Steps 1-3, Choices
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Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: sarnia ontario
Posts: 128
Steps 1-3, Choices
After reading some of the posts here, I feel compelled to revisit the steps and to remind myself just what they mean to me. Remembering that Alanon is open to people of all religions, class and denominations, that it is through working the steps and using the tools that we eventually find that all allusive butterfly....serenity.
Step 1 We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
Usually in the past I figured that meant simply the "I didn't cause it=I can't control it=I can't heal it" type of blanket statement and not a whole lot further. And that would be fine except that if I stop at there, then it means that simply by removing the alcoholic from the home, by refusing to have any contact with him at all, I would be much happier and healthier. And yet, over and over again I am reminded that I am in recovery not so much for 'him' but for me. Because even without him being there......I AM STILL DEALING with the effects of MY OWN SICKNESS....my own alcoholism......that I can be just as alcoholic as he without even taking a drink.
Step II Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
When I do the same thing over and over and keep expecting different results I am insane. When I arrange my life so that I am relying on a person that is proven to be unpredictable I am acting insanely. When I expect my children to be anything other than children I am acting insanely. When I get upset because of something someone does or says.....when I continue to allow old thoughts of beliefs that have proven to be out-dated and unhealthy.....then I am insane. All of these are evidence of how I can live in insanity.....even when I try all on my lonesome to change things...isolating myself by not going to meetings, not reaching out.....then I am living in insanity. And I have to start to believe that an HP regardless of who I choose to call it.....my HP can restore me to sanity along with all of us.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Often times this step is problemmatic. For me, it meant throwing out my old concept of who God was and accepting a new and loving God in His place. Often times I have gotten confuzled in this area because it seems that an organized religion of some kind seemed to go directly against what my own HP appeared to be trying to show me. I grew up with a God that punished. He was definately male, had no concept of what it was like to be female and told us all that we were secondary citizens to the men around us.
I had to learn that that concept was one that would keep me sick. Fortunately for me, I became open for a while to other religions and to what they had to offer. Native religion taught me that women can have power, that God is my Creator and as such wants whats best for me. Just as I create a child and want whats best for that child....so to will He steer me in the right direction if I am open to that. Buddism taught me how to relax and to meditate...how to focus on the breath and to be still and without 'thought' long enough to really listen. And then back to scriptures but this time to read AFTER praying for direction and understanding.
With regards to marriage I was reminded that although all of the verses that compell a woman to remain, there were also verses that give her options to leave. Man is to be had of the house AS Christ was the head of the church....and if by staying with him I had to behave in a manner such as was against my concept of what was good......then I had no alternative but to leave, or accept the consequences that came should I stay. For each of us it is different.....that is why we are taught to have an HP rather than a definate form of God....because we are all individuals with different beliefs and different paths to follow.
One of the hardest things about this program, one of the hardest concepts for me to get is/was the concept of the recovery being for me. Alanon was not a place where I could learn some new and inventive ways of trying to control HIS life and drinking.....it was a place where I could come and learn new ways for ME to deal with my own life.
And it gets very hard to separate the two when you have lived for so long totally enwrapped in someone elses stuff. I had to learn that God was God......not the alcoholic in my life and not myself. See, I always seemed to fall back into the pattern of putting his needs and his wants and his stuff above my own....his reasonings always seemed to make more sense somehow EVEN when I knew fine well they were false. If he was having a good day, I was. If he was having a bad day, I was. If he liked me that day and stayed happy and sober, then it was a good day. If he was angry or insulted me, or got drunk, or did any of the 101 things that used to tick me off......then I had a rotten day....and it was ALL HIS fault.....took a long time for me to grasp that I could have a good day regardless of what anyone else thought or did.
Am hoping that by going over these for me, perhaps it will bring some other people into sharing specifically about what the steps and such mean for them. I am a great believer in the steps of the program....especially for how they work for Alanons and without the ability at the momment to get to meetings.....well, I'm hoping that some will respond and maybe give me some feedback with their own miracles. At the momment I recognize that I am just waking up yet again to the fact that I am still co-dependant, still just as sick as I was the first day I came to the program.....because for so long I have been out of the loop so to speak. Old resentments are resurfacing, old fears are taking control, and this time.....I have no one to blame really other than myself. Because basically I have been on my own now for 3 years.....
So, tonight I am saying the third step prayer....'take my life God, and work with it as You please...." and hopefully I will start to see more changes. I already have even just writing in to this board...I have been praying more often, thanking God at night and asking for help in the morning and I am already much, much happier....
