There’s a person I know who has years of sobriety. They were at an Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting and an attendee crosstalked and made a comment that angered the person. Normally, they could roll with the punches, but instead they reacted, got really angry, yelled, and stormed out of the meeting.
Immediately, after the person cooled down, they felt shame at what they had done. They had years of working their recovery, but they slipped and made a mistake.
If you’re not familiar with the term “crosstalk”, it’s the term used to describe when you’re in an Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting and you’re sharing. When someone in the group shares, everyone else agrees to remain quiet and listen. There’s no judgment, giving of advice, or anything of that sort. When someone in the group breaks that rule, they are crosstalking.
What I’ve learned over the years is that listening can be extremely hard, but it’s also necessary in building trust within the group. When someone in the group shares, they’re becoming vulnerable, and often do not want any advice. The freedom to speak your mind and not be judged is powerful.
But what happens when you backslide? When you lash out in anger or fall into a codependent pattern?
The first thing to do: Be easy on yourself. We’re all human and all make mistakes.
The sooner we embrace our mistake, and own up to it, the better.
The road of recovery is life long. I know that you might not want to hear that. But I like to look at it this way: Just as you wouldn’t expect to exercise once and think you’re done for the rest of your life, the same is true with your recovery. We build a life brick by brick. When we backslide and fall back into dysfunctional patterns, the sooner we correct our mistakes, make amends for them, and then continue on our recovery, the better.
The work we need to do takes time, patience, and resilience. Will the work always be hard? No. Some days it will be easy, whereas on other days it’ll be like climbing Mount Everest. There’s a scale, and it takes time to find the right balance that’s good for us.
Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.