Re: Fwd: Re: Never Enough

[Guest guest]

It was, as you said, appropriate to move on. My second private message - addressed to both you and Terry - was because things had been stirred it up more, not let go as they might have been. I understand that my second message really upset you, and I really did not intend to do that. I do tend to get involved when I shouldn't. I am not a moderator, and will keep my nose out in future. My apologies to the group for any further distraction on my part. x To: ACT <act_for_the_public > Sent: Wednesday, 8 August 2012, 21:41 Subject: Fwd: Re: Never Enough

Thanks for this supportive message, !To: "hbbr" Sent: Wednesday, August 8, 2012 7:30:52 AMSubject: Re: Re: Never EnoughGood answer! To: ACT for the Public <ACT_for_the_Public > Sent: Wednesday, 8 August 2012, 10:51 Subject: Re: Re: Never Enough

If you cannot accept my apology, OK, but please move on. Nothing good can come by holding on to this bone of contention.To: "ACT for the Public" <ACT_for_the_Public >Sent: Tuesday, August 7, 2012 7:18:01 PMSubject: Re: Re: Never Enough

Helena,I hope you take some time to get with yourself about what this is about beyond just saying "sorry". I mean you don't "lash out" with anyone else here, so obviously there is more going on with you targeting me.This felt really abusive, disruptive, disrespectful, this mocking defusion of sorts around a dog digging. And thing is-- there is no substance at all. Just provocative, mean yelling. I just don't get it...I don't get why you even got so violent here.

If you have a legitimate gripe over the content, than by all means say so. I welcome responsible, civil thoughtful questions and concerns and critiques from one adult to another.

Otherwise, I really wish you'd back off. To: ACT for the Public <ACT_for_the_Public > Sent: Sunday, August 5, 2012 9:26 AM Subject: Re: Re: Never Enough

I am truly sorry. Lashing out when I am not feeling good about myself is an old habit I thought I had broken. Back to the drawing board ...HelenaTo: "ACT for the Public" <ACT_for_the_Public >Sent: Sunday, August 5, 2012 12:10:56 PMSubject: Re: Re: Never Enough

OMG...How mature...Gee, Instead of being happy for me that I've been able to stay open and discover meetings that resonate, I get this? What the hell do you care? What are you trying to control Helena? So much for just passing by, muting posts that don't interest you. I'm just sharing my experience so far, so buzz off you don't want to join in and have nothing positive to add.For pete's sake, I'm exploring this very raw territory for me...it all matters deeply to me, including tossing around words like powerlessness and over-extending/attributing them so generally to AA in it's entirety. Not unlike the push to keep

seeing acceptance as

something passive

and weak.

I'm looking closely at what empowerment is in this thread if you hadn't noticed. And it does feel different than self-esteem. I have a co-sponsor who just recently took on an amazing courageous project and did not back down..was able to stay with her values, stay focused, deal (or not deal as she is guided) with annoying people in a productive way where she remained true to her inner voice, assertive when needed, asked questions, got help as needed, etc. So empowering. And what a gift that she shares that process with me. If I hadn't have stayed, none of this would happened.I value calling this stuff out. I need to..it's where I get tripped up. With all this fiction and not much fact. So go blow it out your ear if you don't like it. I'm not stopping. To: ACT for the Public

<ACT_for_the_Public > Cc:

ACT for the Public <ACT_for_the_Public > Sent: Saturday, August 4, 2012 2:50 PM Subject: Re: Re: Never Enough

OMG how much more can a person dig? digdigdigdig Like a dog with a bone bone bone bone boneSorry. Sure I will catch hell for this.To: "ACT for the Public" <ACT_for_the_Public >Sent: Saturday, August 4, 2012 2:24:33 PMSubject: Re: Re: Never Enough

