Lance40

One of the points that my sobriety mentor has always stressed is that attraction to chaos and drama is part and parcel of alcoholism. Whenever I will bring up something I am struggling with, she often will remind me the lives and decisions of others are "none of your business" and that I am allowing something outside of myself to be a distraction to my sobriety.

When I keep this concept alive I do well, but lately it has been slipping. It started several weeks ago when I allowed myself to be affected by FB drama around a political issue in another country. Now that we're around the corner from entering a federal election cycle in Canada, I have started to read a lot of political commentary, but the thing is that I often skip the articles and jump to the comments where I get all worked up and hot under the collar about other peoples' opinions and comments. On another note, just this week at work I was with a group of colleagues who were somewhat gleefully discussing the shortcomings of a peer who is clearly in over his head. I suspect he's an alcoholic, but instead of feeling compassion I found myself part of the pot stirring discussion.

This isn't what I signed up for in sobriety, so I've had to do some course corrections to start "minding my own business". That has meant laying aside some things and also renewing my sobriety practice of spending time each evening reading inspirational materials along with a gratitude practice and a space for reflection. It's only been a couple of days, but this morning my spirit is calm within me and I feel at peace.

Folks, this stuff works if we work it. I don't know if this will be helpful to anyone else, but I felt prompted to share this to keep the work alive for all of us.

Fly N Buy

Good reminder - I too can be a crab in a barrel of crabs. Sometimes when we remove the alcohol from alcoholic we still have ic(k).

Working on our shortcomings is a big part of the journey. We start to see things as they really are (including ourselves). It's not always pleasant.

For me this is part of acceptance. I can't change everything and don't need to try.
I choose to delete FB and turn off the hate channels as well - cast them out as they did nothing but build anger, fear and resentment.


Good thread
Thanks Lance!

mecanix

Knowing what was mine to deal with , knowing what wasn't , Learning how to let someone else's emotion express without me having to "do" anything have been very useful to my sobriety .

keep on

m

ScottFromWI

Great post Lance and thanks for the reminder. This idea is manifested in many different forms. The Serenity Prayer for one. The idea of Mindfulness too - living in the present.

We certainly cannot just forget or ignore the world around us, but the idea that we can acknowledge it without dwelling on it is very important. I'm finding that my anxiety is most likely rooted in my past inability to accept this concept and try to "control" things beyond my control. AKA - keep my nose out of other people's business ;-)

biminiblue

Ah, yes. I also have had to learn how to zone out when someone I have to be polite with starts in on the gossip and complaining. In a lot of cases I am able to disengage quickly, but sometimes I have to listen to it in order to maintain good relations.

What I don't have to do is engage or agree or smile or answer. I just imagine a warm beach and sunshine and try to not listen at all. Kind of like the teacher in Charlie Brown. wahwahwahwah.

There are an awful lot of people out there who could probably benefit from a meeting.

NJKitty

Thanks for the post. I am a work in progress on this front. I have been reading self help books to overcome it. It helps. But I can still get lost in comments made my the mother - in -law or some other meaningless drama.

Soberwolf

The serenity prayer works well here