Spiritual Seeker

Now that I have my AS back at home I find my condependent behaviors rearing and I must consciously think about my actions because my habitual patterns are strong.
It is a struggle not to react, nag + lecture. I can use the present circimstance as a challenge & invitation to look within and stay focused on my own inventory instead of his. I must remind myself that AS is respons. for himself and his affairs now matter his choices and love him unconditionally. He is trying to control his drinking and I am trying to control his thinking. Today I will stop doing that.
I know that my controlling behav. sets up peculiar negative energy that others feel and react to.
1. Today I will LET GO of trying to control the outcome of other's behavior
2. Today I will focus on myself instead of the behavior of the addict and guard against my own unproductive behavior.
3. Today I will focus on how I am acting + thinking rather than control and dictate
4. If I remember that there are only 3 things I have control over: my thoughts, my behaviors and my reactions-Then life becomes simple.
5. Dah- I am powerless over others.
I was so strong in my own recovery. Now that my wishes have come true and he has returned I see that this is the time to put what I know intellectually to the test in reality. I make a committment to my own sprititual & emotional growth and begin a new approach to this relationship. I will remember to control what I can...myself.

Barbara52

Yuppers. That's the hard part. Actually putting into practice what we know intellectually. Its why we all stay in our relationships with our particular As much longer than we know we should. There's jsut a huge difference between knowing and doing.

Good luck to you on the doing. {hugs}

DetachMe9

I had this image in my head earlier this week, then again when reading SS's post. Living in denial (before AlAnon, before the codep books, etc.) was like being in a one-room house with only one door to the outside (I'm either IN or OUT). Being in recovery from enabling/codependency is like having been shown that there was actually another door to a room inside the house that I never saw. Since I "separated" from my AH this past week (staying in a friend's guest house), each time I return home (to get mail, see my stepson or my cats) I can literally feel the pull to go back to "normal" and resume the usual ways of doing life/relating to him before I left. However, since I've seen/felt what's behind the new door I can no longer deny that it exists or deny that I would be KNOWINGLY NOW enabling him. Before, it seemed easier to skirt around my own doubts and make a million reasons or excuses for doing the usual. There is just too much light shining on reality now, that I can't even try to lie to myself anymore. I end up feeling guilty for lying to ME. He may not be drinking more than a few times a week, but he's not working an honest recovery program and he is an active alcoholic. I told him I wouldn't live with active alcoholism and I left. I've got to make my own word mean something, even if it doesn't get him sober. I've got to remember it's progressive. My heart hurts today.

"To thine own self be true..."

Spiritual Seeker

Yes, just like the price is right we can choose another door, even when not sure what is behind it because certainly change of some sort is. Change is good. We've expected others to change, when really let it begin with us. I apprec. your door analogy. We have to actively act "as if" until it becomes natural. Sorry for your pain, but I've learned pain is the great teacher!

Spiritual Seeker

So far today I have stayed in my own business. Yea for me