Saturday, June 25, 2011

My denial, my compassion, and my guilt pulled me down.

Felt it might be helpful to 'copy and paste' this chapter from the "Getting Them Sober, volume 4" book, here, below. (That book is mostly about the hidden 'stuff' that we go through when we are separated from them).

I copied-and-pasted this chapter from the section on this website called "DOZENS of GTS excerpted book chapters".
That section has 33 fully-excerpted chapters there -- from 4 of the books.

(Please feel free to make as many copies as you need, of those excerpted chapters--- for friends//therapists, etc. If you are in therapy, it can be very useful to make copies of certain chapters to talk about in sessions with the therapist.)


Chapter 24: “My Denial, My Compassion, and My Guilt -- Pulled Me Down into It With Him, Again”


Most families of alcoholics go through certain stages of mood swings, after a separation.

They are:

a) Going back and forth between terror and relief and amazement that they had the courage to do it

b) Gratitude to God for helping them

c) Inability to sleep and other signals of situational – temporary – depression

d) Childlike wonder at the vastness of options open, now

* * *

What are other feelings that can lead into setbacks?

If we get into:

$ Smugness about having the strength to do it

$ Understandable, continual anger

Anger and self-righteous feelings can carry us through a certain period of time, but they do eventually end. Unfortunately, there is a boomerang effect from extended anger and self-righteousness. Families of alco­holics have much more of a sense of conscience and of “doing what’s right” than do other folk. Therefore, we tend to have guilt after we’ve angered onto someone for a period of time . . . a feeling of “we’ve got to make it up to them.”

This guilt is often subconscious.

What we (unconsciously) tell ourselves is that we need to “make up for our anger” by letting the other person off the hook. And we do that by going back into denial about how bad their behavior really was.

But, when we tell ourselves, especially uncon­scious­ly, that they were not so bad – then, we get blamed, because we left them! After all, if they were really just a little annoying, instead of abusive, then why in the world did we make such a big deal out of it, and leave?

We get back into the old behavior of taking the blame. Once again, we collude with the alcoholic in saying: “the family is at fault.”

The best way to counteract that is to write down the facts. Keep a fact-notebook. That is one of the best ways to end the minimizing that is often at the heart of family denial.

Example of how writing down the facts can help tremendously: Joanne told me about an incident that was so horrible that she ordinarily would have gone into her denial, and forgotten it. But, she had written it down in her fact-file, and could refer back to it when she told herself that he “probably wasn’t that bad.”

This is what she wrote about:

Joanne and her actively-alcoholic husband, Kirk, were in a marriage-counseling session. The therapist asked Joanne what she would really like from the marriage. Joanne answered that she would like it if Kirk came home at night, didn’t drink, that he would be nice, and that he would spend one whole week being good to her.

The therapist asked Kirk if he would spend one entire week being good to her. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head No. The therapist was stunned that he wouldn’t agree to just that.

What I told Joanne that I found incredible is that the marriage counselor didn’t ask her a very important question: “Do you mean that in your entire 24-year marriage, Kirk has never been nice to you for seven consecutive days?”

* * *

Write down the facts. Keep them in a very safe place, so that they cannot be found to later hurt you.

We families of alcoholics go so very easily into denial and minimization, that we cannot trust our memories to come up with the truth. (I can’t count all the times that clients of mine have remembered something, and exclaimed, “I forgot that that happened!” And it was something like “he shot off guns in the house through the ceiling, all the time!” And the client told me this after weeks of her telling me that he “wasn’t that violent.”)

We must be able to remember the truths when we start to “romance the past.” For if we do not, we may have to repeat the past.

* * *

Another trap we can get into when our anger dies down is: great compassion for the alcoholic.

We often think that compassion will keep us at a detached distance from the alco­holic – and then we start thinking we are a step above holy! After all, he’s terrible and we’re kind and distanced and that leads easily into thinking we are wonderful.

In reality, that “compassion” is easily done away with as soon as the alcoholic acts up, again. Our feelings then turn into confusion and rage.

True detachment doesn’t feel noble. Nobility feelings are too transient. To keep it up, you’ve got to be so good all the time! (Besides, we tend to turn things around and convince ourselves that our family symptoms of sickness are virtues; we say, “I was so good to him. He’ll never find another one like me!” Then we go about trying to get a relationship with someone who will appreciate our overly-givingness! When, in reality, that is not a virtue! In fact, if we keep it up, we will just hook into another sickie, because only those kind will “appreciate” our sickness of giving too much. A well person will give a wide berth to someone who has to love too much.)

* * *

Our fears are the source of our over-abundant need to feel noble. We feel like we’ve got to be wonderful in order to have God’s permission to leave abuse.

That’s just not so. We can be allowed to leave abuse, even if we aren’t “wonder­ful”; and we can leave even if that abuse does not occur all the time.

The alcoholic doesn’t have to be Hitler, in order for us to have permission to leave.

* * *

If your therapist, your friends (maybe even your alcoholic too) are all telling you that you’re crazy for continuing to take abuse, then sometimes the one thing that helps is to tell yourself that you’ve been too turned upside-down by his behavior, right now, to make decisions.
So what you’ll do is go through the motions.
Let the lawyer (if he or she is a good one) make the decisions (like “go for half the property” when you want to give it all away to the alcoholic because you feel guilty for leaving). It’s sort of like, “Let Go And Let Lawyer.”






















































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