God bless and wish everyone continued recovery.
Step 1 We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
Usually in the past I figured that meant simply the "I didn't cause it=I can't control it=I can't heal it" type of blanket statement and not a whole lot further. And that would be fine except that if I stop at there, then it means that simply by removing the alcoholic from the home, by refusing to have any contact with him at all, I would be much happier and healthier. And yet, over and over again I am reminded that I am in recovery not so much for 'him' but for me. Because even without him being there......I AM STILL DEALING with the effects of MY OWN SICKNESS....my own alcoholism......that I can be just as alcoholic as he without even taking a drink.
Step II Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
When I do the same thing over and over and keep expecting different results I am insane. When I arrange my life so that I am relying on a person that is proven to be unpredictable I am acting insanely. When I expect my children to be anything other than children I am acting insanely. When I get upset because of something someone does or says.....when I continue to allow old thoughts of beliefs that have proven to be out-dated and unhealthy.....then I am insane. All of these are evidence of how I can live in insanity.....even when I try all on my lonesome to change things...isolating myself by not going to meetings, not reaching out.....then I am living in insanity. And I have to start to believe that an HP regardless of who I choose to call it.....my HP can restore me to sanity along with all of us.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Often times this step is problemmatic. For me, it meant throwing out my old concept of who God was and accepting a new and loving God in His place. Often times I have gotten confuzled in this area because it seems that an organized religion of some kind seemed to go directly against what my own HP appeared to be trying to show me. I grew up with a God that punished. He was definately male, had no concept of what it was like to be female and told us all that we were secondary citizens to the men around us.
I had to learn that that concept was one that would keep me sick. Fortunately for me, I became open for a while to other religions and to what they had to offer. Native religion taught me that women can have power, that God is my Creator and as such wants whats best for me. Just as I create a child and want whats best for that child....so to will He steer me in the right direction if I am open to that. Buddism taught me how to relax and to meditate...how to focus on the breath and to be still and without 'thought' long enough to really listen. And then back to scriptures but this time to read AFTER praying for direction and understanding.
With regards to marriage I was reminded that although all of the verses that compell a woman to remain, there were also verses that give her options to leave. Man is to be had of the house AS Christ was the head of the church....and if by staying with him I had to behave in a manner such as was against my concept of what was good......then I had no alternative but to leave, or accept the consequences that came should I stay. For each of us it is different.....that is why we are taught to have an HP rather than a definate form of God....because we are all individuals with different beliefs and different paths to follow.
One of the hardest things about this program, one of the hardest concepts for me to get is/was the concept of the recovery being for me. Alanon was not a place where I could learn some new and inventive ways of trying to control HIS life and drinking.....it was a place where I could come and learn new ways for ME to deal with my own life.
And it gets very hard to separate the two when you have lived for so long totally enwrapped in someone elses stuff. I had to learn that God was God......not the alcoholic in my life and not myself. See, I always seemed to fall back into the pattern of putting his needs and his wants and his stuff above my own....his reasonings always seemed to make more sense somehow EVEN when I knew fine well they were false. If he was having a good day, I was. If he was having a bad day, I was. If he liked me that day and stayed happy and sober, then it was a good day. If he was angry or insulted me, or got drunk, or did any of the 101 things that used to tick me off......then I had a rotten day....and it was ALL HIS fault.....took a long time for me to grasp that I could have a good day regardless of what anyone else thought or did.
Am hoping that by going over these for me, perhaps it will bring some other people into sharing specifically about what the steps and such mean for them. I am a great believer in the steps of the program....especially for how they work for Alanons and without the ability at the momment to get to meetings.....well, I'm hoping that some will respond and maybe give me some feedback with their own miracles. At the momment I recognize that I am just waking up yet again to the fact that I am still co-dependant, still just as sick as I was the first day I came to the program.....because for so long I have been out of the loop so to speak. Old resentments are resurfacing, old fears are taking control, and this time.....I have no one to blame really other than myself. Because basically I have been on my own now for 3 years.....
So, tonight I am saying the third step prayer....'take my life God, and work with it as You please...." and hopefully I will start to see more changes. I already have even just writing in to this board...I have been praying more often, thanking God at night and asking for help in the morning and I am already much, much happier....
God bless and wish everyone continued recovery.
Supply Manager
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Cleaverville
Posts: 2,898
Taira,
What a lovely and insightful post. I also had a slip when I was away from meetings and I had to remind myself and revisit the program. I did that here.
