We're as sick as our secrets. We all have a right to our privacy. But, when does the privacy end & the secrets begin?
This topic came up in group & sometimes I have trouble distinguishing between the two!!!
__________________
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Rheinhold Niebuhr
Good topic. Many of us alkies are also codependents, and as such have poor boundaries about sharing our personal information with strangers. We have a habit of doing this in an ill attempt to bond to people. If we share deeply personal accounts in a meeting we are bound to feel a backlash of shame ect... later if we don't feel comfortable about the meeting. Think hard about what and where you share personal stuff. I shared those kinds of things in cozy men's meetings and one or two small meetings, that I'd attended for a while, where the same people showed up each week. The group that comes to mind is the "What group". It met friday nights in a church basement. It's been 17 years since I attended that meeting and I can still see the faces and remember most of their names. I never missed that meeting in the first 3.5 years unless I was on vacation. I still go when I'm visiting VA. Then there's your sponsor who you can confide in. Also remember that old timers or people with 10 years or more feel fairly disconnected from the person who used to drink. For me, my drinking past seem like a bad dream or movie about someone else. I don't feel connected to it, and it feels like all that happened to someone else, so sure I'm not going to feel much shame or remorse talking about what happened to someone else, if that makes sense. You, on the other hand, with 2 years are still very connected to "that person" and as such are going to feel awkward and emotional about that stuff and you can do some harm sharing it in the wrong setting. If you've done your 4th and 5th steps, most of that heavy stuff should be released and gone already.
I blurted all the crazy out in every meeting in the beginning. It took that for me to learn to let go some of problems and it was okay. I aired all sorts of dirty laundry, but now I don't have as great a need to. I sort of know when I need to share and which meeting it is okay to do it in. Like Dean said, it's an issue of boundaries.... I am still working on mine.
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Hello, "Cling to the thought that,in God's hands,the dark past is the greatest possession you have- the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them." I came into A.A. dangerously wild and out of control. My conscience was gone. Alcohol was the fuel I used to feed the fire of abuse and hatred.Drugs helped me drink more. I went from an A and B student my sophomore year of high school, to jail and suspension from school very fast. After I started Drinking. Nothing was more important to me than finding the wonderful relief that alcohol gave me .Nothing. I was abused as a child. I became a worse abuser. Alcohol helped me turn my pain into hate. I got very good at hating. When I needed more hate I sold my eternal soul to the Devil for more booze and dope. I was willing to go to ANY length to continue using. The strangely sad thing is that I did not realize what I was becoming and already had become. The price of admission to continue trying to numb myself into oblivion continued to increase. I got worse and worse and worse. I raped, I beat, I became the wild animal people feared. I stole, I conned, I created fear, I flew below the radar. A dark menace. I hated Love. I hated Goodness. If God would have been a man I would have killed him. That is what I brought to the doors of A. A. My time came. Finally I could no longer keep paying the ever increasing price of admission of using. I cannot say why this happened. I had reached a sufficient bottom. In A.A. the obsession to drink and drug was removed. Ever so slowly I started to experience the presence of Love. The stone cold heart of mine started to melt. The steps started to clear away the astounding amount of wreckage I had acquired. The process of amends was in play. I became useful. In meetings, in jails, in institutions, in treatment centers. My dark sordid past became Very valuable. I could trace back the "Fatal progressive nature of my illness" in a very graphic way. Pitiful and incomprehensible moral degradation. Do not think that there is not a bottom waiting for you that you can even imagine.
My old Grandsponsor, who had gotten sober in 1942 used to interrupt shares that got too personal (like women in early sobriety sharing about being molested as children for example) sometimes (I have never seen anyone do it before or since) with this gravelly voice "There are sick people in this room, these are things you should only share with a sponsor or trusted friends. This room is not safe."
It was always appropriate, he didn't interrupt people who had been around a long time who would share similar things from an ESH standpoint or a "recovered" standpoint, if that makes sense. He had an uncanny knack for knowing who to interrupt, and those people always thanked him.
I would never....or I should say, I have never done this.
After working the steps a number of times there is very little I have shame about.
I got sober young, and I was blessed with a tightly knit group of maybe 30 of us that all bombed around doing stuff together, one of the games we played frequently was "you are only as sick as your secrets" where we would talk about our sickest, most shameful secrets, but in a game format among "safe" people, where we would practically try to top each others deepest darkest, sickest secrets.
This...I can't convey how helpful this was to me, I had been a shame based creature since maybe 2 years of age, when other children would make fun of me at the playground for having long hair, I literally still remember having fear and shame at 2 years of age and not "fitting in"
This game laid all of this to rest.
