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.
B.)) I receive so many emails and calls from spouses of alcoholics, who all tell me, in varying ways,
''My husband is a drinking alcoholic. We have twin 11-year-olds and he wants a divorce. I feel devastated and don't want this. I was seeing a therapist, who told me to just learn how to ''detach with love''. Don't hate him''.
I told her that this is hurting me too much. She went on to tell me that ''he does not want to hurt me. It is just all about the separation process.''
The patient left the therapist, vowing not to return.
What really happened here?
The therapist said rightly, 'that he is not trying to hurt her'. (Now, this is assuming that he is not a person who also has personality//character disorders nor bipolar or other psychiatric problems that may cause him to want to hurt her).
But the therapist implied (even if she did not mean to do so), when she said, 'he is not trying to hurt her' ----- that that alone should mean ''well ok! If he does not mean to hurt me, then I should not be hurt or enraged.''
The therapist's statement invalidates (albeit probably not at all meaning to) the patient's years and years of anger at abuse-------- this divorce threat just adds insult to injury. ("all these years I stuck by you, hoping you'd get sober, and now you're abandoning me'').
OF COURSE the woman is enraged.
So---- how do I say to my clients, 'he does not mean it''------- well, I begin not with that----- but with talking about the holes in his brain.
The famed psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Amen, shows how (through brain scans) alcoholic's have huge craters//holes all over their brains....... whereas, the brain damage from other drugs show 'only' holes over parts of the brain.
It is so much under-estimated how much brain damage affects the judgment of the alcoholic.
The left frontal lobe is euphemistically called ''the executive decision maker'. It 'takes in data' and then 'tells' the person how to act in accordance to how the brain processes the data.
With a drinking alcoholic, that left frontal lobe is toxic for years.
And the judgment gets worse and worse.
In that sense------------- the alcoholic ''does not mean it'' when he decides to divorce.
It is his brain damage that is talking.
He is unable, any longer, to deal with life... with life on life's terms... with less and less as his disease progresses... in more and more parts of his life.
In that sense, he does 'not mean to hurt her'.
It's his alcoholic brain that is doing this.
And when this is explained, in this way, the wife not only is beginning to get some peace around this issue........ but she also is beginning to see that this divorce-threat is not about him not loving her. It is about the brain damage being SO powerful that it overwhelms love.
***** important---------- BUT I always add, ''but just because you now understand that it is his damaged brain talking, does NOT mean that you must say, 'ok, I'm alright about him now''. OF COURSE you are hurt and so upset------- but trying to remember, internalize, that it's the holes in the brain talking WILL make it easier on you, emotionally, to a degree.''
Also.... when the therapist says, ''it is only part of the separation process''......... she does not know or understand how much, how thoroughly, how profoundly---------- the alcoholism affects all of the alcoholic's life and actions.
** for telephone consultations with Toby Drews, she can be reached at 410-243-8352
Please forward this newsletter on to others who may benefit from it.
Thanks Tracy C for bringing that here. It reminded me of some perception work I did with my elder sponsor who after listening to my whining and complaining about my wife and how she was treating me would ask me to clarify..."Are you talking about your wife...or your alcoholic". Of course there was a huge difference. I had to learn which one was with me and at what times in order to respond properly. ((((hugs))))
