Ceres

"What i hate so much right now is that I see the dishonesty, manipulation and unwillingness....that is soo much a part of the way my brain functions....it's sooo natural to me..."

That reminds me of what my sponsor said to me when I'd get mad at myself for thinking about wanting to drink "It's natural to want to drink, you're an alcoholic, it's un-natural to be sober". I guess that would go for all our "thinking" ways too. :-)

Ananda

ok...i feel alot better today....I gave my sponsor the bio she wanted...i just stated the facts....no additional information at the moment....

my thinking can be pretty wack, but i think the bare facts were correct and true and at least my manipulation and trying to set the stage for the reaction i want and all that silly stuff is removed.

my attitude and feelings changed after I gave that to her...of course she hasn't read it yet LOL

I actually think i'll be ok regardless...this isn't a test...I am who i am...my job is to let her know exactly who i am and listen as openmindedly as i can to anything she notices....relfect, get in touch with MY higher power, and then move on in the direction that is the best i can come with as the next indicated thing...

I probably overcomplicated that LOL....not an easy task, but doable and a good goal for me to start with.

Ceres

<smile> sounds good! I overcomplicated EVERYTHING. I meticulously disected the simple steps. - just to be sure. Which had me sitting on them a little to long in retrospect.

Ceres

Hey Ananda,

How's the new sponsor working out? Nosey minds want to know!

Ananda

its going better than i thought it would lol course my capasity for negative thinking is world reknown!!!!

We meet tomarrow for a few hours....will be our first real sit down...have spoken with her daily and suprise suprise...she isn't the hard arse i feared....actually...alot about having too high expectations of myself and trying to be perfect and how i get crazy with it...

She hasn't yet said a word about the part of the bio i was so sure she would wig out about lol.....

But today i'm ok with it....i'm not gonna try and manipulate and control her reactions to me any more than i can help it as an imperfect human being....In fact...I sorta think a reaction is in order lol....

trying to learn how to go with the flow again....just let this process happen...

I was asked to share at last friday nites call up....i was pretty suprised by that...just kept it short and simple....and listened alot to the other shares....learned alot about myself...

Ceres

You sound really good. REALLY!

Ceres

Sunday Funnies:

Ceres

Sunday Funnies:

e4r5t6

I'm pondering a different approach, maybe an add-on, to my AA sobriety.
This comes from a book called
The Real 13th Step
which urges moving past "recovering" into "recovery" to achieve autonomy which the author describes:

Autonomy is composed of many things:

Self-reliance - this is the dictionary definition of autonomy; making your own rules and living by them; also called self-governing.

Self-determination - deciding your own future through planning and careful action.

Higher purpose - a desire to create and accomplish, for a purpose beyond outer rewards, for the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Self-motivation - the ability to generate your own enthusiasm, and find your own reasons to reach your goals.

Self-confidence - the security that comes from having a sense of purpose, and the confidence to accomplish your purpose.

Self-esteem - appreciation of your talents and abilities, the recognition that you are a healthy, capable and loveable person.

Self-love - learning to care for yourself the way you care for your friends.

The author describes working the steps and AA as beneficial but then limiting as you can move into a dependency on meetings and other AA members, many of whom are early in recovery and others who will never become self sufficient.

She raises the question whether it's healthy - for the rest of your life - to spend huge amounts of time with people working on recovery and going to meetings and thinking you can never recover and live a normal albeit sober life.

This idea is interesting to me and compares to the people I see who have adopted an AA life of AA activities and AA "friends" and "family" that continues to focus on addiction.

I'm fine with my AA focus for now, but thinking maybe there's an alternative long term that maintains contact with AA and allows an additional and different and less dependent growth.

Ananda

wow

there are alot of opinions voice about recovering vs recovered...for myself..my goal is recovered.

For me the purpose of the 12 steps is to get us out an part of the stream of life...to practice these principles in ALL our affairs....to become a productive and happy member of society as a whole.

I see AA as a support, and a way to give back for what I am being given...

My sponsor shares her expereince, but I alone make my decisions and live with the concequences.

I am in no way an AA robot, nor is AA my only outlet for activity and growth...

I know many people who are similar to what you have described....I don't know how else to describe it exc ept as the "meeting maker's make it" crowd....who suround themselves with the program ONLY and don't seem to get the full benifits of the steps.... But they do often seem happy so thats ok too Just not me

I'm doin OK with AA at the moment..some sponsorship struggles, but thanks to some ESH shared by long time AA members ... that is sorting itself out...

