Step 10 and the Detox From Negative Thoughts – Tim M.

to set the tone for the meeting i will read an extract from dr bob's nightmare page 180 and 181 i spend a great deal of time passing on what i learned to others who want it and need it badly i do it for four reasons one a sense of duty two it's a pleasure three because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me. Four, because every time I do it I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip. Tonight's meeting is part five of working step 12 with a sponsee and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing and with that i will hand it over to tim thank you your brave souls being here for part five of anything uh i wouldn't be anyway tim alcoholic thank you for having me back we got three topics left on step 12 i have a feeling there's like something else that's going to come after that but we'll see when we get there um i think ellie sheva has been talking about that anyway anyway anyway um tonight the remaining topics although more may pop up are drama from that's drama families maybe a separate topic maybe the same topic unsure we'll see and workplace which is kind of dull so i don't want to bore myself so i'll go in with drama let me open a window okay so dealing with dramatic sponsees um i kind of didn't get the hang of it for around 26 and a half years so um it took a while to work out the kinks um i had a very very dramatic sponsee many years ago who um i suggested that they do uh tea at a meeting and they're very good they got the little flasks full of hot water put out the tea and coffee very neatly and tidily and the biscuits of course biscuits are very important um and then they would sit as far away from the tea as possible leaving people to serve themselves and i suggested well that's kind of not the point of the tea commitment it's it's that you get to talk to everyone and the individual in question said that uh in in her family of origin you always know I get always get slightly tense when I hear that phrase you know because you kind of know what's coming um in my family of my family orage um um I was made to play the servant role so me doing tea at the meeting it just triggers me because it reminds me of that so I'm not going to do that i'm going to sit on the other side of the room and they can serve themselves and on one level i can i can kind of see that whatever fair enough but this becomes a pattern of it became a pattern of resistance and drama one night for reasons i can't remember why i did why my phone was off i have no idea this was about oh 17 maybe 18 19 years ago my phone was on and it rang at 3 30 in the morning and the poor individual was you know when someone is sobbing so hard they can't say anything it's just sobbing for like four or five minutes until the sobbing stops and it was something about they were going to go to a family wedding and they didn't want to go into the family wedding. And I said oh fine you know if you don't want to go don't go there we go it's as simple as that you don't have to do anything if it's traumatizing then after um now you deal with each of these situations and you think well i'm being a very very good sponsor i look i'm giving solutions and the solutions are you know appreciated my personals continuing to call back but the difficulty is that with sponsors where there's lots of drama um is one day you're going to be the subject matter of the drama what do you do then you're now that you're not everyone gets to take a turn as the problem so you're you might be you might Beflavor of the month for a while helping them deal with other dramas but one day you become the drama one day I became the drama I phoned Maureen I said I didn't know what to do about this and she said um uh you tell the individual I don't think I'm the right person to sponsor you and you wish them well and send them off into the night and as you're walking away don't mutter under your breath and I can't imagine who would be So, you know, be kind about it. Don't say that. Say about a tenth of what is going through your mind. Say only what is necessary when you get to the point that you've become part of the problem. Drama can happen in two ways. It can happen and it can be positive drama or negative drama. What I mean by positive drama, sometimes most sponsors are like totally businesslike. um you know in conversations with you they're like the cat and Pepe Le Pew they can't get off the phone quick enough it's fine this is healthy but the ones who are too keen oh you've got to be very very careful there was one I did not know what they wanted from there was something I didn't know what it was so I said I said to them why don't you write down what you think it is that you want from me and they sent me this email which which sends shudders down my spine to this day um it was a they wrote okay i wrote 27 points now that's that's trouble to start with isn't it you know you know you're in for a long day um and the first point was i want your fingers to enter my brain and massage truth into my soul and at this point I deleted the email I deleted I emptied the deleted items folder and ever since I've regretted it oh I'd love to know what the other 26 items were but but it's lost very much lost to posterity and I terminated of the relationship then and i should have terminated it way before they phoned up very dramatically one day like two o'clock thursday afternoon and there was this kind of the first thing was this reproachful question did you say or did you not say that jesus christ was the son of god i'm like i'm in the middle of a work is this was an urgent question where is this coming from so so drama it can be that kind of when they want to entangle with you or the drama can appear to be about everyone else um with very true i've got the hang of very dramatic people now and very very few call me because i'm not available for the i'm Not Available and Available for the Drama Dance and you kind of give off vibes when you're no longer available for a certain type of dance people stop asking to dance particular dance um but