You: "Can I tell you about my week?" "I heard a funny story this week that you might enjoy. Do you want to hear it?" "I saw something really fun on the way to work that I wanted to tell you about."

One of things I caught myself doing in relationship to my using son was to allow myself to be a sounding board only. I resented it after awhile, but it was me who was making the choice to just listen and respond. I wasn't participating. I didn't tell him and don't tell him anything that can be used against me since he can't be trusted under the influence, but I stopped being in the sounding board position. Of course, it didn't stop him from using, but it did help me.

In addition to what grateful and hotrod said:

"If you would like to talk about the solution to some of your problems, I'm sure your father knows people that can help you with getting out of the rut of active alcoholism. I know it's hard but I'm not an alcoholic and I'm not qualified to help you there. I love you though."

That is the kind and tactful way to say "I don't want to hear your disease talking. If your disease want's to talk, it can talk to recovery." I whined to my sponsor in AA like that in the early days and got the solution. Alcoholics don't benefit when we reinforce there poor me attitude.

-- Edited by pinkchip on Saturday 31st of May 2014 07:38:57 AM

Makes me remember my attempts to "help" my A when he was in poor me mode - offering suggestions and/or sympathy - problem then was, later when he'd had enough to drink the inevitable fight would start and he'd throw back at me things I'd said in trying to help; sometimes weeks after I'd said something he would use it to blast me. Of course then I stopped responding with much sympathy and offered no suggestions and was blasted for not caring when he has such real problems. It was a game I couldn't win no matter what, the only winning move was not to play. But my situation is different, my A wasn't my child, I think it would be a lot harder to deal with my child going through it - maybe I would do some of the same stuff, be less available, use my answering machine to screen calls and determine if I was in the mood to deal with "it", get a different cell phone and not give him the number so he couldn't randomly call and ruin my day, get emergency busy when talking with him if he was going down that slope.

 

There are many alternative responses to that "poor me" behaviors the shortest of which I used was "I can't/won't speak about it right now I've got ........ to do" insert a task you'd rather do instead of the poor meeeees".   Another my sponsor taught me was to be agreeable when the alcoholic/addict was complaining and looking for pity.  "Agree with her because you have been in those situations yourself and can say, "I know...that sucks" or "Yeah that was really bad for me when I was there also" or "Crap that use to hurt" and then don't share much of my ESH with her other than to mention getting help from others.  Cut the call short and turn everyone involved over to HP.   Practice, Practice, Practice.    (((((hugs)))))