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'm so loving it; I love the people, I love where it is taking my career plans, I love what I am learning, I love feeling energetic, wanting to be up early, it's all so positive. As much as it was an unexpected career shift for me, I feel really good about where I am at and excited about the future.
But of course, everyone has come to do this course for different reasons and from different backgrounds and today we were talking about the ins and outs of involving people's family members in their treatment etc.
The conversation turned so quickly to 'how is anyone supposed to get well if their partner and children aren't supporting them" , "She stopped going to therapy with him after a couple of years and just ignores him"..."the children avoid him, how must that make him feel, the mother should educate them that he is sick and needs to feel loved, blah blah blah blah" you get the idea lol. "I can understand why he would want to drink when he's just ignored by the people who are supposed to love him" .....UGH!!!!!
Well I am there to learn and build my skills, not to 'educate the world" lol so there is another al-anoner in my class (who has openly identified herself as such) and we exchanged a little smile but isn't it just amazing how quick even the most intelligent and caring of people are to blame partners and even children and how much they seem to expect families to give endlessly to another person's disease? It blows my mind; I've become so used to talking with people that have a recovery-based approach now that I had sort of forgotten that the convention is for wives, husbands, children, parents to put the disease first, wrap the sick person in cotton wool and hush up their illness. It was a lesson for me....I have changed and I choose to speak to people who see me as a valuable person who needs to put her own well-being and sanity first, not a life-support system for a disease...but that doesn't mean society has changed! It seems to be a natural response for people outside the situation to start with the "he should, she should" stuff. It makes me
But it also makes me feel extremely positive about where I am at and how drastically different my thinking is now.
It reminds me of how many times I would be at a family event with A, and he would get drunk, tell everyone to go and roger themselves and go staggering off or even go driving and his family would look at me in horror and ask "why aren't you going with him?" Like it was my duty somehow to be his babysitter while he wandered off drunkenly into the night...or even sit in the car and endanger my own life because somehow it was my job to try to reason and argue with him and keep him safe...what a sad, crazy lot of conventions and ideas we have to get past before we can give ourselves permission to put our own well-being first.
Well anyway the whole discussion just made me feel so grateful for al-anon and the new calm and quiet part of me that listens, accepts and doesn't need to challenge everyone who's ideas and feelings don't compliment my own. And that little smile from a fellow al-anoner was just golden
__________________
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see? (Lewis Caroll)
This is the main reason I don't trust non-addict or non-addict-related drug/alcohol counselors.
I think there is a big difference between living the disease and talking about it. Kind of like learning Spanish for a couple years, instead of just being dropped in Mexico City and having to go for it. This is one reason Al Anon is effective, the built-in qualification "process" that we have. If you don't believe it, you won't be coming back. But if you are tired of it, been living it and beating your head against the wall and nothing changes for long enough, then you may come back.
Normal people talk of unending love, give and take, etc. And that's the way it is with most people. It's takes a while for anybody to get to a point where they can believe that another human, especially a loved one, could be like we all know an alcoholic/addict is.
I'm so glad you are entering this field Melly, the world could use more counselors with your kind of experience. Sorry for the pain that got you here, but the insights you will bring to an addicted or co-addicted patient will be so much better for it.
I know what you mean. Its good to see our growth and then its us who are different, the worlds a differeny place with a small dose of sanity. I struggled a bit though because suddenly I didnt fit in. Im trying not to use sarcasm or bitch about others and mostly this is what the world does, its like us alanoners are different with this brilliant way of thinking. It makes me want to share it. I gave away my anonymity to a friend who had issues at work, her thinking was hurting her, the constant poor mes and everyones against me type thinking. I shared some of the slogans and told her the way im learning to think, trying to be helpful but she began challenging me on the program, she would say well I spoke to professor such and such and sargeant such and such and mr expert such and such and they agree im a victim. Lol, no kidding, crazy biotch. If I hadnt been in alanon that long I may have had second thoughts then I realised that she had a real need to cling on to her belief systems, being a victim all the time in evey situation allowed her to feel superior in some way or it gave her something she needed to have. She didnt want to be challenged in any way. It was a good lesson for me and im a bit more careful now about who I share myself with. At first, I wanted to tell the whole world, 'your all a bit nuts but its ok, come to alanon and get sane', lol. Its a crazy thinking world out there and were about as sane as it gets.x
This is very discouraging but shows why most of the therapists and counselors I've consulted over the years gave me well-meaning but terrible advice about alcoholism. It is damaging to people's lives. I don't know what the answer is, on an individual basis, but I'm glad Al-Anon is available as an alternative so people can get genuinely useful tools to cope with alcoholism.
Hi miss. You are going to be excellent in this field because you have a "bank of real world knowledge" on alcoholism. You have the experience to go along with the book knowledge that you are learning now. Your post reminds me of adults who want to tell parents how they should raise/parent their children, but have no children of their own. And you are so right. Very few people understand addiction and the recovery process, and even fewer people understand the recovery process of people who have lived or are living with alcoholics. I don't think the people who are suffering in silence understand it themselves. !
Thanks for sharing and good luck with your course!
__________________
Look for the rainbow after the storm, and I'm sending you a double dose of HOPE. H-hold O-on P-pain E-ends
And usually the give, give, give expectation falls on the mother or the wife or the SO. I am so glad you are happy in this new life you are creating for yourself. I am also so happy that you have some Al-Anon under your belt as so many don't even in the drug and alcohol field. Great share, Melly!
Betty, the teacher has been working in the field for many years and she very clearly finds a lot of the course to be total rubbish so there is plenty of room for me to respond with some integrity. I like her, she doesn't have the same view as me about many things but she's good But at the end of the day this is the party line, we go to a government funded school to work in the public health industry, we have to learn and understand the parameters we will be working in. Even if they are totally useless and misguided, lol.
