Cliques at meetings - Al-Anon Family Group

andromeda · ~*Service Worker*~

Cliques at meetings

neshema2 · ~*Service Worker*~

andromeda wrote:
I also find out that most of them talk to their sponsor multiple times per week, whereas I barely talk to my sponsor. She has 15 sponsees and I have a call in time each week but she usually isn't available otherwise and will tell me to call one of my other Al Anon sisters.
I don't know...I'm just struggling with sponsorship stuff and knowing that I really need a lot of support now because I'm going to be going through serious changes soon. It's like I want to insert myself into the clique in my home meeting but I also want more contact with my sponsor. Just feeling like I can't connect these days and I know it's really important to my program. I love working my program and it's not about that.

your S and FIFTEEN sponsees???? and u only get to chat 1x per week???what if you really needed her???? i think she is over loaded....i am my sponsor's only sponsee....and i can call any ole time....but to dump a sponsor to "fit in"??? as transient as people are???? i would think, is my sponsor meeting my needs??? 1x per week only would not do it for me.....i would leave for that reason alone, but NEVER to fit in w/a group who may or may not be lasting.....If this were me, i would be sponsor shopping....and help me understand...why , if you kept the sponsor, would this affect your qualifying for the clique???? sorry, i had a looong work day and maybe i am missing something.......i hope my esh was not totally valueless...LOL

I think i would follow my instincts which from your posts , you seem to have instincts.......one time a week hey?? whether you need her or not, lol...sharing her with 15 others, she must not work, lol....i thought i was charred having 3 at one time....that was tough.....thankfully, i am down to one little gal who is a sweetie and works hard.....and bc i work i wont' take on more than one at a time...can't do them justice..now that is not to say i won't trade esh w/a recovery sister....but to sponsor/mentor/guide, i just have the one

-- Edited by neshema2 on Saturday 10th of January 2015 01:04:57 AM

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

I think this can happen in a lot of situations. I am probably the worst becuz if I don't feel welcome I just stop going to the meetings or where this group is. Not a good way to handle it.

I would say for me, I would hope i could say do you guys mind if I go with you? Or ask another sis if they want to go and say to those others hey do you mind if we tag along? If they are rude or not warm or well u no. Then you have their answer?

I am so bad about groups of people and have never enjoyed them, avoided them all my life. I do better one on one or four of us. My thing is I cannot pay attention to more than one person at a time. My attention needs to be focused. um ever heart cannot chew gum and walk at the same time?

Honestly I hope you do go out also. Some who are more extroverted my just expect others to just say hey I would like to come too! Not trying to be a clique.

hugs!

neshema2 · ~*Service Worker*~

Debilyn wrote:

I would say for me, I would hope i could say do you guys mind if I go with you? Or ask another sis if they want to go and say to those others hey do you mind if we tag along? If they are rude or not warm or well u no. Then you have their answer?

hey I like this.....a kinda barometer......good esh....i like this....and as to being a "joiner" i never succeeded in it.....my BFF who is now my sponsor, and i would go out....she could charm the bollix off a bull moose....me??? i am by the food, feeding my face and observing......i prefer one on one or small , say, up to 6 folks, then i get all introverted.....never was a good people person....just me.....i like what Deb said above here....that for sure would give u a good feel as to whats up!!!!

good luck on it, and i hope u find a sponsor whose face/voice you don't 4get due to lack of communication.......15 sponsees...YIKES.....I wonder if she is a "sponsee hoarder".....they have hoarders for everything else.....why not sponsees????

DavidG · ~*Service Worker*~

Hmmm maybe 50 is a large number for one group...

how many meetings a week does the group hold?

would it be a good time to form another group- and retain links with the mother group...?

el-cee · ~*Service Worker*~

I can relate andromeda. My meeting has a group of old timers who were heavily involved with service. They talk about all the things they used to do and it sounds amazing. They used to all go away regularly to conventions, all over the uk and to the conventions in the us and canada. They ran alanon, went round schools, the public relation work was amazing. They became friends and are old now. They are all retired and i must admit to feeling a bit resentful because they do none of this now. They still attend conventions from time to time but there is no alanon in the whole of scotland, the pr person does the minimum and when ive expressed ideas ive been told, oh we used to do that, been there, done that, as if well we had your enthusiasm but we dont now. The thing is i get the idea of being older and slowing down but im like the youngest member and i dont have the confidence or time to put life back in my area meeting and its been made clear that i wont get help. Im getting a bit bored with my meeting and ive been venturing out. I think it might be time for me to address my feelings properly inthe next group consciousness, but what do you say, stop being old and relive the old vibrant meeting? I dont know, i suppose i can say what i mean and dont say it mean.

