“My own wrong habits of thinking and acting” (One Day at a Time in Al-Anon)
I find it helpful to repeat on a daily basis: the problem lies within me, not the alcoholic or anyone or anything around me. Whenever I’m talking about them, with any sense of attribution of fault for present difficulty, even, ‘Growing up in a household affected by alcoholism’, I’m obscuring this point. Although it may be true that I got the way I was in part through outside influence, as soon as I’ve incorporated a way of believing, seeing, or thinking into my _modus operandi_, it’s mine.
The problem is the pathogen not the carrier.
In other words, if someone else drops something, that’s attributable to them. If I pick it up, that’s me.
And that’s the case with all such wrong habits.
Someone taught them but I learned them.
And I’m the one that’s still got them.
For change to take place, I need to … change.