The Recovery Show » Finding serenity through 12 step recovery in Al-Anon – a podcast

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The Recovery Show » Finding serenity through 12 step recovery in Al-Anon – a podcast episodes

February 24, 2013 Detachment – Episode 12
Kelli hosts Swetha and Spencer as they share their experience, strength, and hope about detachment. Kelli opens with a reading that links detachment to self-acceptance and self-care. The first time that Spencer heard about detachment was when his uncle told him, “I hear that you’re supposed to ‘detach with love’”. Spencer had NO idea what that meant. He did not understand how he could detach and love at the same time. When she came into AlAnon, Swetha wanted certain people to just be gone from her life. She received a sheet about detachment, which started “Detachment is neither kind nor unkind...” and felt relief. Kelli thought that “detachment” sounded like giving up on a person.

Kelli relates to a reading that said, if a friend had the flu, we would forgive their inability to meet a commitment, that we could detach the person from their disease and realize that the behavior was a result of the disease. Another reading explains different forms of detachment: Your alcoholic passes out on the front lawn. Detaching with anger, you turn on the sprinkler, then go to bed. Detaching with indifference, you go to bed. Detaching with love, you put a blanket over them, and then go to bed. The outcome for you is the same; the outcome for the alcoholic is very different. Also, the emotional outcome for you is very different

An important part of detachment for Spencer was to detach the disease from his loved one. With a disease that affects behavior, such as alcoholism, this is often hard. Kelli was familiar with “numb” detachment, growing up. Her response to something she didn’t like was to just shut down and walk away. Later, she swung over to angry, “middle finger” detachment. Now she has some tools she can use, such as calling her sponsor, praying, or just using her “pause button”. Swetha had practice with angry and fearful detachment. She would “suppress, suppress, suppress” then explode. She has come to see that if someone with the flu sneezes, she can move away, or say, “please don’t sneeze on me.” She can do the same with alcoholic behavior.

A friend in the program used a visual analogy. She said “I was entangled in a relationship with an alcoholic”, holding up her hands clasped, with fingers interlaced, “so whatever happened to him, happened to me,” moving her hands -- as one moved, the other moved with it, willy-nilly. “Loving detachment,” she said, “is more like this,” holding up her hands palm to palm. “We are still close, but if he goes somewhere I don’t want to go,” moving one hand away, “I don’t have to go there with him.”

A listener had not understood that she did not have to be affected by someone else’s actions. In Al-Anon, she learned that she has a choice whether to feel others’ feelings or to be involved in others’ problems. Learning that we are not responsible for other people’s feelings was difficult, but so important to our recovery. A tool we can use to detach is to remember not to “pick up the rope.” It takes two people to engage in a tug of war, and if we decline to pick up the rope, the conflict can be defused or avoided.

When we practice detachment, we are able to attend to our own needs and take care of ourselves, which can also make us better partners and more pleasant to live with. Kelli can be so focused on the other person that she forgets what else she needs to do. By detaching, Swetha stops feeling like a victim and feels more connected to her higher power and to serenity. Being able practice loving detachment enabled Spencer to stay in a loving relationship with his loved one as her disease progressed. Even in sobriety, we need to practice detachment, as Kelli relates, that when alcoholic behavior surfaced (without the alcohol), she did not follow her “normal” reaction, which would have been to just walk away. She is grateful that she could stay connected in detachment.
53 min
February 18, 2013 Enabling – Episode 11
Swetha, Spencer, and Kelli talk about enabling. We start by defining our understanding of the term, enabling. Early on, Swetha wondered whether anything nice she did for someone was enabling. Her sponsor helped her by giving her this definition: “getting between someone and the consequences of their choices or actions.” Kelli also had this confusion....
The post Enabling – Episode 11 appeared first on The Recovery Show.
59 min
February 18, 2013 Enabling – Episode 11
Swetha, Spencer, and Kelli talk about enabling. We start by defining our understanding of the term, enabling. Early on, Swetha wondered whether anything nice she did for someone was enabling. Her sponsor helped her by giving her this definition: “getting between someone and the consequences of their choices or actions.” Kelli also had this confusion. Her codependency had distorted her thinking so that she always thought she was being helpful, whether she was really just being nice, or she was enabling. The concept of enabling did not come naturally to her, because of the codependency in her family growing up. Spencer is pretty sure he had no idea what “enabling” meant before coming to the program. If he drove to the store to buy more wine, so that his loved one would not be driving drunk, he thought he was doing a good thing, even though he might have resented doing it at the same time. He struggled with the difference between enabling and keeping his family safe, at times.