the things that the way i what i've learned from having very dramatic sponsees over the years is i didn't cause it i can't control it and i sure as hell can't cure it and something that joe said many years ago was that their drama is their balm is their ointment for their inner sense of inadequacy and guilt and shame and so on that rather than facing that they immediately go into blame and and and drama um and that's a useful avenue to because i'm what i don't want to give the impression of is if someone is very dramatic there's nothing you can do there's a lot you can Do there are cases where it goes so far that it's just irremediable at least with you maybe or you've gotten to the next stage they'll handle it with someone else but but how to deal with it okay so first of all sometimes you can redirect the attention to what are the feelings you're trying to avoid by creating this drama in the first place there's the whole borderline personality thing where as tom said uh you know borderline personality people are happy only when everyone around them is in chaos is to look at what are you getting out of this drama what is the kick so let's not look at the content it's not about the content it'S about the fact that there is a drama being created again and again and again and it's just like the cycles in the big book with the alcoholic and the doctor's opinion of um the ease and comfort that you get from uh the first stages of a dramatic situation um followed by the well-known stages of the spree and then emerging remorseful then they emerge remorsefully at the end of the cycle i say they i mean it's not like i have done this the only way i can deal with it is because i used to be like this myself um you get people to look at the cycle because it's not about the content if you sold one another one will crop up the next day because it'S THE MACHINE THAT'S GENERATING THE DRAMAS WHICH IS THE PROBLEM THE DRAMA WHICH Is OCCURRING IS SIMPLY THE WHATEVER TOOLS ARE AVAILABLE whatever whoever's there will be the subject after the drama it's not where it's not coming from the situation the situation is being used and that's a useful conversation you can have a second conversation this is a very common one uh when people are very uh very sort of upset and it's someone else's fault so this is very common with these of Esanon and Al-Anon um uh with with the alcoholic where they think it's everyone else's fault uh very often and because I've been on both sides I've being the typical alcoholic character and the typical Al-Anon character the typical alcoholic character expects everyone else to do everything for them so they don't have to do it for themselves and the typically Al-anon is to play the hero or the martyr so they're doing you know you're doing all the laundry you're doing everything right you'redoing the dinner you'redoing the cleaning you're doing everything why can't they just help with something occasionally it wouldn't hurt if they folded a sock you know that kind of anger and that they're kind of two different situations because it's very clear with the alcoholic who's just going around causing trouble not lifting a finger that theyre the problem with the alanons and the esanons from my own experience of being and alan on actually probably an s long candidate as well um i won't go any further um uh it can it can look superficially as though the problem is originating elsewhere um but the way i'm i handle it and this is the way I handle my own propensity to drama is to say in any dramatic situation um the situation may command a response from but i won't know what the response is until i'm at peace because let's say you think there are 10 things wrong in a relationship with a person and you're furious about lots of them and then you get calm and you realize nine of them are rubbish or inconsequential or not even a problem one of them is a genuine problem the one that's a genuine problem now looks completely different anyway, now that you're calm. And then you notice something else which does need to change, which was being masked by your own rage. So it's vital if you're going to act right in a tricky relationship, whether it's a work relationship or an AA relationship or a group situation, unless you're at peace, you're gonna mess it up anyway. You're gonna act where it's none of your business. You are going to misapprehend the situations which genuinely command the response and act wrong in those and you're going to miss the other things which are being masked so uh a lot of the drama the the form it usually takes is infamy infamy they've all got it in for me the the uh the blame thrower not the flame throw the blame threat where i feel bad i'm being so mistreated blah blah blah and for years i tried to unpick the content of those situations and it never worked i mean you can kind of superficially do it and people are sort of happy because you've given them some attention actually rather a lot of attention often you know 90 percent of my sponsee time was going on the 10 percent of sponsees that were excessively dramatic that's not a great use of time but the sponsees were pleased because they were calm and part of the kind of acting out is to create the situation which is itself a balm to the internal god-shaped void and secondly to get all of like the help and the attention from a sponsor or a therapist or whoever else and that's that's like part two of the ointment and then once they've got those two elements they've Got the thrill and then they get the relief um they're done and then They're quiet for a day or two days and then it all starts up again so dealing unpicking the content what's in what was fascinating about these dramatic situations particularly in the last couple of years like between 24 years and 26 years I started seeing that every single drama with a particular person was that actually the same drama repeating wearing different clothes and all of that unpicking had done absolutely nothing none of it had gone in none of It had penetrated the subconscious none of I had had any effect at all um and I've switched tack