dolce7dolore

I know I've posted so many threads and I apologize if I'm getting in the way, I just really have no where else to go right now.

I just got back from an Al-anon meeting. I feel absolutely horrible. I finally spoke and felt connected with the two children of, and one thanked me for speaking after wards... but I'm feeling very guilty and like I spoke too negatively. I'm not going back. It's not that I am not seeking group help, I crave that right now, to find someone else in the world who has gone through what I have. However, what I found tonight was a bunch of spouses who have no clue what I'm going through and the same old feeling of isolation returns. I do not believe in a spiritual power, I do not believe that I should accept my alcoholic mother and love her for the way that she is as one group member suggested I do. I refuse to. That's what I've been doing all of my life, how is that right? Again, the same isolation. I could dispute almost everything that they were saying, I was different again. I also don't know the purpose of the group, because I was just naturally trying to have a conversation and connect with other people. I now feel like a terrible person for doing so and ruining their meeting tonight.

Anybody else have a similar experience, or did you just seem to fit right in? I've got 6 more months left to try alateen and then they exclude me. Anyone know what goes on at those meetings and if I might fit in there? Or even ACoA meetings?

Excuse the whining--emotional wreck here.

Aesakitty

I have never attended a meeting, so I can not give you direct advice. What I can do is share what I have done. I attended a year of personal counsiling. I ended this when my insurance would no longer cover it. I read books about recovering from abusive relationships and wrote in a journal. I have an addict mother and have not seen her in over two years. I have no plans to include her in my life ever again. I do not love her as she is. It was hard at first, being the only person I knew without parents. Today it is just how things are, and I am ok with it. I was convinced I was the only one who felt different and strange. It turns many people who have been abused feel the same way. Everyday it gets better.

dothi

You're not alone in this feeling. When I was a teenager I had an extremely hard time arranging transportation to these meetings. When I did go, the religious undercurrent was too much of a trigger for me to feel comfortable (grew up in an extremely religious household, so no, was not interested in another spiritual power governing my life). Finding a counsellor bridged that isolation gap for me. It wasn't enough just to speak about it outloud; feedback had to be part of that process (part of what makes posting on this site so gratifying). Even just a, "that's insightful" or "you're right, that was unfair" can really go a long way.

Al-anon is a first step, though, to realizing that alcoholism isn't your problem alone.
That sucks. You're meeting people in random stages of recovery, and unfortunately those in early stages have no idea how cutting their careless words can be. They're still spinning in their A-focussed world and unable to relate to people outside that system. Don't take it personally.

Do try Alateen. The point is to connect with someone, right? I found having even 1-2 friends that I could honestly talk to really helped. We could make progress together, you know?

Worse come to worse, if you don't find a good connection, use this website as your backup. This particular forum can be slow, so do try posting in the "Friends and Family" section (I've noticed other ACoAs posting there as well, so you might attract like-minded folks).

Alcoholism is just so challenging this way. We can all be going through or have gone through the same thing, but the changes to your perspective when going through recovery can be so profound that you can't even relate to the person you were a year ago. So sometimes it's just bad luck being out of sync with fellow posters. Hang in there

dolce7dolore

Thank you both for responding to me, it is really helping.

This last week has been such a whirlwind for me, but mainly I've been having these really good bouts of optimism, until I went to alanon tonight that is... my counselor said to go, books I'm reading say I need connections (which I do want still), but for whatever reason tonight was not a safe environment and it really brought up powerful emotions I can't face right now. I'm glad that you mentioned the thing about religion. It's like that's all they talk about and I just am not willing to relate to that. It's like I'm trying to fake it by being there.

Hearing this helped to clear away my extreme feelings of guilt and how I responded to those people. I was not in a good state a few minutes ago and this post of yours helped immensely dothi. Thanks. I have now reached a feeling of calmness

GiveLove

Dolce,

I had to try three meetings before I found one where the people "got" me. Like you, I really needed the group support, but I didn't need it badly enough to be with a group of people who had no idea what I was going through. It was, like, worse than nothing at all.

