ANGER and BITTERNESS

Recently we have been looking at the PROCESS we go through when we struggle to live with an alcohol abuser - and here is the process:

DISBELIEF > DENIAL > ANGER > BITTERNESS > RESENTMENT > SADNESS >  COMPASSION > FORGIVENESS > LOVE.

See the post of 9 /8/2013 that covered this in general.

Now we are going to look at ANGER and BITTERNESS 

This is how we feel when we stop denying we have a problem in our lives - then we get angry.

We may think: WHY ME?-   HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO US? -   WHY DON"T THEY JUST STOP DRINKING!! - WHY  DON"T THEY LISTEN TO ME?

It is natural to get ANGRY but it does not do us, NOR THE DRINKER, any good.

We may vent our anger on our helpless drinker - that IS NOT GOOD.....

If we show anger to our drinker, it may just give them a REAL REASON TO KEEP DRINKING!

So no one gets any better.

Could I suggest that you look back at some of my earlier posts on ANGER -

• HANDLING OUR ANGER - 28/7/2013
• AN ANSWER TO OUR ANGER - 18/4/2013

I am sure you will find a lot of suggestions there that will help.

But for right now, try to remember --  DO NOT TAKE YOUR ANGER OUT ON YOUR DRINKER

Try to WORK IT OFF somehow - walk, punch a pillow, jog, jump up and down, do pushups, do something physical to bleed off your anger.

YOU will feel better AND you will NOT MAKE THE DRINKING GET WORSE!

GETTING HELP

Last time I talked about the PROCESS we seem to go through when living with an alcohol abuser - and to recap, this was:

DISBELIEF > DENIAL > ANGER > BITTERNESS > RESENTMENT > SADNESS >  COMPASSION > FORGIVENESS > LOVE.

That's what we seem to have to work through - there don't seem to be any shortcuts: we don't seem to able to move from ANGER for instance right through to FORGIVENESS without spending time with the feelings in between.

But this time I'd like to talk about being stuck in the stages of DISBELIEF  or  DENIAL.

This is where we first start out when confronted with our loved one being drunk most of the time.  Its too hard to accept what is going on: we don't want to know about it; we wish it would just go away.

But it goes on.  And we begin to feel angry, and the anger will grow, fuelled by our frustration.

Its right about this stage we should look for help - because the coming anger will do us and those around us a lot of harm.  It would be much better to reach out for help:

 ............ AS SOON AS WE CAN ACCEPT THE REALITY OF THE DRINKING.

The sooner we ACCEPT there is a PROBLEM in our lives, the sooner we can reach out for help.

I reached out to AL-ANON  FAMILY  GROUPS  for help - I found out where the  nearest meeting was and went to that.  I started to feel better because there I found people who had suffered just like I was now doing - and they had found peace in their lives through the Al-Anon program.

So message for today is:  ACCEPT  you have a problem > REACH OUT FOR HELP.

Check out the HELP PAGES to see how I found help.

WHY DO I FEEL AS I DO?

Living with an alcohol abuser is not easy, as we know.  Our feelings are constantly in turmoil with anger and resentment being very common among us.

I was stuck with feeling resentment against my drinking wife at one time, and wondered why I felt that way - why didn't it pass?

I mentioned my predicament to a wise long-time member of Al-Anon Family Groups, who explained to  me the process we go through while living with an alcoholic. Our feelings seem to go through a process, or different stages.  as we live with a drinker. It goes like this:

• DISBELIEF - at first we cannot believe what is happening to us, to what our drinker is doing to our lives
• DENIAL - we may deny what is going on, to our friends, family, workmates - we are too ashamed to face or admit what we are living with
• ANGER - we naturally become angry once we realise what is going on in our lives - and many of us get stuck here..... 
• BITTERNESS - we may feel bitter about our lot, feel like victims - why us?
• RESENTMENT - our anger may subside with time, but then we harbour feelings of resentment against our drinker - we may hit back at them for the slightest reason - we think about hurting them any way we can perhaps .. it's not healthy, but a lot of us hold a grudge for some time
• SADNESS - we may then have feelings of sadness about the life we have lost, the lover we have lost, because of the alcohol abuse.
• COMPASSION - with help we come to understand that our loved one is in the grip of a powerful mental disease, and we can begin to feel some compassion for them...
• FORGIVENESS - we are making real progress on OUR recovery when we accept the disease is controlling our loved one, and we can begin to forgive them for what they have done to us

• LOVE - we may even see that we still love the person despite the affects of the alcohol, and start to free ourselves from the affects of the drinking, while still loving our real person.

When these stages were explained to me, I understood that what I was feeling - resentment at that time - was a normal part of what we go through when we live with an alcoholic, and I could see a way to move on. I began to read about resentment and how to move past it : the answer was: FORGIVENESS.

More next time .... if you are wondering what "AL-ANON Family Groups"s are, please read through my HELP PAGES over on the right - AL-ANON is where I got help that worked.