Slippery people

Days of Healing, Days of Joy...............................................Dec. 12th

"Tell me what company you keep, and I'll tell you who you are"....Cervantes

Program lore frequently reminds recovering people to beware of slippery people and slippery places. The obvious fact is that if we hang around slippery people and places, we will slip.

Adult children are on slippery ground when they try to communicate with people who constantly feel negative about life or negative toward them specifically. Many adult children find the most slippery place on earth is returning to their original families. Many have to make very conscious decisions about how safe it is for them to return home. Our whole task is to grow in the realm of self-esteem and self-confidence. This demands that we experience some success. If we are surrounded by those who only tell us what cannot be done or what we cannot accomplish, we are headed for a slip.

"Stick with winners," we are told. Stick with those people who help push us up the hill - not those who drag us down.
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I am not obliged to spend my life with people who diminish my life. My choice of company is mine.

When I got sober, my so-called 'friends' were just drinking buddies and I never saw them again. Since I stopped hanging around the bar, I had to reason to see them, and they didn't want anything to do with me anyway.

I did what my home group and the Big Book said, and I stuck with the winners, and it worked! What they had started to 'rub off' on me, plus my cravings eased (with the help of chocolate ) and the promises began to come true!! Sticking with the winners works!

Lee, I've always thought of "slippery people" as drinkers/partiers. But your post includes something I wouldn't have thought of that way: my family. My father drank like an alcoholic when I was growing up. He doesn't drink now, but never admitted alcoholism, just got old, started taking meds, quit drinking. But I find that when I'm with him and my mom, even though I'm over 50, all my issues come up with his past physical/emotional abuse and my mother's failure to protect me (especially the time he beat me badly in front of many people, and she stood by the door to prevent others from coming out to stop the beating.)

So, my ACOA issues lead to my "slippery people" issues. Sometimes I think I'm better off not seeing them again. Which leads to so much guilt (they are very old now, frail, sick themselves) why can't I get over it??? My mother half-apologized (in her own sick way) but why can't I just be with them without it sending me into an emotional spiral?

Cookfan, I understand how you feel as I always felt uncomfortable with my family of origin too. It was 'better' after my shrink made me write a letter to my mom, telling her everything I felt about how scared I was growing up - my parents fought all the time, physically and were alcoholics. My shrink said I should include all my emotions both then and now. So I did, and she made me mail it!!! I was inpatient at the time. That did help to get rid of alot of "stuff" that I'd wanted to say for a long time.

But I still needed a lot of therapy to get rid of the anger and resentment over being ignored and emotionally abused all my childhood.

I then figured out that my parents gave Me what they had been given. They couldn't give me something they didn't have. They had been abused as children too. They didn't know how to be parents. I stopped the cycle with my own kids, and lavished love & attention on my own kids.

I guess back then there weren't the resources or reading material about parenting that there is now, and parents just didn't KNOW. I'm not condoning what happened, but I'm glad we live in the time that we do! God bless and please take care. And if you can, I'd suggest getting some therapy. It certainly helped me tremendously! Take care. Hugs, Lee