Needing something, but not sure what...

[Wolf_22]

It's been somewhat rough for me for the past 2-3 days. A lot of it has to do with feeling insecure with myself. I don't really even know where to start because I've been doing pretty good with everything. It's almost as if I feel myself slipping or something.

School finals are around the corner this week and next, so I'm sure something about all this could have something to do with that. Finals week is always stressful. I'm not sure if this is responsible for my peculiar dreams, but as of lately, I've been having some very odd and emotionally sad dreams. One was of my ex-fiance from awhile back, and when I woke up, I felt somewhat happy because I felt as if she was in my life again, but then the reality hit me and I wanted to start crying.

My sleeping patterns seem to be going back and forth between receiving 8 hours to sometimes 4. As of right now, I feel this draining anxiety and paranoia about various things (mainly about my workplace). I feel paranoid about various co-workers and what I can and can't say to them throughout an everyday shift. I know this to be a "norm" in todays office, however I feel worse than normal as I am somehow able to over-analyze things such as emails, conversations, whatever...

I do feel alone, but not always. It's just durring the days where I see or sense something of my ex-fiance or parents or anything that was in my life that is now out of my life, but was bad. I've tried very hard to let go of these things that I've dealt with such as the separation of my ex as well as my alchoholic parents, and although I've come miles since, I still find myself battling some of the same things that I always have (such as the paranoia one is given in a chaotic, alchoholic living environment).

I've arranged a meeting with my therapist for this week, and although I feel that nothing will really happen out of it, I'm going to remain positive as much as possible, and try to keep pushing forward. Will this ever subside to the point to where I'm comfortable with my life? I'm so tired of fighting things I feel I've been fighting all my life. I know I need a break from my job, so I'm hoping that getting away durring the Christmas vacation will help, but I'm worried that I may fall victim to myself as I become exposed to myself in my apartment and the isolation I seem to place upon myself. I'm a very big nerd with computers, and it's my computer/web prowess that seems to have given me my job that I have now, so it's very rare for me to NOT be around my computer. I love my job, just not the isolation it provides sometimes because it leads to lonliness which leads to depression.

Any helpful feedback is appreciative as usual. You guys really are great, and I thank the lord that I worship everyday that I stumbled across these forums and found you!

[Gabe]

Wolf, I can be as antisocial as the next person.
So I get to say this.
You've got to force yourself to get out and be around people.
Isolation is not good and it usually leads us to emotional places we need not go.
What would make you comfortable with your life?
And what is making you uncomfortable with it?
Sometimes identifying these things is the first step towards making a change in the positive direction.
And take it from an expert.
Over-analyzing things will get you nowhere fast.
Boy, do I know all about that.

[Wolf_22]

Wolf, I can be as antisocial as the next person.
So I get to say this.
You've got to force yourself to get out and be around people.

I do this. I mean, the other day(s) I got out and played pool with some friends and got some coffee. It's just that I feel myself slipping with things of higher priority WHEN I do this. I'm not even sure if it's actually happening when I go out and have fun, but I always feel like everything I've worked hard for slipped away when I'm with friends.

Isolation is not good and it usually leads us to emotional places we need not go.

Don't you think that this depends on how well the individual handles lonliness? I usually handle it well, and I don't have problems making friends really, it's just that I have some issues with keeping them because I'm always looking out for better friends. I know this is bad, but I always look out for the friends that can provide more within the relationship. I've talked to my couselor about some of this kind of stuff, and one thing I feel I should point out about myself is that I'm usually attaining female friends that are overweight and not attractive. He informed me it was due to the fact that I wasn't expecting anything in terms of romance. I suppose it's true. What should I do about this? I feel like an idiot half the time when I try to make conversation with a decent looking women because half the time I analyze what I say, while the other half is thinking things about her (such as why she says things to me, what she looks like nude, whatever...). I guess I haven't grown up about some of this kind of stuff.

What would make you comfortable with your life?

If it was normal. lol. I think about my ex a bunch still and I know this is obsessive, but I don't care because I cared about her and I feel completely worthless because it didn't work out. I tried everything in my power to make it work, and to this day I still have the urge to both hate her and love her. Doesn't make any sense at all and I think thats half my issues. I just feel like I miss her so much, but on the same hand hate her for treating me horribly.

