Take the cotton out of your ears…
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008- (by Blackout Girl)
- 4 responses
- Category: Sobriety Salon Young and Sober
…and stick it in your mouth. I remember hearing this old timers slogan often when I first came into the rooms of recovery over 10 years ago. I have to admit I found it quite offensive at the time but that was of course because I thought I knew everything. I would share incessantly at meetings about everything in my life whether it pertained to recovery or not, sometimes taking up 10 or more minutes of a 60 minute meeting. Talk about self-serving. But I was green and didn’t know the ropes until an old timer approached me after a meeting one night and schooled me a little bit on meeting etiquette.
I sat at a meeting last night with several women very new to the program and listened while several of them spoke on and on and on about there lives, their recent relapse or drunks, etc. they droned on and on and only a fraction was truly recovery related. I watched as the women in the meeting were all very tolerant and didn’t say a word. I was ever reminded of that old timer and the benefits I got from him basically telling me to SHUT UP AND LISTEN!
There seems to have been a softening over the years, a political correctness if you will, to meetings as of late. In meetings I attended when I first came around people cut you off if you shared too long or if you began rambling—which we are all guilty of at some point or another. We have to remember our primary purpose which is to help the addict and alcoholic who still suffers—not to share the personal details of our lives. That is what the 15 minutes before and after the meeting are for.
While everyone who walks into the rooms has something valuable for me to hear and learn—there are certainly times when we must put our egos aside and listen for the message.
Sometimes you have to kick it old school and I miss the old timers that use to flatly put people in their places at meetings. I guess I need to assert myself and become the old timer that I apparently am!
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In my home group they put up a sign on each table that says “Please limit your sharing to 3 minutes or less.” How quit we forget, eh?
It is the chairperson’t responsibility to chair the meeting. If people are rambling or going over time the chair should be stopping them. And as for the cotton/ears thing, I still think it’s the most hurtful, harmful thing a newcomer can be told. I always tell people I work with to not share about what they don’t know about, so share at the beginning of the meeting. Let us know what’s REALLY going on. Then we can actually offer you the solution. The best meetings are very often borne of newcomers in pain.
I agree with all three of you; how is that for politically correct?
I think the influx of people who have been in treatment and therapy is much of the reason for the “gut spilling” form of sharing at meetings. Having both been a part of those How Did Your Day Go groups and facilitated many more, I can see the similarities. Furthermore, sponsors seem to be encouraging people to share simply for the purpose of getting used to it, and not monitoring their sponsees’ behavior and giving feedback about the meaning of “experience, strength and hope.”
This is clearly to no one’s benefit, and the advice to put the cotton in, shut up and listen is certainly pertinent. But here is where I agree with Chris: it is far too blunt. Any person who wants to direct others how to behave in a meeting had best (a) have their confidence, and (b) be extremely diplomatic. There is never an excuse for behavior that could turn someone off to the meetings, whether it be blunt advice, rough old-timer talk, Bible-beating or insults about poly-addiction. That is not what the rooms are about.
As one of those old timers, I consider it my responsibility not only to deal with newcomers gently, but to help them understand the people who do not have the grace to do so. Many times I have followed people who got up and left meetings, bought them a cuppa and talked to them, and seen them at the meeting the next day or week. I need to remember that the people in the rooms are not there because they are healthy. They bring all the rough edges, prejudices, control issues and the rest of their character defects with them, and not all shed them at the same rate. It is up to those of us with a bit more polish to do our part both to knock off the rough edges — gently — and to clean up their messes sometimes.
And, if we do not care for the ways the newcomers are evolving, perhaps it is time to re-engage and begin to shape those directions as well.
On the other hand, there is the Serenity Prayer…
Yay, DZ. Couldn’t have said it better myself. I know two oldtimers who were hardcore who killed themselves rather than admit they had slipped. Is this what we want to encourage? All that therapy, etc. has brought us to a new level of understanding and compassion for the newcomer, for where we once were, and even for ourselves when we get off-topic at times. We attract more flies with honey than vinegar, and newcomers can be fly-like. I believe we can direct people to focus on experience, strength and hope without making them feel crappy.