Actually Aunty what the program taught me was that I could be myself and had to learn who myself was and then pray for and learn the courage to be that.   My imagination told me a lot of stories; many of them horrible and scary about what would happen if I did a thing or not and so I had only the imagination and not the experience.   What I needed was the experience...the do part without the fear attached and then accepted the consequences.   Fear for me was the greatest emotional character defect I discovered during the inventory stages of my recovery and when I accepted the acronym of FEAR  F alse  E vidence  A ppearing  R eal and learned that my mind was coming up with false evidence that the other part of myself was accepting as true then I started to change.   Learning also that my alcoholic/addict wife, clean and sober or not was responsible for her own recovery and consequences allowed me the freedom to be the real me and not the "them" me.   Accepting my alcoholic/addict wife as my alcoholic/addict wife gave her full responsibility over her choices and consequences.  Accepting me the same way did the same thing and also the permissions to make the changes I needed to make.   Acceptance and then change.   (((((hugs)))))

Hi Auntrosie

Do you havea sponsor? Have you worked through the steps? It sounds like you are focusing on your husband and not you. When I start to focus on my wife and her problems, whatever I may conceive they are, I realize that I am doing it to escape focusing on my own problems and character defects. Working the steps will help you to identify what is holding you back from happiness.

Keep coming back here and sharing too, that can help as well.

Kenny

Hi Aunty, I have deleted your duplicate post and copied Glad's response to you on to this posting.

I am glad that you have been attending Al-Anon meetings and do supports Jerry's suggestion that by attending meetings, we must truly look inward to find out who we really are, shed the negative coat of arms that we surrounded  ourselves with as we dealt with alcoholism, and develop new tools to validate our true selves. Working the steps with the sponsor helped me tremendously.

I needed to first accept the fact that I was powerless over people places and things, as the first step suggests, that I could be restored to sanity as the second step points out and that I needed to connect with a power greater than myself in order to accomplish this.

Living with the disease of alcoholism, I too developed destructive coping tools in an effort to keep the peace, protect my loved one from the world and myself and in the process and succeededin  making myself invisible and being unhappy and miserable as you describe. I was walled in, and could not connect with others because of this.

Please keep working the program, the steps, the most important and keep coming back here there is hope and help.

 

 

I do hear you and what helped me in this situation was to remind myself that HP was much stronger and more powerful than I . I needed to take care of my own mental health and pray that HP guide my spouse That was the best help I could give.--PRAYER It worked

I took the focus off him, made gratitude lists and asset lists daily, attended meetings, used the slogans and stopped projecting into the future or into someone else's mind

I stayed in my own self and stopped reacting and began to act Placing principles above personalities, including my own, helped me to treat my spouse with courtesy and respect without abandoning my self.

Please keep taking care of you.   It works.