One of the parts of Step Four in Al-Anon is to assess self worth. I’ve had moments when I felt confident and carefree and then I’ve had moments in which I felt totally worthless. In the fourth step workbook, there is a statement that really hits home:

“We hid our feeling of self-worth deep within, and our perspective became distorted. Many of us even tried to conceal that we felt worthless on the inside to the point that we couldn’t show any real warmth and concern for anyone, including ourselves”.

I know that there are families where the self-esteem of the child…

To LET GO does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.
To LET GO is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization I can’t control another.
To LET GO is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To LET GO is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To LET GO is not to try to change or blame another, it’s to make the most of myself.
To LET GO is not to care for, but to care about.
To LET GO is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To LET GO is not to judge, but to…

When I first came to Al-Anon, I was in deep despair. I didn’t want to fix anyone but myself because I was past the point of trying to fix the alcoholic. I didn’t believe that the relationship could be saved. In fact, I didn’t believe in much when I came in. I definitely was at an emotional bottom and in need of guidance.

At first, I didn’t feel much like I belonged. Everyone was further along than I. It was as if there was a different language. But it just felt like I had found a place where I could finally…

In my life, I’ve been quite an actor. I’ve been like the chameleon who changes color to suit the background situation. I don’t remember when putting on masks became a way of life, but most probably I developed my acting ability when I was very young. I would smile and pretend that everything was okay. Even if I felt like crawling in a hole someplace, I would always say that I was fine.

I would have different acting roles depending on the group that I was with. If I was with the party crowd, then I would be happy go lucky.…

The topic of detachment has come up time and time again in meetings. It’s one of those topics that is hard for newcomers to understand and sometimes it’s hard for anyone, regardless of years in the program to put into action. I know that it took me a while before the light turned on and I grasped the concept.

In Al-Anon we say that we love the person but hate the disease. To detach means that we don’t follow someone to the bottom, or allow a person to make us feel rotten because of their actions. It means that we can…

We’ve all read the “promises” in the Big Book of AA. I’ve always thought that those promises are beautiful. But not too long ago, I heard an Al-Anon speaker talk about the Al-Anon “promises”. Here they are: “If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline of The Twelve Steps and work the program, our lives will be transformed. Members work the program by being willing to attend meetings on a regular basis, reading Al-Anon/Alateen literature, getting a sponsor, working toward applying the 12 Steps of recovery to their lives and by becoming involved in Al-Anon Service work as they…

The Big Book of AA doesn’t describe alcoholism as a disease but rather an allergy in which there is a physical craving and a mental obsession. More recent medical information since the publishing of the BB indicates that there are definite physiological differences in the brains of those who crave alcohol and those who are normal drinkers. Regardless of the medical determination, I see alcoholism as a disease of dis-ease.

I know that accepting the disease description helps me to better understand the individual. I can accept and have compassion for a person who has this “cunning, baffling, and powerful” disease.

I…

The topic at my homegroup meeting last night was “how to tell your story”. Telling your story is one of those opportunities to serve that is part of the Al-Anon legacy: “Recovery through the steps; Unity through the traditions; and Service through the Concepts.” It is also an honor to tell your story.

We talked about some of the components in telling about your self. It’s important to talk about what your life was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. This is basically what the “old” you was like, how you wanted to change, what changed you and what…

Listening is one of the things that now comes easy to me. I’d rather listen to someone else talk than to be the center of attention myself. One of the things that I disliked about scientific meetings was to have to do “shop” talk when I really just wanted to be quiet and have some solitude.

Last week, I got a call from the guy that I had taken to an AA meeting the week before. He is a coke addict without an addiction to alcohol. He picked up a one day chip at last week’s meeting. Since I was going to an Al-Anon meeting, I took him along to the AA meeting that is in the same complex. Yesterday, he called again and wanted to go to the closed AA meeting on the other side of town. I was working out downtown so I picked him up and took him to the meeting. Because it…

Accepting “life on life’s terms” is something that hasn’t been easy for me. Life is filled with unexpected things that come up. Some of these are good things but others can be ones that cause a great deal of frustration, sorrow, or anxiety. I’ve always been able to deal with changes fairly easily and like to think of myself as being flexible. But these are changes over which I have some control. It’s the changes that are beyond my control that seem to bother me the most. Some of those changes relate to a sense of loss that I had…

This weekend I had an opportunity to be around someone who I consider to be a trusted friend. Unfortunately, I also witnessed rage in this person that was blown entirely out of proportion to the situation that occurred.

I have suspected for some time that this fellow has adult ADD. He is a long-time recovering alcoholic. I’ve witnessed several other episodes of rage by him in the past.

