The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
1. I have lost 40 lbs since my ex bf and I broke up three months ago! WOOO HOOO!!
2. (Thanks for this shelly) my ex bf has totally shut me out of any kind of communication for many weeks now and it really pisses me off and I just realized today how the A feels when we shut them off. I'm angry with him for treating me this way... I want to cause him to "feel something"... I feel frustrated by it. I don't know if some communication would really make anything any better though. Today I am like the A and I see it. I wish I could feel differently inside. I know how I feel in reality and what I want to say to him and leave him with are two very different things. How I felt about him is what I want to say How I feel about what he's done is what I keep inside. They are very opposite feelings. I don't really know how to reconcile that inside myself.
CG I think you have reconciled it and maybe fail to see it...The alcoholic also has feelings and are just as human as us so we give what it is that we want given to us...love, compassion and understanding. The reconciliation. We change (amend) how we behave toward the alcoholic and others.
It kind of sounds to me like you may be in need of some time with a sponsor and a mini 4th step. I would be asking myself what feelings are associated with this person? Why do I feel that way? Where do these feelings really stem from? I think that looking deeper and further back, maybe into childhood might be revealing.
I had to do that when I was struggling with strong feelings of abandonment, associated with my AH and our relationship. I HAD to let go. I couldn't do this to myself anymore. I was in the way of my recovery. I was in the way of his recovery, and I was passing my unreasonable, unrealistic, and unhealthy patterns of behavior to my oldest child. I had to change.
As I worked through it all, I realised that I had an inaccurate remembrence of my past. I had made a childs assumption that I had grown up in a normal childhood with a minimum of trauma. In reality, I had felt abandoned many times throughout my childhood, through divorce, mom leaving me with dad for what should have been a few weeks that became a year and a half, and several other seemingly minor occurances. None of that seemed like much until I started looking at those feelings more closely. Then I realized that to the child I was at that time, these were major things. Hence, my serious inability to detach from my AH.
Anyway, that is some of my experience. It was not as simple as that and took weeks or months to work through, but I hope it makes a bit of sense and is helpful to you in some way.
In recovery,
__________________
~Jen~
"When you come to the edge of all you know you must believe in one of two things... there will be earth on which to stand or you will be given wings." ~Unknown
For me abandonment is one of the hardest things to deal with. For me the ex A excavated years of abandonment by my family of origin that went back to infancy. I felt like I was walking through mires of broken glass, heartache and gut wrenching pain. I saw it all as his doing rather than a mirror of my past.
I know I always told the ex A I am last on the list. I was as far as he was concerned and confronting him changed nothing. He was well aware of my feelings and needs. He didn't choose to meet them. Nothing but nothing I did changed that. Taking action for myself changed everything.
I can't control how other's behave. I can control my own reaction to them. I can control the begging and pleading for a few small crumbs. I can stop doing that to myself. I know I settled for nothing most of my life. Now I am beyond settling but the journey was a very very hard one.
