What is an Al-Anon slip?
When I find myself talking about him, her, or them, in a spirit of complaint, bitterness, hostility, self-pity, condemnation, or despair, that’s an Al-Anon slip.
You know what? If I’m thinking or talking about them at all, I’m almost certainly in trouble. If I’m upset, and I’m thinking or talking about them, I’m definitely insane. That’s why Step Two talks about a restoration to sanity. Mine; not theirs. Step Two leaves him, her, them quite out of it.
What is the insanity in Al-Anon? For me: heaping opprobrium on others, bewailing their conduct, particularly their alcoholism, and casting myself as the martyr and the victim. That went on for years, but eventually even I got bored of the harping, the hectoring, the whining, and the whingeing. I had had enough not just of them but crucially of me.
Today, my reliance is on the Higher Power. That means I can be OK under any circumstances. My circumstances can be affected, but I can’t, unless I take my circumstances personally by identifying with them.
I am not my circumstances.
I am spirit, soul, presently operating through a physical body.
Only I can affect my peace of mind.
If it’s affected, I did it. ‘The calls are coming from within the house.’
Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps have shown me how to Let It Begin With Me.
Today, I’m concerned not with their conduct and my welfare but with my conduct and its contribution to the good of all.
Al-Anon started ‘working for me’ when I started working for the Al-Anon solution of utter detachment and seeking a spiritual awakening above all else. Literally above all else, by a very hefty margin.
The Higher Power provides absolutely everything I need. Sometimes that comes through people, but I don’t get to choose who. Mostly it’s direct, these days. Thank God for ... God.
