Emotional Sobriety by Bill W
Just a fool, swimming in love
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 164
Emotional Sobriety by Bill W
EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY
by Bill Wilson
I think that many oldsters who have put our AA to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA – the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows and with God.
Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security and perfect romance – urges quite appropriate to age 17 – prove to be impossible and how very painful to discover finally that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been , but still find ourselves unable to get off the merry-go-round.
How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living – well, that’s not only the neurotic’s problem – it’s the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.
Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That’s the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to and it’s a hell of a spot – literally. How shall our unconscious – from which so many fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream – be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task.
I’ve recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones – folks like you and me – commencing to get results. Last autumn, depression having no really rational cause at all almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for anther long, chronic spell. Considering the grief I’ve had with depressions, it wasn’t a bright prospect.
I kept asking myself, "Why can’t the 12 Steps work to release depression?" By the hour I stared at the St. Francis prayer – "It is better to comfort than be comforted." Here was the formula all right, but why didn’t it work?
Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence – almost absolute dependence – on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them, and when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA (indeed!) and upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as St. Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love and expressing a love appropriate to each relation to life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself of God’s love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me, and I couldn’t possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.
For my dependency meant demand – for the possession and control of the people and conditions surrounding me.
This seems to be the primary healing circuit: An outgoing love of God’s creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can’t flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.
Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any AA of 6 months working with a new 12 Step case. If the case says "to the devil with you!" the 12th Stepper only smiles and turns to another case. He doesn’t feel frustrated or rejected. If his next case responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, yet gives none back to him, the Sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn’t feel rejected, instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy. And if his next following case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the Sponsor is most joyful without any demand for a return.
The really stabilizing thing for him was having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was St. Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand.
In the first 6 months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics – not a one responded, yet this work kept me sober. It wasn’t a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give – not out of demanding I receive.
Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy demand. Let us, with God’s help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love. We may then be able to 12 Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety.
Of course, I haven’t offered you a really new idea – only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own "hexes" at depth. Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression… I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.
by Bill Wilson
I think that many oldsters who have put our AA to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA – the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows and with God.
Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security and perfect romance – urges quite appropriate to age 17 – prove to be impossible and how very painful to discover finally that all along we have had the cart before the horse! Then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been , but still find ourselves unable to get off the merry-go-round.
How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy and good living – well, that’s not only the neurotic’s problem – it’s the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness to hew to right principles in all our affairs.
Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That’s the place so many of us AA oldsters have come to and it’s a hell of a spot – literally. How shall our unconscious – from which so many fears, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream – be brought into line with what we actually believe, know and want! How to convince our dumb, raging and hidden "Mr. Hyde" becomes our main task.
I’ve recently come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I begin to see many benighted ones – folks like you and me – commencing to get results. Last autumn, depression having no really rational cause at all almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for anther long, chronic spell. Considering the grief I’ve had with depressions, it wasn’t a bright prospect.
I kept asking myself, "Why can’t the 12 Steps work to release depression?" By the hour I stared at the St. Francis prayer – "It is better to comfort than be comforted." Here was the formula all right, but why didn’t it work?
Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence – almost absolute dependence – on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them, and when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away. Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA (indeed!) and upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as St. Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love and expressing a love appropriate to each relation to life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself of God’s love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me, and I couldn’t possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.
For my dependency meant demand – for the possession and control of the people and conditions surrounding me.
This seems to be the primary healing circuit: An outgoing love of God’s creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can’t flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.
Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any AA of 6 months working with a new 12 Step case. If the case says "to the devil with you!" the 12th Stepper only smiles and turns to another case. He doesn’t feel frustrated or rejected. If his next case responds, and in turn starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics, yet gives none back to him, the Sponsor is happy about it anyway. He still doesn’t feel rejected, instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy. And if his next following case turns out in later time to be his best friend (or romance) then the Sponsor is most joyful without any demand for a return.
The really stabilizing thing for him was having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep. That was St. Francis at work, powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand.
In the first 6 months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics – not a one responded, yet this work kept me sober. It wasn’t a question of those alcoholics giving me anything. My stability came out of trying to give – not out of demanding I receive.
Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy demand. Let us, with God’s help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love. We may then be able to 12 Step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety.
Of course, I haven’t offered you a really new idea – only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own "hexes" at depth. Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression… I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.
Member
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Rochester, NY
Posts: 1
Outside issues
I joined AA 110 percent...an then went into a deep depression that most people in AA did not support in any way. I know that many in AA can accept that some people need more help, but those few that don't affected me greatly.
I have since learned that my drinking may relate to some 'outside issues'...a mother that could not give physical love because of her physical disabilties (when I was 3 or 4). An absent father (and now I don't know how to trust men)...who died when I was 17, and a mother who committed suicide when I was barely 19.
I am in need of love, of a loving relationship, of being able to trust and to believe that any attachment will not necessarily result in loss and pain.
It is true that I need sobriety. But it is also true that I have 'outside issues' that, if not dealt with, will cause me to drink again.