I know that the rage triggers something in me that makes me want to get away from the person as soon as it happens. My inventory tells me that 1) I am frightened of…

My sponsor and I talked about guilt last night. It seems that I have an over abundance of that, even when I’ve nothing to feel guilty about. I have gotten better since being in the program but the guilt beast is still lurking in me, ready to challenge peace and happiness at a moment’s notice.

Another big thing for me is self-criticism. So if someone finds out that I am harsh on myself or have that streak of integrity that means I want to do the “right” thing, then it’s likely that I will cough up what ever it is you’re…

“I am hoping all of you will listen and hear me tonight. I am truly at a low point. The alcoholic in my life told me tonight that I am an embarassment. When I expressed my need for time and attention, I was recvd with a cold shoulder and told to leave. I actually drank too much tonight. I haven’t done that in a year at least. The alcoholic in my life does it regularly and i never know if they are alive or not, but tonight i did it and I am an embarassment to them because of it.…

Al-Anon has lots of slogans that help you to focus on working the program. One of my favorites is, “How important is it?”. When I think about the years that I spent worrying, being anxious and busting a gasket over insignificant crap, I know now that none of it was really important. In the grand scheme of life, there aren’t a lot of things that are really worth personal turmoil. The amount of energy that I wasted on criticism both of self and others, resentment, and a lot of other baggage never enhanced my life or anyone else’s. Instead, I…

I’ve read the book Lois Remembers which tells the story of Lois W., co-founder of Al-Anon. In this book she chronicles her life before and after getting married to Bill W. co-founder of AA. I am only part way through the book but can only wonder at the stamina of this woman and all that she sacrificed in her life. One of the more telling passages for me was her statement on pg. 78, “The problem is not about my life, of course, for probably the suffering is doing me good, but about his–the frightful harm this resolving and breaking…

In the opening for Al-Anon meetings, there is a line that says, “In Al-Anon we learned to keep the focus on ourselves”. I’ve found that is a hard thing to do especially having lived with alcoholism. In Courage to Change, there is a daily reading that basically says that many of us in came to Al-Anon with a compulsion to focus on other people. Many of us had a clear idea of how everyone should behave in every situation and felt very self-righteous when they didn’t follow our rules of conduct. When we realized that our own lives were being…

One of the signs of moving forward in the program is to have solutions rather than just the venting, resentment, self-pity and all the other emotions that keep us stuck. Looking over my last post, I realize that I didn’t offer many solutions. Rather, I implied that I don’t know what I’m going to do, although I think that I know what I’d like to do. Using the frog analogy that is so often quotes in Al-Anon, I’m the frog sitting on the log who is thinking about making a decision to jump, turning it over and over in a…

Learning to love and care for yourself is a topic that often comes up in Al-Anon. I’ve heard people share about how they never had any time to love themselves or take care of themselves because they were always taking care of others. Some people have mentioned having no money with which to take care of themselves, because they are in financial trouble due to the alcoholic’s spending. At one meeting, a lady shared that she didn’t know what it meant to love herself, and if someone would just give her a set of instructions, she could follow that and…

I’ve read that it’s possible to have unconditional love of self in which you love yourself regardless of external conditions. This means being true to your feelings regardless of those around you. Based on what I know from Al-Anon, the HP loves each of us unconditionally. And if I look outside myself for love, I will not find unconditional love from another human. This has been a tough one to understand in my past but now I know that my demands for love often far exceed what the other person can give. And then my expectations of the other become…

One of the things that I’ve learned in Al-Anon is that I’m not responsible for someone else’s drinking. The slogan that captures this is “I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it”. A lot of people come into the program trying to find a way to stop their alcoholic from drinking. Look at the writings of Lois Wilson and all that she tried to do for Bill W. She tried everything including getting drunk herself to show him what the terrible effects of alcohol were. There are a lot of people who come to Al-Anon…

Boundaries are one of those subjects that come up a lot in Al-Anon meetings. I never understood the term before and what it meant in a relationship until coming to meetings.

I’ve had to learn hard lessons with keeping boundaries because I’ve been a boundary breaker. I’ve been involved in a marriage in which I’ve had to gradually learn to establish boundaries.

In the beginning, I put a lot of time and emotional energy into the relationship. I was willing to sacrifice a lot and give much more than I got. That’s definitely not a good thing and indicates my lack of…

I’ve been going to Al-Anon for a couple of years. It has helped me to understand the disease of alcoholism that the Big Book of AA describes as “cunning, baffling, and powerful”. Before Al-Anon, I didn’t have any understanding but I had a lot of pain.

I’ve felt a lot of pain over the years that I’ve lived around alcoholics. I understand what emotional bottoms are. I’ve been there and have been told over the years by my alcoholic that I was a lot of things, most of them not any good. It’s fairly standard alcoholic rhetoric. What I’ve come to…