When Swetha was growing up, she thought that preventing others from feeling the consequences of their actions was just being loving and caring for them. She shared some stories about doing things for the people she loved, and what the consequences were for her when her efforts were not appreciated. Kelli suggests that enabling is often tied to a desire to control the some outcome. She also sees that when she is being an enabler, she prevents the other person from being able to take care of themselves, and she also neglects her own self-care. Spencer agrees and adds that enabling also denies the other person’s dignity by implying that they cannot take care of their own stuff.

Mark called to ask us for our comments on where parental responsibilities end, and where enabling or codependent behavior begins. Spencer responds by recounting an experience where his 20-year old son had a problem with some relatively severe consequences. Spencer flew out to support his son as he dealt with the things he had to deal with, to provide the things, such as a hotel room and transportation, that his son was not able to provide for himself. Spencer feels that he was supporting, not enabling, in that experience. He also talks about how he was not able to set hard boundaries when his children were younger – he was not willing to follow through with the consequences of the boundaries being broken. Kelli relates the experience of a young relative of hers who gets “kicked out” of her home when she uses, but then when she gets in trouble, she can come back home. She things that her relative is not learning from her experience, because she knows it will never get too bad, that she has a safe place to return to. Swetha talks about “rescuing” her sister from academic overload, time and time again. She got resentful, especially when it seemed that her sister just wanted someone else to do her homework. She was able to set a boundary, that she would not do her sister’s homework, that she was willing to sit down and help her, but also not at the last minute. She needed to do that for her own sanity.

Spencer asks whether we might expect that if we stop enabling, then our loved one will start to feel consequences, and as a result will change their behavior. Do we need to guard against such expectations?

Sometimes when we set a boundary about not enabling, we might need to move it. Spencer had decided that he was not going to continue to wake his kids up in the morning and drive them to school – that they needed to figure out how to do that on their own or suffer the consequences of being late. Eventually, his son came and asked for help, because he had been getting detentions for being tardy. Spencer said he would wake him once, what time should he do that? In that way, he was able to provide the help that was asked for, without feeling that he was enabling. Kelli has a story about doing the dishes – her husband was not doing t...
59 min
February 11, 2013 What is Al-Anon? – Episode 10
Spencer, Swetha, and Kelli talk about their experience with Al-Anon, attempting to address the question “What is Al-Anon?” We start by talking about what brought us to the program. Swetha’s boyfriend suggested the program to her, but she didn’t think at first that she qualified. Kelli’s boyfriend’s sponsor told her that if she was going...
The post What is Al-Anon? – Episode 10 appeared first on The Recovery Show.
1 hr 13 min
February 11, 2013 What is Al-Anon? – Episode 10
Spencer, Swetha, and Kelli talk about their experience with Al-Anon, attempting to address the question “What is Al-Anon?” We start by talking about what brought us to the program. Swetha’s boyfriend suggested the program to her, but she didn’t think at first that she qualified. Kelli’s boyfriend’s sponsor told her that if she was going to stay in that relationship she needed to go to Al-Anon. Spencer came into Al-Anon when he realized that his attempts to fix his loved one’s “drinking problem” were making him miserable. He was desperate and figured it might help.

The Al-Anon preamble states “we believe that alcoholism is a family illness.” We talk about our understanding of this concept. Kelli relates that she can now see the effects of her great-grandfather’s alcoholism on her father, and feels that she learned her co-dependent behavior from him. We develop “coping mechanisms” from dealing with the chaos of active drinking, and we pick up behaviors from the alcoholic as well. Swetha broadens the definition to include friends, because she definitely was affected by alcoholic friends.

We talk some about the relationship between Al-Anon and AA and the differences. The 12 steps are almost identical between the two programs, with only one word in Step 12 being different. Spencer’s sponsor has said that he believes that all AA members are automatically qualified for Al-Anon, because they almost always have relatives or friends who are alcoholics. AA members are welcome in Al-Anon as long as they keep the focus on the problems they have around relationships with alcoholics and addicts, rather than on their own addiction. Kelli and Spencer share some of the experience they have had as a sponsor to Al-Anon members who are also in AA. Kelli feels that it’s important for people to have a sponsor in each of their programs.