Ceres

Step 12 does this for me "Having had a spiritual Experience" Something about Step 12 told me to expand - To move forward, including thinking outside the box. Outside of AA recovery material - Without abandoning it.

I had to do AA intensively my first year to be able to grow beyond it. In my eyes, it was the perfect system to treat my alcoholism. No need for me to add any steps.

evmdimples

I use 12-steps as one of the tools in my toolkit to learn how to live a productive healthy life. I know people who do long-term immersion in the 12-steps as described and their entire life centers around the program: meetings, recovery friends, recovery books, etc. It's what works for them. Perhaps that's necessary for some people with substance addictions. I do CoDA recovery work and so for me, I don't see an option to restrict my interactions to CoDAs in recovery... my circle would be very small or non-existent! And given that CoDA recovery is about learning how to have healthy relationships with people, to me that means anybody, regardless of whether they are in recovery or not. To restrict myself to recovery friends/circles would limit my chances of actually using and practicing my recovery tools. I find it easy to be with people in recovery circles. We speak the same language mostly. But that's restricting my life. Someone told me once: it's easy to be saintly sequestered in a monastic environment. The true test is when we walk out into the world.

For me... balance is the key to a healthy life. If I consistently put too much in one area... other areas may end up lacking. I've seen this happen. And why I check in with myself throughout the day, to make sure I'm taking care of me.

oops! sorry, i've veered off the main topic! I'll stop now!

keithj

In my experience, there is no conflict at all. Having taken all the steps and having a spiritual awakening as the result, puts me into the land of recovered, not recovering. Just like the BB authors promised. It's not a 'beyond 12 Step' thing. It's just the full benefit of the 12 steps.

Anyone still doing this has not recovered. Ananda expressed it very well, and I see it all the time. People with a decade or more of sober time, still showing up at the same meeting every night, seeing the same people, doing the same things. Many of them are pretty glum in my opinion.

AA fulfills a social need for them. And that's OK. I'm still incredibly passionate about AA, and that enthusiasm hasn't really faded over time. It's an environment where I can be uniquely useful to others. However, there is also a whole bunch of life out there to be lived.

And really, I can't separate AA from the rest of life. The way of living by spiritual principles is equally at home in a meeting room or around the dinner table, in the office, or on the playground.

My time in AA becomes the fruit of the spiritual life, not the life itself.

e4r5t6

Thanks for the comments and insight.
I know we are all in a different place in our journey and I appreciate the help I get here from those in the atheist and agnostic community.
I'm seeing my meetings in a different way. Today there were many testimonials that were essentially about anger. Call it a resentment, or tolerance or whatever.
One guy started by saying he had asked a friend to get him two pieces of chicken for lunch and the friend brought back one, a breast. The asker had been angry and agitated all day about that.
Another person brought up what must be the most frequent example in this genre, the traffic encounter followed by exchanged middle fingers and lingering anger (how many times have you heard that?).
Someone told of talking with an irritating and frustrating sister and slamming down the phone without saying goodbye.
I'm glad AA provides an outlet for these discussions and glad people have a place to take their anger and grateful for what I have learned about dealing with things like this. I would never have seen myself and my behavior in true light without AA.
However, I am coming to question whether continuing to listen to this sort of thing from people who have been sober 10 or 15 years, attending meetings regularly that long and still reacting this way... am I in the right place?
I don't think these good folks, bless them, are going to change fundamentally and they will always need the support of meetings.
Great.
But I need something beyond that. Something like "senior, sensible, stable AA" for people who are mature and facing life maturely and rationally.
IMHO, getting upset and staying upset for more than 30 seconds about a traffic encounter indicates someone who has not reached emotional sobriety and maturity.
I don't judge or condemn them, I just am ready for something else, something more.
One meeting I used to go to was always dominated by a woman who burst out with anger and volume that was sometimes scary. When chairing a meeting she would speak at length after every other person spoke, re-interpreting the remarks and adding comments.
I thought about appealing to the group conscience and learned that many others wished someone would. But the more I thought the more I concluded she isn't going to change and it's not my job to change her. I have to focus on my sobriety and my new, healthy life. How much time do I want to devote to this issue?
None, I figure. I just quit going to that meeting and I doubt if they miss me and all the lives there go on just fine. I count it a measure of my emotional sobriety and growing maturity that I made that decision and kept focused on my own issues. I'm learning what the Serenity Prayer means and how to
put other people and events in perspective.
I expect to stay connected to AA the rest of my life and struggle with how to do that constructively.

keithj

Welcome to the club, e4r5t6.
What you describe is, sadly, what I've seen a lot of in AA. It's got nothing to do with AA's program of recovery, a spiritual awakening, or any fundamental growth spiritually or mentally.