I don't think you jumped the gun about SOS. I had asked you what is working for you, after all. I never got the whole concern about the powerless stuff, which I notice you mention here a couple of times now. To be honest, not even sure what that is about. What is the concern? Maybe critics like Kasl and those in SOS are confusing acceptance with concepts like learned helplessness or resignation? The higher power in AA i realized recently is just about values. Very empowering, nothing powerless about it at all. Pulls me out my mind, my fusion with self as

content. Noticing

what I'm powerless over

(people, places, things) truly helps remind me what I can't control and frees me up as to what I can...There's also lots of distortion around humility, which is the cornerstone of the program...lots of women I hear equating it with passivity, shut up, be nice..I actually prefer mixed meetings..they're much more dignified than my women's only ones. And I am a feminist who used to only go to women's meetings!Imagine my surprise when I found I prefer the mixed meetings! I attribute that openness to change to ACT...I really prefer and value the variety. Now if we could just get some more people of color, less religious and less conservative! I don't know, the women's only get too cartoon like for me, ragging on men,

humility...they seem to go all over the map and too much focus on old stuff..reminds me of self-esteem therapy groups from the eighties and nineties...no values talk really...I can't put my finger on it but it's like they sort of fall onto themselves and lose sight of the AA traditions, which to me are an amazing set of values in a social contract of sorts. Almost too informal, in a way. Just my experience so far.It's great you found something useful . I think you'll find ACT will add a lot to the mix. Sounds like it already is for you!terry To: ACT_for_the_Public Sent: Thursday, August 2, 2012 5:38 PM Subject: Re: Re: Never Enough

Hi Therese,Thanks for your response. I may have jumped the gun a bit with my response as in the SOS group I'm in there are those for whom AA was not the solution for various reasons, mostly the higher power/powerless stuff - other women got hit on by sponsors etc. I think it very much depends on the group.

That said, there is a smorgasbord of recovery tools out there and whatever works for you - go with it; whatever doesn't - ditch it.

Hey there and everyone, First off, just want to say thanks to this amazing list so much for the space here to just vent some in this thread about "not enough", about my experience as a woman feeling angry about what is acceptable, about being graded and judged, and about AA. There is so much here for me to look at and I'm too close to speak to it but .. , you know, I looked over my last few posts and I can absolutely see where my words would tend to lead one to conclude I was generalizing and concluding that "AA doesn't get female anger.". Makes sense you'd hear that and respond in kind. And..I'm glad you did. I'm glad to have you here. I'm thinking we need many voices for such a difficult problem. All are welcome. More later

as

i continue

to sit with all this. warm regards,terry

To: "ACT_for_the_Public " <ACT_for_the_Public >

Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 9:56 PM Subject: Re: Re: Never Enough

Thanks for sharing your experience and welcome to this ACT group. I'm not able to write too much now, but just want to back up some here because I'm pretty sensitive these days about how easy it is to start a story about AA or about elements of AA, pro or con, and then fuse with it and keep going. I hope I haven't begun to tell a story about AA and women's anger. I don't remember quite saying that AA doesn't get female anger. I really hope that's not the takeaway here, at least that's not what where I was going when I was blowing off steam the other day. Lots and lots of women helped in AA, here in 2012, and I'm one of them.

terry

To: ACT_for_the_Public

Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 10:17 PM Subject: Re: Re: Never Enough

Hi Terry,

I first became aware of needing to do something about drinking in 2008 and stumbled on yahoo group for SOS - secular organisations for sobriety, so like ACT_for_the_public, an email group for people who are trying to live sober. I was on that group for about three years without any really lasting sober time - 10 days , 3 weeks here and there.

I then did go to a weekly AA meeting, following a suggestion from a friend that I was fooling myself if I thought I was managing the problem and they suggested it was worth a try.

I found the face to face meetings helped as I did finally admit to myself that my consumption of alcohol (by this time minimum 2 bottles of wine a day) was not something I could simply manage.

I really struggled with the steps as they are written, and things like the structure of readings parts from the book (too religious for my liking and I don't subscribe to any religions). I also fundamentally don't believe that I am powerless. I found the book ridiculous - couldn't read it. Out dated etc. Also, in my time on the SOS site I had read a lot of complaints from people about AA being cult like - this wasn't my experience I have to say but there were overtones of helplessness and the sense that I could not stay sober without meetings - and I could never see myself going week after week, hearing the same stories, telling the same stories etc etc.