and the tack I've Switched is this uh and is that let me just get rid of the cord there we go The tank I've switched is this. I had a number of emotional difficulties for a number of years from around 20 years, say, but onwards. Like all my personal relationships were largely fine. It was sort of seething resentments against categories of people in the world I classed as idiotic and dangerous. Whether they are idiotic and or dangerous is another question. They might be. But my problem was sitting in my living room, or going for a walk in leafy Dubois town, I was fulminating with rage about these categories of people not doing anything about anything but just culminating with rage doing inventory after inventory thinking if only i analyzed the third column carefully enough there may be something would pop and then occasionally i'd see through it and then it would go um but what i learned was that it's as i've already said it's not about the content it's about the fact that the rage the anger whatever the fear also um is contains it is that's the drug that's a drug i've got to stop taking the drug it's not about how to handle these situations or these types of people it's the fact i'm continuing to feed myself the drug so what i've switched to uh with myself and this is what i then shown to sponsees it's it's much more helpful than what i was doing before is to say right um i sometimes recount the story i was in the um uh the the hofboy house not in munich but in las vegas you know the munich bavarian beer hall and i was with my sponsor and with two steely eyed alanons who were several thousand years old and i said something flippant you know to break the ice the tension at the table And this old, old Al-Anon said, did you know in Al- Anon in Texas, obviously because Al-A-Non in Texas is different than Al- A-N-On elsewhere, says Al-a-Nan in Texas a slip is a negative thought. I then stayed largely silent for the rest of the conversation having nothing to say um and so the the job is to uh with my own propensity to to to drama in whatever form it takes is to treat that as being the case a slip of the negative thought and so you treat it like a game your ego will tempt you many times a day to start thinking negative thoughts about this or about that and generally it'll come into come in one of um three forms um there's resentment uh and the sub versions of that are resentment against oneself so remorse game remorse shame guilt all of those but that's just resent against oneself resentment second one fear third one plotting plotting scheming planning devising arguing with them in your mind winning the argument in your mindset you're prepared for the next conversation so they won't outwit you those are the three mental habits um what my experience is is that those mental habits need to be broken to detoxify myself when i detoxify my self and look at the wreckage of the situation the truth is immediately self-evident i tried to explain or try to lead people back from the drama to what sanity would be in a situation and this is the thing i've stopped doing because i don't think it can be done it's just like with a drink you can't argue someone sober who's been drinking you can't argue someone sane who's in one of their hysterical banshee moments what you have to do is to stop the poison entering the system and have them detox so it's to replace all resentful thoughts where this is a sick man how can i be helpful this is just another child of god how can i be helpful to replace um uh the fear thoughts to substitute for the fear fear thoughts god is there any practical action you'd like me to take or i'm going to trust this whole situation is in your hands and go and do something else uh so so to to practice the emmett fox notion of substitution and you get immediate results now people will push back hugely against this i had someone not unusually pushing back it was about the the situation was um uh where a family member was behaving badly and the family member may or may not be behaving badly and the question was uh do i need to tell him and list for him all the things he's doing wrong shall i do that and the answer lies in the just for today card i won't regulate anybody anybody but myself my feelings may be hurt but if they are hurt i won'T show it and a slip as a negative thought replace any resentment and fear with the appropriate positive thinking and when you're at peace then we can discuss how you're handling the situation and whether any action needs taken but you can't we're not even going to look at that until uh until you're at peace and have been at peace for some time because it's a waste of time trying to change things when you're upset and the put you get all sorts of pushbacks um one of the pushbacks is um but therapists always say that you have to tell people the negative ways in which their behavior is affecting you actually someone you so i've been using that as an example apocryphally for some time there's someone actually said it today and i understand that you know i've had therapist and i said well i don't know do what you want if you want to do what the therapist says do what this says all i can tell you is i've been in a relationship with someone for 17 years we don't argue we're happy and these are the rules that i follow so take your pick so you're not arguing if you as soon as you're arguing you're losing first and last time i quote well reagan um if if you're arguing if you explain that's it you're explaining you're losing i'm sure uh evan if he's here will correct me uh if you'RE EXPLAINING YOU'RE LOSING um so just to it's that it's THAT COURSE IN MIRACLES THING if you apply the solution you don't analyze the solution because analyze means anal lies if you take a cue for analyzes chop it into little bits and look at each of the individual little bits if you take a person and you chop in chop them into little bit uh then you won't learn anything about the person you'll only learn about the little bits um i've never chopped a person into little bites i should add i've been reliably informed this by my mobster friends