We have been looking at the series of emotions we seem to go through when we live with an alcohol abuser,
and they are:

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

And today we will look at "Coming out of the dark tunnel" - FORGIVENESS

If we have been working through these feelings and now can feel some COMPASSION for the plight of our drinker, soon we can think of FORGIVING THEM for all they have done.

If we realise that their brain is now being controlled by the drug ALCOHOL we can realise too that they have lost control of their life.  ALCOHOL is now running their life.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in life faced by your drinker will be : To STOP DRINKING.  This is very difficult for most drinkers and really, they will mostly need the help of AA to do it.

Maybe now we can start to see the situation differently - they cannot help what they are doing, they being controlled by Alcohol.  Perhaps we can feel PITY for them at this time.

What many of us have learned is to overcome ANGER and RESENTMENT we have to try to:

FORGIVE  THEM

Yes, try to FORGIVE the drinker for drinking, for all the harm they have done, for all the bad things that have happened.

WHY?

Because:  HOLDING ONTO OUR ANGER AND RESENTMENT ONLY HURTS US!

WE are the ones that will suffer if we hold onto grudges, resentment or anger - these negative emotions will do physiological harm to our bodies if we do it long enough.

There is no peace of mind if you hold anger, resentment, a grudge, blame.

TO HAVE ANY SORT OF MEANINGFUL LIFE WE HAVE TO LET GO OF ANGER.

THE ONLY WAY WE CAN COPE IS TO FIND SOME PEACE IN OUR LIVES DESPITE WHAT THE DRINKER IS DOING.

I have shown you one way yo find some peace in your life.

Please think about the HEALING POWER OF FORGIVENESS.....

HAVING COMPASSION

Recently we have been working through the feelings we go through in the early times of living with an alcohol abuser. We seem to go through definite stages as follows:

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

In previous posts we have worked through the feelings from Disbelief to Resentment - have a look back at previous posts if you have just joined this blog.

Now we can look at COMPASSION..  This feeling of compassion for our alcohol abuser can come after  SADNESS passes and we begin to learn one thing:

OUR ALCOHOL ABUSER IS IN THE GRIP OF A POWERFUL DRUG - MIND CONTROLLING, CUNNING, BAFFLING, TAKING OVER THEIR LIFE.

Your drinker now has the biggest fight of their life on their hands - can they overcome the urge to drink?

The World Health Organisation lists Alcoholism as one of the world's major health issues, and it is classified by most in the health area as a disease of the mind.

Realising this - that your partner is suffering from a powerful mental disease or disorder, how can you maintain feelings of ANGER or RESENTMENT against them?

What if they suffered from M.S., or Poliomyelitis, or Cancer - would you be angry with them then?

I'm sure you would not. You would feel COMPASSION, would you not?

So you can learn to feel COMPASSION for your drinker. Remember:

They are not doing it to spite you,

They are not doing it because they do not love you,

They are not doing it because they are a bad person

They are not doing it because they are dumb.....

THEY ARE DRINKING BECAUSE THEY ARE UNABLE TO STOP - 

THEIR MIND IS BEING CONTROLLED  BY

ALCOHOL

SO  THINK  ABOUT  IT -  CAN  YOU  BEGIN  TO  FEEL  SOME  COMPASSION?

WHAT  IF  IT  WAS  YOU???

MORE ON RESENTMENT .....

Another thought on RESENTMENT is this ...

IF we have UNREALISTIC  EXPECTATIONS, we are just setting ourselves up for MORE  RESENTMENT ..... when those expectations are not met.

Confused?

Here is an example:

Let's say you expect your partner to stop drinking.

They don't

Then you get resentful AGAIN.

Why? 

It was unrealistic to expect him/her to stop drinking - just because you wanted them to stop.

A drinker cannot stop drinking unless they really make up their OWN MIND to stop.

Having unreal expectations about all sorts of things in life can result in resentment when those expectations are not met.

What to do?

Be REALISTIC IN WHAT YOU EXPECT.  Especially of your alcohol abuser. They have perhaps a long way to go until .... THEY  FIND A REASON TO STOP DRINKING.

THEIR reason - NOT  YOUR REASON.

Maybe you have ACCEPT  that your drinker cannot stop drinking.  ACCEPTANCE  HELPS.

So, watch out for unrealistic expectations!

RESENTMENT

Recently we have been looking at the PROCESS we go through with our emotions when we live with an alcohol abuser - here it is again:
DISBELIEF > DENIAL > ANGER > BITTERNESS > RESENTMENT > SADNESS >  COMPASSION > FORGIVENESS > LOVE.

So now we will look at BITTERNESS and RESENTMENT as part of the feelings we go through.

After our ANGER subsides somewhat, we often find we are feeling BITTER - we may have thoughts like:

• Why ME?
• What have I done to deserve this?
• It's his/her fault we are in this mess!
• I hate this situation I'm in.

Most often this morphs into RESENTMENT - and we may think:

• I hate it when he/she drinks
• Our life is going down the toilet
• I wish I was with someone else
• He/she is damaging our life
• And so on  - WE  HOLD  A  GRUDGE  AGAINST  OUR  DRINKER

This is what happens to most of us. We feel resentful.

Problem is - negative feelings like Resentment, if held long enough, can start to cause us physiological problems - our body will be affected - our health will suffer - this is well understood now.

SO  HOW  DO  WE  LOSE  OUR  RESENTMENT?

The answer to Resentment is ---- FORGIVENESS!

HOW can we FORGIVE what our drinker is doing to us??

BY UNDERSTANDING that alcohol abuse is an ILLNESS.   The WORLD  HEALTH  AUTHORITY  RECOGNIZES  ALCOHOLISM  AS  A  DISEASE.

A DISEASE OF THE MIND..... you may have trouble accepting this for a while, so if you do not want to take my word for it. do some reading.

So if it IS  a DISEASE, we can feel some COMPASSION for the plight our drinker is in.

Have a look at a previous post of mine on July 8 2013 entitled: HOW  DO  I  DEAL  WITH  MY  RESENTMENT?|

Read that and see if you can begin to feel some compassion,  the drinker is not doing this to hurt you - they are in the grip of a powerful mental condition.

Do some research for yourself.  Try to feel some understanding and compassion for your drinker.

It's not their fault they cannot handle alcohol - its a medical condition.

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.