A Sick Cycle of Dependency

Being dependent on others almost comes natural when we are in a state of confusion. We seek others opinions, beliefs, and advice. What others say, if we place them in a position of authority, becomes "The Word." Unfortunately, the advice and opinion of the other person, is really a form of "approval" that we seek. The "approval" we seek is not healthy for the relationship. It forms a relationship of "one up and one down" (someone higher or a "step above" us).

Doing Too Much To Cover Up Our Needs
Unfortunately, no one can really give you advice as a prescription to your situation. Because no one really knows you, and knows ALL your history, and you ENTIRE situation. But because of alcoholism or in fact, anything that may be creating a huge amount of anxiety, can place us in a state of confusion.

So, instead of quieting our minds, seeking guidance from our inner strengths, and just listening, we tend to do the opposite. We run around keeping ourselves busy. We do for others. We then do more for others. We then do even more. We avoid and bury our feelings and we don't confront the fact that we are "stuck" or "have to make a decision." It becomes a way to procrastinate and avoid unpleasant situations.

Our "doing" becomes extreme - after awhile. We get so caught up in doing that we exhaust ourselves. Our "doing" is a way of avoiding an unpleasant situation at first. We then make the doing a habit. This doing mistakenly becomes a way in which we seek approval and validation from others instead of from ourselves.

By doing for everyone else, we set ourselves up for failure. We are in such a state of turmoil, we begin to believe our self-worth is relative to the amount we do for others AND we seek their approbation (approval). When we don't receive their approbation, we do more AND / or we feel "unworthy" or we feel "insignificant."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Note About Children
I need to emphasize here that I am not saying, don't help our children. But I am also saying, don't not expect children to help out and do for themselves what they should be doing. When we do for our children what they should and could be doing and ought to be doing, we actually ROB them of their ability to GROW up to become fully functional adults.

We have 21-year-olds in this society of ours who EXPECT to be given things. And when they don't get, they sulk. We have 40-year-olds who are also the same way. Often, these are our alcoholic relatives of whom nothing has been expected, and therefore they return exactly that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seeking Approval By Seeking Advice
We then go to others for outside advice - on how we could be better at what we are doing. And unfortunately, the people who we are doing for, the people we are running around for - are the same people we go to for advice!!

And because we have set ourselves up in a relationship where we are "not as important" as the other person, their advice really is a form of approval - a form of acceptance - a form of validation - that we feel we need to have.

Does that make sense what I have written? Stop and think here for just a second and reflect on this.

The same people who we are doing for, supporting and doing what they should be doing for themselves, we wind up wanting their approval and validation. When we don't get it, often we seek their advice. This advice may not come in the form of advice or at least good advice, it may come in the form of criticism. Some may call it "constructive criticism" in order to put a veil on it.

We start by asking them, "Tell me what I should be doing?" Or "How can I do this better?" Or "I want to help. Tell me what would make you happy?" And of course we never make them happy.

Just think about that for a while today. Isn't this sick?

Realize this fact. Advice is everywhere, most of it is free and not worth the price. When we don't get their "advice" or their "approval" we are creating a cycle of dependency. It is a sick cycle.

Start by Stopping
The best place to start - to help you and get you on the right track, is to stop doing for others, and start taking time out for yourself.

Stop seeking the approbation of others. You don't need it. You are already a worthwhile person. You ARE good. You ARE strong. YOU ARE GREAT.

Remember, you are great. It's only WHAT you may be DOING, that may not be so hot. In this case, when youare doing only because you are seeking the approval of others, this is not such a great idea. When you know you are OKAY (a good and worthwhile person), you will tend to see yourself and your actions differently.

Reflect on your actions. Start by asking yourself - "Is this something I should be doing? Or is this something others could and should be doing?" And ask yourself, "Am I doing this (or asking this questions or advice) in order to seek the approval and validation of my worth from this person?" The purpose of these questions is not to have you stop doing these things, it is to get you to understand why you are doing them, and then decide if this is something you want to take on.

Take Time Out By Doing Nothing (or the Opposite)
Sometimes, the best thing to do is - NOTHING. It is the opposite of what our lives have been for months and years. The idea of doing NOTHING is so foreign that it is impossible for some of us to grasp.

Doing nothing is not what you may think. Doing nothing doesn't necessarily mean going to the beach and sitting there and watching the waves come in. Although, it could!!!

To me it means, stopping what I am doing and doing something for ME.

