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Daily Meditation: Consider the Source
Keep the crazies at bay and maintain your sanity
When I say “crazies,” I'm talking about our crazies, not the active/recovering alcoholic’s crazies! They get drunk on alcohol and we get drunk on emotion. Every word I write here is about keeping ourselves sane by controlling the things we (mostly) can control: our thoughts, feelings, choices, decisions, and actions.
I struggle to connect with a certain family member who likes to criticize mostly everything I say ( including how I say it) and do (and how I do it). We are complete opposites and in this case they do NOT attract. Repel is more like it.
This person is dry (ie, not drinking) but chose to drop out of AA. This person still thinks and acts much like an alcoholic: sees life in black-and-white and is rigid, critical, argumentative, and self-righteous. They have and still can still bring out the worst in me if I’m not careful to shield my “button board” so they can’t push them.
I often felt physically beat up and bruised by this person after rare family gatherings. It would take days of intense self-care to recover my heart, head, and gut. I used to take every nasty thing they said to me as the “Judgement of Truth.” I know now, after much inner work, that I was projecting my alcoholic father onto this person. However…