I am not like the alcoholics desribed in the big book; I do not have an inflated ego, and I am not selfish and self centered. On the contrary...I am TOO responsible, my ego is nonexistant, and relinquishing my life to a 'higher power' only causes me to believe in myself less than I already do.
The alcoholic personality is not constant, and the concepts, as interpreted by many in AA, do not benefit some of us. I have read much of the literature from AA, in addition to the Big Book, and there is nothing that precludes the possibility that 'outside issues' are relevant. Yet too many modern interpreters feel that they are qualified to distinguish the issues that are pertinent from those that are not.
It is my hope that the general population of AA can come to terms with the idea that some people drink to deal with legitimate pain. And that, although drinking is an ineffective way to deal, these people need to have a safe place to be who they are. The may recognise that they need outside help, but it does not minimize their need for AA.
And AA should not reject these people, or minimize the effect that the past has played on their 'need' to escape by drinking. To do so effecively rejects these people...and makes AA something it was never meant to be.
I have since learned that my drinking may relate to some 'outside issues'...a mother that could not give physical love because of her physical disabilties (when I was 3 or 4). An absent father (and now I don't know how to trust men)...who died when I was 17, and a mother who committed suicide when I was barely 19.
I am in need of love, of a loving relationship, of being able to trust and to believe that any attachment will not necessarily result in loss and pain.
It is true that I need sobriety. But it is also true that I have 'outside issues' that, if not dealt with, will cause me to drink again.
I am not like the alcoholics desribed in the big book; I do not have an inflated ego, and I am not selfish and self centered. On the contrary...I am TOO responsible, my ego is nonexistant, and relinquishing my life to a 'higher power' only causes me to believe in myself less than I already do.
The alcoholic personality is not constant, and the concepts, as interpreted by many in AA, do not benefit some of us. I have read much of the literature from AA, in addition to the Big Book, and there is nothing that precludes the possibility that 'outside issues' are relevant. Yet too many modern interpreters feel that they are qualified to distinguish the issues that are pertinent from those that are not.
It is my hope that the general population of AA can come to terms with the idea that some people drink to deal with legitimate pain. And that, although drinking is an ineffective way to deal, these people need to have a safe place to be who they are. The may recognise that they need outside help, but it does not minimize their need for AA.
And AA should not reject these people, or minimize the effect that the past has played on their 'need' to escape by drinking. To do so effecively rejects these people...and makes AA something it was never meant to be.
Just a fool, swimming in love
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 164
Originally Posted by Joyous56 
It is my hope that the general population of AA can come to terms with the idea that some people drink to deal with legitimate pain. And that, although drinking is an ineffective way to deal, these people need to have a safe place to be who they are.
My heart goes out to you, I hope you find your safe place.
Member
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: anomaly
Posts: 2,180
I belive the general AA population or the older members do relize it.
After all, drinking was my safe space for a long time.
It's a learning and growing process as BW saids it.
Letting go of one of my sponsee was very hard, And having to let go of another close sponsee.
And having to let go of another sponsee. Sometimes I think it'sa hex if
I sponsored someone becuase most of them relapsed. I couldn't never
get anyone of them to do the fouth step and fifth step.
Having trying to help others had kept me sober, but was also a training
ground for me to learn how to let go under my own roof. The closer I get
to people the more emotional dependency I became.
I also have to draw from my own experience. An older gentalman
that kept the doors open all day for me between the meetings
for months. I had a save place and refuge to spend my days.
The gentalman said " keep coming back no matter what kid" and nothing more.
I had to be free to find out what works and what didn't.
After sobering up again for another 30 days. I started hearing
that maybe I needed to go see a doctor for my depression and health
in general. I'm not sure if it was being said to me the entire time
and it just went completely over my head. It took me another
2 weeks of being depressed that I actually just off of my butt and
went to mental health, which was only across the street from AA.
That is just so wierd....it took my GF 3 months to call the doctor
and make an appoinment. Doctor's office is just right around
the conner from where we live...within 100 yards.
After all, drinking was my safe space for a long time.
It's a learning and growing process as BW saids it.
Letting go of one of my sponsee was very hard, And having to let go of another close sponsee.
And having to let go of another sponsee. Sometimes I think it'sa hex if
I sponsored someone becuase most of them relapsed. I couldn't never
get anyone of them to do the fouth step and fifth step.
Having trying to help others had kept me sober, but was also a training
ground for me to learn how to let go under my own roof. The closer I get
to people the more emotional dependency I became.
I also have to draw from my own experience. An older gentalman
that kept the doors open all day for me between the meetings
for months. I had a save place and refuge to spend my days.
The gentalman said " keep coming back no matter what kid" and nothing more.
I had to be free to find out what works and what didn't.
After sobering up again for another 30 days. I started hearing
that maybe I needed to go see a doctor for my depression and health
in general. I'm not sure if it was being said to me the entire time
and it just went completely over my head. It took me another
2 weeks of being depressed that I actually just off of my butt and
went to mental health, which was only across the street from AA.
That is just so wierd....it took my GF 3 months to call the doctor
and make an appoinment. Doctor's office is just right around
the conner from where we live...within 100 yards.
Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
