Heresy 1 would be what I said about Al-Anon on this comment thread yesterday afternoon, adding random points and thoughts in between grading papers and updating departmental websites. A boil-down of those comments might be to say that I find the formulaic nature of the program very constraining.
Formulas, guidelines, and paradigms all have their uses, but as my Arabic teacher pointed out, “You have in your textbook the guiding lines. But sometimes, they are misleading lines. As you study, be aware of this.” When “guiding lines” are enshrined as an ultimate truth, they become dogma. Dogma is oppressive, and serves to alienate its adherents from reality.
Abyss2hope has this to say about the prevention of sexual violence:
I came across this and immediately thought of Al-Anon. In my opinion and experience, and despite the emphasis it places upon not rescuing the perpetrator or making excuses for them, the self-doubt the program so strongly encourages, ultimately places responsibility for stopping addiction and emotional abuse on the victims or potential victims. It gives the perpetrators (who, after all, are merely “ill”), permission to think only of themselves and what they want. I see far too many victims told that bad situations will improve if they change themselves, reminded that they are “sicker than the perpetrator,” and told to pray, but not act for a deliverance which will come “in God’s way, and God’s time.” Work and pray, live on hay, you’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
It is, of course, possible to read the Al-Anon literature against its religious and submissive grain, and make something out of it. This takes a lot of patience. Al-Anon adepts say it is “the work you need to do to get better.” I say it is the work you need to do to get at least something out of their program, given that in many areas there is no more enlightened alternative. Starting with the illness model, the principles and presuppositions of the program are in my view so deeply problematic in the first place, that they need more than mere revision or the correct interpretation.
In more general terms, I do not trust methodologies involving so much convolution, and requiring so much interpretation. I say this as a person with a Ph.D. who would read literary and social theory, and ancient religious documents, whether it were part of my job or not. I am not complaining about the difficulty of texts, or the amount of contextualization their understanding may require. I am saying that complexity is one thing, but convolution is another. Convolution masquerading as complexity, is manipulative.
Anything follows from a contradiction. One of the things I least like about Al-Anon is their contradictory instructions on how to use their principles. For instance, first they say “take what you need, and leave the rest.” When they see that you are doing this, they follow on with, “if you are not working the whole program, you are not working it at all.”
Conversing with the 12-step programs is in some ways like conversing with an abusive person. The program believes itself to be perfect, and takes no responsibility for any contradictions or mistakes it may have. You are placed in the position of striving and striving to understand and fit in. It is always you who have not grasped their wisdom, which is complete and universal. When you have become more adept, “worked the program” enough, you will no longer feel this uncomfortable need to question.
This, of course, is not everything I think about Al-Anon, and I do think some positive things. But I am not prepared to justify or make excuses for the things I see going on and do not like, especially when these things are justified and defended by the program itself.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Convolution masquerading as complexity, is manipulative.
Absolutely. If you can reduce a thought to a form anyone can access you will see if it is still strong, once naked. Or if it was only clanking and banging because it had tin cans attached.
I also really like your penultimate graf. And therein seems to lie a lot of the absolutist, cookie-cutter, cultish element that leaves me cold when looking over the 12-step paradigm as a whole.
Lotta good stuff in here.
I’ve always wanted to like them, but they are like a cult in many respects, as you discuss.
I just thought of another one. They are always discussing the things they are grateful for, especially if those things appeared in their lives since joining Al-Anon. They rarely discuss anything they are proud of, particularly if it was achieved before joining Al-Anon. And the degree of self-criticism is downright painful, which is why I have referred to it as “reeducation.” Watching people who are actually quite admirable do this to themselves does not feel at all right.
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In more general terms, I find with this and with commercialized / mass marketed psychotherapy, the problem is the assumptions which are made. Disagreeing with the assumptions is encoded as denial. That means it is virtually impossible to be an individual: you have to be a cookie cutter person. And I have no objection, mind you, to being told I’ve got a common problem: as with any health problem, I’d rather it be a common one, since it is then more likely to have a solution that works, or at least to be understood. I am only saying that I’d like to have whatever actual problem I have recognized, not ignored in favor of some other common problem I do not, but which is of greater interest to my interlocutor.
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If I hear once more that I should not have control over my very own life, but leave it up to some mysterious God, I will just be rude right out in public! They seem to be very uncomfortable with anything that is not part of The Program. And a key thing, I think, is the lack of flexibility and/or of dissidence. Yes, you can nominally choose your own God, but as I’ve said, it has to be a personal one who watches over you, paternalistically, and it has to be one. “You can’t do this by yourself.” Why not…or, if you don’t do it alone, why does your company have to be a Higher Power (a power above, power over)?
