Guys, I need help. I'm struggling with a blatent alcohol dependency due to my life falling to bits around me. My girlfriend has left, my private information is being passed around the internets, and my mother just scoffs at any attempt I make to reason with her about my life! She hates the fact I took cocaine (I stopped recently, ran out of money, girlfriend left as soon as that boat set sail!) and she wont forgive me for my failures. What do I do?
Welcome to MIP, Michael. It's a great place to start. First off I'll say you're powerless over your Mum's opinion so I'd let go of the pain in trying to change her views. The only person you can change is you & it looks like you are trying to do something about you :) Your Mum will no doubt be holding her attitudes in reaction to your actions rather than your intentions so words will be falling on deaf ears for the moment. Your main concern for now is for your own sanity & rebuilding your life so that you can live with & care about yourself. Everything else can come with time.
Well done in putting the cocaine down. If you're serious in your desire to stop drinking, in my experience, attending A.A. meetings is a must. You'll gain a lot of personal help & support there along with the opportunity to identify with others who have been in similar circumstances & are doing whatever it takes to remedy it. There is friendship & understanding & of course you're welcome to come here & share how it's all going for you as you turn your life around. There's a great future for you on offer here. I hope you seize it with both hands & don't let go. Keep coming back, Danielle x
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Progress not perfection.. & Practice makes Progress!
My suggestion is still with the winners here. Many of us have worn your shoes; maybe not using the exact substance you have but have found that now doesn't matter. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired of the alcohol existence and I too wanted to know where do I go now?!!. Best place to be is around successfully sober people who have learned to have what I want and chemical free life where I can learn to be free "of" and "from" the insanity of trying to be normal by acting abnormally.
If you really want to get a firm hold on your own life and change it into something beautiful...AA or NA is the place to start. There are actually lots of ex-users who are living the life you want. Just gotta go there and do that. I wish you luck.
If you're attending meetings you'll already know that nobody at meetings is asking you to measure up to anything in order to continue to be a member in good standing. There also are people who have worked the program for a long enough time so that they can afford to love ("we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows"). You can feel both the love and acceptance of the people at meetings and you can make them your mother/father/sister/brother. If your Mom cannot afford to love, that need not be a problem. You will be offered a program of living which is based on the deepest kind of truth; that truth which will lead you along a continuum from egoism with its nil capacity to love towards humility with its infinite capacity to love.
Since you will soon recognize (as you work the steps) that you have finally turned in the only possible intelligent direction and surrendered, you will no longer need any other human being's backing up for the road you are on.
That's a great freedom, McShea. You will no longer need to look into anyone else's eyes to see if it's okay for you to be you. When that freedom is truly recognized, you can no longer be manipulated by others into doing what you don't want to do in order to get their approval. Thus you will not resent them. You will not fear them. And when resentment and fear have disappeared you will be able to love them truly. In the meantime, use the people in the meetings for your family . . . only one man's suggestion . . . obviously. :) Love and Blessings - Chuck
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You wouldn't be nearly as concerned with what people thought of you if you knew how seldom they did.
I would like to comment on this topic because it has become apparent to me that approval seeking has become a major problem for me as well and it started with my mother and then I went to councillors....so always trying to get approval from outsdie sources, but those outside sources are not God. They are people. For me this is learning a new way to live as I have to ask myself what are the spiritual answers in this situation. The way of my mother was, go get the best job, do this do that....but no spiritual principles...so I have to ask myself, okay, what did God say. Truth told....my mother never did like me anyway, so why would I go for her approval. She had her own struggles with selfishness and neurosis, so I am not sure what I can expect to learn from her, but I do know that being healthy means having a different value system. My mother cared about clothes, all the non material stuff....so she has had to struggle to learn spiritual principles just as I have to. As for getting approval from councillors, no, the guidance is the thing that would have been helpful, like, the importance of giving and receiving, looking to a higher source/power...but often councillors cannot say God's name or talk about those rules. Learning how to live in a more humanitarian way takes new and different tools. I also understand that part of this struggle is learning the spiritual walk instead of working to satisfy the self. (ego)....we are not here to get the approval of parents, we are here to figure out how to have a healthy relationship with God and others.
Hello MissN and welcome to the board. Yep, did a lot of that, and when I'm not payinq attention, I'll do it some more. We want everyone to like us and it buqs the **** out of us when we think that someone doesn't. Once we own that we can only be concerned with our own feelinqs and that we are powerless over others' sanity returns. Not everyone is qoinq to like me, I ok with that, life is not a popularity contest.
love this thread ,i struggled for me mums approval a long time only to find out that hers was hers and motivational speaker Les Brown said dont let the opinions of other people become your reality makes a lot of sense to me just keep on coming back this is a place full of incredible loving people who walked the walk and lovingly give back so we can all feel right at home love always ,,,,,,Attilio
I do not underestimate or minimize the impact of going for a parent's approval instead of working spiritual principles because there is a big difference between going for the approval of a human instead of God's...they are two different things. Find it interesting how once I started going for her approval I fell away from God and maybe that is because I became selfish and self-seeking. A very ill person. So now I am only interested in spiritual solution, how to act in ways that help me reconnect and have healthy relationships with others. If we are not connected to God, some of us are not very nice people so we do have t learn how to behave differently. I do not come to these boards to talk about the problem....I sincerely come to talk about the solution which is about working toward some higher good,learning how to be honest, learning how to be a better human being. Thanks for your support. .
Sometimes I see it as all about being codependent and that really messes you up because you forget how to love yourself and if you cant love yourself it is hard to know and love God.
