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.
I believe that anonymity is crucial and a vital foundation to the Al-Anon meetings. The confidentiality is an integral part of the ability for its members to share and trust. I read a post where a co-worker violated this. I once had a co-worker tell me that she met someone we both know at her Al-Anon meeting. I asked her, "isn't that supposed to be confidential" and she told me "yes, but I know you won't tell anyone." I have been going back to meetings after being absent for awhile and this type of violation makes me want to run the other way. I just saw someone today that was in my meeting and I always become concerned when I see someone on the outside. The privacy issue is so important to me in my ability to confide and share my story which ultimately is so healing to all of us.
Aloha Wife....Anonymity is the spiritual foundations of all our traditions ever reminds us to place princples above personalities. Some people screw up from time to time. I try not to be like that tho in the past I'm sure I've done it a time or two. Grace and Forgiveness allows me to smile thru it and stay in my seat. As the members in your meetings how they handle anonymity and get suggestions as to how you can handle meeting another member in public with non-members there. Once in a great while I may have to answer the question how do you know them? or where did you meet them? with "We've been very good friends for a while and I can't remember when it started." Nonners in our area always meet with hugs...Soooo cool and comforting.
In our groups we read the 3 cards at every meeting , anonymity reminder , alanon declaration , and keep the focus on our program please . this seems to help all of us remember how important anonymity is ,for all of us . It dosent seem to be enough to just put the cards out , reading them makes a difference .
I agree that hearing the reading of it is extremely important- it enters the brain in a way that is different from just reading it to yourself.
We are re-wiring ourselves!
This is very important in order to completely re-wire us- to read it, hear it, feel it, hear it, read it, listen to it, think it, read it, over and over again. Look at how well it works in advertising- we want a purple dingleberry hopnotch more than anything else in the world because all we see and hear is everyone talking about how great and important and cool the purple dinglberry hopnotch is- same thing works here in al-anon.
Anominity is crucial to our program. I personally don't care who knows I am in the program but I believe it is crucial to protect my A's anominity as that is his story to share not mine. It's not my job to "out" him. So i would feel betrayed also by someone who broke that anominity and if i knew who it was I would confront that person. As for someone trying to share the anonminity of someone else to me I would have stopped that convo immeditaly and walked away.
