Right Thoughts Follow Right Action

Gratitude used to be something that I thought of passively. I knew when I was thankful for someone or something, because I would just feel it in my heart. I would have to wait for those moments though, the ones that caught me by surprise and made my passive life much more enjoyable.

I have since tried to become much more pro-active in finding the joy in life. Abraham Lincoln said, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” This is a much more involving way of looking at gratitude. The process of finding something to be thankful about in life every day can be very hard at first. Eventually, it does get easier, or so I'm told.

When I get caught up in my own depression and anxiety, it seems I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop. That's how it was when I was a child. There was always some form of chaos in the house, something that I would have to hide from or defend myself against. Two of the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder are hyper-awareness (being preoccupied with studying the environment for possible threats) and hyper-arousal (a chronic state of fight or flight complete with the tension that goes along with that). I have those things in spades. It's hard to have gratitude when you always think that something bad is going to happen and you're always preparing for the worst possible outcome.

When I grew up and got out of my alcoholic childhood home though, it was up to me to find both a safe place to reside and the gratitude that had gone missing in the chaos. It was up to me to build the kind of life that I could be happy with and to be happy with a life that strives for progress and not perfection. There must be action behind my complaints if I am to make them. I can't be one of the people who doesn't vote in life but complains about who wins the elections.

At the moment, I'm stuck with trying to find the good in many of the things that have happened to me. There has been so much bad in the past few years that it's easy to just choke on it until I can't breathe anymore-- but there have also been wonderful times of joy. I was able to get out of an abusive relationship because my friends graciously offered me a room in their apartment when I finally asked. There have been people standing by my side through court appointments, scary doctor visits and trips to the very confusing accountant. I have a roof over my head, a bed of my own, food in my stomach and for the first time since I was ten I'm living in a home where there is no violence. No matter what happens, I have those things to be grateful for and I must start remembering them and actively seeking out the rest of the pieces to fit the puzzle of my life.

Not So Easy As One, Two, Three

As someone coming back into the rooms of Alanon after a long absence, I'm trying to ascertain where I am in regards to the steps and what progress I need to make. I'm an old-timer and have been in and out of the program for a decade now, but I keep coming back to the first couple of steps. I've worked them them so many times but I still feel like a complete beginner at times.

Step One brought me to Alanon, when I knew deep in my soul that my life was unmanageable. I had tried in the past to stop my family from falling apart due to alcoholism but in the end all of my qualifiers died. I lost my sister, father and mother all to alcoholism so I realize there's nothing I can do. It's too late to do anything. I've watched the fallout and by now I know I can't control it and I didn't cause it, but sometimes I feel like I should have been enough to cure it somehow.

I think it goes into Survivor's Guilt a bit for me. I'm the only one to have survived my family situation without dying (though, I have one more sister who is still alive but she's on her last legs with a cocaine addiction). I know it was Alanon that saved me over the past decade or so, watching everyone die but knowing that I just had to work my program. I abused alcohol a little, as it ran so deeply in my family, but never went as far as to get an addiction. Step One remains confusing to me, since I have these visions of me saving everyone. My father had a cabin up in the woods and I keep saying that I should have kidnapped my sister, brought her there and refused to leave until she got sober. I know it's silly, but I still think I could have helped in some way.

I know I have Step Two down, because I truly believe that the program can restore me to sanity. Though, when my "friends" start talking about how I've come from an insane background so I'm always going to be crazy, sometimes that step gets a bit hard for me. I've really latched onto the program lately, because I really want it to work and need it to work as a lot of things have been brought up for me lately that keep trying to drag me back to the world of the insane.

Step Three is pretty easy for me at the moment. I'm not doing much with my life right now, so I feel like maybe my Higher Power will run it better than I can. Though, when I get hints and signs of what I should do I usually just say its too much work. I often forget to use the program when I'm in the middle of a problem because I just want to stay in my little bubble of depression. My Higher Power can be screaming at times, but I just tune it out and stay with the thoughts that make me miserable.

I'm attempting to find a sponsor, something I've never done in all my years of program. I had a sponsor for a day once, but I couldn't find the strength to pick up the phone and actually call them. Now though, I'm ready to work the full program. I'm ready to work the steps. I'm ready to climb the mountain to the top. I have to start somewhere and these first few steps are my jumping off point. I keep reminding myself that it's progress and not perfection, but each step seems so nuanced that it's hard to know if I comprehend it in my heart or just understand it in my head. The latter is more easier; the former will take a lot of work and faith.

