“Al-Anon is more than a Ladies Aid Society or a women’s auxiliary meeting,” she said. “It’s where I go to keep on track.”

—ANONYMOUS

20

WORKING ONE (OR MORE) PROGRAMS

“I can’t figure out what’s wrong,” Jane said. “I feel disconnected from people and God. I’m worried and frightened. I’m having trouble sleeping. And I feel so helpless. What’s going on?”

I told her it sounded like codependency, and asked if she was going to her Al-Anon meetings.

“No,” she said. “Why should I? I’m not living with an alcoholic anymore.”

“I’m not living with an alcoholic anymore either,” I said. “But I’m still living with myself, so I still go to meetings.”

No matter who we begin reacting to, codependency takes on a life of its own. I suspect our commitment to self-care and self-love may be a lifetime one. We may always need to pay attention to our attitudes, behaviors, and emotions. Regularly investing time and energy in our recovery programs is a good way to do that.

Does that mean we have to go to meetings or groups all our lives? No. I think it means we’ll want to.

Although I’m prejudiced about Twelve Step groups being a good vehicle for recovery, other groups offer help and hope for people recovering from codependency and adult children issues too. Whichever way we choose, this chapter is about our need to continue working at it.

There are two ideas central to working a recovery program: (1) going to meetings and being involved with other recovering people, and (2)working a program.

We need to go to groups or meetings, or find some way to be involved with other recovering people who have similar issues and goals. If we’re trying to recover in isolation, what we’re doing is probably not recovery. We need involvement with other recovering people. We need support, encouragement, fellowship, and bits and pieces of information. We may know something in our minds, but hearing this information from someone else helps us know it in our hearts. A benefit of our involvement with people and groups is we get to “belong.”

“I grew up in a dysfunctional family. I never felt like I belonged anywhere. One thing I like about my support groups is I finally feel like part of something,” says one woman.

“But I can’t find any good groups!” some people object.

Some recovery groups are in the beginning stages and lack the focus, consistency, and strength found in groups with “old-timers.” Some groups are floundering. Some consist of people going to a meeting and doing what they’re there to learn how to stop doing: caretaking and controlling. But there are many good groups out there too. Look until you find one. If a group isn’t right, you don’t need to become stuck or stop recovering. You can voice opinions, suggest alternatives, or find another group.

Finding a Sponsor

As part of going to meetings and connecting with other recovering people, you’ll also want to find a sponsor. A sponsor is someone you develop a special relationship with. This relationship entitles you to call on this person for support. If you’ve been recovering for a while, you probably need to be sponsoring somebody. Recovering people need to “give away” what they’ve been given. That’s how it works.

How Many Groups Do You Need To Go To?

If we have a problem with chemical dependency and adult children or codependency issues, the addiction will always be a primary problem requiring its own recovery program. Our codependency issues probably will too.

When I first began recovering from chemical dependency, I heard much talk about how sobriety was more than staying straight or dry. It meant dealing with all the stuff underneath our disease, the issues that were there before we drank or used other drugs. I’ve now come to believe the stuff underneath my alcoholism is codependency.

Some people start the recovery journey by going to Al-Anon, then move into A.A. Some start by attending A.A., and later move into the Al-Anon room. Some of us need to go to both rooms. Ultimately, recovery is one big room called “lives and relationships that work.” We do what we need to do to get and stay there.

Some people go to one or two meetings a week for chemical dependency and one a week for codependency issues. Some go to a weekly meeting for chemical problems and a biweekly meeting for codependency issues. Some people recovering only from codependency issues go to one meeting a week; some go to one a month. Whatever it takes to stay on track is what we do. This holds true for any combination of issues we face.

We each need to find our own kind of groups and the number of groups that work for us. It may be helpful in the beginning stages of recovery to go to more meetings. During stressful times, it’s helpful to go to more meetings than usual. But the purpose of recovery isn’t to spend our lives sitting in groups. The purpose is to go to enough groups to get and stay healthy enough to live our lives in ways that work.

The second idea important to ongoing recovery is “working a program.” We need to do more than sit at groups and talk to people. We need to do our own work. We need to do our part. This means applying the recovery themes, concepts, and the Twelve Step to ourselves.

“We’ve got a Twelve Step group going for adult children of alcoholics,” one woman told me. “Guess what? We’ve found the most phenomenal growth occurs when we work the Steps.”

We try to do something each day toward recovery. That something can be brief: taking time for daily meditation, chanting an affirmation of “I love you” when we look in the mirror, or, asking our Higher Power to remove character defects such as shame or low self-esteem.

It requires hard work. We may do an inventory of our lives or our relationships. We might make a particularly tough amend. We might sit down and tackle our family of origin work, deciphering our destructive messages and creating new, healthy ones for ourselves.

But do something each day. Whether what you’ve done takes five minutes or five hours, try to feel good about it. Tell yourself it’s really great that you’re loving yourself that much and doing that for yourself. Tell yourself it’s great you’re moving forward, because you are. Tell yourself it’s okay to be right where you are today—because it is.

Some days, we may do particularly well. We may assertively refuse someone’s invitation to be codependent. We may deal well with a particular conflict or a feeling. We may have a few moments of intimacy or closeness. We may buy ourselves something special, then not wreck it by telling ourselves we don’t deserve it.

Some days, we may have to look more closely to notice what we did. Maybe we took time out to rest when we were tired. We said the Serenity Prayer during a trying moment. Things got crazy and we detached when we noticed ourselves getting hooked in.

On our worst days, we still look for something we’ve done toward recovery. Sometimes the best we can do is feel good about what we did not do. We pat ourselves on the back because we didn’t run to the nearest bar, drag home an alcoholic, and fall in love with him or her. For some of us, that’s real progress and not to be overlooked on the gray days.

All the days count. Believe in recovery. Our lives and experiences can be different and better. The process of getting better is happening right now, this moment, in our lives.

Someone once asked me if I was still “in process.” I think this person wanted to know if I was still doing my own recovery work, how much of it I had done, and how crazy my life was today, compared to yesterday.

I answered this way. “There was a time when life was mostly pain and problems, and occasionally something good happened. I used to joke about going through ten bad experiences before one good thing happened, and how small the one good thing seemed compared to the bad. But it wasn’t a joke. I hurt most of the time. Somewhere, something changed. The record flipped over from Side B, negative, to Side A, positive. I still have bad days. I still feel hurt and afraid sometimes. But the constant pain I lived with for most of my life is gone. And the pain is so far gone that I can hardly remember it. It’s like childbirth: it hurt so much I was afraid it wouldn’t stop, but when it did, I could hardly remember it.”

Am I still in process? Yes. I probably will be all my life, because that’s what life and recovery is. The difference is, now life is mostly good, with some problems. Mostly sunny, with a little rain. And I don’t know how much better it can get.