My first thought is why are you going to a 12 and 12 meeting, 12th tradition as a newcomer with 11 days into the program? Makes no sense to me. Choose meetings wisely and the material you are hearing to coincide with where you are in the work, the steps...your stepwork.
Wary? Uncomfortable? You felt these things from a meeting? Maybe it is just you. You are judging an oldtimer. Something happened that you didn't like. It wasn't what you wanted to hear. We judge and become righteous. How do we know that someone didn't need to hear what that member had to share? Maybe it was what that member needed to share for themselves and he was sharing his experience with anonymity.
You can change his message was to "his experience was"...and his is his - may not be yours, or what you want to hear. Maybe he was helping you. It is wise to be careful with who we tell our secrets to and whom to trust. The book advises us to do just that. Maybe he got burned and so he feels his experience is vital, or will help others to avoid what happened to him.
My experience is that my secrets have not been safe when I opened my mouth and gossiped about myself at group level. Maybe try listening and saving certain info for those you trust. You can talk it over with your sponsor without naming names.
Ask yourself what you can learn from this. What you have is an opportunity to see how you react and learn about yourself. You get to pardon this member and turn your thoughts away from this "problem" today.
What we focus on grows. There are instructions in the big book as to what to do with these feelings.
When people offend, we pray, "God save me from being angry".
We ask God to remove our resentments, praying only for His will for us and the power to carry that out.
You really judge this member. You say he made you uncomfortable and wary and then even more uncomfortable. You called his speaking a "rant" and complained over his attitude, and he was presenting a case, and he was condoning and justifying compromised anonymity, and then it turned into a sermon.
I learned from my sponsor that alcoholics can be big deal makers, very dramatic, selfish, and our brains attract chaos. Thoughts that AA is not good, they don't do it right, f-it...all lead to the downward spiral.
You can handle this situation constructively or destructively. Get a piece of paper and draw a line down the center. On one side list what it would look like to handle this situation constructively and the other destructively.
c/ find a new meeting, talk to my sponsor, forgive,
d/complain, judge, stop going to meetings
You have at least two ways to handle this. If you are unhappy, find a new group. We seek the fellowship we crave.
Do you have any guarantee of confidentiality anywhere?
Finally here comes the selfishness. (I only say this as I have recognized it in myself and say it only to help you.)
Poor me.
"I" had a really tough day.
"I" needed a meeting.
What's in it for me?
I didn't get what I wanted. It didn't go the way it should have for me. It should have been about me. They should have realized I was new and changed the topic to step one for me.
You left feeling worse because you judged and blocked out the good. We miss the good when we judge.
If you learned from it, if you were openminded, you would be leaving grateful.
It's all in how you interpreted it. Your perception. My perception was really lousy at times. Our main problem centers in our mind.
Blaming meeting for you feeling worse that you felt when you went in and for drinking thoughts.
Drinking thoughts are caused by the mental obsession of an alcoholic not a bad meeting, or bad people. Our minds. It's our main problem.
And now you are resentful with the program and the fellowship.
How to deal with this...
Ask God to remove your resentment.
Seek new meetings.
Talk to sponsor.
Pray.
Change focus from problem to solution, new action, different action that moves you away from the problem.
Get a service position, even if it's greeter, or making coffee.
It's alright. We have all been to a meeting where there was something said that we didn't like...I am sure.
"It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feeling we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.
If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.
We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look for it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.
This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.”
How It Works