Step one...my son is no longer in my home but is very much in my life. He is in jail and I have been having a difficult time with it. Much more difficult than I would care to admit with many years of recovery under my belt. I AM powerless over his addiction. In this sence I am powerless over the results of his continued drinking. I am powerless over the consequences of his actions. The only power I have is over myself, my recovery and my happiness. I have to acknowledge that power that I do have and claim it.
Step two...Coming to believe. For me indecision is insanity today. By believing in a power greater than myself I am allowed to ask for help. All too often I rely on my own intellect to solve the problem of the day. Coming to believe allows me to turn it over. My weakness is taking it back.
Step three...Made a decision...ahh that may be the fly in my ointment. Indecision is my particular insanity today. Being required to make a decision to turn my will and my life over is the decision I need to work on (one more time) to quiet todays insanity. All the other decisions in my life are merely noice....background chatter. That clutter is getting in the way of the biggest decision of my life, turning my will and my life over to the care of God. There are no decisions bigger than that and if I have successfully accomplished that feat the rest simply flows.
Thanks,
JT
What a lovely and insightful post. I also had a slip when I was away from meetings and I had to remind myself and revisit the program. I did that here.
Step one...my son is no longer in my home but is very much in my life. He is in jail and I have been having a difficult time with it. Much more difficult than I would care to admit with many years of recovery under my belt. I AM powerless over his addiction. In this sence I am powerless over the results of his continued drinking. I am powerless over the consequences of his actions. The only power I have is over myself, my recovery and my happiness. I have to acknowledge that power that I do have and claim it.
Step two...Coming to believe. For me indecision is insanity today. By believing in a power greater than myself I am allowed to ask for help. All too often I rely on my own intellect to solve the problem of the day. Coming to believe allows me to turn it over. My weakness is taking it back.
Step three...Made a decision...ahh that may be the fly in my ointment. Indecision is my particular insanity today. Being required to make a decision to turn my will and my life over is the decision I need to work on (one more time) to quiet todays insanity. All the other decisions in my life are merely noice....background chatter. That clutter is getting in the way of the biggest decision of my life, turning my will and my life over to the care of God. There are no decisions bigger than that and if I have successfully accomplished that feat the rest simply flows.
Thanks,
JT
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: ohio
Posts: 322
Taira
great post for me, as i have been trying to work the steps into my life and have had a difficult time with step 3.
step 1: when i discovered last year that my daughter was an alcoholic and soon after my son ,alcoholic/bi polar, my life fell apart very quickly and also quickly saw my powerlessness over this big huge alcohol thing. My life was unmanagable.
step 2: so insane, i was so crazy and did so many crazy things in that zeal to save my family that i wanted to , had to believe that my HP would restore me to sanity. He has done that and now continues to do that for all the years prior that I was messed up and didnt know it until the program began to click in and i saw that is was all realy about me and not those in my life.
step 3:i believe it was in Hope for Today that i read this morning that I see maybe I can give my will up one minute or hour at a time. that it doesnt have to be a say it once and for all times kind of thing. I have done my will for so many years ! turning it all over at once has looked very difficult and ominus to me. However, reading that it can be small pieces at a time may be a beginning for me. To let myself be conscious of turning my stubborn will over slowly gives me hope.
thank you so much for bringing the steps up today taira.
progress not perfection !
Hugs
liddy
great post for me, as i have been trying to work the steps into my life and have had a difficult time with step 3.
step 1: when i discovered last year that my daughter was an alcoholic and soon after my son ,alcoholic/bi polar, my life fell apart very quickly and also quickly saw my powerlessness over this big huge alcohol thing. My life was unmanagable.
step 2: so insane, i was so crazy and did so many crazy things in that zeal to save my family that i wanted to , had to believe that my HP would restore me to sanity. He has done that and now continues to do that for all the years prior that I was messed up and didnt know it until the program began to click in and i saw that is was all realy about me and not those in my life.
step 3:i believe it was in Hope for Today that i read this morning that I see maybe I can give my will up one minute or hour at a time. that it doesnt have to be a say it once and for all times kind of thing. I have done my will for so many years ! turning it all over at once has looked very difficult and ominus to me. However, reading that it can be small pieces at a time may be a beginning for me. To let myself be conscious of turning my stubborn will over slowly gives me hope.
thank you so much for bringing the steps up today taira.
progress not perfection !
Hugs
liddy
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: sarnia ontario
Posts: 128
Thanks for input. I really find that by concentrating on the steps and trying to work them into my life, life seems to get better--I seem to get happier and I am finding even more so now that those steps are there to benefit me just as much now when I no longer worry so much about 'the alcoholic' as when I was living, or trying to live, with him.