I feel as if my whole life is messed up because it's like I get on top of it all for about a week or month, and then I slip and fall back down again. I've always been someone who tried to fix his own problems, and I think this is why I'm probably comming off as an anti-social person. I think it's this self-preservational perspective on life that has made me paranoid about most everyday things like co-workers and women. Being a kid from a very alchoholic family, I think that it was a normal instinct to have this survival instinct because in these kinds of family's, there are no stable grounds anywhere, especially when both parents are like this.

I've done well with keeping to my altimadum with my mother. I told her that she either got help and stopped drinking, or else I would never talk to her again. It's now been about 3 years since I've talked to her. It's been now about 2 years since I've talked to my dad for doing some things he shouldn't have, and although I feel I was closer to him than my mother, I don't miss either of them. The thing I miss is the parental figure in my life because my grandmother has had to take up the slack in this aspect, and although I love my grandmother to death, it's just not the same.

I like to blame a lot of my issues on my famlily life as it has been a horrible dysfunction of my family. Sometimes I think I even use it as a scapegoat with things. My ex-girlfriend was one of these things for when I would blame her for cheating on my, I would break down and start crying because I didn't want her to think that I didn't trust her, so, I just blamed issues on my mom and dad. I know this was wrong, and I should've accepted my own rationale for my accusations, but it's just that I didn't want to lose her because somehow I always felt that my mother and father would always be there.

I don't really know how to turn off this "over analyzing" stuff. It's almost something thats like breathing for me; it just doesn't stop. The funny thing though is that sometimes my over analyzing serves me right. My grandmother always said that she thought I was over sensitive, and I think she's probably right about this. If thats the case, then what am I supposed to do about that? I think I'm Pandora's box...

[utopia]

wolf hon, have you got meetings nearby, are you going to a fellowship?

you cant do it alone. noone can, its that thing about being human. for me, ive learnt that theres a difference between isolation and solitude, being alone and lonely.

my childhood was abusive and alcoholic and there were good aspects too. anyway i did grow up to be very insecure, mistrusting, doubtful of peoples intentions.
i felt that life was a war, and that battle by battle i had to fight it, had to struggle and stand tall as the strong survivor i was, i see now i was sending out a message of "im better than you an i dont need you" which was not what i was intending. in a way i didnt want to rely on anything ever again to face what i had faced in my childhood. without my 12 steps, my recovery i would either be dead or in an asylum, theres no maybes about it. without a power greater than myself to love me i would never have gotten over the deep feelings of self-hatred and utter worthlessness, the cloud of misery and bittersweet nostalgia of life.

i spent a lot of my life looking for somethings and used many objects, people and substances but still it would not come, for me that fulfillment and filling of the emptiness was only to be found in spirituality, in the healing and growth of my soul. in recovery meetings when i share without interruption or criticism i develop DEEP TRUST, and i can also learn DETACHMENT and to cease my brains blah blah blahing when another shares. its been a process from within. i have to love and trust myself and the "god" of my understanding before i can let other people into my life. i over analysed their intentions and my own becuse of fears of being used and abused again, fears of not being perfect, ultimately, fears of just being a human being with all the frailties which help us learn. i send you much love and hope you find some light on your path. peace.

[ODAT]

I think about my ex a bunch still and I know this is obsessive, but I don't care because I cared about her and I feel completely worthless because it didn't work out. I just feel like I miss her so much, but on the same hand hate her for treating me horribly.

I've done well with keeping to my altimadum with my mother. I told her that she either got help and stopped drinking, or else I would never talk to her again. It's now been about 3 years since I've talked to her. It's been now about 2 years since I've talked to my dad for doing some things he shouldn't have, and although I feel I was closer to him than my mother, I don't miss either of them.

The thing I miss is the parental figure in my life because my grandmother has had to take up the slack in this aspect, and although I love my grandmother to death, it's just not the same.

My ex-girlfriend was one of these things for when I would blame her for cheating on my, I would break down and start crying because I didn't want her to think that I didn't trust her, so, I just blamed issues on my mom and dad. I know this was wrong, and I should've accepted my own rationale for my accusations, but it's just that I didn't want to lose her because somehow I always felt that my mother and father would always be there.
* * *
When I first came into recovery, I, too had a lot of issues with regards to my parents. I was both very angry with them and afraid and tired of being in the same role as I had always been and it was necessary to put a whole lot of distance between me and them at that time for many reasons.

