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.
when you feel lonely but often tend to isolate yourself,
when you finally figured out a lot of things in your mind, managed to become honest with yourself, but feel you are doing other people wrong
when you want to share but you can't
when you want to become active, but you are tired
when you know the job you are doing is not appreciated, but continue anyway
when you love, but feel invisible
when the only way you feel safe is to sleep
when you want to laugh but nobody cares
when your body is so tired that even when you wanted live fully today, it's too tired to follow.????
this is how I feel today, and even sleep gives me only nightmares. So full of good intentions, and too tired to follow through...I feel tension building up inside. I feel good about my mental and spiritual recovery lately, i really have come to a new serenity, but something feels very wrong too, and I don't know what it is. It's a fear...an uncomfortable feeling...maybe that I will always live a quite solitary life in order to be safe. I feel so connected but yet my reality is disconnected.
I cannot say "Yes" to all of your questions of "did you ever" however, I can say that I have felt completely empty and uncertain and my sponsor suggested that this is part of the process--- now HP can proceed to fill us with all the positive tools that I might need. I liked that!!!
.
Keep showing up, working your program and remember the all important tool of HALT. Do not get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired
Tortuga - I don't know so much about alanon, but in AA we identify that when left to our own devices to just "ponder" and "think" about things, over time, it turns toxic and neurotic. I don't think you are totally there but I do believe some of what you are describing is just what I refer to as "yucky head space" and I go there when I am too busy thinking and not enough acting. Go to the gym, get out, share, go to church, join a club, enjoy people....make yourself do it and then you won't have time for those evil thoughts. The fearful scary feeling is likely that you have dropped the A in your life and there is a vacuum there and you are searching for how to fill it up. Yes, filling it up with spirituality is great but it also involves filling it up with positive actions and positive/supportive relationships. It is a scary proposition to change your life that much but it's worth it and you are already significantly into the process.
Thank you so much hotrod and pinkchip. What you are saying makes some sense to me. Unfortunately it is common for me in my situation to end up in my day alone,living in a completely different culture makes me isolate sometimes, just to have a break from it all. But then I'm in my head too much, and yes, not enough action is definitely the root of trouble. HALT is also often part of toots of trouble, so I need to take even more care of myself, ...which again gives me more practice in that, since it is also quite new. Thoughts are only thoughts, i tend to forget that and believe they are reality. ok, practice practice practice. Thanks for the support.
Oh I can relate to lots of those feelings and they never did me any good. Like you I am living in a different culture and spend a lot of time on my own. At the end of each day I list the three best things of the day in my journal - it helps to remind myself of what I've achieved or what I've been lucky enough to experience (at the moment the local bird song is figuring highly!). It also makes good reading on days when I really do let myself get down in the dumps. As Hotrod says, it is what we do next that counts. Practice, practice, practice sounds like it is a great mantra! Have a good day
((((Tortuga))))....that sounds like depression. I know about that; I practiced it for most of my life including when I got into Al-Anon and then both programs. I learned several things about depression; like alcohol is a chemical depression and like children of alcoholic families and up-bringings often carry that "induced" emotion throughout their lives until they change their lives. I was told by a former psycologist that "Anger turned inward" was a good explanation of depression and he was right about that for me because when I learned "self love and acceptance" in the program the depression went away cause I was no longer that upset about myself not being "good enough" or "perfect" all of the time for all of the people for all of the right reasons without any positive affirmations. Good news!! the condition is temporary. Have you started your inventory steps yet? Do you have daily readers with the indexes by subject in the back of the book? Have you been practicing the Serenity Prayer and do you have a "Just for Today" pamphlet everywhere around you...purse, kitchen table, bathroom, car...??? Just giving you a little bit about what I have done to get thru the depression ages. Yep I was born with it. Nightmares are usually about the subconscious playing "fright" movies while you sleep. Dreams are metaphoric so what you see in them usually means something else that is going on in your head...not necessarily going on in your life. Many of my fears were made up in my head and were not real. My Al-Anon Family Group members taught me that the acronym for fear I "F"alse "E"vidence "A"ppearing "R"eal. I had to learn how to retrain my thinking and bring it into the realm of sanity. I even got the definition for sanity from my groups..."A continuous and orderly process of thought"...when my head was entertaining all forms of nonsense I usually wasn't sane to speak of .
I know the feeling. Anger turned inward...fear. I'm in support. Keep coming back. ((((hugs))))
Yucky head space, Pinkchip. Yeah, that about sums it up. As you said, Tortuga, it's practice practice practice. One thing I've learned in Al Anon is that nothing is permanent, change is inevitable, and I must learn to take things one day at a time. My expectations of what 'should be' and how my life 'should look' are simply that: expectations. If I look at reality and face 'what is', then I can start working on acceptance and loving myself and my life just how it is. Not an easy task especially when there's fear involved. YOu sound like you're moving forward, girlfriend. You may not feel it, but I think we all hear it here. That self introspection stuff is hard work. If Al Anon and AA(and recovery in general) were easy, then everybody would be knocking down our doors to get better. Be gentle with yourself, take some time off from working on 'it' because 'it' will always be there, in one form or another. HUGS!
