“If your talk has been sane, quiet and full of human understanding, you have perhaps made a friend.” (Chapter Seven, Big Book)
“It does not lighten our burden when we recklessly make the crosses of others heavier.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
Sometimes I can use the programme to stop working the programme. What’s an example?
Noting that others are either pissed off with me or are avoiding me, I will try to fix it using the programme. How?
- Over-apologising
- Using the opportunity to disclose my inner world (guilt, shame, self-hatred)
- Actively seeking exoneration or forgiveness from others
- Asking whether this has ‘solved the problem’
- All of this accompanied by emotional writhing and a pitiful desire for approval
I thought this created intimacy, whereas it actually created alienation and pushed people away.
[NB this is sometimes called people pleasing, but my interest was not pleasing people but acquiring a pat on the head like a spaniel. The spaniel cannot conceive of the human’s internal world. Nor could I.]
Instead, I now apologise where necessary and then leave people to come round of their own accord, or not.