Friday, May 16, 2008

On-line Weekend Al-Anon Meeting on; Changing Our Attitudes

On-line Weekend Al-Anon Meeting on; Changing Our Attitudes

If you have found this website you are invited to join us in a weekend long, Al-Anon Meeting.

The on-line meeting starts Friday evening 5/16/08 and runs to Sunday 5/18/08 evening.

Note: To view this Post and the Comments at the same time, click on the link here ---> (click here). Or you can click on the title of this Post in order to get a better view of the Post and the Comments.

Here are some guidelines ---> Click for Guidelines. Bottom line; say what you want, when you want, as many times as you want, to whomever you want, about whatever you want. Cross-talk is allowed ("cross-talk" is talking to each other, not being "cross" to the other).

This is where we start:
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The people in Al-Anon are bound together by a common background and history. We have been affected by some one's alcoholism. We love this person. We care for this person. And in our love and care we trip over the boundaries of care and love and start to do for the person what they can do for themselves.

These lines are hard to distinguish, as we mistakenly try to help the other person, and attempt to pick up what they drop, feel the pain they feel and express the emotions they cannot express.

We become - in a sense - them. And we lose our perspective and we lose ourselves.

Recovery needs to become our foremost criteria. We are ill and we don't recognize it. Our thinking is clouded and our judgement is distorted. We are angry, depressed, are anxious, feel unaccepted and unloved.

Some of us move away from a higher power, believing or questioning our higher power for allowing this to happen to us.

Getting recovery is what Al-Anon tries to help us do. And this is the quote from the Al-Anon book "From Survival to Recovery," page 138, that I would like to share for this weekend:

Recovering people are Al-Anon's treasure. Because of the people in the program, I have found acceptance, support, and love so warm I can hardly describe it. I didn't know unconditional love existed. Now I know it exists in abundance.

I've learned that it is much more harmful and painful for me to carry grudges and resentments than it is to go through the grieving process I may need to go through to forgive my past and forgive myself. I've learned that I'm not perfect and I don't have to be.

The reading goes on to page 139 . . .

. . . Changing my attitude has allowed love to flood in from everywhere. It is a great way to live, far better then anything I had ever thought possible. I wouldn't be alive to write this without the help I received from every single person who held my hand along the way. They say the best way to keep this program is to give it away.

Getting to meetings and getting help from others helps us change our own attitudes and helps us get a clearer perspective and see how we are contributing to the chaos.

We need to be aware that there are solutions for changing our attitudes and perspectives which affect our well-being. This needs to become one of our primary tasks in order for us to improve our recovery.

Our recovery is paramount, whether we are living with the alcoholic or whether we are not.

And this is where we discuss - changing our attitudes . . . and what we have done or can do to improve our personal situations.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because we are who we are, we are so SURE that our attitude, perspective, view point is right. Changing our attitude seems unthinkable, because we are right ..... wrong!

I felt a shift in attitude a week or so ago that was so fundemental that it felt like an earthquake. I'm still not quite sure what it was ... maybe I stepped back, maybe I just waited for HIS comment, but whatever it was, it WORKED. There was an understanding, no spiral into chaos.

In the preamble to 'How Al-Anon Works' it says ...."that changed attitudes can aid recovery". I think that might be true - she says very tentitvely. Hmmmmm Pause for thought. Sue

Syd said...

My problem has and probably still is that I want to feel the love from another that I never seemed to get when around alcoholics. But I've learned that they can't give that to me. I have to feel that within myself and get it from my HP. It's hard somedays.

Anonymous said...

i dont have any problem with changing my attitude except for around the alcoholic in my life. I am down right frustrated with his whole personality. So i find it very hard to change my attitude.
I get irritable,agitated when iam around him. I just have to get out of his presense. When i tell him i dont nor i want to get involved with his stuff because i am working on me. He throws his comments at me I thought you were my friend you were my girlfriend.
Right now i am in school and doing very well.
He is entering school later on in life Anyhow threw the V.A. I do know how to obtain information from the college. Have suggested and given information He doesnt listen and every thing he does is so detailed to the point I dont even get how he lives with himself.
I just stepped back and said I didnt want to be involved with it. I was getting frustrated. My right,mythoughts my feelings period. I have to get away from him because i start having a change of attitude called Angry and Resentment. I have my own thoughts and i choose to keep them to myself or to talk with someone who actually listens. Alcoholics want your advice and then when you give it to them It gets disapprove So instead of me getting aggravated I dont want no parts of the drama and that is what it is

Anonymous said...

After attending only a few Al-Anon meetings, I'd say the biggest change in my attitude was the realization that I'm not responsible for helping other people all the time. It was truly freeing to start expecting adults to be adults, and that someone else's decision to neglect a responsibility didn't mean it automatically became my job.

Now I am working on being compassionate, but with boundaries. How to be sympathetic but not take on others' problems as my own.