grateful2be · ~*Service Worker*~

One of the things I like about two of my meetings is that nothing is exclusive when it comes to outside the meetings. It is announced in the beginning of the meeting for 3 weeks any party or gathering that is going on and sign ups go out, too. No one in those meetings are excluded from any gathering. It is also known in another group that people meet for dinner together before the meeting and coffee afterwards is suggested when somebody wants to do after the meeting. I appreciate the sensitivity in these groups to the need to invite everybody in our family group to whatever is going on that might be a celebration, dinner, etc. These groups - out of all of them - are the ones that flourish best and haven't had any split offs or people feeling hurt because they are not invited to what others in their family group are invited to. Group conscience or finding another group are two ways folks in my f2f groups have handled this.

As a sponsor myself, I am not one who would want to sponsor 15 people at a time. Maybe 1 or 2, but that would be all for me and the person would have to working their program daily and attending meetings consistently for it to work for me. If I weren't working my program, I'd also want to know that my sponsor has enough experience with me to challenge me when I've derailed into my disease. I wouldn't want to just have a hit and miss relationship with my sponsor. I also don't want to be a hit and miss sponsor.

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Interesting issue. I know I cannot attend huge meetings and find my comfort in smaller meetings. Regardless of this, I also think that people have the right to go for coffee after meetings with their friends or sponsors We stress the unity of the group in meetings -- I do not think we must walk in "lock step "after meetings. In fact I stopped going to the coffee meetings after meetings because I felt program was abandoned and I was not comfortable. I go to meetings to recover and not form friendships so I now go with my sponsee after a meetings.

As an aside I talk to my sponsees every day and I have 10 I believe connecting with your sponsor more often is crucial .

tiredtonite · Veteran Member

I've had the same experience in meetings concerning fellowship after the meeting. Typically, in larger meetings though I've found that the chair will make announcement that fellowship will follow at a particular coffee shop or restuarant and "all are welcome." Personal friendships amongst Alanoners is considered to be an outside issue as well as personal invitations to only a "select" group of people. The aim of Alanon to my understanding is to help people feel less isolated, alone and not terminally unique as compared to others in the program. One suggestion might be to not wait for the on again off again acceptance of you by this group of women. If you're chairing, you could certainly name a place of your own choosing or even the place where you go with these women for fellowship, announce that there is fellowship after the meeting at that place and all are welcome.

As far as sponsors, I guess it's whatever a person is comfortable with. My sponsor sponsors a lot of people but makes herself available to me anytime. If she can't talk for long, she gives what she can in the moment and sets up another time to talk with me either later in the day or the next day. It's how I sponsor too. We have lots of tools in our program including meetings and others in the program but sometimes there is a burning issue that's time sensitive that you want to discuss with your sponsor. You need that person to be available. What if we're in a crisis on Wednesday and our scheduled talk time was Tuesday?

I can understand your feelings of exclusion and feeling like an oddball around these women in the meeting. They can do what they want of course if they want to have their close knit "members only" type group. For myself personally, that wouldn't allow for enough personal growth. I like newcomers and hearing new perspectives after the meeting in fellowship. If I like you personally, I get together with you at another time to hang out. But that's just me. To each their own.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I've felt those feelings too. To me, there's lots of value from larger meetings because it opens me to so many more people's shares. Having moved from a city of millions of people, I miss those meetings. I do like my small meetings where I live now but there is always the risk in these small meetings of becoming overly comfortable with one another and foregoing principles of the program during meeting time and then putting on the Alanon hats when a newcomer shows up. So I guess for me the finger always ends up pointing inward. I get out of any meeting what I personally am willing to put in. It can mean shaking things up a bit at times with suggesting another meeting format to breathe some new life our meeting.

Thanks for the topic and for being here. You sound like someone I'd enjoy getting to know at fellowship after a meeting. LOL if we all only lived close to one another who share here huh. :) We'd run the place out of coffee! (((hugs)))) TT

grateful2be · ~*Service Worker*~

One of the groups I belong to is a large group in a fairly large facility. We meet as a whole group for the preamble, announcements, newcomer welcome, 7th Step and whatever the theme for the meeting day is: Step or Topic. Then we count off into 3 groups so that we can reduce the large number of people into manageable small groups where everybody can speak and be heard. Two other groups are very large and won't split out into smaller groups and it does get unmanageable in those groups and because we have to leave the building within an hour of coming in, many don't get to share but for some reason, these groups after group conscience meetings have decided they don't want to split into smaller groups even though they, too, have the space to do it. If I only need to listen I go to the non-split groups, but the most work really is done in the large groups that will form small groups following the opening.