Safety Found In Anonymity

I've started doing a 90-in-90 again. The last time I tried doing 90 meetings in 90 days, something miraculous happened and I was able to find the courage to get out of an abusive relationship. I have been blessed with wonderful friends, both in and out of the program, who've given me a place to stay, food when I was hungry, ears to listen to me and shoulders for me to cry on. My Higher Power continues to bless me every day with this program.

One of the meetings I attended today was on the idea of Alanon being a safe place when our lives get chaotic, and how there is so much safety in the rooms and member to member. I'm finding this to be very true.

For the two years when I lived with my ex, I was not allowed to talk about certain topics because I knew they would set him off. He would scream at me, punch holes in the walls or tell me I was worthless. He also told me not to talk to anyone about what went on inside the house. "Mutual friends" also said they didn't want to hear it or said I was lying when I even had photographic proof of the abuse that was going on. I just had to shut my mouth and keep the peace. And I did that for so long I stopped talking to anyone. I felt really alone at the time, just very scared and very alone.

Then I moved a couple of states away, and eventually wound up back in the program and all these things started pouring out of my mouth. I couldn't keep them bottled up anymore-- and the amazing thing about the program was that I didn't have to anymore. I could talk as long as I wanted (even if it was after the meeting if my sharings ran too long). I was encouraged, hugged and shown such love and patience that my hungry soul had been lacking for so long. I have started to feel safe again. For once, kind people like my home group, listened and didn't tell me I was lying and didn't tell me they didn't want to hear it or to "just shut up already". They just let me share while they listened. I've heard it said that all anyone really wants is someone to be a witness to their life. Alanon is the witness to my own.

Other than trusting me to tell my personal story my way and encouraging me to do so, I also have the added benefit of anonymity. As such, I don't have to worry about anything I have said in the rooms or member-to-member getting around the social circle, or back to my ex. The Twelfth Tradition states that, “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles above personalities.” This allows me to feel safe again and has begun to make me start trusting people again.

It's like I'm finally coming clean and replacing my ex's brainwashing with a program of my own making and choosing. There is such great healing and truth in these rooms.

We Are Just As Sick

One of the important parts of doing Step One is in realizing that we are as sick as our alcoholics. It says in Step One that OUR lives had become unmanageable. This program is about us but for many years, while I was still living with active alcoholics I would rationalize it in my head that I was going to these meetings because of them. THEY were sick. I need to learn how to live with THEM. If THEY hadn't done all these things to me then I would be a perfectly fine and functioning person in the world. Even though we are taught that it is a family disease, I still placed all the blame on their faults and what I saw as THEIR disease.

After my alcoholics weren't with me anymore though-- after they had died, I was still here and I was still not managing my life to the best of my abilities. I was still displaying codependent thoughts and behaviors. I was still stuck in everyone's head but my own. I still didn't listen to my Higher Power. I still let my character defects run rampant through my life where they created chaos and disorder. I left Alanon for several years and jumped head on into many slips because I was sure that with my family of alcoholics gone I didn't need to do the work anymore.

I still would rage on about how if they hadn't left me when I was in my twenties that I would have a better life now. I still blamed them for the chaos that enveloped my life in the wake of their disease. I still was in so many people's heads that I couldn't think straight. My depression and codependency was a result of their problems, obviously not my own.

I was thinking today though how it's impossible to blame them for anything in my life anymore. It's been a year since my mother died, three since my father died and five since my sister died. I have discovered the ultimate detachment. They're not here anymore. They're not doing anything to me actively. They don't even know the problems I face now or what my life has become so the idea of me blaming them for anything that I have created in my own life seems to fall very short now.

I'm still sick.

I have all the problems that this FAMILY disease has instilled in my brain. I am standing here on my own, alone with no alcoholics in my life and I am still living in many of the same ways that I did when they were here. I, and I alone, are recreating the same patterns that I lived before because I lack the knowledge and know-how to create anything else. I need the help. I need my Higher Power to guide me. When you're locked in a room by yourself, which is somewhat what it's felt like since I was left an orphan in my family, you discover in that silence what really goes on in your own brain and what kind of person you are.

I am a person in need of recovery.

I find that recovery in Alanon.

Concept One: Responsibility and Authority -- Two Sides of the Same Coin

CONCEPT ONE: The ultimate responsibility and authority  for Al‑Anon world services  belongs to the Al‑Anon groups.