• It may mean getting up at 4:30AM and reading spiritual books, leadership books, or something positive.
• It means to me, now, finding an Al-Anon meeting and sitting there, breathing deeply and listening. Al-Anon has become a source of quieting my mind.
• It means to me, going running in the middle of the day.
• It means to me, that when in a business meeting, I do not need to take over and lead the discussion. It may mean I sit in the meeting, taking notes, and reflecting and watching, and seeing that things turn out the way I would have it turn out anyway.
• It means to me, taking timeout to do something with my daughter, that I wouldn't do, because I am too busy to do that at that moment.
• To me, doing nothing, may mean meditating. Or taking a nap.

It could mean to you, the above or something else. But doing nothing - can be - doing just the opposite of what you "normally" would do, but most of all, doing nothing and doing the opposite is a "focus on yourself" and not someone else.

This post, started off on the topic of being dependent and seeking the advice of others. I am suggesting that we slow down, and start thinking about who we are and what we are doing. And ultimately stop doing so much for others and start doing for ourselves. And accept ourselves as worthy and worthwhile individuals.

On-line Weekend Al-Anon Meeting on; Alcoholism In The Home

On-line Weekend Al-Anon Meeting on; Alcoholism In The Home
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 3/28/08 and runs to Sunday 3/30/08 evening.

Note: To view this post and the comments at the same time, click on the link here (click here) in order to get a better view.

Have you ever tried to explain what it like to live in a home as a child or as a spouse in the home with active alcoholism - to someone who has never been in it?

Living in a home with an alcoholic is difficult to understand by people who are not living in it. I personally have tried to explain it therapists (who do not have training in addictions) and found that they have no clue. I have read where people who have commented on this blog talked to neighbors, friends and relatives and gave them solutions that mirrored something out of "Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus." Even one trained addiction specialist, who is a recovering alcoholic, suggested I read Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends and Influence People" because I assume, he was not now living with an active alcoholic.

People who are on the outside just do not understand what we live through. They may say, "It's in your head." Or they may say, "Have you read this book, listened to this CD or gone to couples church outing?"

It is a disease. There are neurological effects that lead to dementia, which can lead to learning, memory and behavioral disorders. But worse, it affects the entire family system.

Below are some terrible, but accurate passages about how it affects children and adults

The following passages are from the book, "From Survival To Recovery"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"What is it like growing up in an alcoholic home? If you asked me a few years ago, I would have had to say, "I have no idea." My childhood was so painful that the only way I could survive was to block out the pain; I also blocked out the good. It was as if I had no life. When my family talked about events, I felt stupid because I couldn't remember them, and it frightened me that I couldn't remember. I couldn't feel, either. I was numb.

"What is it like? It's unremitting fear - fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of being known - a constant, nagging fear that never goes away.

"It's lonely. It's wanting so desperately to be a part, yet pushing people so far away I couldn't possibly be connected. It's isolating myself and then being the outsider looking in and never fitting in. I'm often ashamed. I'm afraid to lose the only people who say they love me. I'm afraid they won't come back, and then I'm afraid they will. It's confusing. People say they love me and then they hurt me. In my gut, I know something is wrong, but I'm told I overreact or I'm too sensitive. So I learn to not trust my instincts.

"It's being needy. It's being convinced I am loved and unlovable. It's needing to hear over and over, "You're wonderful!" yet never believing it. So I always need to hear it again, and it's still not enough. It's feeling that I am not enough. It's having to do for others so that I can earn their love, yet feeling that what I give is never enough."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These are the voices of children and adults living in an alcoholic environment,

This is where we comment on the affects of what is happening in our homes or what has happened in our homes. And how can we try to tell someone who has never been through this?

Please comment on the topic or comment if you have a burning desire.

A Prisoner

A Prisoner. I heard this at the Family Night Rehab, from a man who was describing his life with his wife and her alcoholism. He was an ex-military person, who apparently spent some time in active combat.

A Prisoner. That's how I feel, or maybe felt. A Prisoner.

Not too many people - if any at all - can actually understand the feeling of living with an active alcoholic. Especially one that is angry, deceitful, lying and puts on a "show" to the outside world. No one will know how they can manipulate you, and make you lose self-confidence and self-esteem. Essentially, they make you feel inadequate, undeserving, unloved and often, like it (it = everything) is some how your fault. At least this is the words from some of the people from these meetings.

For someone reading this - who is not living with an active alcoholic - this may sound extreme. I can assure you - it is not.

