“Is the help I offer truly loving or do I have other motives? Am I trying to change another person or get them to do what I want? Talking it over with my Sponsor can offer perspective. My best hope for helping those I love really does begin when I focus on myself.”
-Courage to Change Jan. 18
The four M’s of Al-Anon are managing, martyring, manipulating, and mothering. Notice the -ing suffix on all of these words. These words are not just a state of being, but rather verbs—something I do when trying to control the uncontrollable. This includes alcoholism and everything outside of me. These M’s are also a way I take the focus off myself and my recovery and put it directly on my chosen victim of the day: my significant other, my family member, my boss, my colleagues, my sponsor, my sponsee, my next-door neighbor, or even the driver in front of me. They are a way of avoiding the responsibility of a mature recovering person.
Managing is not only a convenient way of taking the focus off myself, but it is actually a pretty sick and dangerous way to live. I cause needless conflict by trying to force solutions and make decisions for people very capable of making them for themselves. This happened this weekend with my adult son. We were discussing a plan to have him live on his own. My plan is that he could get a roommate. He has always resisted this and would rather wait until he can afford to get an apartment and live by himself. When I spoke to my Al-Anon sponsor about this, she assured me that I was trying to fix, manage and control the situation by trying to have it my way. This young man has never once entertained the idea of living with a roommate, but it is the same worn thought that I always return to. Why? Because I am trying to outrun God. I so badly want it to happen now and in the fashion that I choose. After all, I do know best!
When I attempt to manage another person’s life, I leave very little room for a Higher Power to work in their lives—or in mine. This is part of my sickness and not part of my recovery. But the awareness of my own need to still control the world around me at many years of recovery blah blah blah just shows how much learning God still has for me to do. I am not a finished product—my recovery is a living process.
Today I am going to do a couple of things. First, I am going to be still and recognize that God is God—and I am not. Second, I will recognize that just as I have a Higher Power, so does my son. If I say that my Higher Power cares for me and only wants the best for me, can I just admit that this same Higher Power wants the best for him? His relationship with God is vertical—between God and him, just like mine is. It is not some horizontal triangulation where I have to get in there and help his decision along.
And finally, just for today I will live in this one day only—and keep the focus on what needs to change inside of me. My sponsor pointed out that I can leave my son in the care of his sponsor and his Al-Anon program. What a beautiful assurance. I know from personal experience just how much Al-Anon helped me in my own crisis with a problem drinker. Can I just give this wonderful program a chance to work on him as well? Just for this one day? Yes, I can.