
Every day I.sm.reminded of how crucial it is to practice self csde. No one ekse is going to do it. Secondly to have goa llk s abd strategoes. I am willing to out yge tine in to.neet those goals .
.welcime to thus fabukous olace. If you have a moment keep us updared and get to knkw people. Set good boundaries. If you do mot like someone tel them to focus elsewhere.
Of course settimg boundaries with your family of origin is going to be a minefield. In the.meantime work real hard on makimg yourself feel known and loved on your own. That is no.easu task but it is doable. Watch other other oeople. Do they hace a life uou want to imitare. Do they hsve orobkens wherever they go. If you encounter someone who ststes everyone is dygunctional excekt her.
Be orepared for then to lash out af you because they are sely centered on themsejves. They have no control over their emotions. One triggwr abd they stsrt caling everyorlne dysfinctional look really closely. There is no winning wuth yhe #perfect womann
I want to welcome you really warmly. You deserve heakth Vd hsppimess. Al anon can certainly helo. Line uo.those respyrces and lesrn to love yourself.
Aloha ANewDay...and I welcome you to the MIP Board and Family also. This like recovery is a blessing for me and at first I didn't understand what blessing meant. I did not know I was born and raised in the disease on both sides of my family and drunk drinking was normal as was my understands and reactions to it. I just never used the description "drunk" when referring to family members including parents and grand-parents when they were drunk. That was disrespectful and earned us punishment. I learned the hard negative hurtful results. Drinking was a part of our culture so I was introduced to it when I was 9yoa and while my mother argued against it with her mother. I had the feelings and thoughts and behaviors at a young age an by the time I heard the suggestion about recovery to the diseases I was done for. I didn't understand or like anything about AA, Al-Anon, Alcoholism and/or addiction. I didn't know....and didn't know that I didn't know and I learned what insanity was, mind, body, spsirit and emotions.
I was a very angry and violent victim of our disease including almost costing the lives of others who made me rageful.
I am born and raised in a culture which uses/d metaphors to show me what was really going on and so I watched rather than listened to what was going on in order to understand. I didn't believe what was being said by others especially the addicts and alcoholics in my life. When I was asked by therapists "how did/do you feel about such and such" I would describe in picture. They tried very well to change my process which changed when I finally got into our program on purpose and sat and watched the behaviors of the fellowship after listening to their stories. It was very hard and I was asked to leave meetings because of my negative over reactions many times.
What changed that more than anything was coming to believe in that "power greater than myself" person.
I married the women I drank with or who we addicted to some thought, feeling, behavior or chemical....I know insanity and didn't know I could change it until I listened to myself and then watched my behaviors.
Miracles do happen when the program is worked as suggested. I am proof of that because when I gave up the resistance and fight and started to follow the suggestions...especially of getting a sponsor and listening, learning and practice, practice, practice; miracles started to happen in my life. I detached from my family and friends and became a program follower without resistance. My family when they saw me found me a changed (for the better) member and sometimes asked me why which I would say "I don't notice any difference". My drinking buddies really didn't care. My neighborhood still considered me for a while "crazy" but the courts and police were relieved. My sponsor, an Al-Anon man who had been in recovery a long time and was willing to stand by and with me taught me to "Don't React and to call him before I might. His name was DonT...."Don't !" I still see him metaphorically.
"Feelings" for me have always been emotional responses or reactions to outside events and I have learned with Don and the program that they are always choices not "have to's" Today I get to choose how I respond and work against reactions.
Life is soooo much more peaceful and still and quiet and I thank my Higher Power who I choose to call "Akua...(I am Hawaiian National") and who I choose to walk along side with 24//7 including this MIP Family and the AFG.
The Fellowship Walks the walk and that is the best picture for me.
Keep coming back and feel free to share you experience, strength and hope with us often. (((((Hugs)))))
Thank you all for your replies. Let me ask you a question.
I am in a longterm car rental. Ive been renting for months from the same nationwide company.
The other day I woke up to an enormous debt in my bank account. The company had charged me for something, and I didn't know what for.
I called the rental location I use, but couldn't reach anyone.
So I called a different location of the same company whom I have also used in the past.
I asked them to look up what the charge was for.
I figured it was a corporate mistake of some kind, I wasn't even thinking of "where" it came from.
