RussellSue
Not Active
At nearly 41, I have been sober for all but 9 months of my legal drinking-age life and because of that, I met a LOT of people in 12-Step meetings. These people were mostly what my family would label "bad people" with histories worse than my own, regrets and scars deeper than mine, and often, criminal records - I deserved one of these but I got lucky.
Through meetings, I became comfortable with the idea that people are not inherently or permanently good or evil, in most cases. Most of us in any kind of recovery really are just sick people trying to get well. A lot of us have done bad things but it seems that the very nature of recovery insists that we try not to do these things, anymore.
I was kicked out at 12 because my mother thought I was a "bad person" just like my sister. I have noticed that the theme of good people and bad people is very much a part of the legacy of my birth family. I feel like it might be at the core of why no one in my family can possibly reach out for help regarding their trauma/addictions. Because, after all, if you admit that you failed your children, you must be wrong and wrong = evil and no one wants to cop to that. Instead, they point to all the "bad" ways that people handled their failings and pin the badness on the victim.
Case in point: At 12, my sister told my mother that she could steal my former stepfather from my mother and my mother cites this gut-wrenching event as proof of my sister being a "bad person." Of course, it wouldn't have happened had my stepfather not been sexually abusing/grooming my sister for years.
Does lack of intellect cause this sort of thinking or is it something else?
As a person who spent a long damned time in rural America, I have seen a lot of the good and evil, right and wrong stories that roll right over the possibility of causation. Does anyone know why this happens or if there is any reasoning with it? I mean, I understand that there is stigma surrounding the possibility of emotional problems but is it really strong enough to tear families apart or is there more to the story?
I have an entire family caught in a disaster of right/wrong and evil/good thinking that seems to make peace impossible because not one of us gets to be broken due to the facts surrounding our existence.
Does anyone have any wisdom on this topic? I'm baffled.
Through meetings, I became comfortable with the idea that people are not inherently or permanently good or evil, in most cases. Most of us in any kind of recovery really are just sick people trying to get well. A lot of us have done bad things but it seems that the very nature of recovery insists that we try not to do these things, anymore.
I was kicked out at 12 because my mother thought I was a "bad person" just like my sister. I have noticed that the theme of good people and bad people is very much a part of the legacy of my birth family. I feel like it might be at the core of why no one in my family can possibly reach out for help regarding their trauma/addictions. Because, after all, if you admit that you failed your children, you must be wrong and wrong = evil and no one wants to cop to that. Instead, they point to all the "bad" ways that people handled their failings and pin the badness on the victim.
Case in point: At 12, my sister told my mother that she could steal my former stepfather from my mother and my mother cites this gut-wrenching event as proof of my sister being a "bad person." Of course, it wouldn't have happened had my stepfather not been sexually abusing/grooming my sister for years.
Does lack of intellect cause this sort of thinking or is it something else?
As a person who spent a long damned time in rural America, I have seen a lot of the good and evil, right and wrong stories that roll right over the possibility of causation. Does anyone know why this happens or if there is any reasoning with it? I mean, I understand that there is stigma surrounding the possibility of emotional problems but is it really strong enough to tear families apart or is there more to the story?
I have an entire family caught in a disaster of right/wrong and evil/good thinking that seems to make peace impossible because not one of us gets to be broken due to the facts surrounding our existence.
Does anyone have any wisdom on this topic? I'm baffled.