Concept One came about because Dr. Bob, one of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, became terminally ill. This was someone who the groups of AA looked to and entrusted with many policy decisions. Though the years had been fruitful to AA and many thought it would continue throughout the future unharmed, Bill W-- the other main co-founder of the fellowship-- needed to ensure that the fellowship was protected in case anything happened to those like him and Dr. Bob who had first created it. He wanted to make sure that future generations could benefit from the strength and hope of the program they had established.

Bill W had fought in World War I. He had seen for himself that many dictatorships crumble under the ultimate power of one authority figure while other governments were made too weak with complete democracy to do anything to ensure their futures. He needed something more to sustain the spiritual program of AA. He did this by passing the responsibility and authority to the groups themselves. They would then be trusted to conduct their own group conscious meetings through their own higher power and Tradition 2 which states “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.” The trusted servants in turn would serve the groups in higher offices but they would be accountable and responsible to the authority of the Alanon groups themselves. He said this was possible because it was a spiritual program and because the love of a higher power was behind the program.

Alanon kept this model. We received the Twelve Concepts from Alcoholics Anonymous when they were first created in that fellowship in 1962. We adopted them just as we did the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and they helped to strengthen our own fellowship. Many people who come to these programs are confused about how to work well with others and do service that is helpful and orderly. These concepts give us practical rules to live by concerning the fellowship as a whole but also show how we can work well with others. They describe how best to do service, both in the program and in our own lives. Through Concept One we created group conscience meeting, the upside-down triangle of authority of Alanon with the groups maintaining responsibility and authority in the program and a basis for which to allow our trusted servants to serve but not govern us. The program now had a way to to carry out it's service.

The main message of Concept One is Unity. It also shows how we have to serve the group in order for the Alanon groups to serve us; we have to give it away to keep it. Bill did this in AA when he gave his baby-- his program that he created out of the blood, sweat and tears of his own life-- and gave it over to the groups and their authority. He saw that there was so much more the groups could do that a few authority figures could not. One person can not do as much as the whole group.

We must remember that we recovered through the program. It's not enough to recovery and have unity with those in the program, we must also uphold the responsibilities that are given to us with the many service opportunities in the program. We may have the authority within our groups for Alanon, but without continuing to fulfill the service positions there will be no Alanon anymore and future generations will not be able to benefit from the program as we have. Authority and responsibility are therefore two sides of the same coin. We can not have one without the other.

This translates to our own lives as well. When we allowed other people to become our Higher Power and bent to the wishes and whims of the alcoholic many of us hid from our responsibilities. We stopped taking care of ourselves as we should have and with that lost much of the authority over our own lives. We ended up with lives that were unmanageable and out of control.

On the other side of things, how often did we think that we were the ultimate authority for our Alcoholics? We took their responsibility away by trying to become their Higher Power. We paid their bills, did their chores, made sure they were happy and they forgot how to manage their own lives because we were there to enable them. We forgot that we were part of a team. We forgot that the unity of our own relationships should be about two people coming together equally. We tried to control that which wasn't ours in the first place and took on way too much for one person to handle. We needed to delegate like in the program when we place some of the duties of Alanon in the service boards. We needed to give some of the authority away to keep our sanity. No one person or one group can do it all.

To truly work this concept in our lives we have to remember that we are part of the group. No man is an island and if we try to do it all we will surely drown. We have to also be able to dedicate our new found sanity and peace to serving the group and it's collective conscious, as it says in Tradition 1: “Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.” We must seek to serve the groups in our lives-- our families, our marriages, our work environments and our family groups at Alanon. We must give it away to keep it and continue to do service where it is needed, in this way we serve the group but we also make sure that the groups continue to serve us. By doing service where it is needed and warranted we will pass it on to the next generation and ensure that we all get healthy.

Alanon's Best Kept Secrets: The Concepts of Service

The Concepts of Service are called one of Alanon's “best kept secrets”. I've never come across a meeting on a concept in my area. We give lip service to them in the beginning of most of the meetings in this county. We'll read the same twelve statements, usually one per each meeting and call it a wrap. I used to sit there during the reading of the Concepts and wonder what all these things meant and we we were reading them if we weren't going to ever use them. It seemed like a lot of wasted time when we could just get right to the sharing.