Living with the alcoholic - even when I did not know she was drinking - somewhere deep inside, I was missing something. I look back now and know it was the hidden drinking of alcohol by my wife that was affecting me. It was big and little behavior that was out of the norm that soon became "the norm" that threw me off. But I didn't know it back then.

The weird behavior was; the throwing out (purposely losing) diamond earrings, because they were, "too small." Or falling down in the center of a sidewalk, because she had too much too drink (I didn't know it then, because I didn't see her drinking). Or when she threw up one morning on a street, on a beautiful spring morning in a quaint southern town on the Atlantic Ocean with my friend and his wife looking at her going, "what the ?" The burning of food. The burning of pots. The late bills.

How in the world did you miss this? You dismissed it because when you inquired about it to someone you trusted, you got "dismissed" as being "controlling" or a "control freak" or that, "I am a little ditzey." So, you start to doubt yourself. Self-doubt . . . a killer of instinct and all good from within.

It's all clear now of course. How could I have missed this? But we do. How many stories have I heard from both men and women who have spouses that hid their drinking - so well, that no one even had a clue. Next thing we know, there is no escape. Because we have become too weak, too ashamed, too much self-esteem lost, to leave, to get unstuck.

Then one day, something happens. We say - "Stop."

Where and when do we say this? How do we get away. I can tell you, that only through getting out of the house, every day, and meeting with YOUR friends or better - Al-Anon Meetings. Only at Al-Anon Meetings is really where you find people who understand.

I have compassion for the alcoholic. I really do. I feel sorry for her. She is being controlled by a substance that is powerful. Except in our society we see alcohol as "alright." It the alcoholic's fault for not being able to control themselves. It's "just" 10% of the population who can't handle it. If it was cocaine, well then, that's another story.

But it's not just the 10%. It may be another 25% - because of the effects on the family. Maybe the number is larger. We have made drinking glamerous and popular. We have become connessiuers of beer, wine, and scotch. Isn't that sad, knowing what we now know? The general population has not a clue of how this is a dangerous drug.

Are we prisoners? That is my question to you this morning.

The Children of the Alcoholic Family

Outside the home, no one knows of the prison we live in. As mothers, and fathers, we know the feeling of being trapped. We know the gloom of the home of the raging alcoholic. We can take comfort in our tools we learn from Al-Anon. We can learn to detach, stop engaging, focus on ourselves.

But our children.

For them, it is a different matter. How can they possibly understand that something is wrong? How can they understand that mommy's and daddy's bickering and fighting is about one person trying to fix and control the chaos and other - the alcoholic - someone who has no control of what they are doing.

In fact, with the alcoholic, it is like dealing with two people. Except, you are mostly if not always dealing the alcoholism. Remember, "cunning, baffling and powerful."

Our children do not understand this. And we, if we grew up around it, we also did not understand. But we tried to cope (we didn't call it this). We were too young to learn real coping mechanisms. Often the alcoholic took it out on us. In some cases, the sober parent lashed out at us, only because of the frustration and not knowing who to turn to and how to relieve their frustrations and stress.

It is not called "the disease of the alcoholic." It is called and known as the "the disease of the family." It is unlike any other disease on earth. It affects the entire orbit of the family. The enitre family system. All the children and the grandparents and others who come in contact, were and are extremely affected, without their even knowing it.

I read to you from the book, From Survival to Recovery, an Al-Anon book. I was asked to chair the meeting Sunday, and was asked to find something in this book. So I did. I never had such a response from a group of grown men and women before. Every one of the people were moved. And they spoke up, so candidly, about the affect the alcoholic and the alcoholism played on them or their children.

Here are the passages I read this past Sunday, written by those who struggled in the home as children; (from page 14)

In the alcoholic family, the need and demands of the alcoholic frequently dominate all other needs. Preoccupied with the alcoholic, the other family members may be too exhausted, irritated, or overwhelmed to provide for the children;s needs as well. Some children try to help their families cope by being quiet, good, and asking for nothing. While mastering the art of disappearing into a remote part of the house, or going to a friend's home, or becoming invisible in the midst of a crowd, those of us who "got lost" also lost a sense of self and the belief that our own needs had any validity. Some of us became human chameleons who changed our personalities to fit whatever social and personal environment we encountered.

