getthere

When non alcoholics on here talk about RECOVERY,what exactly do you mean,do you talk about getting your life back on track,having a peaceful happy home etc,or do you feel that if you lived with an alcoholic then you are sick,i ask this because yesterday I was asked when was I going to look after ME,and get better,because I am sick,this made me mad,i ended relationship,am working,looking after home,yes I have my sad/angry moments,after all relationship was nearly 9 yrs .But I am NOT falling apart.

SparkleKitty

For me, recovery meant taking responsibility for the kind of life I wanted to lead. In my case, I grew up with an alcoholic mother and codependent father. I learned coping mechanisms for surviving my childhood that had no relevance to my adult relationships. I had to break myself down and put myself back together if I wanted to have the kind of life and relationships I wanted. I had to do this, because I recognized that my codependency had hurt people (not just me) and because I found myself repeating the same bad relationship over and over again.

For me, recovery looked like five years of individual therapy and three years of being alone. Through a lot of time, patience, and hard work I learned to love and accept myself just as I am for the first time in my life, and stopped needing and expectating validation from others to prove I was good enough. I used to be quite a control freak, and never recognized it. Today I am much more at peace and ready for whatever challenges lay ahead of me. I don't know what will happen to me, but I am confident that I will no longer get entirely caught up in dramas of my own making, like I used to.

Just my E, S, and H. Good question.

honeypig

getthere, for me, recovery doesn't imply that I was "falling apart." Not at all. Like you, I worked, took care of my other responsibilities, did what needed doing.

To me, recovery is finding that there is a better way to live, a way to handle life that is less stressful, more honest, more peaceful, more authentic, than what I have been doing so far.

Recovery is about not doing for another person what they can and should be doing for themselves. Recovery is about taking care of myself. Recovery is acknowledging that other people have different viewpoints and ideas, and they have a right to those, even if I don't necessarily agree w/them. Recovery is being able to see what is really there in a situation or person, not what I wish was there or what I think could be there in the future.

Recovery is all this and so much more.

I'll reference the same thread I linked to in another thread here about Alanon. Maybe this will help show what recovery means. http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...reas-life.html

Edited to add: Just read this thread, and this might help show what recovery is/can do too! http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...-progress.html

ShootingStar1

When I was living with an alcoholic, first as a child, and then as the wife of my now XAH of 20 years, they caused so much chaos and drama that my life began to revolve around them. How could it not?

Of necessity, I became more reactive to my XAH's behavior because he kept life all stirred up one way or the other. He made more messes - literally and figuratively - that I had to deal with to live with him.

I wanted my life to change, and at that time, that meant I wanted him to change. So I got more and more involved with HIS behavior and trying to change it to what I thought was better. Or at least, behavior I could live with.

Recovery means to me that I now figure out what I want and how I want to live, and take responsibility for creating that environment for myself. I acknowledge that my husband has the right to drink and live how he wants, and I have to respect his choice even if I do not like it or agree. I get to own what I want for me, not for anyone else.

It has freed me up so much to live and let live, to be able to choose the most fulfilling life I can.

ShootingStar1

Yancy

I'll take a stab at this. Recovery, to me, is the process of reclaiming who I was, and who I am now. I'm definitely a changed man. In my mind it is like a soldier returning from war. While away they spend every day just trying to survive, to stay alive. When they come home, that is when they have problems. Their lives have changed, and they don't always know what to do. So it is with me and my recovering addicts. I don't know if this is such a good analogy, but it is one I can relate to. My fight with addicts and addiction is over, at least for today, but my experience with all the years of turmoil with my family of addicts is still with me. The effects and behaviors of those years linger. I want to let them go.

I told a therapist at one of the treatment centers that I wanted my family sober so life would be normal again. He just laughed. I think I know now what he was laughing about.

