The use of imagry can be powerful.
I have an image I conjur in my mind when I start to see my ABF as helpless, and I feel the need to mommy him and not stay on my side of the street.
I imagine my ABF as a two-year-old toddling down the opposite side of the road from me dragging an axe along behind him. Those instinctive feelings of rushing to him and saving him from himself and from the world well up in force.
Then I image my ABF on that same road opposite me dragging that same axe but as the grown 30+-year-old often intoxicated man that he is.
....well, I don't have to tell you how quickly those feelings drain from me and how easy it is to want to stay on my own damn side of the street from him with that image in my mind.
Stay strong.
Stay with us.
Stay on your side of the street.
Alice