In those groups/meetings, I can only agree with you. It's a pretty glum lot focused on their problems and inability to deal with them. Lots of opinions and very little recovery.

Thankfully, it's nothing like the AA I know. It doesn't have to be the AA you know, either. We create the fellowship we crave. For me, that meant home-growing our fellowship. Start a group that actually runs according to the Traditions and sticks steadfastly to the recovery contained in the BB. One guy sponsors another into the group. That person recovers, and sponsors somebody else in. And it grows just like that.

You'd be surprised to see how many old timers will come out of the woodwork after years of avoiding the kind of meeting you described. There is a need for solution based AA. Same as it ever was.

Ceres

It's weird, AA is what we want it to be in some respects. We see the reality we want to see. We'll ignore what our reality of it could be. I've done this! I resented my all female sniveling homegroup members! Today, I do not see that at all. I see my old way of thinking as lack of humility. In time I found my group of friends that think much like myself.

preta

"We create the fellowship we crave"
This has been my saving grace recently. I love my homegroup. It happens to be a popular meeting right now. We get visits from groups sometimes that are pushy about their brand of AA and they pass the sharing to each other until they have effectively dominated the meeting saying the same things over and over. Or other times someone will share first, talk about some personal problem they are having, and ask for feedback. The rest of the hour is people who have swung around in their chairs giving that feedback.
The solution is just that "We create the fellowship we crave." This has involved putting a restriction on addressing people directly like that, and emphasizing that we talk about the solution as laid out in the program of AA. Also, homegroup members have been speaking up more, breaking up the little crew that seemed hell bent on sharing with us what they think AA should look like. People are responding well to all of this, connections are being formed. People are hooking up with like minded sponsors and forming a real network. It makes me so very happy to be involved in creating the fellowship that I crave, and others seem to crave also...

Zencat

As of now that is where I need to be with the AA program and as a body of AA works: fulfilling a singular requirement. I'm done beating myself pliable enough to fit into something that I am not. I think my motivation to work an AA program of recovery was based on resentment anyhow. I think Ive known this all along but did not want to openly state such, as I'm sure this was quite evident to others here at SR. I believe I wanted to bend and distort the AA program only to get a antagonistic reaction from others that earnestly try or do work the program. Ah well there it is...Ive got to stay clear of 12 step stuff and work diligently through a resentment that has festered from childhood into the present day.

However there are things that I can do to with an attitude of "take what you need and leave the rest" so as to save some sanity...ah sanity, a precious meager commodity for me. For I do value my AA friends and find it beneficial to attend meetings. I'm even able to relate similarities between certain aspects of the AA program and age old wisdom. Wisdom that I can relate to as a secular person.

Pagekeeper

Will,

I hear what you're saying, and I can empathize. Still, I hope you won't abandon the 12 steps simply because you have a resentment or feel you're not doing them the "perfect" way according to the Gospel of Pagekeeper or anyone else.

How I practice the steps, and the nature of my program is no one else's business but mine. How I define the spiritual terms expressed in the book and how my journey evolves is between me and my higher power--whatever that may be or not be--again, it's no one's business. It may also be my sponsor's business, but only if I want it to be.

I'm not only allowed, I'm encouraged to have my own experience, and the only thing the 12 steps give me license to do is to share what happened to me. Anytime I go outside that boundary, I'm exhibiting something other than the result of the 12 steps. For myself, I'd call it self-will run riot.

I can practice the principles and grow along spiritual lines and have emotional sobriety, or I can allow my self-will to run riot in nearly any direction: AA, on the people here at SR, my family, my weight, my job, food, my kid, service work, etc.

I try to grow along spiritual lines, and remember it's progress not perfection.

murrill

Will, I have not been around SR long enough to know your history or anything else about you. (I do, however, appreciate that you were one of the first to welcome me here.) There is a basic tenet in the counseling field: Meet your patient where he is. If a resentment fueled your recovery, by all means use it. I'm reminded that our dark, or shadow, sides are merely a cover for something brilliant. It may take me a while to reveal that, but I can if I remain true & constant.