JustAGirl1971

Like sparklekitty, I grew up with an alcoholic parent (father) who was also a workaholic, and a codependent mother. I made unwise choices as a teen and ended up married to a man who abused alcohol and was also the child of an alcoholic father (& an abusive stepmother.) Our relationship has just reinforced all of the codependent behaviors I learned as a child. I have major control issues (want to control everyone/everything), trust issues, suffer from anxiety. Following my mother's example, when I feel out of control, I scream/yell/nag.

For me, recovery means freedom from these ineffective and/or destructive behaviors. It means taking responsibility for *my actions*, not taking responsibility for other people's actions, making wise choices for me and my children,and learning to trust other people & God.

m1k3

Great question. There are whole sections in bookstores about this.

For me the best way I can describe it was finding my center. I see a huge overlap between recovery, Buddhism and Taoism. I think my life of being raised and then married to an alcoholic simply magnified my poor coping skills. I don't look at myself as being broken but rather living un-skillfully.

I think pretty much anyone could get valuable life skills from working recovery.

For me I learned how to let go of the past and not carry around old resentments, to focus on today and not spend so much time future tripping on everything that might happen. Maybe most important I learned to accept myself just as I am.

I can honestly say that I live a much happier, serene and skillful life now because of this. It is a journey of self discovery.

Your friend,

lillamy

Recovery.

See, when I was married to an A, I was convinced that all I needed to be happy was him out of my life. Getting him out of my life was the biggest, but not the only, step to living a healthy life.

I was pissed at the Alanannies who told me we were sick. Hey, I wasn't the one with the drinking problem so eff them very much for telling me I was sick.

Except they were right. And being sick isn't a moral failure. The "sick" we are is caused by living with an addict. As humans, we are equipped with fantastic survival mechanisms that kick in automatically when we're in danger. Except our mental development hasn't kept up with our society's development. So the stress reactions we have are still adapted to running from sabertooth tigers, not to living every day with alcoholics who are unpredictable and frightening and make us walk on eggshells.

Biochemically, the stress reactions in our bodies do make many of us physically ill. I was just for the second time diagnosed with adrenal fatigue, caused by unmanaged stress.

That's one thing.

The other thing is that we use coping mechanisms that are unhealthy to survive an alcoholic marriage. We often don't see it because we're so busy surviving, but I've seen plenty of it since I left AXH.

Nobody wants to be sick. But I don't know what else to call it when, four years after AXH threatened to kill our entire family, when I've got a long-term restraining order against him, I've moved, he doesn't know my address, I have a new life, and our children are finally starting to live normal lives... and on my way in to work, I have to pull over because I can't see the road through my tears because all of a sudden I'm hit with this wave of guilt because I'm happy and living a good life and I abandoned my alcoholic husband and divorced him.

He threatened to kill our children. And me. And he's done it again after I left him. More than once. And still, I have moments when I have not forgiven myself for leaving him. When I still think my staying with him could have saved him. When I still think I don't deserve a happy life because I abandoned him.

That, to me, is sick. And that is a sick I need to recover from.

hopeful4

First of all I want to validate your being mad. I too am mad at all I have went through and I have a right to be mad. You have a right to be mad.

For me Recovery means not letting being mad rule my life. Getting off the crazy train. Detatching from my AH's situations and seeing that if he decides to take the road to ruin that I don't have to go with him, and my kids don't either. That I can leave for the weekend and truly not give a crap what he is doing because I am having a nice time...somewhere else...and not even thinking about it. Recovery means not putting his sobriety or lack thereof first. Realizing that his choices are his, mine are mine and that I want to make healthy happy ones. Realizing that no matter what I do or don't do, I cannot will him to do the right thing, those are his choices, not mine. And I realize that later in life my children will realize those were his choices, not mine. I will do the best I can for myself and for them. They are first for me and always will be.

I guess that sums it up for me. I have a LONG ways to go but you know what....I am making progress and that is all I can ask for.

I hope you keep posting because you are not alone in all of this.