A friend called me last night. She’s in the midst of some very messy office politics at work. She thinks her coworkers are being difficult. They think she’s being unreasonable. Her boss thinks they’re all wrong and they all think the boss is wrong. “Do you think I’m being unreasonable? Am I crazy or are they?” she asked. And I paused, because I’ve seen a whole lot of crazy at this point in my life and I’ve gotten a pretty secure grip on two things: the first is what I think is and isn’t crazy, and the second (and more important)…

What is your definition of “sanity”?

Last night’s step study ended before we got to this question in our Celebrate Recovery workbooks. I didn’t get to share my answer. So here ya go…

Sanity is stopping this relapse before the demon in my head possessed me again. Thank God I’m not in my addiction today.

Sanity is having friends like you, that I’ve never met, who encourage me and pour out heartfelt empathy and solid advice when I’m at my worst. I appreciated every one of your comments last week.

Sanity is leaving the most uncomfortable counseling appointment I’ve ever had, and knowing what…

Somewhere, gathering dust on a dark, forgotten shelf in my house is a video that helped greatly in my recovery. It’s not one that you can buy on Amazon.com and it’s not one that will help any of you. It’s a video of me. Pre-recovery. Being angry and upset. Being really pissy. Being just a total screaming hellion. Or at least that’s what I thought. Until I watched the video.

The video is of me, and the rest of my extended family, getting ready for a big family event. We’re trying to get dressed and figure out where we’re going and get…

The Junky’s Wife recently posted about an article that’s been doing its wildfire dance through the Internet. It passed through my inbox several times as girlfriend after girlfriend blasted it out to everyone in their address books until I got the creepy feeling that this was the latest set of helpful household hints, the marital equivalent of that e-mail I keep getting about how to use Bounce fabric softener sheets to do everything from repel mosquitoes to deodorize sneakers. Here’s the answer, ladies! When your husband tells you he doesn’t love you anymore: tell him you don’t buy it, detach from his…

Ok, so I’m a little behind on my Lost watching. Somewhere in the middle of the season my husband and I just couldn’t find time to watch TV together, so we are only now getting back to those episodes we so faithfully recorded. Last night we were watching the episode “Whatever Happened, Happened” in which (warning to those more behind than I am: stop here if you don’t want to know) a young Ben Linus is in danger of dying from a gunshot wound and all eyes turn to surgeon Jack Shephard to save him. And Jack… grows some boundaries.

That’s right,…

I think I loved her.

There, I said it.

I want to put some kind of warning at the top of posts about Elena (the emotional affair) so that Linsey (the wife) won’t have to read them.  But why bother?  Linsey knows everything anyway.  I call her Sherlock Holmes because she’s so freakin’ hyper-vigilant.  Over the years she’s become a better and better detective, while I’ve become a better and better liar.  The codependent vs. addict arms race.

Back to Elena.  It’s hard enough for me to express the officially sanctioned emotions, like gratitude or joy or excitement.  So I guess I should…

My COSA meetings are structured around a speaker who reads from recovery literature and then briefly shares. This week’s reading from Pia Mellody’s Facing Codependence was a passage on negative control versus positive control. She defines negative (unhealthy, codependent) control as trying to control how someone else should look, feel or act or letting someone else control how we look, feel or act, while positive (healthy, self) control is determining for ourselves how we should look, feel and act. She gives an example in which a man named Jack helps his neighbor with some yard work. The neighbor (exerting negative control)…

I am getting better at saying no, when I mean no, but it’s still an area where I have a lot of work to do. Saying “yes” to requests is like a reflex to me. Tap my knee and my foot bounces up, ask me for help and I say, “Yes.” Oops. Wait. Let me think about that. The “yes” is so deeply ingrained that I don’t always see it.

I learned early on that “no” was not an acceptable answer, at least not if people pleasing me wanted to continue to please people. The folks in my life would give…

When I first discovered my husband’s addiction, I knew I was going to need healing from the pain and devastation I was facing, so I looked for support groups for partners. But I couldn’t seem to find plain old support; all I could find was “recovery.” You know, from my “disease” of codependency. What?! I was not the screwed up one here. All I did was unwittingly marry an addict; he was the one with all the problems. My only problem was that he had problems: fix him and my issues would magically go away, right?

Well, since I couldn’t find anything else,…

The topic for my home group meeting last night was dealing with unacceptable behavior. This is a topic that I struggle with often. My meter for unacceptable behavior can have a wide range. I’m dealing with an alcoholic in recovery so drunken acting out isn’t an issue. But angry outbursts and self-centeredness still occur. I can usually shrug off unacceptable behavior in the people that I love, but there are times when I simply buy into what’s going on and build a resentment. And eventually that resentment leads to anger.

I have learned to inventory my feelings. And I know that…

A few months ago, a friend of mine, who is a single mom, asked me if I’d be willing to help her out while she worked late, because she’d missed a few days taking care of her son when he was sick and now needed to put in extra hours to maintain her health insurance eligibility. Now, helping out a friend in that situation is the kind of thing one is usually willing to do without a second thought. But what if she asked me to help so that she could free up some time go out and steal car…

I was reminded yesterday of how difficult sometimes it is to have relationships. Things can go along just great for a while and then WHAM, there is an impasse that happens. I have had difficulties with relationships over the years because of looking to someone else to give me what I never received as a kid.

I think that things have improved a lot through Al-Anon. I have lessened expectations and have felt happy doing those things that I like to do. Yet, there are times that I know that I look for reactions from another in order to validate feelings…

So my husband is back home, somewhat against my will. He’s home against the part of my will that is sane, healthy, and serves my best interest. The other part of my will is thrilled. The other part of my will wanted him to come home for sure, with no reservations, no hesitations.

So far, it’s been ok. The sane part of me set some boundaries and made sure that we have a deadline for checking in to see if those boundaries are being met. The crazy part of me couldn’t wait to get my clothes off, get his clothes off,…

When I look back over the last year of my life, I see that my husband has improved in quite a few areas. A lot of the big stuff is much improved. I was talking with some program friends this morning, and I realized that it’s been over a year since the cops have been to our house. I haven’t found a syringe since February, and nothing disappears to the pawn shop anymore. I no longer lock up my wallet at night. I keep it next to me, and I can feel his presence in the room if he gets…

“The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt…

I hear a lot about alcoholic marriages in meetings. Heck, I’ve lived in one for a long time. The amount of pain that comes out in sharings involving alcoholic relationships can sometimes take me right back to all those times when I had so much pain.

Take the meeting yesterday. One of the sharings was from someone in an alcoholic marriage. A couple of young children are the innocent ones. One of the adults is a high roller in business, winer and diner of clients, mostly drunk every day. The other adult accompanies the spouse to the wining and dining. A…

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 was telling a friend about how my husband pushes all my buttons, and she asked me, “What are you doing with buttons?”

Funny, huh?

Then, I was reading today’s post on Daily Om, and it made a lot of sense:

Buttons are just soft spots that have been touched one too many times, and they symbolize some pain that needs to be acknowledged and healed. This may be a wound from childhood, or some recent trauma, that we haven’t adequately tended. Whatever the case, when our buttons get pushed, the person who most needs our attention and caring is us, and blaming…