Author: Diary of a Quitter
Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 2:29 pm
I am SO totally stealing the phrase "tapestry of profanity." Genius.
You already know a lot of my thoughts and feelings about NA, so I won’t reiterate them here. The one thing that stood out for me is how you kinda suddenly "boiled over" with your anger.
When that happens to me, then I know that it’s not so much that I suddenly "got angry." It’s more like I’ve been out of touch with how I’ve actually been feeling about a situation for quite a while, and now it has reached the tipping point.
And the thing that sets me off isn’t always the main reason that I’m pissed. Sometimes it’s tangential, sometimes it’s totally unrelated, and sometimes it’s just the last thing in a long series of bullshit that I’ve been allowing to affect me at some deeper level without even being aware of it.
After you cool off, try taking a step back and seeing if you can source the root of this irritation. I know you know it’s not your job to fix NA. I also know you’ve had issues with your sponsor for a while now. He seems like he’s pretty dogmatic and rigid. It also seems that he’s pretty dismissive of your input and not terribly reflective about his part in the dynamic of your relationship. I can see how these things would rub you the wrong way, but you defer to his superior length of sobriety and time in the program. Meanwhile, anger builds. And eventually explodes.
So that’s my food for thought. As addicts, we often medicated our emotions away. In recovery it’s up to us to increase our emotional intelligence so that our internal processes don’t catch us unaware. How awesome would it have been if like 20 minutes before you reached your tipping point you’d been able to realize what was going on and just said to yourself "this is really pissing me off. I’m leaving and going for a walk." Or whatever. Then you cultivate some clarity about the situation and figure out what to do with a cool head.
It’s a process, and not an easy one at that. It takes practice and more practice and even then you fuck up a lot. And then it gets better and that feels really good. Even though it might not feel like it sometimes, you ARE making progress. You noted that your recovery goes along well until it’s been going along well for a while and then WHAM! Why do you think that is? When things are going well, we have less motivation to be introspective or to work on improving ourselves and we start to coast. I think it’s pretty normal to have to learn this lesson over and over until we get it hammered into our thick heads that we just have to make a practice of doing all the little internal maintenance things that make us healthy people. I hope some day I get to that place. 
Thanks for sharing Romeo, you gave me a lot to think about. I’m going to try to take my own advice!
