Kathleen41

Currently in early sobriety, I am haing lots of opportunities to practice patience and use the serenity prayer. We talked some in my group yesterday about this "ping-pong" game that often goes on between family members and the recovering alcoholic, where a family member is uncomfortable, with and fearful of, the alcoholics changed behavior, and keeps trying to provoke them to return to the old pattern of reacting. Admittedly, this is going on in my home. And I'm able to survive the first several attempts, but my defenses get worn down and I find myself snapping and returning to old behaviors. Later I am very frustrated with myself for doing so.

I was hoping to hear from some more experienced members of this group about how they handled such episodes with spouses and children. And when it got better!!

bbthumper

I dealt with a lot of struggles with my wife early in sobriety. First there were a lot of issues with trust. Later she had a really hard time seeing me get better while she felt neglected. When I had built a firm foundation in the program I was able to spend less time at meetings and more time practicing the principles in all of my affairs, particularly at home. I have found the steps to be incredibly helpful in keeping my interactions peaceful. I fall short at times and open my big mouth of course, but this is why it is a practice. I can continue to grow and be grateful for the improvements.

Best wishes to you!

skg

Hi, Kathleen41.
When I was about 9 months sober and actively working the steps, my wife said: "I think I liked you better when you were drinking!" Obviously, she didn't mean it, but if ever there was a time for blaming a relapse on someone, that would have been it.

To this day, she considers it my problem, not hers. No AlAnon for her, thank you very much, and this makes it much more challenging--Duh. Suggestion: Do NOT tell them they need AlAnon (you will, anyway)... It's like the doc telling me not to drink on Antabuse because it'll make me violently ill. He was right.

I've been sober for a while, but I STILL have to be reminded of right-behaviours and to do the 'next right thing' constantly. On pp 419 of the text of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a couple paragraphs that Dr. Paul O. talks about taking his program into his home and to stop trying to change his wife. I have had to copy that and leave it in my car, because she simply will not love me like I think she should; she won't treat me like I should be treated; she won't behave like I think she should behave; she won't stop spending money like I think.... Get the picture?

Somewhere in the 12 and 12 in step 10 it talks about the Spiritual Axiom. I hate axioms. I have to accept, however, that my mind is not my friend--Joyce Meyers wrote an entire book about, "The Battlefield of the Mind," and I swear she was using mine as the diagram! Spiritual warfare in my head? Yup. And I used to get hammered and watch it until I couldn't remember what side I was on.

Anyway, I've had to ask on more than one occasion that my Spousal Unit (SU) stand down and back up; that I needed to work my recovery and I'd apologize in advance for having to avoid certain triggers. Nowadays, fighting seems like a complete fear-based activity so I make every effort to apply my principles as I was taught. GENERALLY speaking, it works if I work it. And the topics seem to lessen when I practice love and forgiveness first and foremost in my life. It helps (for me) to have a God and a savior, too, but I have also learned not to "shove the dove" within the confines of recovery.

I guess this turned into a dissertation--sorry. I've seen a lot of people get divorced in AA because it's easier to blame the other person rather than practice ego-reduction and fear removal, but I don't get to make the rules these days. Nobody ever asks me to, either... There are a lot of self-help books on forgiveness and relationship mending, but there's only One I have found that works under all conditions...

Hope this helps. You can IM if you have particular questions, but I started getting sober when I had been married 27 years. Some changes were required, and some were scary...

tomsteve

welp, im reading something good in this all: reacting like ya used to react is frustrating you. so theres progress already!
there could be many different ways the family afterwards( which is a chapter that has some pretty good advise in it) can react.it could be that living with an alcoholic has made the family sick,too.yer workin on the solution and they are still in the problem.its goona tke T.I.M.E. to repair the damage fromt he tornado.
one thing i would highly suggest is not praying for patience. seems thats when God puts situations on me to practice it!
keep on trudgin! it will get better if ya work for it!

Tommyh

it will pass in time,some people are quicker than others,but stay the course
maybe they are not quite well yet
and remember
we have nothing to really prove to others,we just live sober and be happy,one day at a time

mfanch

I was told to disengage in the ping-pong. (note: NOT detach)

My defenses would get worn down and blah blah blah. I was told that if someone was handing me a paddle and trying to serve the ball...do not even take the paddle or approach the ping-pong table. Worked like a charm.