It is supportive to read that for others this is the same. For now, I have tried each morning and night this week to give myself some time and have been thinking more along the lines of the steps during different points in the day and I am noticing a huge improvement in the way I am thinking even with just these few days.
I was the person who came into the doors of Alanon, much like alot of people, when crisis had hit....I was in a relationship with an alcoholic and wondering if this was all that life had to offer. Then after I gained enough courage through the program to send him packing, I slowly went to less meetings and eventually stopped for a while. Untill I found myself back at the beginning of the cycle, dating yet another alcoholic. This was to become sort of a cycle....and each time things within the cycle got that little bit worse.
So I took a break from relationships, kept trying to go to meetings but found that the job I had taken on didn't really allow that to happen. So here I am again, and this time there is no alcoholic I am dating, no huge danger signs that I can see headed down on that score and yet....still I was reverting back to old behaviors. Kids couldn't seem to do anything right, I couldn't seem to do anything right, feeling like 'everyones against me' at work and just general stuff like that.
I am dating again. This time he's not an alcoholic in or out of recovery, but he is a person who has worked miracles with a weight-loss program, losing something like 165lbs' in the last year I have known him. And you know what? Yup....I find myself getting all tied up in knots....worrying not so much about alcohol....now its turned to food.
He is on this strict program and thing is....I am one of those people who forget to eat, eat gigantic amounts of food when I do eat....and if anything I have to worry about not eating enough, not the opposite. And yet, I find myself afraid to mention food in general to this guy in case I 'set him off' and he stops his program because of something I said. And its ridiculous. One of my biggest enjoyments in life is cooking and baking and here I am scared to tell him when something I made is a success (you know, the kind of dinner the kids say mmmmmm and want more off--and its NOT Kd and hotdogs)..... He doesn't drink, but goes out on Fridays to a gaming thing.....and on those nights I revert strangely back to thoughts and feelings based on....'there see? HE's off out...I'm stuck in here.......yada yada....." and I caught
myself doing this last week and just shook my head.
Time for a meeting......time to go back. I am happy that I came to Alanon.....that there is a program out there for people like me who without constant reassurance and reminders can get so wrapped up in worry and old mind sets that life can get pretty hard very quickly.
It is supportive to read that for others this is the same. For now, I have tried each morning and night this week to give myself some time and have been thinking more along the lines of the steps during different points in the day and I am noticing a huge improvement in the way I am thinking even with just these few days.
I was the person who came into the doors of Alanon, much like alot of people, when crisis had hit....I was in a relationship with an alcoholic and wondering if this was all that life had to offer. Then after I gained enough courage through the program to send him packing, I slowly went to less meetings and eventually stopped for a while. Untill I found myself back at the beginning of the cycle, dating yet another alcoholic. This was to become sort of a cycle....and each time things within the cycle got that little bit worse.
So I took a break from relationships, kept trying to go to meetings but found that the job I had taken on didn't really allow that to happen. So here I am again, and this time there is no alcoholic I am dating, no huge danger signs that I can see headed down on that score and yet....still I was reverting back to old behaviors. Kids couldn't seem to do anything right, I couldn't seem to do anything right, feeling like 'everyones against me' at work and just general stuff like that.
I am dating again. This time he's not an alcoholic in or out of recovery, but he is a person who has worked miracles with a weight-loss program, losing something like 165lbs' in the last year I have known him. And you know what? Yup....I find myself getting all tied up in knots....worrying not so much about alcohol....now its turned to food.
He is on this strict program and thing is....I am one of those people who forget to eat, eat gigantic amounts of food when I do eat....and if anything I have to worry about not eating enough, not the opposite. And yet, I find myself afraid to mention food in general to this guy in case I 'set him off' and he stops his program because of something I said. And its ridiculous. One of my biggest enjoyments in life is cooking and baking and here I am scared to tell him when something I made is a success (you know, the kind of dinner the kids say mmmmmm and want more off--and its NOT Kd and hotdogs)..... He doesn't drink, but goes out on Fridays to a gaming thing.....and on those nights I revert strangely back to thoughts and feelings based on....'there see? HE's off out...I'm stuck in here.......yada yada....." and I caught
myself doing this last week and just shook my head.
Time for a meeting......time to go back. I am happy that I came to Alanon.....that there is a program out there for people like me who without constant reassurance and reminders can get so wrapped up in worry and old mind sets that life can get pretty hard very quickly.
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