of whom i have none but if you chop people into little pieces they can't tell you anything useful um if i analyze this if i analyze the solution it's the it's the cockroach defending itself against the exterminator you know if you ask the cockroache its view as to you know whether the exterminators should be in the kitchen and what kind of powder they're using the cockroaches not going to help you but achieve your objective they're gonna they're going to argue it's like suddenly around this part of east london i don't know if they have them where you live you know those dogs which always look angry and then they rush up at people angrily and barking and they say oh don't worry he's only playing he just wants to play just friendly those dogs you know when you give them a newspaper within seven seconds there's a pile of there'sa pile of newspaper on the floor they've ripped it all up and they look up at you pleased with themselves the same if you give one of them a soft toy or something within seven seconds it's completely destroyed and they look pleased with themselves that's my mind in response to a solution you give the solution to my mind it analyzes it it destroys it and it is pleased with itself so i don't discuss this like one thing that i've been giving people is oh my god you just this goes straight this goes right this is like the crucifix in the heart of the vampire like with a spiky end to the crucifice um to repeat every time you have a negative thought about another person or yourself i am innocent they are innocent i am innocence they are innocent and people almost literally start hissing at you when you suggest that as but they're not innocent um you get them doing that and everything starts to change straight away um uh but you they've got to do it there's no point trying to understand it some people say but i don't understand why they're innocent no no you have to understand that you just have to apply it and it's just like in course in miracles lessons where they say you don't have to like the solution, you don'T have to agree with it, but all you have to do is apply it and then you'll find out it's true. It's only through application that you find out it's truth. And what this does, this is brilliant because it means you don' t have to have, you don''t have to perform an exorcism on them, which is what it's like dealing with dramatic people otherwise. If you engage in the content, you're now in a scene from the exorcist you know when the the the you know the girl is levitating off the white's always a girl i don't know but when the girl has levitated freud would tell you when the Girl is levetating off the bed and the priest there's like the young priest and the old priest and The Young Priest is trying to address the demon inside the person and the girl as speaking with the demon's voice and the demon knows everything about the young priest and then and incorporates all of its knowledge about the Young Priest and the Young Priests deepest darkest fears into its rebuttal into its argument against the exorcism and you have the old priest saying basically don't engage with any of that stuff it's all lies you've got to see you've gotta So don't touch the material, otherwise you get the material all over you and you become part of the problem. As soon as you're part of that problem, you've lost. They're going to have to go on. They've burnt you out. It's like the fuse has gone. You're done. they have to go on to the next one um but that those bet that basic sort of emmett box course in miracles approach works and if they work the steps systematically so the the way you address the situation is through the systematic formal approach of step four if you're going to address tool which goes very very systematically you know um and i won't rehearse it now we've done it in another in another of these talks about first column second column third column forgiveness um page 67 questions fear inventory sex inventory sane and sound ideal which is the approach but and each of those however sick someone is if they're willing they can go through that but you can't short circuit that in the kind of step 10 situation with someone who is on their high horse just doesn't work so you've got to shoot straight to the detox process and then when they're calm as i say 90 percent of the structure collapses they realize they've been crazy and it's obvious to them how um what else do we need to know about dramatic um situations don't take it personally and i repeat that don't take it personally the dramatic ones the dramatic sponsees um have got a way of involving and entangling you uh and if you're not careful you get involved in entanglement and when it when this is the therapist you see this is the therapist in big little lies when it breaks down because it's going to break down it's not if when it brakes down then uh you've got to be very careful what you say to people who are very dramatic because they will tell everyone else except they won't tell everyone that's exactly what you of they'll tell everyone else their version of what you're saying so you've got to be very very careful but the point is um uh it's not about you um it's about them so i mustn't get involved and even when it breaks down there might be all sorts of fallout in your home group or locally you just stand firm and you muscle through it basically and it can be unpleasant the point therefore is to avoid getting to that stage where you stay you basically keep the same arm's length business-like approach with the very dramatic people as with everyone else so the the temptation if you've got an alan on streak is to uh is to get more involved and to see this as a project as as um i can't remember who said it uh when when you respond to the prospect of a dramatic phone call from responsee with a mixture of excitement and a dread like a here's a fascinating project but b you feel slightly sick at the same time those situations i want to be careful of that because what i'm doing is what they're doing so they have a drama about whoever else and then they become your drama then