[Wants2Fly]

This is for the 2 people who asked about Emotions Anonymous. Obviously, I am not an expert on Emotions Anonymous, having attended exacty one (1!) meeting.

I'm not sure how I first heard about this group, but it was years ago. I looked them up online, Emotions Anonymous, to find a meeting near me.

I will quote from a flyer I was given (typos are my own), and then I will tell a little bit about my personal experience with this one meeting.

"The pressures of daily living and resulting emotions affect everyone regardless of intelligence, education, wealth, or social position. The purpose of Emotions Anonymous is to help people of all faiths or of no recognized faith to live a better emotional life. The program provides answers, yet asks no questions of its members. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is equal. No one is more important than another.

"Men and women from all walks of life have banded together to learn how to cope with such symptoms as panic, anxiety, depression, abnormal fear, self-pity, resentment, remorse, insomnia, jealousy, envy, guilt, despair, fatigue, tension, boredom, loneliness, low self-esteem [ list continues] and other psychosomatic or physical illnesses.

"Members meet . . . to share their thoughts with each other. . . . By sharing their experiences and relationships, members find that they not alone or unique in their feelings even though their symptoms may be different. This discovery brings on an immediate relief and an inner peace begins to take form."

Now, some additional background info from ME, followed by my two-cents.

My apologies in advance to anyone who is familiar with AA and finds that the words below misrepresent. I also know that this is (a) boring to those who know the AA program already and (b) so brief that it of necessity can't include everything, and I may have left out some concept that is particularly important to you.

This program is modeled on the AA 12-step program. I am very familiar with AA, having gotten clean and sober in 1986.

The AA program is spiritual, but not religious in nature. The participant gets a sponsor who will share his/her "experience, strength, and hope" to help one "work the steps" of the program. These include getting honest with oneself, repentance, amends (which can be to oneself, if one has treated oneself badly, as many of us depressives with our harsh self-criticism), and establishing conscious contact with a higher power of one's chosing, be it faith in the power of numbers -- the AA group being greater than the ills and flaws of any one member -- or a transcendental spiritual source.

NOW, my 2-cents about this AA meeting. And my judgmentalness is going to kick in Big Time. So let me say right up front that some of the EA literature points out that each meeting has its own flavor, and to attend more than one meeting before making up your mind whether EA is for you -- and I am planning to do that.

There were 4 men there, plus me. The format I am used to from AA is very solution-oriented, program-oriented. By this, I don't mean that people are silenced when they talk about feeling poorly, confronting some challenge or crisis or sticky situation in their lives. Usually, there is a topic of some sort, based on an AA reading or a slogan or step in the program. So, after someone has shared their confusion, others may empathize, share on similar themes -- but there is almost always others who bring the discussion back to the topic, and how that principle, or some AA principle, helped them in a similar situation. The purpose of the meeting, bottom line, is to help the drunk to overcome alcohol abuse and use the program to heal underlying problems that led to drinking.

An AA meeting is not usually just a big BS session.

I did feel that this EA meeting drifted a good bit. We read a step, and there was zero discussion of why we read that step, what we could do with it, how it made people feel (and it was the step about making amends, which usually arouses a lot of emotions in people). There was absolutely no time limit on people talking, and the guys made little attempt to self-edit to finish the meeting in an hour.

I am not one to stick around and socialize after meetings -- and I should, I need that. Even though I had shared only briefly, the leader dedicated the closing prayer to me, and two of the men followed me into the hallway to offer support. They were not, believe me, hitting on me. These were honest offers of support.

So am I going back? Yeah. Absolutely.

AA is wonderful, it helps me a lot, and there are a lot more meetings, a lot closer to where I live. But one does not exclude the other. AA is not set up to help people with emotional crises and problems. The focus is kept on the recovering alcoholic, as well it should be.

But being sober for a very long time has definitely NOT helped my tendency toward depression and unmanageable emotions.

I liked being welcomed someplace, as I am here all alone in New Orleans.

I owe it to myself to give EA a chance.