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.
Why do I feel so guilty about speaking to my own mom? My A makes me feel this way. I didnt speak to my mom for a few yrs cause of a bunch of issues. My dry does not like my family at all. Blames my mom because of my sickness. My was drunk during caring me. I am at peace with it now. I accept it. I dont feel comfortable talking to my Mom in front of my dry A. My dry A will critic my phone call and tell me i shouldnt have said this or that.
I need to get rid of this guilt i feel.
Im tired of my A have so much control... I know It doenst have to be said I feel implied.
One of the key symptoms of the family dysfunction of alcholism is the isolation and control the disease exerts on us. There's a level of "I can't" we have. Because you're not making your A the center of the universe, perhaps you feel like a failure/like you're abandoning him.
I know from my own experience that when I began to "break away" from my family and the dysfunction associated with it that there was a lot of the guilt/shame cycle you're describing, namely because I was "changing roles." Rather than being the "happy fixer," who never shows hurt, grief or shame, but instead bottles it up inside, I was scared and hurting, shamed with myself. What was I thinking, I kept asking myself, abandoning my family like this? But then, as time went on, I realized I really needed to ask myself, what was I thinking, trying to control someone in the active disease of alcholism?
I do a lot of the same things you describe. Actions that would be perfectly normal, and ordinary for anyone else hold some sort of massive guilt for me. Spending an afternoon seeing a sick friend, talking with my folks, going to the gym to work out.
All of them have something in common, I want to do them and they have nothing to do (good or bad) with my AW. But it infuriates her if I do them instead of doing something for her. The focus is not on them anymore and the selfishness of the disease wants it to stop.
Getting over it in some cases for me was just simply doing it anyway. If she had a fit, then that is her decission to sit and be miserable and blame me for wasted time.
Just what came to mind when I read your post. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Take care of you!
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"Good judgement comes from experience... experience comes from bad judgement" - unknown
Oh boy can I relate. Thank you for posting. For me, I feel so much guilt when I do for me and make plans for myself to balance out me and my relationship to A. At first I didn't understand and got sucked in like a vacumn into the insanity of it all - the accusations, the pity party, that I was being self-centered and how dare I. IT was such craziness. Now that I am beginning to understand this diease more, I completely understand what was going on. I'm getting better at detaching and not engaging in the conversation or trying to defend myself - it only makes me and the situation crazy. There is nothing I can do and i know I am doing the right thing by keeping sane.
Wishing you good luck and do for you - however you need to.