We barely do meetings on Traditions either. I remember a few years ago in my home group, we had a group conscious meeting about changing the format of the meeting so that we would do Step study on the first Thursday of the week like we were already doing and then some people wanted to add in Tradition study on the third Thursday of the week. So many people were against doing this because they didn't see any point in studying the Traditions.

However, as I did my own reading and studying of the traditions a whole new world opened up for me. It's said that the Steps are for our own recovery and the Traditions show us how to have group unity. Once I started studying them I found helpful ideas on promotion versus attraction, supporting yourself financially and emotional, remaining anonymous and all these other life lessons that I was never taught growing up in a dysfunctional home that was plagued by alcoholism. It was as if someone had given me the handbook for life, opening my eyes wide while they said, “here's all those things you always wanted to know but never knew where to ask.”

My first inkling that Traditions were a guide to practical relationships and unity came from this article: http://www.upperroomcomm.com/insights/traditions.shtml and also later from this PDF file: http://storiesofrecovery.org/downloader/index.php?afg/TraditionsAsAGuideToHealthyRelations.pdf . It was such a wonderful a-ha moment! When my home group passed the motion that we would start studying the Traditions I volunteered to speak on the first one-- mostly just because I wanted to open other people's eyes to what I'd found through those two readings. I like to think they were impressed because a lot of them were like me and didn't really know that the Traditions were of any use outside of the Alanon groups. Why isn't this being taught more?

Now that I've come back to Alanon I want to dive back into the murky depths and pull up as much treasure as I can find in these waters. I want to know the program deeply. I've had many slips in these past few years and I feel like maybe if I grab onto something new or something I haven't learned about yet it'll stick this time and I'll keep coming back to the rooms. This probably has to do with my over-eagerness and maybe a misplaced sense of guilt for the slips that have occurred. Still, I want to teach myself the Concepts of Service. They are said to be a good guide to working well with others-- something that as a child from a dysfunctional home I know very little about.

Unfortunately, unlike the Traditions which have so much written about them information about the Concepts seems very bare. When I CAN find it I find it so hard to wrap my head around the business like legal jargon and translate it into English. It's hard to figure out what is trying to be said though I still feel like there's some awesome information in there if I can just figure it out. There's stuff about participating to create harmony, effective leadership and how responsibility and authority are two sides of the same coin if I can just reach down far enough to pull these secrets out from where they're hidden so tightly away. Here's hoping I hit the jackpot! I'll let you know what I find.

What an Alanonic learned at an open AA meeting...

I went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the other day. I do this sometimes so I can gain perspective on the disease from the other side of the fence. My own view point can become very narrow at times and I need fresh ideas so my brain can have some more puzzle pieces to play with to figure out this great big thing we call life. Tunnel vision is the great curse of being an alanonic.

At this meeting, there was a newcomer who didn't know if they were in the right meeting. They told some of their story and then threw out their question to the others in the program: “So, do you think I'm an alcoholic?” They seemed desperate for some kind of validation, as if they were pleading with the elders of some tribe to tell them what they needed to do with their life, give them guidance on this problem and start them on the quest to finding the missing part of themselves.

None of the people in the meeting would tell them the answer. It couldn't come from them. They weren't a tribe of elders. They followed Tradition Two very well where it was written, “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”

In the end one of them finally explained that no one in Alcoholics Anonymous could call another person an alcoholic. They had no authority like that. They only came to share their OWN experience, strength and hope not to cast judgments on those who came through the doors to the meetings. They went on to say that it was something that person would have to do some soul-searching to figure out because when the answers came from inside themselves with the help of a Higher Power, that answer would mean more. They also explained that to judge someone like that would take away the dignity of them finding their own answers away from them.

Now most times I understand that alcoholism is a disease, but my old thinking of them being screwed up individuals who would screw up more times than not is still ingrained in the back of my head. There I was though-- listening to the people in the meeting and they were making more sense than I was during this conversation. As an alanoic, I always feel like I have to tell those in my life when they are sick or bad or crazy. I have an overwhelming need to tell them to stop and do it right-- do it my way. I am quite often judge, jury and executioner for those who I deem more broken than me. Thinking I know better than everyone else is my own special brand of sickness.

I'm no better or worse than the rest. I have no right to believe or act or preach otherwise.

They have their own Higher Power and I am not it.

I have to let people make up their own minds, do their own soul-searching and make their own decisions. I have to detach. I have to live and let live. I have to keep an open mind and remember that I can learn from everyone and everything out there.

Only in this way will I start to recover from my own sickness.