Are We Choosing to Be Bothered by Others?

Sometimes in CODA meetings we allow ourselves to be bothered by someone else who attends the same meeting. We then fixate on that person until we decide that we aren’t going to the meeting anymore because that person bothers us. This is a cop-out on our behalf. It is actually our subconscious choice to ditch recovery in favor of relapsing.

                        

Why? Because no one can truly bother us unless we choose to allow them to do so. The first recovery lesson we receive In Step One is that we are “powerless over other people.” It’s the addictive part of us that wants to control and change other people to please ourselves. If I am bothered by someone in a meeting it’s because I’m refusing to admit that I am powerless over them. If something about them bothers me, I am choosing to let it bother me. And if I’m thinking about leaving the meeting permanently because of them, then I am plotting my own exit because I’d really rather be at home vegging out in from of the television. It’s a lot easier to relapse into old comfortable patterns of behavior than it is to consciously work every day at changing ourselves for the better.

If we are true to our recovery, we will recognize this fact and we will take our personal power back. We will choose to no longer be bothered by a particular person because we can’t change them. And we will admit that they are not the focus of our recovery: We are. We are attending meetings to fix ourselves and no one else.

Any time I am “bothered” by someone else, I now realize that the other person is not the problem. I am. Focusing on others and taking their inventories is an age old addictive means of running from ourselves. It may have one time been a necessary protection mechanism, but once we are in recovery, it is no longer protecting us. It can only be a means of self-sabotage. We have to keep the focus on us if we are going to succeed in recovery.