Growing up with the chaos and unpredictability created by alcoholism cause many of us to mask our confusion, anger, and shame by trying to be perfect. To prove to ourselves and the world that there was nothing wrong with us or our families, we scrambled hard in school to get straight A's, or work feverishly at home to keep everything neat and tidy. We became star athletes, artists, corporation leaders, humanitarians, and outstanding citizens. Inside, however, we feel driven, terrified by failure unable to relax or play, and lonely. Toward less responsible people who seem to make our efforts at perfection harder, we often became self-righteous and angry. Convinced that something terrible will happen if we lose control, we run ourselves ragged trying to take charge of everything and never know how much is enough. Until we begin to recover, many of us are trapped in a compulsive need to give more, love more and do more.

Now I skip to page 17 in the same book.

Each member of an alcoholic family tries to adjust to the problem in his or her own way. Our adjustments depend on our situation in the family (whether we are a spouse, sibling, child, relative) and on our individual emotional temperaments. We have in common the tendency to keep changing ourselves to try to fix something that is not in our power to fix, someone else's alcoholism.

I add these words, to the final sentence instead of "someone else's alcoholism" - "that we did not cause, cannot change and cannot and should not take responsibility for. We are not responsible."

I think about that passage as it relates to my daughter.

Your Intuition

In our craziness, have we lost a certain "power" we once had? I believe one of our greatest gifts is the cultivation of our intuition. But in our chaos, we seem to have lost this gift. The noise that surrounds us is too loud to allow us to get a feeling, a sense or a gut feel of what else is going on, that perhaps we cannot see, feel, hear, smell or taste.

In "Hope for Today" there is a reading that talks about intuition. It goes onto say, "in your heart you already know." It talks about this feeling as a connection with your higher power. It is the voice in which our HP may speak to us.

In a book that I opened that I always carry with me, I turned to a page, this morning, and it says this, "In your heart, you already know exactly what you want. And if you listen to your intuition, it will tell you. Your mind will sell you out, but your intuition never will. Your intuition is your connection with the Ultimate Power. Learn to trust it."

Whatever our intuition is telling us is important. We need to quiet our minds and listen. I used to love getting in the car and just driving - anywhere! It gave me a chance to think. Now with cell phones, driving to get that quiet time is difficult to obtain.

If we can get back into the habit of escaping from the noise and listen to our intuition, our intuitive voice becomes stronger. But we have to make an effort. The more we trust it, the more it will tell us.

Control

Through Al-Anon we have learned that we cannot control it, did not cause it, nor can we cure it. The "it" of course is alcoholism. It is a "cunning, baffling and powerful disease." This is from psychologists and therapists who have actual experience in dealing with it.

So today I want to talk about "control."

Control. We need it in order for our lives to function. We need order. There is order in the universe. Nature is order. You have the four seasons. Day follows night. Time ticks away, one second, one minute, one hour, one day, one week, one month, one year - always. This is "order."

So when we have chaos, our natural tendency is to bring it back to order. We have to "fix" it. Whatever "it" is. With alcoholism fixing does not work. It makes more chaos. This is why it is a "baffling" disease. Fixing it through control from us - actually brings more disorder. It brings dysfunction to our lives and the lives of our children.

I read this in a passage somewhere, and thought "Wow. This is Zen-like." It really fits our predicament. It is thought proking and powerful. I have used this to remind myself of how I need to adject. Please ponder this for a moment:

"Whenever we try to control, we are actually being controlled."

We may be controlled by the chaos. Or the person who is causing the chaos. And we respond or are "controlled" by fixing it. This is okay in some cases. But with children, if we do this all the time, we provide the child a sense of "helplessness." We may be programming their minds that maybe they cannot do it themselves. And later in life, they may not function in society very well.

The same is true with the alcoholic. Except the alcoholic may "allow" us to do some things for him or her. Then we fall into co-dependence.

As we try to fix or control the alcoholic, and it does not work, we try harder. When we try harder and it still does not work, we can become angry and frustrated. This frustration maybe taken out on the wrong people. These people are people at work, our children, our neighbors, people in the car next to us, people in the grocery line - you get the picture. In addition, we beat ourselves up. We turn our anger inward.

After awhile we can begin to feel powerless. And perhaps this leads us to look for things outside ourselves to fill our void. Perhaps, we do nothing. We may slip into depression, isolation, or we, ourselves, get this "learned helplessness."

When we focus on controlling things outside our orbit (stand-up, hold your arms out - and spin once - that's your orbit), we actually lose power. We are trying to control things we cannot control. We cannot change things outside our orbit.

My message for today: Focus on controlling the things we can control. As in the serenity prayer,

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.