A meeting as large as you describe with a speaker is something I didn't even know happened until I came to this board. I learn so much from everybody when they share about their group meeting experiences. Gives me new ideas to share with groups when it appears that another family group might have a solution that our family groups don't know about yet.

andromeda · ~*Service Worker*~

I think the bigger issue here is that I hardly ever get to talk to my sponsor and I feel it hurts my program. This past week she cancelled and said she was sick and had no voice. So, I texted her (since I knew she had no voice) and told her I really wanted to check in with her over the weekend because I needed to talk. She never responded. That was on Thursday evening.

FYI: my sponsor has a very demanding job, has 2 daughters whom she helps out weekly with babysitting the grandchildren, and she attends 2 meetings weekly. That much, I know, LOL. When I do talk to her, I get so much out of it. I have yet to express to her that I need more time with her and I think I need to visit this issue with her so that I can decide if I need to move on or not.

As for the group thing: I love the big group as much as I love the smaller groups. Group size isn't what matters to me, what bugs me is feeling left out of certain things. Yet, I know that I am there for my program and not for social hour so I try to keep my focus on that first.

Grateful: our meeting has different themes from week to week. The first week is a step meeting. One person shares for 10 minutes on the step of the month. We give out tickets to people who come in to the meeting and then call ticket numbers for people to share on the step. IF they don't want to share, they can pass or they can refuse a ticket at the beginning of the meeting.

Week 2 is what we call 'ask it basket'. you write a question on a piece of paper, put your name on another paper and we fold them up and put them in 2 baskets. We read a question, call out a name and you can get up and talk on that question. Again, if you don't want to share, you pass.

Week 3 is a topic meeting; You ask someone to share on a topic ie. powerlessness, service, fellowship, character defects, etc and that person talks for 10 minutes and then we do the tickets again like the week 1 meeting.

Week 4 is a speaker meeting where we invite someone in to share their story and their ESH for the whole meeting and try to leave about 10 minutes at the end for question and answer session.

Week 5, which happens 4 times a year, is a tradition meeting. 3 different speakers talk on 3 traditions and then we open it up to the group to share on whichever tradition they'd like to speak about.

This is a very organized meeting and we actually time people to make sure their shares are 3 minutes or less. It runs smoothly and I enjoy leading this meeting. Must be the organized, OCD person in me, LOL.

grateful2be · ~*Service Worker*~

We do not do any of that at any of our meetings. I like every one of those good ideas.

I have no experience with not having a sponsor available but I understand how difficult that must be for you when she is unavailable? I've been fortunate in that each sponsor I've had has been available and I've also had some long time program members who I can call, too, if my sponsor is gone. I hope you and your sponsor can work it out. I know how important that is.

Our meetings also have good order and structure to them. I'm like you in that I really need the organization of the structure in the bigger groups. The smaller ones it doesn't matter to me so much. What does bother me is when a meeting is scheduled for a certain time and the start is held until the latecomers can get there. My thinking is: Well, if we're going to give everybody 10 minutes to get here before the meeting, let's just say the meeting starts at 12:10? Course, if we did that, then, we may wait until 12:20 to start. Grin. If I chair, we start at noon. Probably bugs those who wants to wait for the late comers? Grin.

andromeda · ~*Service Worker*~

Hmm, I've been to a LOT of meetings, and some in other states and I've never been to a meeting where we waited for latecomers. Here in Phoenix at all the meetings I've attended, we start at exactly the time we are scheduled to start and not a minute later. Latecomers can just jump in when they're ready. And, yes, when I chair, we start at 7 on the dot even if it means I'm saying the serenity prayer and people are still chatting because eventually someone tells them to knock it off, LOL.

grateful2be · ~*Service Worker*~

I get that starting on time. I used to drive to a meeting at 8 on Sunday nights in another City. We'd just sit and wait and wait until the chair showed up. I quit going to that one. Bugged me too much to wait and see when we're going to actually start if the chair showed up. I don't know if that meeting is going any longer. I like informal-formal, but not this informal.

DavidG · ~*Service Worker*~

I have been at the starting of three groups over my time... so I am used to one and two person meetings, at least for the starting up phase. And then they grew from there. So here were times when there was a lot of time to share and to get to know each other very well...

...much larger meetings, especially in the USA, don't phase me today- a meeting is a meeting... and a foreign accent anywhere in the world will ensure a conversation afterwards.

Its a bit different on a board like this where length and time is not an issue... anyone can choose whether or not to click on a thread...

...progress not perfection... but I think all of us try to do our darnedest...

anyone who gets into Alanon and gets to a meeting has my unreserved respect.

aww

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