you're telling all your friends and you're selling your sponsor and you go into your extra al-anon meeting hoping the qualifier doesn't show up you know you see what i mean i can replicate that i can do what they're doing it's almost contagious drama it's almost contagious it's an extraordinary the whole dynamic is extraordinary and it's the um uh someone here will know more about this than me they've disappeared in there um the the uh the the drama triangle of the the victim the persecutor and the rescuer and uh the danger if you've got someone who is playing the victim role in the drama triangle that you've been cast as the rescurer and the thing about the the carpman c-k-a-r-p-m-a end go and read about it cartman drama triangle and the funky thing about the cartman drama triangle is the roles aren't fixed so on monday you're they're the victim and you're the rescuer but then something weird happens and suddenly you become the victim and they become the persecutor and you didn't see how could this happen to me you enter the triangle when you enter the triangle that's when the musical chairs start and when the music stops the seat you're nearest to is the one you're sitting in for the next period until the music starts up again so one's got to stay outside the triangle very difficult the reason this is very difficult is someone who is in a drama cycle is going to look like very much like an ordinary person with a situation and it can take two or three uh calls or two two or three problem-solving situations before you realize oh okay so this is a pattern this this this is not problem solving this is something else this is a historical reenactment of an unresolved drama from childhood or wherever and you know we're reenacting the civil war basically trying to get the ending to change but the ending never changes because it's fixed that the the ending is determined by the rules of the game the parameters of the gain determine the end that the payoff is the victimhood which is why people don't want to be relieved of it and i know this because that was me you know yeah the only way i know anything is because i've done i did it for decades until finally i was relieved of it myself now I can see it playing out so um I think that's all I've got to say on drama it's a very difficult subject that's what I've gotta say on drama does anyone have anything to ask what I'm gonna do if I may and obviously if there are other questions arise just just comes you know put your little hand up or something is uh the family stuff this is very dangerous territory because it involves its real people uh and their actual families um so i'm extremely cautious about giving any kind of advice and uh my advice is limited almost solely to what it says in the big book uh your page references if you like page references are pages 98 to 99 um and then the chapter uh it's basically from uh page 115 to 135 that 20 page block has got a bunch of a bunch of things don't do these but do do those things not to do things to do and i get people just to read those passages and do what it says and let me just get the big book as we call it up on screen i might share it if i may i think i probably can so 98 um though his family be at fault in many respects he should not be concerned about that he should concentrate on his own spiritual demonstration arguments and fault finding to be avoided like plague and then the next important bit is on the next page um the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober considerate and helpful regard will arise of boundaries and uh so this is it's usually with family this is the point i sort of share with my experience of what boundaries are and how you settle and i think there are two types of boundary first type of boundary is the have we talked about boundaries before or not in these sessions i can't remember okay so the first type of boundary is the i can t i won't boundary so when the boundaries do with me um you know you're invited to a family gathering uh all the people who press your buttons because they all the buttons are going to be there you're seven months sober and it's in a country house 47 miles from a railway station you have no car everyone's going to be drunk should you go that's the question um and taxes they get and it over a long weekend bank holidays deepest scotland it's going to be snowy um you know a possible boundary is i can't come or i won't come you know the line i always quote this one from phoebe and friends um where someone asks her to do something she said gee i wish i could but i don't want to and so you know this is always an option to just duck out of things where boundaries um get trickier is where it's a boundary where you want someone else to do something either start doing something stop doing something or do it differently and then you've got the five levels to escape through of a polite request offering a transaction so transaction is if we if you come out with me and my mother this weekend i'll go out with you and your mother next weekend deal if you come to my work dinner i will come to yours if i do the dinner tonight when you do the laundry transaction um the third type of boundary is the um uh the covert so covert consequences so when someone the most obvious example is uh if you've got a family member that is sometimes rude and accusatory and insane and sometimes really pleasant the covert boundary is to um basically you don't reply unless they're pleasant if they're unpleasant you don'T reply and they get to join the dots and recognize if they want your engagement they're going to have to play nice that's the covert boundary the overt the overt consequences is when you say um if you carry on shouting i'm going to put the phone down and then they carry on shouting and then there's a click that's the over that's there so you threaten the overt consequence and then you enact the overt consequence which can be putting the phone done leaving calling the police changing the locks something like that so i run through those but honestly honestly um i'm very skeptical i'm i'm very clear about