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A friend complains that her mother has attended “too many Al-Anon meetings.” There, she learned that “nobody can hurt your feelings,” with the result that she gives carte blanche to bullies and other abusive people. As an Al-Anon person, you should be able to withstand anything, and not “blame” anyone for bad behavior. All I have to say about that is, Dios me guarde (so to speak). It is so twisted, it is absolutely maddening.
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One more thing, which I might have mentioned before, is that it is so WHITE. It is practically the only place I have ever been in the South where there are no Black people. I have seen just a couple of Latinos, and ONE Asian, and that is it.
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Hmmm…like any dogmatic, one-size-fits-all belief: as with neoliberalism, where the ‘Market’ solves everything, and so on. It seems to be one a totalizing system with no outside. This is what I do not like about it.
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Yes I know I sound mean and that is one of the things people do not do in Al-Anon, SOUND mean. Instead, they sound syrupy, and when they are not self-deprecating, they are condescending. (This being one of the hallmarks of an abusive atmosphere, I’d say in passing.)
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Anyway, I need to sit on this comment, and my others, which have gotten very long, and then boil them clear, and then put them on a piece of paper, and cremate them. I see myself building a fire of roses which will perfume the house. It is funny: I have gotten good things from Al-Anon meetings, but always and only if I take it as I see fit. But if you go to the meetings, you have to hear about how doing things as you see fit is wrong, and how you have to swallow the program whole. So much pulling towards abjection…when abjection is precisely what I want to boil out.
Field note: I have been to an Al-Anon meeting since I wrote this, partly because, having vituperated about them inside my own head and blog, it seemed one should actually go look at them directly. Each invidual, mind you, is very nice.
They were discussing forgiveness. That part was fine, actually, and I did realize a couple of interesting things from listening to that, so this was fine.
Then they went into this thing about how all of us whose lives have been affected by alcoholism live “on a ladder.” Whether we admit it or not, we are constantly judging, and constantly arranging people in hierarchies: they are better or worse than us. We give them new grades each day, so their positions, above us and below us, may change. We are here to learn to share our rung, and to look at the world in a less judgmental, more egalitarian manner.
I said HUNH? When did I ever imagine the world “like a ladder”? I have met a few people who do do that, and they are difficult to deal with. But I don’t do that, and most people I know don’t do that! The image is a useful description/explanation of certain weird behavior I have seen on occasion and not understood. But I really don’t feel it is a sin or “character defect” I need to confess to.
In my first bout with Al-Anon, my sponsor would have had me go off to question myself: of course, being who I am, I MUST really see the world that way. I MUST just be “in denial” about it. I would have seriously considered, and ultimately, under pressure, accepted the idea that I was merely “not humble enough” to see this wrong in myself.
They would call this arrogant, but from what I have been able to gather, I was just born more advanced than many of these Al-Anon people. When they discuss struggling with their rigidity, their judgmentalism, and so on, I find it mildly interesting, but I do NOT relate and I do NOT see myself mirrored. And this is NOT just a result of my being “in denial.” I do not know what purpose it would serve for me to “admit” that I see the world in a way I do not.
I read this last night and went to bed, waking this morning with a few thoughts about it. I’m sure Al-Anon members will find much to “argue” with in your post, as well as in my somewhat alternative view. But here goes.
My bead on Al-Anon is that it’s for people who are addicted to drama and being with or around sick people who create it. People who have a psychological and/or emotional “need” to hold the universe steady while someone else cuts a swath through it generally “learn” this in childhood, so it’s deeply imbedded in their personhood and then anchored by a need to control (since the illusion is that, if they can control the situation/the person/whatever, they will be safe). The focus in Al-Anon is, thus, on the person addicted to drama, then, rather than on the drama-creator. “Detachment” becomes the watchword because it’s the process of de-toxification from the need to be “attached” to this kind of situation in the first place.
