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 have been sick with the flu for a week. I need to get up and around to doing things I need to do. I feel drained and useless. I really want to crawl in bed and go back to sleep. I resent the fact that my husband and my dad get to do whatever they want at my expense. It feels like they have to beat me down in order to do what they need to do. It feels like I am fighting for control from them. I resent the fact that my husband's house is spotless and my house looks like a train wreck. I feel trapped here living with my dad. He watches everything I do. He doesn't really have a life ever since my mom died. I feel like a child when he always asks where I am going or calls when I'm not home at the time he thinks I will be coming home. My husband could care less what I do. I griped at him yesterday because he didn't help me with the kids while I had the flu, and I had a huge test to study for. My expectations will kill me if I do not surrender them. I expected him to help me when I know he can't, thus setting myself up for a resentment.
I have another problem that I need to write about. Every relationship I have ever been in I become obsessed about whether or not the man is cheating on me. It is creeping up again this weekend and I'm tired of it. My mind just reaches and grabs for things that don't make sense to my life anymore and I am tired of entertaining these thoughts. Could someone suggest to me how to stop this? Is it in an inventory? Am i not properly surrendering this problem? I know surely there is no quick fix, just would also like some esh and prayers.
I have spoken with my sponsor, and she noted out the expectations I was entertaining about my husband. Just as soon as I surrendered that, I started thinking that my husband is cheating on me while he goes to his poker game last night. I was ok this morning, and when I started taking care of myself, this disease reared its ugly head and my heart started pounding, I started shaking, and I started thinking that he has cheated on me. Now I am writing this, however, this has been paralyzing to me. Such a fearful scary feeling. It is irrational. I know he's not cheating on me, if he is then it is his problem for breaking his vows to me. I know all this in my head, I just don't want to ever feel this paralyzing fear ever again. It tries to get me down when I am moving on with my life, and I allow it because I haven't really discussed this with anyone, and I have been trying to deal with it on my own because I am embarassed to feel this way. Like I said, I have been like this in every relationship. It is my own insecurity. No matter what my husband says or does, I will believe in him for a while, and then, I will start to think he's cheating on me and it just destroys what little trust I have begun to have for him. Anyway, I have been doing okay and practicing the program in my daily life. It just got so difficult when I got the flu and had to study for that test and all the stress involved. My kids still had to be fed and taken care of, and there was no one to do it but me. I was resentful at my dad and husband and most people in general because I felt alone, and I took it out on my husband yesterday, and I am ignoring my dad today. How do I get back on track? I really don't want to be this way. I feel like I'm stuck in quicksand and need someone to pull me out. I'm so tired of living around this disease. I don't feel like I can change. I keep reverting back to my old ways. It gets on my nerves when my dad and husband think they have done so much, and I see they could do so much more if they would stop using. My husband thinks it is such a big deal to accomplish the littlest thing. I know that sounds hateful. My dad thinks that just because he has worked his whole life, that he has a right to drink every day. They act like me and my children are nuisances. It really pisses me off. I'm glad I posted this, it helps me to vent my anger. I am going to release this and move on to detachment today. I would appreciate some esh on getting rid of recurring damaging thoughts. I can handle the minor ones, but when I peel away that layer, the big covered up ones come up and I sometimes don't have faith to apply this program to the deep ones. It is almost like I'm afraid to let them go!! I've had them for so long, they are like a trusted friend. But they are destroying me. They must be let go and I must be healed.
Hope everyone has a great day!! We are going to a wedding today, my girls are so excited!! I get to see many of my dear loved ones today (on my mom's side of the family). It always helps me to see her (our) family since she passed away.