like the i can't i don't want to boundaries i think those are very very useful to me and i use them a lot what i'm much more skeptical about particularly with families uh because if it goes wrong you're kind of stuck with your blood relatives you're stuck with them literally forever you know you can excommunicate a family member but they remain your family member it's not like leaving the home group uh you know your you're stuck with the relationship whether or not you're seeing them so one has to be terrible with the family is uh something tom's sponsor says don't expect much to change so when you realize that probably not much if anything is going to change the question is what's the point in even trying to set the boundary it just aggravates people stick to one a month find a really careful subtle way of communicating things um you run out of the vouchers really really quickly um what you're left with now that these all these tools all help in all sorts of situations um the the one type of situation which is very naughty is people in romantic relationships which are toxic and involve verbal or physical violence and um people uh in other sort of family relationships with verbal physical violence um with the with the ones where it's romantic relationships um i've got to the stage where i've discovered it's just i've probably mentioned this before it's like if they're drinking or taking drugs or you know eating 17 belgian buns they're high they're high on the drama the violence toxicity the so-called codependency which is i hate the word but there we go and they won't make any progress in that actual program if they stay in a relationship so i can't i won't tell someone to leave the relationship but what i will say is i i don't think the time trying to i i'm spending trying to help you is helping while you're in the relationship so i can't sponsor you if you stay in a relationship there are a thousand other people that can sponsor you if you want to stay in the relationships and have a sponsor ask one of them but i'm not doing it because it's page 96 the if if the toxic relationship is so getting in the way of uh like it occupies nine tenths of the room so there's only a tenth of the room left for the program there's a there are magical creatures in the harry potter wizarding world who are this is the adjective that jk rowling made up koran at tixic and what koran at ticsic means is that they grow to fill the space they're in if you can entice one into a teapot it will fill the teacups if it escapes into the large room it will grow to fill the room and the toxic relationships like that whatever their life is like and i've been like this when i'm in a toxic relationship i haven't been in one for years many years thank god fingers crossed touch wood um it it occupies nine tenths of my consciousness whatever however big or small my life is it's going to occupy nine times and i can't help people who are in a toxic romantic relationship send them so where's dominic there you go send dominic can help those poor old dominic's gonna get a stream of calls uh he knows where to send the special place some of us know about um and you know maybe that they can be helped by another fellowship um the family ones are trickier as i say you're stuck with them um with my own family there are three cats i think there are people i'm i don't know where this tape is going i hope this doesn't get broadcast depending on my family there is someone in my family who actually listens to me so i have to tell him to be very careful you know where he but don't play this at home there are some people i'm largely indifferent to they're like fine like if i'm at a wake fine i'll talk to him you know we're not going to be exchanging christmas presents we're not going gonna be um you know we're huge amounts of hangout going to get great but there's no problem um there are some people i've got some some um troubled very troubled relations particularly on the french side the english side much more sedate but the french site um there is some whose behavior is so extreme and so bizarre and so criminal actually um like Charlotte Rampling you know upper class criminal but criminal um you know seven figure criminal that kind of thing they're so awful I mean they've got hearts of gold I'm sure somewhere but I just it's just too much toxicity to deal with I can't even go near it and then everyone else there's the everyone else and everyone else you know because i'm immense i was immensely troubled i'm a little better now i come from a family which is very very troubled and there are some very troubled people now some of the troubled people are good as gold and sweet and occasionally they do strange things and you can't try and help them where you can but some other people it depends what day you catch them on if they're on a good day then you can have a normal conversation if they're on a bad day uh god help you and when i used to go and visit my mother in dorchester she's much older now this is many years ago let's go down to when she lived in dorset it's to go down visit and she's got a thousand good reasons for being difficult so this is not to i don't want to sort of pillory her so if i'd had her life i'd be far more difficult than she is she's amazing considering what she's been through but anyway when we arrived in dorset for a weekend visit jonathan would go to tesco's to buy champagne chocolate and flowers now whilst he was there my mother had built up a head of steam over days and weeks with all the things she wanted to reproach me for and our deal was when jonathan was at tesco's she would see her opportunity she would get it all off her chest he'd come back with the flowers the chocolate the uh champagne and since you've got it off her she was fine for the rest of the weekend she just needed to get it off their chest and so what i practiced was quietly listening to it not engaging within it any of it and seeing past the behavior to the hurt child within keeping my focus on that as being the real person the surface behavior is not her the realperson is innocent and