As a side note I have lost my left arm today, again, it's been 3 years since this happened and it's just not very nice. I have something wrong possibly MS although I haven't gone back for test results but in any event my left arm has been dead weight all day with complete wrist drop, I had forgotten how this feels and started to think maybe it was a temporary thing or something, this is the 4th arm loss so hows that for denial and I keep having attacks of blindness and calling them migraines time to get real, It doesn't feel like my arm is going to come back any time soon, last time my right arm went for 2 months and when it came back it shakes and my handwriting is crazy and awful even after 3 years, I guess when my left comes back this time it might be messed up too, if anyone has a spare prayer, that I can accept this and stay positive and be the best I can be regardless is what I am praying for.
-- Edited by missmeliss on Thursday 4th of September 2014 02:43:17 AM
__________________
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see? (Lewis Caroll)
Thanks for the follow up Melly. I know you will be able to respond to any test questions with intelligence , insight and integrity .
I am very concerned about your arm and would like to urge you to follow up with the Doctor as soon a possible, there are powerful MS med's available and the sooner they are started the better.
AS far as typing is concerned I have a typing program called "Dragon" : that I use . All I need to do is speak into a Mic. and the program types for me. It is so cool.
The majority of counseling with substance abusers needs to be done individually. However, those that actually make it as far as voluntary rehab are usually able to take some ownership over their drinking/drugging. Even they know they don't drink/drug from not having support. That argument is usually made by active drinkers and users or relapsers as an excuse.
It is true that many addicts come from dysfunctional families and they replicate those dynamics when they go out and start their own families. It does help do know what healthy family support and dynamics even look like because in some circumstances, that can emerge after a person gets sober and its a wonderful thing when it does happen. None of my education stressed or taught that addicts and users use/drink because of nagging spouses or whatever. Sounds fishy.
We all come from dysfunctional families and I have to laugh when I think of how I didn't see how that applied to me or to my FOO when I first began hearing that term in the 80s. Since that time, I have truly NOT experienced a family that doesn't have some pathology in it. I also know folks who work in the field of substance abuse and alcoholism who don't attend Al-Anon and know very little about it who feel compassion for the A and do hold the partners most accountable for the habits of the A. I find myself wondering if the lack of program work on the part of people in this field doesn't end up with them being sucked in by the disease without awareness? In the work I have done, I am the only person in this kind of work that attended Al-Anon and worked a program - not just because I knew I had codependent tendencies but because I spent so much time with people who were affected or carriers of the disease. There was a difference in the way I came to the work than some of my peers who I saw to be enabling the drinker and the drugger and judging the family members harshly or pitying the children and indulging their bad behaviors.
This is interesting and fit right in with a book I am reading right now called Don't Help. It's for persons in the field that work with addictions. One point of view is that non-A's in the field don't help as they haven't lived it, but may do a better job of demonstrating positive behaviors. The other side was reflecting on Sober A's that get a license to counsel Alcoholics and Addicts. They can relate to the suffering but what was shown in this book and the model of therapy is that most sober A licensed counselors don't create treatment plans, goals nothing it's more of a do what I tell you to do, similar to a sponsor noted issues that are caused with this type of counseling showed the people being counseled will not believe what is said, will cling to the counselor in hero worship mode or not take anything seriously. This book also points out that many of those types of counselors are not educated on mental health issues and are ill equipped to handle dually diagnosed addicts. The other thing that is mentioned with sober A's being counselors is they don't really understand the family affect and tend to push that out of the realm of treatment which is quite detrimental to the addict and family.
It was also noted that counseling should be provided one on one with persons in group homes, inpatient settings or intensive outpatient and when a licensed sober A is the counselor there tends to be a lack of respect and others show up during appointment times and "horn in" on the counseling session, they confuse straight on counseling with an open AA meeting.
I really try to learn about treatment modalities and see how the trends will evolve.
__________________
Linda
Don't worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will have it's own worries
I know what you are getting at with the sober A counselors. Many of them are only drawing from their addiction experience and they get licensed as addiction therapists only. That does NOT qualify them to counsel in any area outside of addiction. If they are working in a rehab, the will have to do treatment plans or the rehab will shut down. Many to most therapists in private practice don't do treatment plans because insurance companies do not require it. Most substance abusers will say they prefer to have people in recovery as counselors but I do not think there is any evidence that this some great benefit or that it results in better outcome. You did mention some things that are true for some Sober A's that are Addictions Therapists. If they go through the 6 years of schooling needed to actually be a Licensed mental Health Counselor, Social Worker, or the 9 years to be a Clinical Psychologist - They WILL MUCH MORE LIKELY have the overall experience, better boundaries, and skills. Addiction therapists really should not work outside their scope.
I hope you follow through with the medical community to determine, at least from their perspective, what may be happening in your body. The treatment piece of it can certainly differ from or be inclusive of other modalities not within their radar. Keep in touch.
Pink, I was refering to class members opinions not course content re the family stuff.
__________________
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see? (Lewis Caroll)
I think they will learn fast when they get in the field. It was a daily experience to have clients calling their spouses and/or parents to curse them out and then hang up on them when they did not get what they wanted which was often a plane ticket to leave early (AMA), money, cigarettes, or something else. They will learn through observation that A's are typically very demanding, manipulative, and even abusive to their family members. It is obvious and evident even from the rehab. They will see when they have a crying parent on the phone begging their child to stay sober, stay in treatment and the adult child calls the parent foul names, tries to say they are drunks or drug addict too (whether true or not) and hangs up on them angrily.
Yep! That was my experience, Pink. Glad those in the field who are actually working with As in a controlled environment see the disease in real action.
!