I had been nothing but a shame based creature with nothing but secrets, secrets that were killing me. I was ashamed of my parents, myself, I was nothing but this underlying fear and shame.
Until I drank, then I was a dead sexy love machine that was fearless and charming of course.
In addition, the 12 and 12 talks about the fifth step, it says until we share all of our secrets with another human being, and have them do the same with us, we don't feel as if we "belong", we don't feel "part of"
In the Joe and Charlie Book seminars, they explained until you do a fifth step with a sponsor, then hear someone else's, you will have this feeling of not belonging.
This is my experience.
I will never forget hearing my first fifth step, looking at this beautiful young man crying like a baby as he bared his soul and realizing that none of it was important, how do I explain, the things he was telling me weren't bad, they were only important to him because they were his secrets but they were killing him.
At that moment I forgave him utterly and totally, not only that, I realized that his "stuff" was only important to him because it was his, and if that was true for him, it might be true for me, that my guilt, fear, and shame was, in the light of day, pretty small time stuff.
The disease of alcoholism is like a fun guy, I mean a funghi, it only flourishes in the dark if you feed it s***. It can't survive the light of day, it can't survive the sunlight of the spirit, that's why it withers away and dies when we do the steps. Light, fresh air and health don't allow alcoholism a place to grow.
Anyway, my experience is pretty common, when I came to AA and gradually opened up, I blathered everything to everybody, if someone asked me how I was I told them at tedious length, I hid nothing and I talked like a sheep poops, aimlessly and everywhere.
Now, if something is pertinent, I share it at a meeting, I am utterly and completely honest with my support group, those I trust, and I unfold slowly to those I don't know, as in over the years, I have learned what it means to have healthy boundaries, and that there is no such thing as instant intimacy, and that having boundaries about what I share about myself is healthy.
For me though it all comes back to the steps, until I did a thorough fifth step, and took a sponsee through one as well, I didn't understand the difference between privacy and secrets in recovery, I couldn't since I had no experience with them and the difference between them.
__________________
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night, light a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
It wasn't until my monsters were dragged out into the full light of day that they withered and showed themselves to be what they were; fears.
In my opinion, secrets & misdeeds are all important for Step 4...to be removed via Step 5. Also for Step 8 so we may be willing top make amends for them in Step 9.
I share all secrets with my sponsor & my shrink. I share more here (when applicable to ESH & before/after) than I do in meetings.
MIP is more "Anonymous" than the meetings I go to in my small town, so I speak more freely here than I do there. In my real-world meetings I keep in mind that I am a fairly recognizable representative of my employer among other members of my small community.
That's where the privacy comes in. The only requirement for attending AA is a desire to stop drinking. I make no optimistic assumptions regarding the morality or stability of other people at meetings. There are some members of my group that I trust and others I don't. I value my privacy and the privacy of my family.
I had secrets from my past life, deep, dark, shaming and shameful things that I shared with myself, with God and with another trusted human being in step 5. I do not need to re share these things in an open meeting, but may re share them with some trusted one when it may help them or me.
In sobriety I have learnt that if I have something that I want to keep a secret, then that is unhealthy (for me) and I need to stop that behaviour.
Thus I do not do anything that I cannot be comfortable sharing openly about. But sometimes I still think about things I would not openly share about.
This is my self test. If I think of a thing and then do that thing, would I be happy for the world and his wife to know about it. If the answer is yes then I will decide whether I will do it. If the answer is no, then I will not do it and further will ask that these thoughts are removed from me.
This self test has worked for me for a while. I do not like to live in fear. I do not like to have things in sobriety that I need to hold secret. Secrecy in sobriety leads me to fear.
Privacy is different. There may be things that I do in the privacy of my own home. These are things that I could share openly but choose not to because they have nothing to do with anyone else but me. Similarly, not many people know exactly where I live, what my contact details are, what my last name is. This is privacy, not secrecy. Those who have a legitimate need to know and those who I want to know, do know.
Just my view, based on teachings received from others
__________________
It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
I've been letting this thread go without replying so I could get as much feedback as possible. Everyones comments has helped me understand this better. But, Bikerbill really gave me some things to think about & practice. I guess that's the answer I knew in my heart but was trying to deny. I've been one who has tried to defy some changes in my bahavior telling myself that it has nothing to do with my alcoholism & that they won't get me drunk or high. Guess I need to quit fooling myself & let the secrets go. thx
__________________
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Rheinhold Niebuhr