The “victim” is, in fact, not being victimized by the addict as much as they are by the patterns they developed in childhood, since they could otherwise leave. Therefore, the “victim” is an intrinsic part of the “dance” that actually serves to feed the drama. They try to control the addict’s behavior (in a thousand obvious and less obvious ways–as in “if I can just be ‘good enough,’ he or she will stop using/drinking/running around/whatever the behavior is”) and the addict responds with belligerance by continuing the offending behavior. The “victim” then tends to focus totally on the addict’s behavior and avoid seeing how they participate in it (and, in truth, need it to continue, since most people would rather be “right” than “happy,” when push comes to shove–and in this case, the “victim” sees themselves as being “good” while the addict is being “bad”–a perception for which they are often rewarded by others).
The “victim,” locked in by their neurotic commitment to “fix” the user so that the “victim” can, once and for all, feel safe, will typically remain engaged in this dance until the addict either dies or quits using (and why should they quit as long as someone will “help” them to continue?). In fact, the “victim’s” need to resolve their own riddles is so imperative that if the addict does quit using, after a period during which the “victim” tries to goad the addict into returning to active addiction, the “victim” will often leave the no-longer dramatic partner and find a new person to “fix.”
Al-Anon members who have actually been able to stop the patterns know this, so they don’t necessarily lobby that the “accolyte” should leave their situation. The new person is just encouraged to focus on themselves in the hope that eventually they may strengthen and leave of their own accord. Interestingly enough, their disengagement and ultimate leaving can be the impetus for the addict to go into recovery themselves (at which point, the couple often finds they have nothing in common but the kids, the mortgage, and the drama).
The process to overcome these patterns sometimes takes quite a while, if it’s successful at all, but my experience suggests that, over time, the individual can eventually become healthy enough to walk away from the current nightmare and not ultimately walk into another one. Obviously, this whole reality can develop in spades if the two people in the relationship happen to be parent and child, rather than partners of some kind.
Just some thoughts.
Interesting: and it makes a lot of sense, and later I will reread less quickly. Q-D reactions:
1. If this program is for people addicted to drama, then I understand why I can’t relate. They keep on saying, ADMIT you are addicted to [drama]. They describe emotions and attitudes that I not only can’t relate to, but that I have never heard of. They say we all have these emotions and attitudes, and if we do not think so, we are ‘in denial’–because their program is universal. But if the program can be understood as directed towards people addicted to drama/chaos, then I understand it better.
2. One thing I was never able figure out about was, it seems primarily directed towards either people who can’t get out of their situations, or towards keeping people in bad situations. Spouses of alcoholics are supposed to admit and accept that they cannot have a functional relationship with this person. However, they are also supposed to admit that the problem is them, not the alcoholic, and that it is a “disease.” So they have to resign themselves, learn how to put up with this impoverished life in a more functional way than before. It all seems very convoluted: why do all of this work to resign yourself to a situation which has no real hope for normalcy since it is due to an illness which has no cure? Why wait to leave? The bad news Al-Anon delivers only adds MORE reasons to the list of reasons for leaving one already has. So why does it simultaneously advocate staying? I know it isn’t supposed to advocate staying, but it is what it presupposes, in my experience, and it does give advice oriented towards staying. Resign yourself. Take the blame. Work and pray.
2a. Your comment does emphasize why people stay and why Al-Anon does not push them. That’s fine as far as it goes but I still think the emphasis on IT IS YOUR PROBLEM, YOU ARE THE SICK ONE, encourages people to do the impossible act of staying in no-win situations and taking the blame for these.
3. What Al-Anon says is also directly opposed to what smart people say to abuse victims. There, the answer of the true experts is, the problem is the perpetrator, don’t make it any more complicated than that, if you feel crazy it is because that’s part of the strategy of the perpetrator.
4. THIS LAST fits my own experience. The Al-Anon thing, detach and understand, well yes, it is indeed the sort of attitude to take with someone like my father who is an alcoholic. But it was pretty easy to figure that out without the convolutions of Al-Anon.
5. As I say, I think you’ve hit it on the head: Al-Anon wants people to be drama queens and kings and does not understand them if they are not.
6. Side note: the degree of immaturity of many of the people in the groups I’ve attended, amazes me. It’s sort of like talking to third graders, with tantrums. Sorry, I guess, to be so mean-sounding about it, but this is what I see.
7.I can certainly see it for parents and children, for siblings, etc., etc. I mean, I do understand the basic concepts of the program. I can maybe see it for a spouse who is not yet in a person to leave. But I don’t see very well how it works if you’re not directly involved with an addict, not interested in fixing them, not excited by drama, not interested in finding drama, and not trying to stay.
