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Old 09-18-2010, 04:39 AM
  # 2 (permalink)  
Learn2Live
To thine own self be true.
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: U.S.A.
Posts: 5,924
last night, after a fight with adult son, i feel so worthless. i said things in anger, again. he knows which buttons to push, even telling me that i use him as a scapegoat!
Right. Reacting in anger can make me feel so worthless and bad and horrible. Because it just does not match up to my values and morals. But when I include alcoholics and addicts in my life who are not in Recovery, I fight, yell and scream all the time.

Why? Many reasons but mostly because they WANT to push my buttons. They WANT to hook me right back in to the crap they call their life. You see, they HAVE TO do this to me, so that I can explode and overreact and scream and yell and behave poorly, so that they can continue to point their finger at me and believe for themselves that I am the problem.

You see, EVERY time you fall for this trick, you are perpetuating the disease. EVERY time you react, their minds say, "Look at how horrible she acts. Look at how she treats me. Look at how she is using me." And they go on feeling OK about and even JUSTIFIED in their drinking and bad behavior. YOU are his alcoholism's scapegoat and you keep falling for it.

Here's my advice:
Stop reacting. Learn to just breathe. Get smart to his game. Learn how to step back. Inhibit yourself. Stop listening to him.

i know i cant fix him, but i want him to think about it. if he is not an alcoholic, i want him to be afraid to be one. i know, let go. but how?
What right do you have to choose for someone else when and how they should think? Or how to feel? Do you honestly believe you can control how someone else thinks and feels?
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