But the third time was a charm for me and I found a few people I shared common ground with. IT IS NOT THAT WE ALL AGREED. But we were able to listen to each other, see that each others' ideas might have merit for someone, and not walk away angry.

Mostly, it sounds (and I wasn't there, so I shouldn't pass judgment) that there were members there trying to give you advice, tell you what you should do. That's not common, if indeed that's what happened. Or maybe people just said, "Here's what I've learned to do" and you took it like they were saying you should do that too............I know for myself, whenever I say anything like, "This is what I'm trying to do", I don't EVER mean, "This is also the best way for you." Maybe they didn't mean any harm.

In a perfect world, we COULD love our alcoholic loved ones for who and what they are AND STILL be 100% free to get on with our own detachment, healing, and self-esteem issues. I will continue to try to get there until I die. If these meeting people have gotten there, more power to them.

For what it's worth, I'm not religious either, and so I had to hunt around to find a group that wasn't that religious. It made me uncomfortable.

Wishing for you the support and clarity that I've found through my own Al-Anon experience and through SR. You are not in the way, not here and not at any meeting. You are an important part of things.

dolce7dolore

It is such a relief to hear that other people had a hard time with going at first. I do think the religious aspect is a hard part for me. I think one of my main problems was the woman who's running it. For whatever reason, I just can't connect with her. Maybe it's as simple as the fact that some of her expressions and facial features remind me of my mom and my grandma actually. So that alone is hard, and I felt a sense of disdain from her last week when she kept asking if I wanted to talk and I kept saying no. She also smiled in a condescending way like she knows what I'm going through when I teared up from another child's speech. That was annoying.

Most of the members weren't giving advice. A lot of them gave constructive examples as to how they dealt with situations. I definitely connected with some individuals and liked their insight. I was being very negative, make no doubt about that, and I really think it was making some of the other members uncomfortable. So I walked away feeling that I was saying the wrong things. Like I have to be positive or something. I gave my little speech, about the stage my mom is in, completely content. And then some really old woman said something about how we do just need to accept the people we love exactly the way they are and for who they are, then said "just like your mom." So I'm pretty sure that old woman was giving advice, and then right after that, the woman who runs it said something like "people put too much emphasis on the alcohol, because once it's taken away, people find they still have problems," to which I responded, "Yeah, I'm learning just how horrible my mom is when she's sober. Which is really scary." Then they pretty much went straight into prayer right after that. I didn't know they were closing the meeting! I felt such a strong sense of guilt for possibly making others uncomfortable at my words and making things awkward when the rest were trying to be positive and constructive. I wasn't constructive, and I ended up feeling like I was whining.

That was why I came here. I want to find other groups, maybe just another environment?

tromboneliness

If there's a religious aspect, that's not the right meeting. I'm basically an atheist, so I don't like it when people start going on and on about "my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God." But that just means you need to find another meeting -- Al-Anon is supposed to be "a spiritual program, not a religious program." That's where "God as we understood him" came in -- there was a lot of fighting about that in AA 60 years ago, when they wrote the Big Book and set down a lot of the 12-step stuff on paper. Agnostics have always had a place in the program, and religion should not stomp on them.

Nothing wrong with being negative -- don't worry about it. If you've been in the program for 15-20 years and are still being negative, that will indicate that you've got some issues to work on -- but early on, that's no problem. If your parents are toxic, by all means hammer them at meetings -- that is totally acceptable and should not subject you to criticism from other members.

That said, at the end of the day, the program is about you, not about the people who "qualify" you for Al-Anon (or ACoA or whatever program you're doing). After awhile, you'll find that you start focusing more on yourself and what you can do, rather than on the people you can't change.

It's hard -- I have a medallion in my pocket that says XIII (meaning I started in 1995), but I still don't have a clue, a lot of the time. I keep going back to Step 1 and saying, "things I can change, things I can't change," and trying to figure that out. From what you're saying, it sounds like you're doing fine -- but do try to find some other meetings to try out. Different groups work differently -- I try to rotate my home group every so often, say every couple of years. It's sort of like rotating crops.

T