P.S. I don’t know, I’m probably being really unkind to the Al-Anons out there by saying all of this.
a. One of the important things is that I simply do not think the fundamentalist Christianity which, from what I can gather, suffuses and underlies Al-Anon helps much, or helps people grow. I find it infantile and infantilizing.
b. Going to meetings where you pray out of the Bible, and where people exhort you to find God, is religious indoctrination as far as I am concerned. Having to listen to people for an entire hour saying only God can do or solve anything, is religious persecution. I experience it as violence.
c. I understand what the Al-Anon theory is supposed to be, but I have found it most of it very destructive when trying to apply it to myself. For instance, since I already only want to control things having to do with my life, such as what gear I put the car in, which journal I send my article to, etc., the admonition to give up power, only serves to disable.
d. My general reaction to addicts is to want to leave NOW. A program which insists and presupposes that I will not be able to, or that I will miss the drama, is not helpful.
e. When I do get frozen to the spot, is with emotional abuse. And yes, THAT is a reaction to old training. I tend not to know that I can leave, and not to know that it is not my fault.
f. I am irritated with the ‘universality’ of the Al-Anon model because, while I’m more than ready to leave a bad situation, Al-Anon will be saying I should be more understanding and less judgmental and that I am “sicker than the abuser,” and giving me “tools” to try to hang on one more day. If I were also prone to getting into physically abusive situations, the Al-Anon advice would be literally life-threatening.
g. They say they’re not about control, but then again they do say that if you focus on yourself, “the family situation” will improve. I.E. they still retain this idea that you can somehow control others.
h. Once again, their model is very different from what is recommended for abuse victims. And their presuppositions about other people, are invasive.
i. Perhaps I don’t like Al-Anon because it is so full of people who need to ‘work that program’?
j. How seriously do they take their own program? They say “take it easy,” but they beat their breasts, and harangue themselves and others. They say “take what you need and leave the rest” but they also chase after you to come to a Fundamentalist Je-sus.
k. Yes, I submit that a Fundamentalist Je-sus is what their ‘God’ is, even when they call it by another name. You can tell by the prayers they say in the meetings, and the sorts of things their God thinks and does for them. (But then perhaps it is all terminology – I think it is terribly egotistical, for instance, to pray for parking places, but maybe they just mean they are hoping for parking places and thinking positively.)
l. Not that one cannot get something nice out of it, as one can from any church service … but from all of these presuppositions, projections, manipulations, and semi-covert religious recruiting, Dios me guarde.
I do not know – it appears that others’ experience is different – but I’d far rather have a real religion and a real psychoanalyst than deal with this insipid, watered down stuff, or give authority to what these VERY screwed up and immature people say. I know they claim their discourse is complex and multilayered, and that there is always something deeper in it. I say, their discourse is muddy and confused, and it takes a lot of work to wring anything useful out of it. Not that I may not keep trying, for reasons of my own. However I think the whole thing is very fucked-up.
P.P.S. What I DO find those meetings VERY useful for is finding answers to questions like, am I feeling as I do because of dealing/having dealt with an addict? That’s invaluable, as violence support groups
for purposes of figuring out what it is you’re going through – and as CR groups were for purposes of figuring out the experience of living in sexist society, beccoming able to see it for what it is. Etc.
P.P.P.S. Dialogue with my first sponsor:
S: Would you rather be happy or right?
PZ: Happy.
S: That is a lie. You have not worked the steps, so you cannot have come up with that answer. You would rather be right. You are just denying it. Here in Al-Anon, we have to be honest, so admit it: you’d rather be right than happy.
Notice how this guy’s words precluded my just saying no. If I say no, you’re wrong, I would rather be happy, then I am showing him that I would rather be right than happy. It is circular, manipulative and maddening. … I also find all of the labels irritating. Every aspect of normal life seems to be pathologized, unless, of course, it was something you did while praying or reading Al-Anon texts. If you want some order in your day, you are controlling; if you’d rather be flexible, you are choosing chaos. If you make a decision, you’re impulsive; if you decide not to do anything now, you’re indecisive. Worst of all, you are always “exactly where you are supposed to be” (supposed, by whom, may I ask?). Any bad situation is something you need. If you make the best of it, it is because God was teaching you a lesson, not just because you knew what to do in bad circumstances. And on, and on, and on: s.o.p.h.i.s.t.r.y. … However, I will reiterate: I still do go on occasion, because there are some things worh going for. I have just been burned really badly by ceding to pressure to swallow The Program whole, and by accepting the self-image it wanted me to have. So I get very feisty when people now try to recruit me to do all of that AGAIN. In the blog, I vituperate about that, and also, I try to externalize and purge from myself the weird, twisted ideas I got from these people back in the day. If I had time, I’d go through the clinical psych literature on it. I’ve seen some pretty good critiques, on problems with this paradigm even when the shoe actually fits the person in question better than it fits me. I don’t really have time to get into that piece of research now. But as you can see, I have about 15 years’ worth of anger at these people shored up, and I’m spilling it. If I can see what it is I am angry about, then I’ll be able to externalize it, draw it out of my body, and I’ll stop being so mad at Al-Anon. What am I angry at today? 1. REPRESSION. 2. MANIPULATION. 3. GENERAL SOPHISTRY. Of these, which is the worst? REPRESSION.
