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.
Todays reading focuses on why we are attracted to alcoholics. How is it that alcoholism becomes part of our lives? For a lot of us, there is a familiarity with the disease, and even with an issue that can affect our lives so negatively, we are drawn to what we know. It took me a long while to see but the chaos that surrounds the alcoholic life was familiar to me. I did not grow up in it directly, but the insidious nature of the disease helped to ensure that the many ways it can be manifested were known to me. When one has been living with/loving an alcoholic, the four Ms that are mentioned in todays reading become an integral part of life: martyrdom, managing, manipulation and mothering.
The first time I saw these four Ms laid out I realized I was looking into a mirror! I sure was the disappointed and hurt wife, hoping everyone could see how much I was dealing with! I tried to both manage and manipuliate the qualifier in my life into what I considered better behavior and in so doing was very often seeing our relationship not as partners, but as me being the caretaker. One thing that I have learned in alanon is what my role(s) have been in whatever sadness and disappointment I was feeling in my life. I began to see that things were not hopeless, but I could control and manage myself instead of someone else. Martyrdom and manipulation were not necessary, and the only people I was responsible for mothering were my kids!
It was and is freeing to know that I can manage my own life with positivity. I can feel compassion and empathy for others, not the need to try and fix what I perceive to be their problems. All of the energy wasted on trying to change someone else can be poured into working on my own self improvement, a far better use of the time and energy!
.for "mothering" I read "smothering". I was the oldest of 5 and I smothered our kid brother. Read him stories and hung out with him a lot. I saw mum and dad at their best. Mum told me that things were already going downhill- and they were. The normal that the younger kids saw was different and worse, though.
Alcoholism is a no-win, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide situation.
It is just blimmin awful. Destructive, soul destroying...
In 1976 I left my job as a railway ganger and returned home to my small inland town.
I was doing okay at the job, and got promoted. I lived fairly close to the city. My last girlfriend there was a drunk, and had done jail time and beat me up from time to time. As I did my steps I looked my my relationships with affection, and remembered names and situations. I needed to.
But I felt that if I loved and smothered long enough things would just come right.
People would respond to loving kindness, eventually.
I look at my friends and workmates, as well as my cousins.
Birds of a feather stick together.
By 1982 I was ready for Alanon. I was ready in 1970 but there was no group around. In fact I was a founding member of our local group- so i go too learn things from the ground up.
I am sharing a bit more this week. Assembly coming up next weekend. The neighbouring group has a lot of men in it. I am not a sponsor, but relate to one member... ...really well. We kid and joke a fair bit.
Our kid brother passed away in Texas three years ago.
I had the strength and culture to go over there and deal with it.
Part of the contract was that I was able to view the body. The was going to get me closure.
There seemed to be a bot of an industry going on over there- dealing with dead people.
I stuck my toes in and they had to turn the hearse around so they complied with the contract.
And I was able to have my own little funeral service.
Alanon has given me these boundaries, and my rights. But the ability to assert them firmly and gently.
Instead of getting all boiled up with anger. Rage.
Or silence.
Those last two my family system taught me. Let it go, let it pass.
The SP the serenity prayer taught me when to let go, and when to stick up for myself.
Martin's ashes are scattered up on the sheep farm where he first worked.
This week Iplan to put a bee hive up near there, so that i can work close to him.
Alanon family gives us a base to work from, until we can find our feet.
Yesterday madame went a bought an electric bike. Bikes and bike trails are a big culture around here.
She had trouble getting up hills- and this has done the trick!
I was tempted to get back out into the vineyards. There is a real shortage of migrant workers, because of lockdown.
But really speaking I need to get ny book finished. I had a nice children's book up my sleeve too. And a bit more poetry.
I sometimes have trouble sticking to my strategies.
The plan was to work as a handyman on our properties, and earn a much higher wage.
Hmmm... choices...
...in my alcoholic home we never really had the luxury of conversation. Not regular daily conversations anyway.
And with the A. in our world it was just anger and frustration.
Happy Sunday Mary and thank you for your service and the daily. I can look back now, and see that I had an (unhealthy) want to be needed, thus often seemed to gravitate towards unhealthy folks. Not just partners, but even in friendship. I (unknowingly at the time) did grow up with this disease all around me, so know it did shape me - in good ways and also in some not so good ways.
I am grateful that this program gave me a different way of seeing my part in my life. I spent so much time in a reactive mode trying to defend myself & those I love from the disease. Nobody asked me to defend for them, yet I felt it my job - what a thankless job, and truly not a healthy way to live/be.
The 4 M's gave me one of many 'Aha' moments in my journey. It never occurred to me that how I was and how I did was unhealthy or a bit obsessive. I truly had to rethink so many things, after I segmented myself from the disease, diseased, chaos and drama. I believe I lost my individuality long before I got to Al-Anon and had to really back-up and re-group. I unintentionally and with no ill will had become one that exploited many of my strengths in an effort to force solutions (my will/ego). My own insanity, from this disease, had entered into my life subtly and woven into the fabric of my being. Time takes time, and with practice I am way better today with unconditional love and acceptance of both self and others.
