intention

Hi, I know the issues you have with your mum but maybe it might be wise to accept her offer of paying for childcare in the short term. If the kids are happier.....it will help you. If they are safer, it will help you. You can deal with your feelings about her later when working the steps with your sponsor.


This is from Beyond the Influence by Katherine Ketchum and William Asbury and may seem relevant to you right now.

"Irritating or annoying events such as a traffic jam, the neighbors barking dog, a child's piercing scream, or a bounced check get blown out of all proportion. Pyschologist James Milam calls this emotional explosiveness "augmentation." When the brains cells are hyperactive, having been bathed in alcohol for a period of time and then left to dry out, even a slight provocation will set the nerves on fire.

"When I had a bad hangover and the phone rang" one recovering alcoholic recalls "it was like World War three going off in my head". Another alcoholic recalls how she would curl up in a ball when her children fought with each other. Only after several months of recovery was she able to deal with loud noises and intense emotional displays.

When a situation that would normally rate low on the irritability scale gets and exteme response, its obvious that something else is going on. That's augmentation: The brain is agitated by alcohol and any stimulus moving throught its hyperactive cells is going to seem bigger, stronger, louder and more emotionally jarring than it actually is.

Augmentation is a process that happens to everyone, alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike. If you're exhausted from lack of sleep and a friend looks at you cross-eyed, you might feel like bursting into tears or punching them on the nose. When you have the flu, you might be extremely sensitive to loud noises or certain smells. A week or so before their menstrual periods, many women experience a heightened sensitivity, created by hormonal shifts to physical and emotional stimuli. "