So I lasted about six months of one meeting per week, but the face to face time got me enough sober time (2-3 months) to make the difference to me being able to make that last, and somewhere along the way I found that being sober is very very precious to me and something I want to protect.

I really like the online group which goes beyond substance abuse/sobriety to being a community of women(there are two groups but I prefer the one specifically for women) where you can whinge, vent and melt down and know you will get a compassionate response. there are women at all stages of recovery and I find reading over and over again the women in early stages of recovery is the perfect daily reminder of where I have come from and why being sober Is so precious to me. Many substance abusers have underlying depression and anxiety so this a frequent topic of conversation.

In the first few months of recovery I read Charlotte Kasl's Many Roads One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps which is a wonderful treatment of women's addiction issues - whether you are interested in 12 step programmes or not. This is an often recommended book in the SOS women's group which I got a lot out of and explains how, for examples, AA's attitude to anger and self esteem may not be very good for women in recovery.

Hope this helps.

I will add that getting sober did not really lift my depression as I had hoped but I did get to a better place from which to deal with it.

I've only been reading about ACT for about a month but the ideas do sing to me as they have already been part of my journey (I just didn't have a conceptual framework for it before).

cheers,

Hey ,

I am still learning how to navigate the 12-step scene. It's very tricky for me. Layered emotions like anger, fear, regret, hurt..they're so nuanced that a huge program isn't going to be able to address this stuff very effectively for every single addict. I'm just glad to notice even that. Thanks to my ability to defuse and stay with values, I keep going and find good in a few meetings here and there. But I really need to remember to hold lightly and remember why I'm going. It gets noisy very fast in those rooms.

Would you mind sharing some about your different path? What works for you?

thanks,

terry

To: ACT_for_the_Public

Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 12:09 AMSubject: Re: Re: Never Enough

Hi Terry,

I agree with you about AA not quite getting female anger. In my experience, for many women one of the first things they need to do when getting sober is learn how to be productive with anger, as you say when it is about standing up for yourself and building self esteem. I think a lot of the AA approaches are based on a different time and not ideally suited to many women. I certainly chose a very different path

I don't know what has led to my feeling feisty today but I like it. I am remembering the fight I had in me and it's been beaten down to a pulp in recent decade of my life. I fell way off the grid. Lost jobs and so forth. So it's a different scale than most here, who still have income, jobs.

In the recovery community groups I go to, there is a lot of talk about anger being a sign of too much ego and leading up to a drink. I think it can if you fuse with it and have the anger be the end of the story. I also notice that in general the men in the program experience anger differently than women. For some women (myself included), it's very empowering to allow for anger. Unfortunately, these nuances aren't elaborated upon in meetings and so anger gets lumped into the very unbecoming, something you really want to get rid of NOW category...a sign you're not working a spiritual healthy program, praying enough, helping others enough..blah blah...part of the seven deadly sins crap. Sorry I'm so whiny about twelve steps. The larger point is I like my anger in terms of the I give a hoot about my life feeling that is coming back for me today. And I'm also fed up with giving others so much power

to decide what it is safe or cool to feel or not feel. Fed up with buying into the thought not enough.

I like the idea of having the anger speak to me...thanks for that.

terry

To: ACT_for_the_Public

Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 9:19 AMSubject: Re: Never Enough

Hi Terry,I am sorry to hear that you have been feeling so sad and angry of late and that you feel today that your life is not as full as it once was. At least today you are acknowledging you are angry and sad and hopefully you will be able to find a way to defuse from the thoughts that created it and still work toward your valued path.

Interestingly I never looked at anger in differing froms, I always saw anger as just that. It was what lead to the anger that I saw as the differering variable, which was the one to watch out for and be mindful of.

Maybe you will have a window of time today Terry to sit with your sadness and anger and give it time to speak to you so that you can mindfully establish what is truly leading you to feeling this way(thoughts)about your life lately and hopefully start defusing from it.

With loving kindnessJo

> >> > I just checked the headlines for the Olympics and read: "Phelps Suffers Stinging Loss" Is that what's meant in part by this "negativity bias"?> > Gee, whatever it is, I noticed my stomach tightened reading it...talk about "never good enough" media messaging. Pretty sad.

> > > > > > terry> >>