About 20 minutes later, I got a call from the first location, the one who hadn't answered. I had noticed the woman who works there who usually picks right up (she can see it's me calling), hadn't been answering the phone lately. She usually calls me right back if she misses my calls, too. I don't require this; it's something she took upon herself to do. I had also observed recently that she seemed to have a lot going on, personal stuff, and was very stressed out. She had been somewhat disrespectful to me the last time I saw her.
Anyway, she began to LAMBASTE me over the phone, for calling that other location to ask a question. She was WAY too harsh, criticizing, and I felt there was something else going on in her life. She also lied, tried to "blame-shift", and say that she "always answers the phone", and that I did something wrong bu calling other people to ask a questions when clearly I had no other choice
What would you do in a situation like that?
-- Edited by anewdayeveryday on Saturday 24th of October 2020 10:46:20 AM
Hi, Anewday! I'm sorry you are having a frustrating situation with a business. What has worked for me is reaching out to a higher power -- and this time I don't mean in a spiritual sense, I mean the highest person in the company, such as the CEO.
I've googled to find out the name and contact information for the CEO or the highest level person nationwide for that company. Not customer service, but the top individual. Then I have sent a nicely worded email -- or a postal letter if there is no email address.
In the letter I calmly describe the situation with details -- dates, amounts, my account number, invoice number, etc. -- and say that my contacts with local representatives have not resolved the problem, and respectfully ask for their help to resolve the situation. If appropriate, I also say something positive, such as that I've been a longtime customer or always had good service in the past. When I have written to CEOs, I have received a response within a few days, or sometimes a few hours.
In your situation, I wouldn't even mention the bad customer service of the woman who lambasted you. I would just say just that there appears to be a large financial error and you would like it to be corrected or to receive an explanation of what happened.
A funny story -- When I recently contacted a CEO via a message on LinkedIn -- he immediately responded that he was no longer the CEO of that company, he had left a couple of months before, but he would contact their customer team on my behalf. He did, and I heard from them the next day.
Sometimes I am powerless but not helpless! Good luck with your situation. I hope that not only is the money straightened out, but that you feel more empowered.
WRONG.
It is easy sit behind my computer and give out saintly advice, when everythings fairly ok in the moment.
The ONLY solution to the increasing disrespect I was dealing with is this:
I told her, Dont you EVER call my phone and speak to me like that again.
CLICK.
See, if no one here had THAT answer, then how could anyone give correct feedback about my family?!
Im a woman of God. I wont put up with malarkey. I am constructing a letter this weekend to send out to EVERYONE my family knows. And as you can guess, I know JUST what to say.
Unless we have a very solid recovery, we dont set boundaries.
New day we share our experiences, strengths and hopes which we know have worked for us the way we did it at the time and we did it with tools sponsors being one of them and the literature another. Having a Higher Power was a biggie for me as when I was in your position I use to handle the situation "MY WAY" which made my sponsor ask me the question, "So how did that work out for you"?...It never worked out I remained the same or worse because I use the old solutions that never worked for me. If I didn't need help I wouldn't be here.
I know compassion and empathy and how to use it even when I didn't want to. I knew how to hurt people beyond their limits and what was a blessing for me was learning how to make amends for that behavior.
I also was a child and man of God I thought until I heard God tell me I needed change.
As a former therapist I have learned how others are feeling by listening to them and then making up my mind to support/help and turning them over. If I don't change everything stays the same. ((((hugs))))
Not that anyone can tell anyone how to set boundaries. I have been in this group for many years. Everyone who has come here has been through hell and bsck
How you.set your boundsrors is your concern
Nevertheless there are people in thos forum who have most certainly found innovative ways to manage tremendous pain
People can agree to disagree how to set boundaries. At times it can certainly seem like there is only.one option
There are oeople here who have experienced tremendous pain, total devastation.and tremendous bettayal. No one comes to.al anon unless they are totally devaststed.
How you set your boundaries is entirely up to you. There is no demand here on snyone to do a certain thing st a certain time.
Most of the suggestions pretty much all of us ssid #no.way# to.st a certain point.
I am glad thst you cane to this group to seek help. There is no.demand on anyone to do what someone.else has. There are #suggestions# no mandates and.no.ultimatums.
