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.
Thanks for all the kind words yesterday, it really helped me out.
There is a story one of my old professors told in class about frogs. Something my sponsor sent me made me think of it and I thought you might want to hear it.
It was a biology experiment on cold blooded animals. He related that frogs will get used to their environment. For example if you take a frog and drop him in hot water, he will jump out.
But if you take room tempreture water and put the frog in, he will be happy. Put a burner under the pot of water and slowly start warming the water and the frog will stay in there until he boils to death.
Some of us are like that, we become very adaptable due to growing up in A homes or some other such hardship early in life. As we get older we bring that defense mechanism along with us.
Nobody flipped a lightswitch and turned my wife into a raging A. Things and situations have slowly changed over the past 10 years and now... the water is near boiling. Before this program I would have just let someone keep turning up the heat.
Today, I am working to set the thermostat at a more comfortable tempreture.
I hope you all have a great weekend!
Take care of you!
__________________
"Good judgement comes from experience... experience comes from bad judgement" - unknown
I think denial was it for me. When the A first started showing his true colors early on I did not know how to cope so I ignored it and hoped it would go away. I also was overwhelmed. I did not have the tools to refect on it. I also did not have that thing called self preservation.
I lived with an alcoholic, abusive dad, married an alcoholic, who later after our divorce became a drug dealer who got our children into drugs; had an alcoholic boyfriend .... and finally got a very nice non alcoholic husband.
However, the point was that after living in that "hot" water all those years, as it kept getting hotter ..I stayed .... it was all I have ever known! Until I finally, with God's grace got out of it.
But, the consequences I still live with of watching my children go through the battles from the results of those situations are terrible. If not for Al-Anon, I don't know how I could bear it.
The father who got them involved in the drugs has died, but I still watch them struggle with their addictions.