Coming to Al-Anon helped us to recover from these effects. Before Spencer came to Al-Anon, he was in denial about his loved one’s alcoholism. Learning more about the disease helped him to break through that denial. A listener wrote to us, “I joke that Al-Anon doesn’t change anything in my life, except the amount of sleep I get.” She concludes “ I use the program to be a better version of myself, to myself, and in my other relationships.” Kelli has learned in Al-Anon that most situations are not just black and white, which she says “freeing and also terrifying.” Swetha used what she has learned in Al-Anon to make it through some devastating news she received this week, and to continue to function and to continue to live without collapsing. At the beginning, Spencer learned how to stop obsessing over his loved one’s actions, and to start to find himself again, to start living his own life again, and to stop being the rageful person he had become.

Another listener email reminds Kelli that a great thing she learned in the program is that it is OK to ask for help. She used to feel that she had to fix her problems herself, partly from a feeling that nobody would understand. Also feeling that if she couldn’t handle it herself, that meant there was something wrong with her, that she was just weak. In meetings we often have the experience of hearing someone else talk about exactly what is going on in our own heads, sometimes illuminating things that we hadn’t see about ourselves. The honest sharing in our groups lets us know that we are not alone, and that we are not weird. To know that we are only human just like the others in the room. Swetha adds that hearing “her story” from 3 different people gives her 3 different perspectives on herself.

What would we say to someone who is thinking about Al-Anon, but is hesitant, who maybe doesn’t think they qualify, who isn’t sure why they would want to go? Kelli suggests that you should “just go” and give it a try. At the worst, you waste a few hours. And at the best, you find a better way of living,
1 hr 13 min
February 04, 2013 Step 2 – A power greater than ourselves – Episode 9
Kelli, Swetha, and Spencer discuss Step 2: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Spencer talks about the first 3 words of the step: First, he “came”. After some time in Al-Anon, he “came to.” As he started to recover, he “came to believe.” Swetha found it easy...
The post Step 2 – A power greater than ourselves – Episode 9 appeared first on The Recovery Show.
1 hr 1 min
February 04, 2013 Step 2 – A power greater than ourselves – Episode 9
Kelli, Swetha, and Spencer discuss Step 2: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Spencer talks about the first 3 words of the step: First, he “came”. After some time in Al-Anon, he “came to.” As he started to recover, he “came to believe.” Swetha found it easy to believe in a power greater than herself, because she was doing a lousy job of taking care of things. For her, a higher power is anything that restores her to sanity, whether it’s a meeting or a sunset. Kelli had no definition of a higher power when she came into the program, and those first three words gave her space and time to find her path.
We move on to discussing our understanding of “a higher power.” Swetha came to understand her higher power as a loving force that she can rely on to help her stay serene and sane. Spencer thinks he resisted coming to a 12-step program because he was unable to accept a judgemental, controlling God. At the beginning, he could accept that the Al-Anon groups were a power greater than himself. He came to free himself of the need to be able to name or picture his higher power, and now he finds God as a loving spirit that manifests in many ways. Kelli agrees that we don’t have put a name or shape on our higher power, and that it made it easier for her to accept Step 2.
Kelli asks whether it’s possible for an atheist to be in the program and to work the steps. Spencer suggests that the answer is “yes,” if we can detach “higher power” from the traditional “God” idea. One friend in the program finds his higher power in his dog — his dog loves him unconditionally and lives in the moment. Swetha was a “hard-core atheist” when she entered the program, at least partly because she was rejecting a judgemental God. For her, Step 2 was easy because she saw it as not about finding God—it was about finding a power different from herself that could lead her to sanity. She says it’s a spiritual program. It’s about finding connections between her and everything else. Kelli suggests reading the “agnostics” chapter in the AA big book.
What is sanity? What is insanity? Kelli defines sanity as not being anxious or stressed out, and “staying in her own hula hoop.” When she focusses on herself and not on trying to control other people, her life is more sane. For Swetha, it is being aware of who she is, regardless of what is going on around her, or what other people are saying and doing. Spencer’s insanity often takes the form of “circular thinking”—running the same (negative) thoughts over and over, like a hamster on a wheel running and running and never getting anywhere and being unable to get off. He needs to get off, and contact with his higher power helps him to do that. He is trying to figure out what what it means to pray. He knows it’s not “Please, God, give me a pony!”
Kelli reminds us that by incorporating prayer and meditation into her daily routine, it makes them much easier to turn to in times of trouble. Swetha is able to incorporate prayer and meditation into her life, pausing and retreating into a quiet place when she needs a moment to “be still and know that I am with you.”
Our topic for next week will be “What is Al-Anon?” We would really like to get as many voices as we can for this discussion. Add your thoughts to the conversation, tell us what Al-Anon means for you. Call 734-707-8795 and leave a voice mail, or email [email protected]. We will play your voice message or read your email into the show.