I can't change my family members, but they DID change when I changed myself. Amazingly, after a time (18 months) they came along for the ride and everybody is working the steps SOMEwhere (aa alanon, etc). Thanksgiving dinners are very different now, I must say!

paul99

My wife and I have had to make adjustments for sure. We separated for the first six month - unsure if we were even going to be together again. So perhaps that helped in the adjustment phase. Regardless, there was a transition of things that happened, and we had a LOT of discussions on things. Some were unpleasant (in terms of my past actions and behaviours) but for the most part were positive. She is not an Alanon person, although she did go to two meetings and read some literature. That was enough for her - she just wanted to know that she wasn't alone in how she felt.

While I haven't experienced her trying to unconsciously or consciously get me into old habits, it's I who has done that, like you, at times, and have had to adjust to a new way of living. I try to balance home life and meetings - go where I am most needed or pulled to, but take into consideration a few things. I do have to practice patience at times, but then again I temper that with the notion that she too is recovering in a way.

I find that being centered and open and living a joyous, happy and free life makes things go smoothly.

muvinon

With my family, I made up my mind to not react, no matter what. I bit a hole in my tongue more than once.

I'm SO glad I made that choice. The relationships have gradually improved. Mostly, I don't have a lot of wreckage of sobriety to clean up, if you know what I mean.

I did share with my sponsor. That helped. It's hard sometimes to not defend.

DayTrader

I had to change the way I thought about their actions. For me, thinking they were "trying to get me to go back to old behaviors" totally resulted in me getting bitter and angry......which usually WOULD lead me back to those old actions.

I had to kinda shift my thinking from "they're doing it on purpose TO me" to "they don't know what they're doing and it's not on purpose......it's just all they know to do around me." --- similar to how I'd come to look at booze/alcoholism. I wasn't consciously hurting myself......I just didn't know a way out, yet.

It helped, as well, to accept that some of my family relationships were just kinda screwy. Part was on them, part was on me. Regardless, there didn't seem to be an immediate solution. While I had faith that these relationships were part of the insanity God could relieve me (and them) of......it hadn't happened yet. So.....I feel it's my responsibility to be on the lookout for when that old ping-pong game starts to get out of hand and rather than continuing to play (as I would have done in the past), my role now that I'm in recovery should be to get out of the game before that old anger, spite, and bitterness gets triggered to the point that I can't control it anymore.

In practice that meant I had to be observant of myself and my emotions when I interacted with my mom, dad, and brother (my ex-wife too....). As soon as I'd notice my emotions were getting overcharged and on high-alert I'd take that as a cue for me to get OUT of that conversation. I knew that if I let myself hang in there too long, sooner or later, all those old behaviors of mine were likely to come out (an area of powerlessness for me) whether I wanted them to or not. This was new-living for me - new tools - new behaviors. No surprise.......it worked. Rather than "let" myself hang around so long that I'd get upset and say things I'd later regret, I'd duck out of the conversation, find some peace, find some forgiveness for them, and we'd all end up much better off.

All this took a lot of practice and I got it wrong a LOT, especially early on. As I got better in my practice, things got a lot smoother. Most of those "weird" relationships are totally different today - and the coolest part is THEY didn't have to change...... I worked on keeping my side clear of current wreckage, tried to behave as I believed God would want me to, stayed out of sticky situations that I figured would lead me back to old actions that I'd regret later, and concentrated on being understanding and forgiving of the other ppl involved.

skg

I was reading DayTrader's post and it brought to mind something I've noticed about my relationships. I always thought others were thinking badly of me--from the people in the grocery store to the way people looked at me at my dining table. That guilt and remorse, the fear and ego? It saturated my life.

Learning new responses to the same old triggers and the fear that's cause them is what the principles of the steps are all about. Practicing them in all my affairs doesn't mean I'm going to fix the people in my life, but it means that eventually I will respond out of love and not out of fear. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. My relationship with my Maker doesn't fix the world, but it fixes me so I can move about freely within it.

I've made more mistakes in the few years I've been sober within my family circle than probably all the ones that I can remember in my drinking days (I know that's not true--poetic license?). The first probability for that is that I actually care these days. The odd thing is that they love me anyway--and we communicate. If the fidelity of any relationship lies in the details of communication, then I have a lifetime of learning to look forward to. So long as I put my relationship with God first, the other stuff will be what it will be--and I don't have to fret who's loving whom anymore.

Thank you for the topic and the opportunity for growth. Again. S