One of the reasons was because whilst they were still in my life and I was learning new ways of being, I kept finding myself being pulled back into the old way of relating and I knew that this wasn't healthy. My way of dealing with things wasn't quite so direct, although in a way it was just as absolute. I was dealing with foggy memories of my childhood, lots of blank spaces, lots of enmeshment and unhealthiness with the present relationship at that time and I had tried to tell them over and over again that things just weren't healthy and needed to change. So, for me, the solution was to move--I moved to the other side of the country, changed my name, left a file with the police so that they knew I was ok if they tried to find me--and basically I disappeared. And I had no intention of every connecting with them again--things were never going to change, my Dad was never going to stop drinking and being horrid to my mother, my mother was never going to stop drinking and justifying my father and so I was done.

I, too, ended a relationship when I was out west--with a man with whom I both love and hated, with whom I had tried absolutely everything to make it work and with whom I had basically been re-living my father/daughter relationship with. The same basic dance with the same basic insecurities and such that I had lived for most of my childhood.

I tried finding a substitute parent in A.A. I picked a wonderful lady who was around my mother's age and who I related well to and respected greatly to be my surrigate mother. And, I picked an older gentleman in the program who had many years clean time, had written his own book of his journey in life and whom I also related well to and respected to be my surrigate father. And this worked for a while--I felt ok and was able to come to understand a few things about myself from these people.

From reading different books and such, from listening to different women and from doing alot of soul-searching, I began to understand that with regards to my relationship what it was that I was seeking, was the same acceptance that I had been seeking all of my life and never had received from my father. I wanted him to be proud of me. Nothing really more, nothing less. And yet, because of how my childhood was, the person I had picked to work through these issues--was indeed, just as incapable of giving or showing me that kind of acceptance as was my father. So, I was in a lose-lose scenario--always trying for that unobtainable thing, using things that just weren't going to work. The reasons why my father couldn't show me his pride or acceptance in me was because he couldn't feel it or show it to himself--and this was exactly the same reason why this person couldn't do so either. I was caught in a dance of trying to receive acceptance, mistrusting the things that were going on (and in this case I had good reason to mistrust them), being blamed for being mistrusting, realizing I was correct and walking away--and then going back to square one again. It was only after I had the realization of actually listening to myself crying out for this type of parental love that I understood in a momment or two of clarity and was able to leave this relationship.

What I learned to understand was that whilst my outside self had become a grown-up in the world, still there was a part of me--a big part of me--that was still essentially a child. And that child part of myself was operating things a lot more than it should--because not only had my parents ignored me as a child--but I was IGNORING that child part of myself just has my parents had. Basically, my child was needing ME to trust her, to listen to her and to reassure her--the acceptance and reassurance that I was seeking needed to come from my own adultside--not from outside sources.

I started to have recurring dreams too--a similar sleep pattern to what you have described. In my dreams I had moved to this wonderful little house on the side of a mountain--the flowers were beautiful and the sun was shining and it was just beautiful there. I could see myself and my children playing on the mountain side, yet I was so sad. I would try and send a letter or call my mother to have her come and see this place because it was just so beautiful and I know she and Dad would have loved the flowers too. But, the phone line kept breaking and they couldn't hear me--and then I'd wake up to such a heavy sadness that would stay with me for hours after waking.

I would remember the counsellors back in the town where I'd gone to university and gone to the long-term-trauma's groups--there was one there who would always say to us no matter how much things hurt or how crazy things seemed to be--"trust the process" she would say. And I guess this is what I did.

After a little while of having these dreams, I eventually ended up meeting my mother at an A.A. meeting in a town somewhere in the middle between the west coast and Ontario--during the time I had not spoken to her, she had left my father, gone into recovery and had moved to be with my older sister. And, in all honesty, if it had not been for the fact that for 3 years prior to this I had been practising talking with and to other women of her age who were in the program, I would likely have not been ready to meet with her again, nor my sister.

For the first time in forever, I was able to see my mother as something other than just my mother--as simply another screwed up individual who was a lot like me. And that was when the walls that I had constructed were able to start coming down. Rather than listening to her with judgements and a mind that was closed and full of pain, I was able to listen to her with as much acceptance and openness as I had ANY OTHER WOMAN in the program--for that was exactly who she was. Certainly, she was my mother, but she was also a woman, a woman struggling with a disease in much the same way I was. We agreed that I could talk about my father as my father--and that she could speak about him as her husband--2 separate relationships, 2 separate ways of looking at things, 2 separate sets of memories and it was with this type of openness that set the stage for the relationship that we have now. It was also with this type of openness that I was able to speak with my sister and clear up so many of the ghosts of the past that had haunted me for so many years.