I'm excited for football shortly! Happy Sunday MIP family - find and keep your joy!!
__________________
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
Aloha Kakahiaka Mary and Ohana (Good Morning Mary and Family)... I am not back home with the exception of my spirit and heart. The cold is not healthy for me yet doesn't bother my other as much.
I was born with inheriting several diseases...Tuberculosis was one and alcoholism another. I knew Alcohol was going to be a very important issue in my life from the age of 9 as on the day that my grandmother introduced me to it she did in in a wild, full fledged argument with my mother. "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DO THAT TO MY SONS" Mom screamed and yet she was wrong. "HEY BUDDY...HOW ARE YOU DOING?" was the voice from the glass and I knew I was going to love it from the first sip. It was a heady deep red Portugese Rose and I thought God lived in that bottle. From that instant until my Higher Power found me and sat and talked with me I lived within the gates of Hell and should not have survived the "Fatal" promise of our disease not because I drank alone but because I surrounded myself also with drinkers; heavy addicted alcoholics and addicts and married that same way 4 times.
Thanks God for God and his powerful continuous patient love. I learned that Love was His name and I came to understand later through His teaching conversations with me that I was His son as you are his daughter and MIP His family also.
Thank you also for your empathy, compassion and Love...I will pass it on. ((((Hugs))))
Thank you Mary for your service this morning, and to all those above who have shared their stories, I thank you as well!
I remember vividly when I was first introduced to the Four M's. When I read them, I immediately was taken back to one of our marriage counseling sessions (we were 11 years off and on -mostly "on" - in marriage counseling), where the therapist said, "You are acting like his mother... and YOU are expecting/perpetuating it." She was speaking to the both of us at the time. Looking back at that moment, I was aghast at the realization that I used all four of those "techniques" at one time or another in my 29 years of marriage!!
Some of the M's were easier to drop than others. I guess I held onto Managing and Martyrdom the longest. I am glad Al-Anon has helped me to learn a different way of looking at, and dealing with things.
The rain we were expecting didn't last long, nor was it as torrential as they predicted. But it is cold, and we got snow in the local mountains. Fall has finally come!
&
-- Edited by PosiesandPuppies on Sunday 8th of November 2020 02:31:54 PM
__________________
"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
I have to be so careful with this because it can sound like I chose to have qualifiers when i was always trying to be
The truth is that I had chronic post traumatic stress disorder
from s child. The result is that i grew up with no boundaries and so much trauma that social isolation was the only.way I could not he triggered on a constsnt basis. I also had what I know as a cluster of symptoms of #an abandonment melange# . Vwith those stellar conditions under my belt I was absolutey guaranteed 100% to fail and fail miserably.
I would fail at a relationship with co workers. I would fail at a relationship with peers i would most certainly fail at a relstionship with supervisors
So since I wad ansolutely deatined for failure the fact I had a number of qualifiers is to absolutely be expected
Needless to say this discovery of the symptoms and repercussions of chronic post traumatic stress disorder is pretty new for me. I have a great deal of grieving to do as a result. The good news id thst I can noi longer feel I was at fault. In alanon no longer need to know # why. #
The #why# and #how# of course haunted me. In fact it was g8ven my #inner crot8c# something that burned me day snd might. Perhaps there are good points about having an #inner crotic# because I finally got to the #why#
Now all I have to focus on getting bette. So much better than I ever imagined possible.
I have to be so careful with this because it can sound like I chose to have qualifiers when i was always trying to be
The truth is that I had chronic post traumatic stress disorder
from s child. The result is that i grew up with no boundaries and so much trauma that social isolation was the only.way I could not he triggered on a constsnt basis. I also had what I know as a cluster of symptoms of #an abandonment melange# . Vwith those stellar conditions under my belt I was absolutey guaranteed 100% to fail and fail miserably.
I would fail at a relationship with co workers. I would fail at a relationship with peers i would most certainly fail at a relstionship with supervisors
So since I wad ansolutely deatined for failure the fact I had a number of qualifiers is to absolutely be expected
Needless to say this discovery of the symptoms and repercussions of chronic post traumatic stress disorder is pretty new for me. I have a great deal of grieving to do as a result. The good news id thst I can noi longer feel I was at fault. In alanon no longer need to know # why. #
The #why# and #how# of course haunted me. In fact it was g8ven my #inner crot8c# something that burned me day snd might. Perhaps there are good points about having an #inner crotic# because I finally got to the #why#
Now all I have to focus on getting bette. So much better than I ever imagined possible.
Thanks for the Service Yanksfan. And right on cue are the words of running to familiarity. I almost wish to groan aloud at the realization of how achingly simply complicated situations may begin. I was born into the madness of this disease and honestly spent my first 30 years in a constant state of anxiety. I finally escaped that as my normal a year ago and now any flare up of anxiety is unbearable because it no longer feels natural. I credit that to alanon and pranic healing... The latter like surgery the former prevention, cure, care and maintenance. I look at my 27 year old self and wish I could comfort her. I ran to what was familiar having lost everything I loved despite best efforts. Well I'm here today a little more lined but overall, grateful. The devil you know is still the devil.
Thanks Mary... 
& 