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I need some help in dealing with my AW's self-pity. I know this is common, and I know she is not happy right now for many reasons. This weekend I just couldn't keep my mouth closed.
Every conversation with her has become how much her life sucks. I feel for her, but I guess I just had my fill of her sitting in her own self pity. When she rattled off her long list of things about her life that suck, I told her what I thought.
My car is falling apart.... so go get another one.
I hate my job.... so find a new one.
A new job would require schooling.... so go to school, they will pay for it.
In the state I am in I couldn't make good grades.... If it's important to you get in a new state and study, you are smart and you can do it.
Bottom line is you are an adult, if you don't like what's going on... do something else, and quit waiting around for everything else to just change to suit you... <sigh>
Now, I know this conversation didn't help a thing... probably made her feel worse, but one of the reasons I have let things get as bad as they have is because I don't have a tendancy to do that. I don't do self pity much, and I don't have much sympathy for someone doing that for long periods of time and doing nothing. Especially if they just keep looking at me to fix it all for them.
Does that make me cold hearted? Am I missing something?
How do you deal with it, I know this has to be very common. If you have some magic way of dealing with this situation I would love to hear it. I have spent weeks, letting her vent it and saying nothing and I finally snapped.
God... grant me the serenity to not be everyones shrink, the courage to let them work things out for themselves, and the wisdom to ask someone else how in the hell you do that...
Take care of you!
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"Good judgement comes from experience... experience comes from bad judgement" - unknown
don't really have any esh for you as I had one of those partys for myself yesterday. I like to call it a mental health day...lol!
What I do have for you though is that I feel you give so much to everyone on these boards. I love following your recovery. It gives hope to alot of people.
I got to the stage where I was starting to snap too easily. I found myself telling him to get off his pity pot too often. He, like your wife is consumed with the disease. This self pity characteristic of this. No, you are certainly not cold hearted. I think you are progressing in your own recovery. In doing this you are changing your own behaviours which of course can be an uneasy time for any of us.
For me, I constantly remind myself that he is very ill. Someone here pointed out to me that I am not the type of person who would want to be nasty/curt to a sick person. From this, I focus myself on the fact that he is ill, and I feel pity for him much of the time. This keeps me calm and allows me to detatch.
I found rereading "getting them sober" helped me through this stage.
It read something like: don't think they're getting away with anything, they are dying from alcoholism. This touched me so hard. I look at him and I see his sad life and I know he is ill. This keeps me grounded.
I know rtexas that you love your wife very much, and you are actually giving her the kindest gift anyone could give to anA, you are giving her a chance. A real chance. Not everyone is so lucky.
Long time, no chat. I am glad you are still here as I could sure use a familiar name on the site.
I am sorry that your AW is wallowing in it right now. You are not cold hearted in the least. You are probably the kindest heart. And You Should Remember That!
By jove, my bloke, you've got it!You've realized, in your heart that, she's looking for attention that she doesn't need, that you can't give and that she needs to get from a power that is 1) greater than her; 2) greater than her disease; 3) can run her life. Those we pity will become piteous--self pity is a leech that sucks our motivation. It enables us to become loathesome creatures (think about it--do you hang around people that suck out your self esteem?) and also allows us to become manipulative (if you really loved me you'd feed into my self hatred...).
You're doing exactly the right thing. When she comes looking for "love", you know what to say. "I hate my life..." Change it! "I hate myself..." Change it! "I don't know what to do.." Ask for help! I promise you--you're right on track.
Self pity is a hard one. What happens when you find your life gets a little out of sorts and then you hear the whinning of your A. When you truely have something going on that is a load yet still hear the sob story of the A. And you sit there and know that they have absolutely no idea what it is to be facing something that is impossible to change -- and there is no compassion, only the disease. It's all about them, it's all about how bad it is for them, it's all about how things could be different "if" or they can't change this or that because....all the A reasoning. What do you do? Let is eat you up inside, let the resentments start building, fuel your frustrations with anger? No, we detatch. It's what's healthy for us, what keeps us in the peace. It's not about them, it's really about us.
I use to think that it was a male/female thing -- now I believe that it is also an alanon trate. We are not here to fix all their problems, reason it out for them, show them the sunny side of life. There is no answer that will satisify them, one that will make it better --- you know what will make it better for them, and more than likely they know what will make it better for them -- they just have to want it. Right now she's wanting you to make it better. Caution is the key. We can really jump in if we see even a little bit of our reasoning working for them. Remember that no matter what we give them, we can't give them sobriety.
My experience is not to offer suggestions to my A, now I don't always get this right, lol, I still get drawn in. Sometimes I want to think that I have the answer -- it just seems so easy, lol. Here is where a nice Uh huh, to acknowldge that I am listening comes in mighty handy. I do my best to leave the advice out -- it's kind of like that brick wall. Hey I've run into it enough, I need to learn that it only frustrates me and doesn't move the wall at all. So why keep doing it?
If you can stand it, let her vent, let her whine, just stop trying to give her answers. Let her figure it out. If you can't handle the self-pity I don't see anything wrong with saying flattly that "right now, I can't talk" (or listen to this ) and make yourself unavailable. It helps prevent that feeling of being sucked dry.
