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I went to a meeting a few months ago and ran into a sober guy that I love. But I hadn’t seen him in awhile, and he said that to me. “Where have you been? We miss you around here. Everything ok?” he said.
It was such an innocent remark on his part. There was nothing untrue about it. I hadn’t been there for awhile, and I hadn’t seen him in a few months.
But I work a really good, steady program, so I was getting to lots of others meetings and feeling pretty great about how hard I was chasing sobriety. So I immediately felt my back go up a little bit.
I’m not sure exactly what that’s about. My thought process in the moment is, “F— you, mind your own business. Stop micromanaging my program. Who are you to interrogate me about my recovery?”
That thought process is terrible for about 10 different reasons.
First, his comments came from a good place. He’s a friend who cares about me. Asking, “How have you been?” is an obvious question. It’s also a question I ask people on a regular basis.
Secondly, why do I get so defensive about that? What is my insecurity? I’ve grown so much in having a level of self-esteem where you can say you think I am a bad driver or my fly is down or I am an idiot sometimes, and I don’t blow my stack. So why is it specifically recovery where I have the worst reaction to that? I have some thoughts on that topic that I will come back to.
Thirdly, using the word “interrogation” is a great example of how my inner dialogue doesn’t serve me well. Was that guy interrogating me? No. That word alone is totally blowing his comments out of proportion. He asked me how I was doing once. The whole exchange was 5-10 seconds. When was the last time you heard of a 7-second interrogation? Come on, brain, stop gassing me up on this b******t!
Fourth, the “mind your own business” thing is a recurring theme for me. I consider myself a fiercely independent, strong person. That serves me well about 90 percent of the time. I go to meetings because I push myself to. I am good at my job because I have a drive inside me that propels me forward. I go to the gym every day because of that internal drive. That’s the 90 percent. The 10 percent is when people offer me feedback I didn’t ask for and I feel my fists ball up. It’s rarely rude or pushy feedback—it’s usually people who care about me and throw a suggestion my way. If I were in a really serene head space, I could take any suggestion, good or bad, and respond, “Thank you for that. I’ll give it some thought.” Instead, I immediately get my back up like my cats when they start fighting over food. I gotta get better at that—I can’t let my ego flare out of control about a basic comment.
To go back to trying to figure out what the underlying insecurity is, I think it’s actually not a terrible thing for me. I think my insecurity is that I care about sobriety so, so much. It’s the most important part of my life. Of course I care about my family more than anything in the world. But I believe the old adage that anything you put in front of sobriety, you will lose—so my No. 1 goal every day has to be that I stay sober and enlarge my spiritual condition.
So when I feel like somebody might be picking at my desire to stay sober, I take it hard. Too hard. Way too hard! I don’t even think that’s what the guy was doing. I just have very thin skin about it. I probably need to grow up and just smile… I mean, deep down, I know I am doing the right things. Nobody else needs to know that as long as I do. So I’m not sure why it cuts deep the way it does. But I also think a part of me always want to care so much about sobriety that I am easily agitated because I want a sober life so bad.
So whatever you do, don’t ask me how I am doing… how freaking NOT spiritual is that?
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
OLDIE BUT GOODIE: The AA group gave the old-timer a pin recognizing her outstanding humility. And the first time she wore it, they took it back.
(Credit: Grapevine, April 2008, by J.C. of California)
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