I wrote a pretty decent comment earlier this morning for this thread and then rested the heel of my hand on my laptop in the wrong way or hit the wrong button or something and promptly deleted it…so I am back now, having recovered from my irritation and frustration and determined to soldier on, as they say.
First of all, PZ, individual twelve step groups are autonomous by design. If one group accepts members pushing Christianity (unacceptable according to the organization guidelines, actually), a different group, if that was possible to find, may not. This is basically the same idea as having to “shop” for a different therapist, if one turns out to be a poor fit. Keep in mind, too, that many twelve step group “members” are control freaks themselves (and will even admit to it) and they are, after all, sick, sometimes even very sick (and I say this in the nicest possible way, with great love and respect for anyone who is trying to fight their demons with whatever they can find).
Further, one massive, international twelve step group quit using “The Lord’s Prayer” for exactly the reason you offer. And the term “Higher Power” is supposed to include the potential for any subjective definition a person might apply to it. The Higher Power, for example, for some people is construed to be “The Group.” There are, in fact, atheists in twelve step groups, although the vast majority usually eventually settle on some conception of “God,” “Allah,” “Gaia,” “Goddess,” “The Universe,” “H.P.,” or whatever they might call their own still, small voice.
Cryptic, flip slogans, such as “you’re right where you’re supposed to be” (as in related to process, not to physical locale) are supposed to be short hand for very deep concepts, which may not even be grasped by the one using the slogan. And so you walk in, with nerve-endings a-tingle, recently or at least once or more times burned, and someone bum-rushes you, speaking in jargon and pumping their brand of what can only sound to the uninitiated as “religion,” and there you have it–a recipe for discomfort, at least, and disaster possibly.
Repression, in any form, is bad. You know this, and you are choosing not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This usually indicates that, for all it’s bad taste (if you will), there’s a reason you’re sticking around to take another dose of the “medicine.” Just “trust the process.” ;^) There’s nothing to fear but fear itself. And the coffee, which is invariably too strong.
Thanks CS! Believe what I am telling you, this is by far the least Christian-oriented group I have ever located in South Louisiana. And it also does not have any culturally imperialistic, self-styled practitioners of local vodun (hah! as if they knew) imported from the Pacific Northwest.
1. Honestly, I really do understand what the deal is supposed to be. If I had not, I never would have started. However, I have come over the past 15 years (15 years, mind you!) to “trust the process” less and less, not more and more. Initially, I had no fear. It was a mistake to be so open-minded! Now I do have mistrust for and fear of this institution, in my view for very good reason.
2. What I did not understand, and what you explained in an earlier comment, was exactly who it was for. If it is for what I have recently had described to me as “chaos addicts,” then I understand completely. It would work for that. I’m not one of those–I’m just overly cowed, which is a different thing.
3. When I first started going to Al-Anon, they were upset with me because I was “too serene” not to have been through Al-Anon. Why had I not married any alcoholics? Why was I not out on the streets picking up men? Why was I not tired and angry from my (actually very easy) 80-minute commute? Why was my life in order? I must be in denial. My success must be a form of failure. My lack of chaos must be a mask. That was it: it was a mask. I was unfeeling. I was in such deep denial that I was able to fake everything – everything that would in fact be right to do, but only with their help. This, of course, happened in New Orleans, not a place where white people easily believe a single, childless woman when she says she is not “into” drugs or random sex. And I only took it seriously because it happened in conjunction with the efforts of Dat Wicked Shrink who was himself very, if imperfectly, 12-steppy. So I would hardly blame the whole unfortunate episode on Al-Anon. I do, however, think they and ‘The Theory’ had a part in it. (Of course, Al-Anon would not like to hear me say that: everyone is supposed to admit ‘their part’ in whatever happens, EXCEPT The Program itself which is perfect and holy. I find many of the actual Al-Anon MEMBERS to be a lot saner and more interesting than the program they follow, but I am a pagan and a heretic.)