New day we share our experiences, strengths and hopes which we know have worked for us the way we did it at the time and we did it with tools sponsors being one of them and the literature another. Having a Higher Power was a biggie for me
Having a Higher Power isn't the "biggest tool", it's what it's all about.
as when I was in your position I use to handle the situation "MY WAY" which made my sponsor ask me the question, "So how did that work out for you"?...It never worked out I remained the same or worse because I use the old solutions that never worked for me. If I didn't need help I wouldn't be here.
If any sponsor ever asked me "How did that work out for you?" that I spoke up for myself about abuse, I'd tell her, "Good. My whole insides are better." My old way was never speaking up, taking everyone's abuse, etc. That's not usual, most people are boundary-crossers. I am not. I allowed my boundaries to be crossed because of the trauma I came from and not knowing what was acceptable and what wasn't.
The only time we are to let go is if it was too long ago in the past to do anything about it.
I know compassion and empathy and how to use it even when I didn't want to. I knew how to hurt people beyond their limits and what was a blessing for me was learning how to make amends for that behavior.
See, that's not me. That's you. I didn't hurt people beyond their limits. I was disrespectful and had a skewed reality about relationships (complaining to boyfriend's mothers about my boyfriends etc.) and I stole money from employers to get alcohol & drugs and stole time from employers and I made amends for all that, but my amends list wasn't that long. And that's after going through my whole life thoroughly.
I also was a child and man of God I thought until I heard God tell me I needed change.
Then you weren't a man of God yet. You never changed.
As a former therapist I have learned how others are feeling by listening to them and then making up my mind to support/help and turning them over. If I don't change everything stays the same. ((((hugs))))
Oh, boy, there it is. A former therapist. And still even mentioning it. Lol. No wonder you have no idea what I mean about the spiritual life. Never mind, lol.
Not that anyone can tell anyone how to set boundaries. I have been in this group for many years. Everyone who has come here has been through hell and bsck
How you.set your boundsrors is your concern
Nevertheless there are people in thos forum who have most certainly found innovative ways to manage tremendous pain
I have a high tolerance for pain and thus thought I could handle everybody's malarky. I had to see the truth about that. Our bodies keep score. I've been down that road before, where I am emotionally exhausted from taking everybody's abuse. I would NEVER tell anyone to deny my Soul like that. OMG. Horrible.
People can agree to disagree how to set boundaries.
No, God is in the TRUTH. There are no opinions in the truth. Those with it will all give you the very same feedback. That's why you can trust it!
At times it can certainly seem like there is only.one option
There are oeople here who have experienced tremendous pain, total devastation.and tremendous bettayal. No one comes to.al anon unless they are totally devaststed.
Agreed.
How you set your boundaries is entirely up to you. There is no demand here on snyone to do a certain thing st a certain time.
Oh, yes there is. Your LIFE is at stake. And boundaries actually need to be set right at the get-go. Or it becomes abuse. Where do you get this stuff?
Most of the suggestions pretty much all of us ssid #no.way# to.st a certain point.
I can't even discern what you wrote there. A little effort, please? And let's get rid of the modern day #s. This is not social media. I am not IN that world. Neither is God.
I am glad thst you cane to this group to seek help. There is no.demand on anyone to do what someone.else has. There are #suggestions# no mandates and.no.ultimatums.
That's what I hate about Alanon. People can't express what to actually do, because they have no idea. LOL. All they say is, "keep coming back." it's a way to control, of course. To not give an answer. But I already have my answer. The emails are being sent out tonight. :) I can't wait. :) I believe this will give me a HUGE amount of well-being, a way to move forward and not be stuck in their bullshite, and permission to move on. Now let me stop wasting time with people who have absolutely no answers.
Good luck on your boundaries. Everyone single person here has struggled with boundaries.
They are extremely difficult to navigate
I hope you find peace and resolution for your issues
Maresie
New Day how's it working out about the car and the debt and the gal on the other side of the phone? Did coming here and listening help you out? Would like to hear in the future about how you handled it as it might help some one out. Do you want and are you looking for help?
Are you willing to listen and learn? It took me a long while to tell myself yes before the growth started. Only one of the powerful conditions that my sponsor taught me was the definition of humility. Being teachable and part of that lesson was the definition of EGO...
Lets see what happens. Keep coming back cause this works when we work it. ((((hugs))))
My name is DavidG and i am a proud member of Alanon.
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