Music from the show

1 hr 1 min
January 28, 2013 Resentment – Episode 8
We discuss resentment. How do we understand it? How does it affect us? How do we recognize resentment? What tools have we learned to deal with it?
The post Resentment – Episode 8 appeared first on The Recovery Show.
59 min
January 28, 2013 Resentment – Episode 8
Swetha, Liz, and Spencer discuss resentments. We find some commonality in defining resentments as anger over something that happened in the past. Sometimes it’s “righteous indignation” about someone else’s behavior, about some injury that someone else did to us.
Mark calls in and asks whether we have had resentments against AA, maybe about the time our loved ones spend in meetings or treatment. Liz had huge resentments, because her loved one was “never” home. After about 4 months, she asked him, “now that your 90 days are over, do you still have to go to a meeting every day?” Spencer talks about his resentment towards a local treatment program that wouldn’t allow him to talk to his loved one while she was there.
How do we handle resentments? Swetha uses an inventory as a tool to see what is involved in the resentment while also being gentle with herself, and to formulate a plan of action for dealing with it if it recurs. Liz sees that many of her resentments are against people who treated her in a way that feeds into her own insecurities. She finds that addressing those feelings in a healthy way with the other person helps to reduce or remove the resentment. Spencer find that many of his resentments are not about reality but are about his expectations of how someone will act or react in the future. He can deal with those by stating his needs and desires, and finding that the response is not what he expected it to be. Sometimes the best thing is just to get “out of his own head”.
Liz finds that physical activity is a great way to release anger and resentments. Yoga is a favorite activity of both Liz and Swetha, especially since it also includes some meditation. Spencer remarks that much of his anger comes out of fear of some sort. When he can identify the fear, then he can let go of the anger more easily. Sometimes he is “living in the wreckage of the future.” Liz follows up that she can be resentful over past behavior that is actually no longer happening, and recognizing that it isn’t happening is good for her. Sometimes she has to get past her anger of the moment before she can come around to the “healthy thinking”. Her tools include talking to someone else, spending time with her pet, or doing some sort of “mindless” activity. Swetha uses a “time out” tool to help get through her anger.
Liz gave us a quote attributed to Rumi, “And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.” Sometimes our resentments arise from a feeling of being “owed.” Spencer finds this feeling of love without obligation in Al-Anon meetings. Liz talks about writing a “gratitude essay” to recognize all the positive things in a relationship, to get out of her negative, resentful thinking. Gratitude can be “the anti-resentment”.
Next week's topic will be Step 2, which states “[We] came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Please share your questions or experience with this step by voice (734) 707-8795 or email ([email protected]).

Music from the show
As promised, here are two versions of The Grudge by Tool. The first just has the lyrics over the song. The second uses the song as the soundtrack for an animated short called “The Backwater Gospel.” It is somewhat disturbing.
Finally, another great “resentment” song that we didn't have room to include — Forget You by Cee Lo Green.

59 min
January 18, 2013 Letting Go – Episode 7
In this podcast, Spencer, Mark, and Swetha discuss letting go as a path to serenity and happiness. But if we do, to whom are we letting go?
The post Letting Go – Episode 7 appeared first on The Recovery Show.
59 min

About The Recovery Show » Finding serenity through 12 step recovery in Al-Anon – a podcast

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12-step recovery for those of us who love alcoholics or addicts. We share our experience, strength, and hope as we use the principles of the Al-Anon program in our lives. We talk openly and honestly…