4. I have been told that the fact that I fell for that line, only shows that I needed The Program. I am not convinced by this. Everyone breaks under torture.
5. At bottom, what I am really tired of are the projections. A common example is, “We came here to fix someone else, but now we realize we are really sick. Repeat after me.” Well, I never did go there to fix someone else. I could say so to be polite, or to conform to paradigm, but in truth, that would be dishonest, which is another Al-Anon no-no. I could say that I have always been in denial, and that I really did first go there to fix someone else. That would be dishonest in an even more convoluted way.
6. So I find myself constantly caught in double binds, IF I try to do as they say, and swallow the whole thing. “It is fine to be where you are,” “It is not fine not to have a sponsor from within this group and not to go to more marathons,” and “It is not fine to use your own judgment,” simply CANNOT all be true at the same time.
7. I am interested in it to the extent I am because I am interested in some of the ideas and the EXPERIENCE some of the members have. I am not interested in all parts of the paradigm. I’m not trying to talk anyone else out of it though, if they like it better than I do. Again, I do find that some pieces of it make general sense, and some pieces are useful, for some situations.
8. I DO, however, think it is worth discussing the problems with it, for people who notice these. I think it is OK not to agree with all of it. It is one of the only entities I have ever encountered which does NOT accept only partial agreement, or which tells dissidents that they have simply “misunderstood” or “have not ‘worked the program’ enough.” That right there is a red flag. Also, I think it has become an Althusserian ISA … why is it that THIS particular paradigm is the acceptable one in the current culture? More generally, I am against the installation of ANY particular paradigm as complete and universal!
9. So part of why I rant and rave is in case there is any other desperate person out there, caught in the 12-step maw as I was, wanting to find out whether anyone else wonders. I realized I did not have to believe the Al-Anon line when someone with whom I had a chance conversation, who was from a foreign country and had never heard of ‘The Theory’, said “But there is nothing wrong with you! Who is telling you this? These ideas are silly!” It is hard to describe what a relief it was, and how freeing.
Post post post post post script: something, or some things, just occurred to me about this.
ONE: I don’t think this program is universal as much as it fills a gap, well or poorly. I myself wouldn’t go if I could find something more a propos.
(Analogy: now in the U.S. in the absence of social service agencies, vibrant civic cultures, active unions, etc., we have these megachurches which also provide some necessary social services.)
TWO: I do think the Al-Anon texts say some things which make sense, and can be useful. But as far as reading on multiple levels, finding something always deeper, NO, or at least not necessarily. Actually, it’s not their “slogans” I find problematic, it’s their longer texts and their general logic, including the assumption that these contain deep wisdom only Al-Anon has thought of, and that nobody who hasn’t “worked the steps” could comprehend. Now THAT’s arrogance – but they say it’s arrogant not to give all credit to THE PROGRAM. This is totalitarian.
THREE: On deep meanings: in my experience one of their big manipulative hooks, to keep people thinking there is something wrong with THEM, is to say that they/we haven’t seen these “deep meanings” yet. There are just so many other places to look for substance! Yet Al-Anon – not at the beginning, but once you get into it – says, “only here.” I find it shallow, and that is not something I would say about most religions, even though I am not religious. And/but, the parts of it I think are fine, are things which to me are so natural: it is hard to sit there and say, oh yes, I learned these things in Al-Anon, because I can’t remember not knowing them.
FOUR: I am much more interested in actual religion and mysticism than in Al-Anon literature. I do not “believe.” Al-Anon doesn’t care about that, they only care that you BELIEVE, and in something HIGHER, which will GIVE YOU SOMETHING, if you only give it AUTHORITY. This is weird, and it doesn’t seem very respectful of religions. It makes me uncomfortable.
FIVE and MOST INTERESTING: When I interviewed therapists, for my infamous bout with psychotherapy, there was one I didn’t choose, but might have done well to. I didn’t choose her because she was so Freudian, and so culturally conservative in some ways, she was convinced that it was a problem I was unmarried/childless, and she wanted to focus on that. I said I didn’t find this line applicable/relevant, and discontinued, and she was cool with it and ALSO said: you know, you may not need psychotherapy at all, what it does it teach you to reflect, and you already seem to know how.