I do understand having expectaions and then the long fall of disappointment when my expections aren't met. I don't have the issue of an A spouse so I can't give much esh on that. Our A is our son. And I know that I would be "hopeful" when it seemed he was trying to get on track but soon that hope would turn into an "expectaion" and the minute i swear that I turned my hope into an expectaion my son would revert back to using and I was left feeling angry and resentful. I didn't get the concept of "detachment with love" for the longest time. Everyone seemed to understand it and be able to practice it but me. So I obsessed over every little move my son made or didn't make for that matter. Obessed on him when he was home and even worse when he wasn't. It literally consumed my every waking moments and I wasn't sleeping much so it was a lot. And when i felt hurt and resentful I would shamfully take it out on my son. Yell, scream, cry, beg whatever i thought i could do to just make him understand what he was doing to himself and what he was doing to us. We took his addiction very personally...he was doing something bad to us..why? whatever did we do to deserve this? ugh I could go on and on about my obsessive thoughts. One night my son came home high and I was tired, lost, felt helpless and hopeless and I jumped right up in his face and started yelling at him. He just stood there and took it...I wanted him to react, to have some sort of breakthrough...something. And I looked into his eyes and what I saw in his eyes will haunt me forever..but it was truly the real beginning of my recovery. What I saw in his eyes was the most incredible pain I have ever encountered. Here was my child, my beloved son in such pain that he couldn't handle it or didn't have the coping skills to deal with it and his answer was to just stay high to drown out that pain. And what was I doing? I was adding to his feelings of no self worth, no self esteem by yelling at him about how he was ruining all our lives. And that day I realized he wasn't doing anything "to" us at all. His addiction had nothing to do with us, it was about him and his pain...we were the collateral damage and we all know that addiction leaves nothing but collateral damage in it's wake. After that I understood the concept of detachment. I could love my beautiful son and I do unconditionally but I can hate the disease. I could stop feeding into the disease by enabling and still support my son in his efforts to get sober. And the ONLY thing I could expect from then on was for my son to act just as he was...an addict. I couldn't expect any other behavior from him so I had to change my own attitudes and behaviors. I now knew that if we were speaking I was speaking to his disease not to a rational person, I could also expect pretty much anything that came out of his mouth to be a lie because this is how the disease protects itself the A's actually believe much of thier lies, they have to. Again to protect the disease. I learned none of this was personal ( this was huge for me ) I know my real son wouldn't hurt a fly but now here was this stranger in my home reeking havoc. That was not the son we raised and knew. He was/is hurting himself...reasons why unknown. I have no idea what could have happened to him that put him in so much pain. I will probably never know. Once I got the detachment concept down and stopped taking it personally I was finally able to start setting boundaries that I could follow through with. Things just started falling into place for my own recovery. However I do slip out of my recovery from time to time and go back into my obsessive thinking. Your post seemed to state that right now you are stuck in being obsessed that your husband may be cheating. When I get obssesive I also go into "projection" mode. I can't relate to the cheating but I will obsess on projecting worse case senerios for my son. At first when that would happen I would feel the need to share, share and share somemore to anyone who would listen but I was so consumed I didn't take the time to "listen' to the responses to my sharing. What I have found that works for me when I start obsessing is I go somewhere quite (I know this may be difficult with children) and I make up a mantra/prayer for whatever I am feeling at the time. And I pray that mantra for HP to remove whatever negative feelings i have and to replace those feelings with love and compassion or whatever it is I want to be feeling. At first this took me a really long time I would literally pray for hours until the negative feelings were gone and had been replaced by the positive feelings. Now I can catch myself much quicker when i slip and I stop immediatly and start my prayers and my feelings get replaced much quicker. So it a bit of work but so worth it. For me prayer is one of the most powerful things I can do to help my program along. Sorry to ramble on...probably bored you to death and gave you more information than you wanted to know but you caught me on a "rambling" day I wish you all the best in your recovery Blessings
Aloha Kath...there are many alternatives which are available to me when I get into the "head owns me" ferris wheel. One of the ones that worked for me is I look at the negative sick thinking as if it is another personality of mine like and evil unwelcomed twin and I tell it to shut up and leave (I like that forceful agressive acting out...lol) and for a while it leaves and then I practice it again and again until I can get it to stay away by working on lessing my fear of things, life, imaginatary stuff. Lots of things are none of my business but my evil twin doesn't believe it like I do so....get out!! works most of the time.
Getting help from others like this cures the stuck stuff. ((((hugs))))