This must be the week for the pity parties to flourish. I can so identify with what your going through. My A son called Sunday night and golly gee whillackers was he ever on a roll.
He started off with telling me how sick he was, how he had an anxiety attack and went to the ER. He says he told the doctor all about his history (NO I do not believe that, he doesn't even remember a lot of his history). The doctor supposedly told him that his liver and other organs are suffering badly (no tests were done to support this one). He said he thought he had a seizure (I have epilepsy, this one was a big time Momma feel sorry for me). Then the tears started flowing, on his part not mine. GEESH I don't need phone calls like this. His gf has split with him and told him that they no longer have a relationship but she is still staying in the apartment just in a different bedroom, the lease is in her name and will be due in February.
Next comes, I don't have a car, I don't have a license, I can't rent an apartment. He doesn't have a car because he lost all of them for not paying the payments, he doesn't have a license because of too many DUI's and he can't get an apartment because he ran out on the lease at the last one that was in his name.
This was all leading up to "Mom will you cosign on a lease for me in February". Now I'm not exactly a mental midget when it comes to alcoholics and their manipulating ways thanks to Al-Anon and I saw right through what was going on.
I suggested he get to meetings..........nope not gonna have anything to do with that bunch of people.
I suggested he get to church...........well his HP must have abandoned him or he wouldn't be in this mess.
My last statement to him was I'm sure you will figure out something, you always do. Then I handed the phone to his dad.
Without this program I would still be in a frantic tizzy trying to figure out how to help him knowing all too well that I was doing the wrong thing when I did. I took the advice of a member of my home group and that was When in Crisis, don't feed it for seven minutes and it will no longer be a crisis. This worked for me this time, every time I started in with the what if's in my mind I made myself stop feeding it.
He called on Monday morning and apologized for throwing a pity party and for the moment he has everything figured out. I don't know who he talked to but he talked to someone because I have never heard him use the term pity party before.
The best way for me to handle a pity party is to remember who I am talking to and that one of the characteristics of the disease is to lie, cry, whimper, bargain or anything else they have to do to get what they want. If I buy into this or don't is my decision.
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Everything I have ever let go of has claw marks all over it.
I think what is pretty hard for me about living with an A is that they take all their probelms and lay them at my feet. I am not so prone to pick them up anymore.
I know huge role I had in the A's life was to be dependable.
I've stopped picking up his problems. That doesn't mean I don't acknowledge them. I do. I just stop making them my own.
Maybe your solution to your wife's problems is not the one for her. Sometimes it is not change that is needed. If she is an alcoholic maybe her best bet at the moment is to concentrate on treatment and separation. I know I have been a huge fan of tumultous change for the A because I simply couldn't bear his huge pile of problems.
I have my own problems of course and these days I tend to focus on them. Some of them come from my asocciation with the A some of them don't. I tend to try to work on what I can do about them.
For me personally I have to really limit how much I interact with the A. I don't do well at it I get toxic with resentment pretty quickly. I also get pretty fed up with how self absorbed he is.
I don't really have an answr for the issue except to say that I know I was all too ready to take on the A's problems before. I was a huge rescuer and enabler. I am not now but I had to lose my emotional and physical health to get there.
((((rtexas)))) lol, I loved your serenity prayer version.
Sounds like she is just stuck, still in the blameing you for her situation, wanting you to fix it and make it all better.
My AH is always playing that game too. He is so angry for having to go to his batterer's intervention classes, and blaming me for something he did. And I am sure he doesn't even connect the problems in his life to his alcohol comsumption. It is all MY fault. If I wasn't this or that, his life would be so much better. So he thinks.
I think, in my opinion, you have been very understanding and loving towards your A. She and/or her disease is just trying to suck you in. If she can get you to feel guilty or sorry for her, she won't have to feel guilty or get off her butt and make changes in her life.
I used to pray to God to grant me patience, then one day He sent me my AH to practice on! I have learned to be careful of what I pray for.
I HATE that poor, pitiful me act! My mom is an alcoholic who has not had a drink in about 13 years. She stopped drinking without any program and, boy, can she get into that pity pot. She's forever saying how nothing she does is good, 'I'm such an awful person, I have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to see, no one likes me, nothing I do is right, no one invites me anywhere'....it goes on and on and on. You can't have a conversation with her without her knocking something about herself. Finally, I figured out a way to get her to stop it when she starts that with me: She buys everyone in the family a small gift for Christamas which is fun for us. She always tells me what she got all the males and what she got for the females and I'll tell her how nice that is. Then she procedes to tell me how dumb the gifts are and how she never gets the right thing. Finally, I asked her not to give me a gift and when she asked why, I told her it was because she said it was dumb. She laughed and that put an end to her nonsense that time. Another time she cooked one of her terrific casseroles and then talks about how she can't cook. So I asked her to please not cook any of her meals because she calls them awful. She can really get on my nerves with that attitude............I wonder what your wife would do if you quietly agreed with her. 'my car is falling apart' - Yeah, it is. 'I hate my job'. - Yeah, I know. 'A new job requires schooling' - You're right. It does. 'In the state I'm in I couldn't make good grades'. No. Not in the state you're in..........jaja
).
) and make yourself unavailable. It helps prevent that feeling of being sucked dry. 