5a. This was nice of her and all, and I ought perhaps to have listened more closely: what I was seeking psychotherapy for was help in how to deal with bullies, and there weren’t so many books about that then, and I didn’t know how to phrase my question in such simple terms.
5b. But my point is, I ought perhaps to have stuck with her. What she meant, reading analogically, about my unmarried/childless state, was that I was thinking much more about what requirements I should satisfy, and whom I should appease, than about what I might want for myself. She was ONTO something in that way.
5c. Of course I thought at the time, and I suspect many others would think, that that was all well and fine, but that the cultural baggage on marriage/ children was likely to obscure the view, and that it would be better to take things from another angle.
5d. Al-Anon, on the other hand, which preaches humility, cannot see itself as having any limits to its point of view. If you see any limits, it is because you have not read deeply enough. In affirming this, and requesting that it be believed, it is much less modest than many older, deeper paths.
SIX: Writing that last sentence made me realize, where my discomfort lies. I am not the first to ask, is this a self-help group or a religion? It says it is a “spiritual program” … perhaps the issue for me, is that it is neither fish nor fowl. I find that the religiosity interferes with the self-help, and I do not feel it is particularly respectful of religion.
6a. I come to the conclusion that it’s thin because I really have tried to find more in it. It leads in circles and up against walls. This is not the experience I have had with reading in philosophy, psychology, religion, or with yoga / meditation, and so on.
6b. Along the same lines: they say “keep coming back, and eventually you’ll get it,” and “trust the process.” In practice, I find this means, keep trying to find absent meaning in a weak paradigm.
6c. See this satire: http://sanegallery.morerevealed.com/aabrain.html and the site of Agent Orange, http://www.orange-papers.org/ including the “cult test,” which I think applies. I have also seen smart, refereed, peer-reviewed articles in clinical psychology, not by Americans, interestingly, about the counter- or anti-therapeutic nature of the 12 steps. I’m writing here in case anyone as frustrated with it as I have been, needs to hear that they are not the only one. Once again, I really do understand the intentions of The Program, and I really do realize many people like it. I do not mean to offend such people. I have a strong difference of opinion and experience with them, that is all, and I stand by it.
SEVEN: At another level (hah! levels again), it’s the authoritarianism and the claims of universality which make me the most uncomfortable. Subject yourself to our box. If you do not, you are arrogant. Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned. Dios me guarde.
EIGHT: And a random thought: perhaps the way in which it did me harm was, through its assumption that anyone who comes to a meeting is rigid and judgmental, and has never considered thinking in a self-reflective way before. In my own case, becoming LESS judgmental, accepting MORE crap, and renouncing control over my own life, was very destructive – as would make sense! After all: to do anything in life one makes judgments, says yes and no to things, and decides what one wants to do. This was what Al-Anon wanted me to give up, because I was already tending my own garden, not others’, and they just had to find something to get me to change.
8a. And THAT is why I think the “multileveled-ness” of the paradigm is a dangerous patch of quicksand. It is not that I disagree with Al-Anon about how one should lead one’s days or one’s life. I disagree with the assumptions it makes, and the oppressive, cookie cutter logic, i.e. IF you have an alcoholic relative, then you MUST be overly controlling in your life now, and if you do not think so, you are in DENIAL, you must find some area in which you wield control and renounce it. In order to follow their instructions, I had to give up control of some things I should not have, since I ALREADY wasn’t trying to control anyone else. I had to give up things like the decision to be happy, which they felt was inappropriate in someone with the background they perceived me to have. That’s what I mean by disabling.
NINE: ON THE OVER-FLEXIBILITY OF WEAK PARADIGMS, AND ON NON-UNIVERSALITY OF PARADIGMS.
A colleague and I once made, and carried out to the very best of our considerable ability, a pact to apply the principles of Al-Anon to our situation at work. It was a fact that the insitution was dysfunctional, and that our attempt to work within it as professionals was making our lives unmanageable. We decided we would serenely detach. We would accept that it was not a professional situation, lower our expectations, and cultivate our own gardens. As we changed our tactics and focused more completely upon ourselves, the work situation was bound to improve.
9a. The plan backfired completely. We stopped dealing with problems which were officially the responsibilities of others, even if we, and only we, had a vested interest in their solution. Of course, all that happened was that these problems came back to bite us, with a vengeance.