wounded that's all they're innocent and wounded and so this is something that i will share with people if the person is gonna be in your life because they're your mother and you they'reyourmother um you try and i tried to estrange myself for a while for a couple of years and it was no less painful than seeing her regularly it was is you're no further ahead by estranging yourself as the relationship continues psychically i don't know how that happens my brother tried to estringe himself from her eventually killed himself so it doesn't work and the relationship between him and her has continued to this day unresolved because he didn't resolve it while he was on this plane so she still has a disordered relationship with him and with my sister who died earlier this year. So I think the job with these ones, I have to face these ones and the way I face them they're very difficult but it's as I say it's all the Emmett Fox stuff of seeing the real person behind the surface and over many years they stop acting out in my experience because when they see the i remember the the moment if my mother broke in a good way break um she was having a go i was on the phone to her she was Having a Go and she said she she she attacked me for something something right i can't remember what it was you say i can'T remember isn't that great can'T Remember she attacked Me for something and she said so what are you going to say about that and i said i don't know nothing's coming into my head because i was thinking about fairies or unicorns or something i was deliberately not mentally engaging in it and she carried on and she said now has anything occurred to you yet any answer do you have anything to say you have nothing to say because everything i am saying is true if it wasn't for you to have an answer that is amazing and at one point I said I saw nothing, mind blank and she laughed and she never did it again at least not in that way there are little spurts of it when she starts to have a go but that particularly ferocious form of attack she because i remained completely neutral kind of held her in that position she finally saw it and once she'd seen it once she didn't have the nerve to continue it was extraordinary but i had to withstand that for years i say withstand all i had to do was not fall for the illusion that any of it was real at least real for me what she was experiencing she was experiencing real emotions they weren't a reflection of the reality this was all going on inside her bubble it was nothing to do with me by learning how to sit with that for a very long time and not react to it eventually it changed I did not need to do anything to change it other than not try and change it that's the paradox for the years I've tried to fix and change and control that behavior it got worse when I stopped trying to fix change control than just sat there for years eventually it stopped it's the it's the only way and um so what i'm practicing much more at the moment is uh keeping my big fat mouth shut and it's it and so those those are the three things i can offer with family that you know that there are some people where it's irremediable and maybe you have to separate there are other people who are neutral and it'S fine the people who aren't very well um some are non-aggressive in which case you just love them and look after them do what you can the ones who are aggressive that is an option what I did with my mother is an option and I'm glad I did it you know the sort of distant French cousins the crazy French cousins there's no love lost there but with my mother it needed to be dealt with um but my experience this is a I shouldn't really well I'm gonna say it okay um this is where drama crosses over the family stuff so there is a solution there is a way of learning how to be different with the very difficult people but you've got to want it above all else you've gone you've Got to want to not be part of the drama and whatever stage of development I was at a stage of development for a very long time that the drama I have with my mother was part of my identity so i wanted to be free of the consequences of the drama but i didn't want the drama narrative to collapse because it was part of my existential position in the world if i didn t have that who was i what would if my childhood was actually fine who would i be was the whole thing a lie very difficult to let go of a drama structure so people have got to want to if they don't want to don't push them and as my sponsor says don't pick on ripe apples um i think that's all i've got on family alistair uh was there one more topic drama and family yeah there was there was one more which is which is workplace this is far more straightforward it's terribly simple actually workplace stuff um part of it is boundaries how to get on with other people and i think i mentioned this before it's very simple uh it's a matter of applying the traditions the principles contained in the tradition system systematically and dennis f is your primary go-to for the principles behind the traditions um when people have got corporate structures they're dealing with and you know it's how different departments work with each other um how businesses are structured how partnerships are structured, how the family business because a family is in effect a type of business then it's the concepts so um you simply sort of throw people in deep end with the traditions if it's to do with interpersonal stuff and the concepts if it's to do with structural stuff like how decisions get made how those decisions get implemented how responsibility and authority work how delegation works it's the concepts and uh i'll tell you just very very briefly there isn't much time uh that that solved with with those things it's actually the traditions and the concept not steps i mean you need to be in a fit state yourself but it's traditions and the concepts and the principles contained within them that actually resolve those situations just like they do in a group um but i've got a a friend who works for um uh one of the big american banks um i can't tell you what it's