I tire of identification. OK, when you're new, it's great. Step One requires identification with the key features of alcoholism. A little identification doesn't hurt in Step Two. But once you're sold that you're an alcoholic and the Twelve Steps are the solution, no identification is necessary. The common bond of the common problem and the common solution is a different matter, maybe: what I'm talking about is identification with particular aspects of the ego narrative about the past and about one's identity.
Most AA meetings are story-telling followed by people recounting how they identify with this or that, as though that achieves anything for the identifier, the identified-with, or the room. Of course it doesn't. If you already know you identify with alcoholics on account of their alcoholism, repeatedly parroting this adds nothing.
In any case, it's actually divisive and, what's more, it's not even true.
If I identify with everyone equally, the observation I identify with Sally or Peter is trivial; if I identify with Sally or Peter in particular, what I'm really saying is that I don't identify with anyone else. When I go on to cite the particular things I identify with in Sally or Peter, I'm really saying I don't identify with the other things though, only these.
And then I recount the particular things I identify with and tell my particular back-story to substantiate this stipulation, and we all learn that my particular circumstances are different and bear only a slight family resemblance to the fact or circumstance earlier recounted by Sally or Peter.
When I say I identify, I'm really saying I don't identify with anyone at all, except for one person at a time, and even then, I don't identify with everything, just with some things, and, in respect of those some things, I identify only in terms of some abstract or arbitrary feature of correspondence between the two accounts.
But what next? Once I identify, what does that achieve?
It's a placeholder for progress and a temporary balm for untreated alcoholism. I'm as sick and messed up as you. Ha ha ha. But I have somewhere to come and tell of it! And you understand so well! I'm understood. And that's that.
Once you realise you're the right place, do something about it. And share about that instead.