Changing my number - Al-Anon Family Group

qwerty49 · Veteran Member

Changing my number

grateful2be · ~*Service Worker*~

Keep coming back and working your program, Q. I see a lot of hurt and taking each other's inventory in your share. I feel compassion for each of you. I've experienced those kinds of interchanges to some degree in my own life. Continuing with my own recovery work has been a big stress reliever for me. A friend of mine once told me that there are two kinds of people in the world. Attic people and basement people. Attic people help you feel good about yourself. Basement people help you feel bad about yourself. I've learned to spend the majority of my time trying to be an attic person by spending the majority of my time with attic people. You are a woman of honor and dignity who is choosing to make changes in her life that will help you experience the beauty of you more clearly. Lots of hugs and understanding, Q. Although you are powerless over the past and over your Mom and the affects of our disease, you are going to make progress in this program one day at a time if you work it. Hope you can get to a f2f meeting and some on-line meetings with us, too.

neshema2 · ~*Service Worker*~

if this is a cell she is calling, why not contact provider and block her number? that way your friends can still find you and she cannot...

you may have to renew that block, something I get sloppy on and my abusive sister gets through to me occasionally, but blocking would be what I try first....unless u want her to get the recorded message, this number has been change....when they are blocked their calls won't go through, and also their texts.....dunno if they get a message or not.....

Just a thought

Mattie · ~*Service Worker*~

My family history was one of family members cutting each other off. I thought that was the best way to do things and was considering cutting my mother off as you are. Then I read some of the books by Harriet Lerner (The Dance of Anger etc.), where she brings up that cutting people off preserves the intensity, just in a different way. It's another form of high drama. She suggests that lessening the intensity is a more peaceful way to go forward. We do this through working on ourselves and developing the tools to handle challenging situations, making our own lives better, and getting our own recovery.

I also remember the Al-Anon sayings "Don't React" and "When in doubt, don't." It may be that it would help to hold off on any big decisions until you have some more recovery helping you. Meetings, literature, a sponsor? So many of us have been in these same situations. There's great wisdom in the program. Take good care of yourself.

likemyheart · ~*Service Worker*~

Hello Q - I will speak from the other side of the coin, I am a mother whose daughter sent the same kind of messages to - I got so exasperated with her attempts to MAKE me be what she wanted me to be, that I distanced myself until she came back around and quit trying to guilt, shame and manipulate me into being what she thought I should be. Her in-laws are the perfect grandparents, with time and money to be able to spend good time with their son and his wife. Being negatively compared to them constantly had me biting my tongue and being thankful that I WAS far away from her because I refused to compete for the best parent/grandparent award. Being told that another woman was more of a mother to her did NOT make me try harder to please her, it made me give up on her and back into my world and wait for her to grow up, let her kids get to the age where they scream "I HATE YOU, you're the worst mother in the world!". It is easy to be "like a mother" to someone else's young adult. Its much harder to be there, day in and day out throughout your kids life, changing all the diapers, drying all the tears; when your kids are little, comforting them as they barf on you; waiting for the sound of them coming in the door from a late evening out; being the money and ride when they are teenagers and having to drag a "thank you" from them for it; I can't begin to tell you how many things I did that I did not want to do, all because it was important to HER. I put her first through all her growing years only to have her turn around and blast me for not being as good as someone else who wasn't there to clean up the puke. I saw her behavior as a normal part of severing the ties between parent and child, a necessary part of growing up; we were very close as mother and daughter and it was VERY hard to go through that stage with her. We have a normal relationship again and she no longer tries to make me into someone I am not.

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