called but it's it rhymes with no i'm not going to do that anyway he's literally too senior for me to even joke about this But we've had situations where he's explaining the stuff that's going on in the bank and we can diagnose the problem amazingly effectively and quickly by systematically going through concept, concept one, concept two. Where is this business going wrong in terms of the delegation of authority and decision making and responsibility being out of alignment with authority, which is what the whole thing is about? If you have authority and responsibility properly allocated with the proper delineations of where decision making takes place, who is responsible for the decisions, who they're then delegated to, what scope the delegatee has, everything becomes clear. and it's amazing how many unsolvable complex business situations yield within half an hour to the application of traditions in the concept it's really extraordinary um so that's if they're in work and they have problems and that is your opportunity for to get them to work on the traditions and concepts and it'S far more useful actually my experience to do it that the traditions in the context that way rather than cold as like academic exercises so that's that's all I've got on there and I think that's me done for step 12 topics super thank you Tim um and with that I'll open it up for questions thank you Jim thanks for that presentation uh the question I have is um related to family and working with somebody particularly if they're newly sober or newly in recovery and the the dynamics within their family is has changed because well they're and for example in aa they're no longer drinking while they're with their family and my question is how important or useful is it to help somebody to see that they're the spirit that they do things in is is um something that can help them have a more healthy relationship with their family and i'm thinking for example principles out of that are outlined in the big book like i think it's in the family afterwards it's got the idea of giving rather than getting will become the guiding principle um whether helping people to apply those sorts of principles when they have contact with their family is helpful alongside the just the out when you were talking about changing one's perception so for example with maybe a parent seeing them as innocent but wounded um is it helpful to suggest that people change their attitude when they're actually spending time with their family or yeah it's kind of the only thing to change actually if the attitude changes everything else changes um uh automatically um people in aa and well all the fellowships think they're really good at conceiving their emotions it's like i said i hid behind a wall and no one saw the real me i'm like come on we could see it from 50 feet away you were concealing nothing just because you weren't saying anything it's like someone walks in a room you know where they are in their life do you know what i mean it's like sometimes people walk in the room the room lights up other people walk in the run a chill the air you know the temperature drops 10 degrees um you know i've thought that i'm being super subtle with jonathan and i just i've been leaking horribly so um what i've being taught to do by it was jim jim willis it was a very simple talk actually i had with him but he said whatever darkness you've got in your mind about your family do not inflict it on your family so keep yourself absolutely squeaky clean when you're with them really pay attention to not letting anything leak with you know doing things loudly or sighing or huffing or funny little silences before replying you know there's subtle ways you indicate that you're pissed off to really adopt the same attitude that you would if you had uh if you're because everyone knows how to behave or almost everyone knows How To Behave with policemen and bosses like you know when you're just on the verge of getting arrested and you have to switch or you're in serious trouble in about two minutes time that whatever skill got you through that or when your boss is about to fire you Just deploy that with your family in extremis. Otherwise, withdraw from the situation. Get yourself calm. Get your head on straight and adopting the attitude of I'm here to forgive, which means to withdraw judgment. I'm going to serve. And page 85 is super helpful with this. Every day is a day where we must carry the vision of God's will into all our activities. How may I best serve thee? Thy will not mine be done. So what I do, and I suggest to other people to do this, go to the loop, say that line from page 85 and go back in as the servant. So you have no stake. You're just there to serve. Is there anything I can do? My Lord. Now, don't say my Lord or they'll think it's sarcastic. So don't add that. But that to take that attitude of I'm here to serve if there's nothing you can do. say let me know if there's anything i can do go and do your sudoku in a corner sitting on the floor just don't just you know be ignorable um and that will go an awful awfully long way sometimes people in aa say you know well my behavior is better you know my thinking is still terrible and i'm all over the place but my behavior's better and that's kind of fine like it at least we're all glad you're not punching people anymore but that just creates a tension and it's when there's a tension between the outsides and the insides it's like an elastic band when you let go it'll snap and it'll slap back to its original shape so the job is actually to change the internal attitude to drop this the snarky snide cynical victim blamey attitude and just put on a new not just put on a new face but have that face be an expression of a new attitude inside um and i think that that's vital it takes a lot of practice thanks tim uh if you have time if we have any more questions so um i was talking with ellie sheva we've kind of got to the end of step 12 thing are we uh doing the early chapters from next week or is that going to be at some later date um should i should i stop the recording yeah okay