chess

This really confuses me. I' ve been reading up on abusive relationships and I find the traits of abuser in myself while I was with my A. I used emotional abuse by interrogating, checking up, putting down, blaming and the works. I would have loved to cut him of his social activities which were mainly drinking and hanging out with other A's. And it confuses me totally. How can I resort to such ugly behaviour and yet reading these pages tell me that I'm not the only one. What is this? My part of the sickness called alcoholism? Can anyone explain this to me and offer advice?

splendra

We resort to such ugly behavior because it is the very nature of the illness of addiction. Addiction teaches us nasty behaviors and the more we follow thru the deeper we get. We convince ourselves it is right to want to control the other person and they have behaviors that link up with ours and draw us deeper.
We become prisoners and jailers. We put bars around our A's and they turn around and put bars around us and our world keeps getting smaller. We get where we are one choice at the time. That is how we get out too one choice at the time. We decide we can no more control the A in our life than we can control the spin of the earth. We start realizing that the only thing we can control is ourselves. As we take control of our lives and start the journey out of our self made prison we feel pain and we often take step backwards towards our prison. For some of us the taste of freedom is too good and we start out again taking smaller steps. We don't listen to crys from our past because we now know it will only draw us back to our prison and that taste of freedom helps us set one foot in front of the other....

JT

Chess,

I learned caretaking and controlling at a very young age because I was raised in an alcoholic home. As far back as I can remember I tried to fix the relationship between my father and my brother. I didn't feel "heard" then and I often don't even now.

I have done some pretty awful things as a result of thinking I knew what was best. Not long after coming to recovery I had to face that and it hurt....a lot.

Part of the family disease of alcoholism is that dynamic. The spouse that is supposedly the sane one slowly goes insane. The two feed off each other and until one changes it just keeps going on and on and on.

That is the best thing about recovery...when one person changes it causes change in the rest of the family. Often it is for the good but not always.

Hugs,
JT

Magichappens

Hi chess,
I learned most of my behavior as a young child. I was put in a position to protect myself from the behaviors of my family. It only became abusive when I became an adult, and these behaviors were inappropriate responses to someone else's behavior. That is why Al-Anon has been such a great program for me. It guides me to see where my behaviors have caused me problems, without making me feel like I am bad or wrong. Then it gives me something to replace those behaviors, examples from people who are using the program, and the time to develop these new behaviors. The word "abusive" suggests that we are focussing on how our behavior has affected someone else. Remember that we are the most abusive to ourself. If we stop abusing ourself, we will stop abusing others. When we start caring for ourself, we are able to start caring about others. Keeping the focus on us is how we are able to change. As a result, our attitudes and actions towards others changes. Hugs, Magic