9b. Whatever you do, takes place in a context and a community. In my experience, those contexts and communities must be worked with. Sometimes, you even have to “overfunction” in them. Where I work now, everyone who is successful and happy, is to some degree overfunctioning. And it isn’t workaholism, either. It’s accepting the situation for what it is, and taking responsibility for what you want to happen. And yes, I suppose that can be considered “controlling.” It does take quite a lot of intervention, and it means doing work which, in a more “functional” place, would be done by others. It is what I used to do, before Al-Anon. And thinking about it now, I do not actually think it goes counter to Al-Anon principles.
TEN. It is amazing: I really do now feel I’ve said almost all I have to say on this matter. At last. I realize that the Al-Anon principles are supposed to be multi-layered and complex, but I find that in fact, they are merely vague. It’s like the difference between ambiguity (rich, thick) and ambivalence (poor, thin).
10a. I think the fundamental problem with the principles is their claim to universal applicability. As I say, when I have been dealing directly with alcoholics/addicts, going to Al-Anon meetings and “working the steps” has thrown things into clear relief, and offered invaluable support. When I try to apply the same principles to problems less directly related to addiction, I find them vague, misleading, distorting.
Months later: CS, I just came across your idea that Al-Anon was for people “addicted” to drama and thought, once again, “AHA,” that makes a lot of sense.
After writing a new rant on this, which I hope will be my last rant, I got a new idea: Al-Anon is very much for people who are really good at deluding themselves.
This seems to have been the major conflict between me and them. I had not known my father fit the definition of an alcoholic, but when I was shown that he did and why, I did not resist the realization.
The fact that I did not resist and fight the things that seemed illuminating and reasonable – even if they were new – really confused the Al-Anon people. It should be harder for me, I should show more resistance. If not, that meant there were deeper things, much worse things, that I simply must be hiding. That is why, for me, the experience of Al-Anon involved so much interrogation, and why I was so often the object of suspicion.
Related to that is the pop-psych idea that “change is good.” I do not know why change is hard for so many people – I like it. I do, however, resist negative change, as in, jumping off precipices, wrecking my car, and so on.
Al-Anon assumed we all must be deluded, must resist change, must feel uncomfortable when things went well, must crave drama, must be overfunctioning, etc., etc., and said it was “denial” if we begged to differ.
I therefore ended up agreeing to “correct” problems I did not have, by accepting situations I should not have accepted. They were, after all, “new” and I might just be considering them dangerous because they were new, not because they were dangerous.
What all of this suggests is that my problems with Al-Anon have to do with its FORMULAIC ASSUMPTIONS and in my experience, its BELLIGERENT ENFORCEMENT OF THESE. So it is good to define who it really does help – people who are really really good at self-delusion, people who are really really into drama, a few others.
***
A lot of people, though, say Al-Anon is where they learned not to lie to themselves and others, where they learned to be open to points of view different than their own, where they learned for the first time not to judge people who were unlike them, where they learned to give up bossing people around, where they learned to be calm and be still, where they learned to be patient with themselves and others, where they first learned that you can make a conscious decision to have a pleasant day even if it is a mundane day.
I of course can only applaud that. Where my experience was difficult was, I was accused of “denial,” when I said I had these skills already, and of “arrogance” when I actually showed that I had them. You could *only* acquire them in Al-Anon.
***
Also CS: I do get the point about shopping for an Al-Anon group as one would for a therapist. The difference, though, is that all of them use the 12 steps, whereas therapists have a wider variety of approaches.
OK – I am officially going to stop talking about this because it is getting circular and I have purged myself. But on this:
“Cryptic, flip slogans, such as “you’re right where you’re supposed to be” (as in related to process, not to physical locale) are supposed to be short hand for very deep concepts, which may not even be grasped by the one using the slogan.”
The problem is that a lot of the *concepts* aren’t actually deep, I find … slogans like the one you cite, sure, I can unpack it … but too much of what I heard was superficial, formulaic, pop-psychy, or else needed far too much reinterpretation to become deep. By the time you rewrote them, you could have studied a sutra!
The sort of thing that really irritated me was, for instance, the insistence that we all were terribly judgmental and if we thought we were not, we were in denial. That’s arrogant and intrusive, not deep. I can see what the real point is – many of the people I met were in fact quite snobbish/judgmental – but the idea that “you are, or else you’re in denial” is EVEN MORE judgmental. Etc., etc.
OK though, I’ll shut up … and thanks to all for *very* thoughtful comments.