View Single Post
Old 01-01-2011, 05:54 AM
  # 34 (permalink)  
Bucyn
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 223
Originally Posted by goldengirl3 View Post
My counselor talks in a lot of analogies. I continued to ask and say I don't understand. So he gave another.

"Imagine you are walking with someone down a beach. Beautiful. The waves are crashing. The sun is setting. Seagulls. Looking at your partner and smiling. Hand in hand. Then...you accidently step on a sharp rock. Your foot is bleeding. The pain is intense. Suddenly, you can't see the seagulls. You aren't hearing the waves crash. You don't notice the sunset. All you can see and feel is the pain in your foot."
Of course, if the person is PURPOSEFULLY stepping on the sharp rock over and over and refuses to stop inflicting pain on themselves, well... that's different, isn't it?

There's hardly an alcoholic who doesn't truly know s/he's got a problem. It's kind of clear with the being sick all the time, lost jobs, the lost relationships, the bitter fights with loved ones, the mounting failures, and the people telling you straight out: you need to stop drinking. There's a clue of some sort. "Denial" is never so strong that the truth/realization doesn't break through eventually: "This pain is caused by stepping on sharp rocks."

Alcoholics may accidentally get themselves addicted, slide into it unaware, I acknowledge that fully--nobody drinks with the goal of becoming an alkie--but eventually every alcoholic I've ever heard of admits, if only for a few moments that they have a drinking problem and need to get it under control. And then they choose "denial", ie, choose not to enjoy the sunset, beach, hand-in-hand partner, they chose to step on the sharp rock again, they chose to be oblivious to the good stuff around them, they choose the pain, blood, and sharp rock.

And when it gets to that point, is the loving partner really expected to muster up continual sympathy and halt their own journey along the beach to tend to the endless, pointless, crisises of the other who insists on stepping on that rock over and over and over again?
Bucyn is offline