I left the mid-west shortly after that--to come home and to start to try and work at being real with my father. I had read some other self-help books and although I can't remember the place where I read this, I remember reading that my relationship struggles would always follow me untill I had worked out my issues with my initial male/female relationship which was with that of father/daughter. I had to somehow learn to accept my father for who he was, to somehow separate his disease from the person and to maintain my own sobriety through this--to basically heal the rift that had been created in the past. This took a lot of work--at first he was happy to see me and I began being somewhat dishonest about some things with him inorder to 'keep the peace'. This was one of the things I had done in some of my relationships--keeping quiet about times when I was tired, or had not set proper boundaries for fear of that person leaving me--and then growing to resent them because I was tired or angry or hungry or lonely. I had to learn basically how to be an adult-child in and adult/adult relationship rather than a child-adult in and child/adult relationship with my father--don't know if you can understand what am trying to say. Just that before, when I had been around my Dad, my child had sort of ran the show--I would be reacting to my fathers fears which had been passed down to me--rather than to be able to be the leader, I was the follower--rather than being able to be totally honest about who I was--I sort of sank some of my personality inorder to not dammage the calmness of the waters.

All of this, I had to change--and I'm lucky that in my case, I was able to do so. My father is still drinking and is now dying basically from the disease of alcoholism. His liver is just about gone, heart gone, kidney's failing and has been hospitalized more times than I can count in the past year or so. Yet, although he has tried to stop drinking, tried to stop smoking and tried to eat a healthier diet--and certainly he has been able to 'cut down' a lot--still he persists. He is told by the doctors to take things easy--let out of the hospital--only to try digging the garden or refitting the roof or whatever and end up back in the hospital a day or so later. He still has mood swings and has episodes of being angry and such--only difference now is that his moods and such don't affect me in my own recovery. I can, finally, accept him and be completely myself when I am around him and I can appreciate all of the good parts about him.

Whilst I understand that my past and story is mine and mine alone, there were little bits and pieces along the way that made sense to me from others who's past were different than mine. One of the things that I would urge you to do if you are not already doing it, is to get out your bigbook and read and re-read it little bits at a time. Think about some of the principles and the steps and maybe start looking at how you could work the steps with regards to your own family and possibly somehow learn to separate the disease within them from the people that they are.

Remember that it clearly says that 'we' were alcoholic and our lives had become unmanagable--not I. For me, basically what that says is that yes, I need meetings, yes, I need community. The higher power thing--that sort of helps us /helped me--to relax somewhat and to trust the process. Where at the beginning of my journey I needed separation from my parents and my past inorder to simply get clean--after I had gotten clean, I needed to then heal that relationship with both my parents and my past inorder to STAY clean. Where at the beginning with regards to my parents, all I could see was how they had hurt me, how they had betrayed me and such--after doing some of what the other members had suggested to work through anger and resentments and such--after a while I learned to look at how I had betrayed them--how I had hurt them and what I could do to make amends for that pain that I had caused them. I learned to pray for them--to really pray for them--not that they would get clean and sober or anything of the like, because that is their story and up to God to dictate, not for me to make demands and such which they might not be able to keep. But I mean pray for them as in to pray that they get everything in their life that I would want in mine--happiness, joy, freedom and peace. And as I continue to do that, have done that--I have been able to move from that feeling of isolation and such and feeling hurt and such from my past, angry towards my parents and such--to feeling at peace with the past and to understand that although my parents were and are sick, I can love them anyways and see the good that is mixed with all of the sickness. And, to a degree, this helps me to love and accept me--and the other imperfect people in my life--my husband and children for example.

I would draw your attention in particular to the tradition which ends with principles before personalities--trust the process, connect with others in recovery (both done to different degrees each day I'm sure), learn to parent yourself, practise honesty, keep trusting the process (its quite possible that the sadness from your dreams is coming from your hurts from the past, or a basic need to connect with our parents that hasn't been fulfilled) keep praying that third-step prayer, keep praying for yourself and for those that have hurt you, keep trying to practise the principles in ALL your affairs, and eventually you will find that this is just another one of the valleys that we go through on the spiritual path. Remember too, that whilst the peaks are wonderful, it is through the valleys that we grow--momments of clarity only come after momments of confusion--and if happiness/joy and sorrow/grief are both sides of the same coin--then as you shed this sorrow, increasing happiness will come.

God bless