“When we continue to nag and domineer, complain and criticize, we are assuming, in large measure, the responsibility for deferred sobriety, and for slips from sobriety. … As we abandon the role of accuser, judge and manager, the home climate shows marked improvement.” (ODAT, 25 July)
Yes, the alcoholic does this and that, and it’s awful and
unacceptable. However: it’s interesting in a lot of Al-Anon settings how the
discourse revolves around the alcoholic, their ‘narcissism’ or ‘toxicity’,
their behaviours, their [fill in the blank], and, in as far as the individual
discusses themselves, the discussion concerns boundaries, ‘sticking up for
oneself’, managing the behaviours, getting them to stop or change, figuring out
how to ‘support them’, how to get them into recovery, how to manage the
situation, etc. This is still the acting out of full-blown Al-Anonism, just
with the jargon of self-help, self-empowerment, and outside approaches.
Instead, what has helped me is to take the focus entirely
off them and what they’re doing, to proceed on the basis that there is
absolutely nothing I can do to get them to change, improve, or recover, to
recognise the futility of tough talkings-to and boundary-setting, etc., and
instead to look at my own character defects, chief amongst which are my
preoccupation with the alcoholic and my interfering interactions.
Instead: minding my own business is about 99% of the
programme. When I’m doing that, the defects—which are mostly about minding
others’ business—largely abate. Minding my own business has two elements: (1)
not minding others’ business (2) actively attending to mine.