Service in Al-Anon meeting: How to handle gossip and meeting disruptions
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Yucatan
Posts: 6
Service in Al-Anon meeting: How to handle gossip and meeting disruptions
Im in need of ideas on how to better be of service to the meeting I am chairing. Could anyone recommend a forum for me to read and participate in? The meeting is for Al-Anon. I am new to the program; I've been active participant for 2 years and have taken on the responsibity of leader or chair of our meetings for about a year. The meeting is small and a bit close knit. Thanks for any ideas. Meeting gossip and disruption how better to serve.
to SR! Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Yucatan
Posts: 6
I know I can't please everyone. I just want that gentle meeting I had to return. I've never been to other meetings in the United States. I have nothing to compare for such situations as I have. I'll keep going. I see a lot of good tid bits in the forum. Any stories anyone might have about diruption in any meeting would help me have some perspective on how other leaders handle it. Gently and with compasion. As oppose to " hey, you two take your crap outside" .... not the preferred way... but hey, I'm human too. 
Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,103
How my al-anon works
The chair is the person responsible for making sure the meeting room is set up with the al-anon material (hand outs) (books) etc. In our meetings we pass around a calendar for people to sign up to lead a meeting. And someone volunteers for a month or two to be the opening speaker where we always start with the suggested al-anon welcome:
The opening speaker also goes over any rules that were set by the group such as no cross talking and allowing quiet while someone is speaking, etc.
Then the meeting is turned over to whom ever has signed up for that night with a topic. Topics can be a step or a subject. If cross talks starts the opening speaker is responsible to ask people not to cross talk and is also responsible if people begin to speak among themselves and disrupt the meeting. Only once in my 10 yeas in al-anon have I scene someone asked to leave a meeting.
Not sure if this helps but that’s how my meeting goes.
The chair is the person responsible for making sure the meeting room is set up with the al-anon material (hand outs) (books) etc. In our meetings we pass around a calendar for people to sign up to lead a meeting. And someone volunteers for a month or two to be the opening speaker where we always start with the suggested al-anon welcome:
We welcome you to the Al-Anon Family Group and hope you will find in this fellowship the help and friendship we have been privileged to enjoy.
We who live, or have lived, with the problem of alcoholism understand as perhaps few others can. We, too, were lonely and frustrated, but in Al-Anon we discover that no situation is really hopeless and that it is possible for us to find contentment, and even happiness, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.
We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.
The family situation is bound to improve as we apply the Al-Anon ideas. Without such spiritual help, living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us. Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions, and we become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.
The Al-Anon program is based on the Twelve Steps (adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous), which we try, little by little, one day at a time, to apply to our lives, along with our slogans and the Serenity Prayer. The loving interchange of help among members and daily reading of Al-Anon literature thus make us ready to receive the priceless gift of serenity.
Anonymity is an important principle of the Al-Anon program. Everything that is said here, in the group meeting and member-to-member, must be held in confidence. Only in this way can we feel free to say what is in our minds and hearts, for this is how we help one another in Al-Anon
We who live, or have lived, with the problem of alcoholism understand as perhaps few others can. We, too, were lonely and frustrated, but in Al-Anon we discover that no situation is really hopeless and that it is possible for us to find contentment, and even happiness, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.
We urge you to try our program. It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives.
The family situation is bound to improve as we apply the Al-Anon ideas. Without such spiritual help, living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us. Our thinking becomes distorted by trying to force solutions, and we become irritable and unreasonable without knowing it.
The Al-Anon program is based on the Twelve Steps (adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous), which we try, little by little, one day at a time, to apply to our lives, along with our slogans and the Serenity Prayer. The loving interchange of help among members and daily reading of Al-Anon literature thus make us ready to receive the priceless gift of serenity.
Anonymity is an important principle of the Al-Anon program. Everything that is said here, in the group meeting and member-to-member, must be held in confidence. Only in this way can we feel free to say what is in our minds and hearts, for this is how we help one another in Al-Anon
Then the meeting is turned over to whom ever has signed up for that night with a topic. Topics can be a step or a subject. If cross talks starts the opening speaker is responsible to ask people not to cross talk and is also responsible if people begin to speak among themselves and disrupt the meeting. Only once in my 10 yeas in al-anon have I scene someone asked to leave a meeting.
Not sure if this helps but that’s how my meeting goes.
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