A bad attack after a meeting

I wrote this post yesterday afternoon but did not feel that comfortable sharing it. But today I want to just get it out there in the interest of self expression.

After sharing this morning how happy I was to be back at AA meetings today I had such a painful experience at the Saturday group this afternoon. I don’t know if it was just that I got triggered but I felt like everyone there had walls an inch thick around them and the entire time I was there I felt the most terrible feelings that I did not exist. I am not entirely sure where all of the feelings came from but at the end of the meeting I just left the room which was in our local library and could not stop crying. I found a chair in place far away from where anyone could see me and I just cried solidly for about 10 minutes.

One of the group leaders of this group is agnostic which is fine by me but part of his share involved a cerebral analysis of why he doesn’t believe in a God force, just human free, will, rationality and consequences. I believe in that too but does it deny the presence of a force of power and healing and love in this Universe? Anyway no one is wrong or right, only free to find truths that work for them and belief is a very personal thing anyway, believe whatever you want to believe, maybe your higher power is just a force of life that wants you to flow in the best direction possible

The meeting was actually on removing character defects and the major defect one member spoke about was lying. Its interesting as in the book I was reading on Everyday Narcissism lately she speaks of how toxic rules that we have to take care of others feelings or follow things that don’t come naturally to us can lead us to lie. The consequences of lying to ourselves or others can be devastating. We may sometimes lie not to hurt others, we may lie because we are scared if we tell the truth we will get in trouble, we may lie so as not to be exiled or judged, we may lie to others or ourselves and not even know it. Lying and the reasons for it are complex.

Anyway I shared in the meeting that lying doesn’t sit well with me. And that Scott had asked me to lie at the bank about where this money I sent was actually going (I told the story in such a way as to not reveal all the details.) I never feel all that comfortable at lying but I see that in this case I did it to try to help someone and please them and part of that involved lying which was a rule that needed to be bent so as to not violate opsec or persec, two military concepts that limit what truths that can be told about a soldiers location and purpose on deployment.

I think it may have been a good thing that I left the meeting feeling a bit sad. No one there molly coddled me, no one reached out, since the three core group members there seem to be very self involved and just seemed to enjoy sparring verbally with each other. There didn’t seem to be any space for anyone else there, in that closed group so I just left after the meeting. But on reflection with so much sadness this week around my sister’ op it would have been nice to be embraced by a warm loving group.

I remember so often at the end of AA meetings in early sobriety feeling so left out and actually sadder leaving the meeting after no one made any effort to reach out or speak to me. Thinking about it later one of the reason I went today was that I was lonely and was looking forward to some company, but I came away feeling worse. Its a shame as this morning I was actually feeling positive about things. I was trying to keep my focus on the positive in my day. All this happening today makes me feel I am better not to seek out company sometimes, especially in the rooms of AA.. Everyone there is struggling to put their lives back together so they probably don’t have a lot to give to others anyway. I have head ache now as I went and ate something I don’t usually eat and had a second cup of coffee because I was upset. I then had a major spin out after getting home.

It seems to me that sometimes as an empath when I go into groups I come away feeling worse. I have read that sometimes we absorb feelings there, I don’t know if that is what happened today. Partly I am glad I made the effort to even if I ended up sad, at least I tried. Part of me thinks it just would have been better being alone at home but then life isn’t perfect is it? And the people in the meeting don’t have to be and maybe at the end of the day this meeting isn’t one I will feel comfortable at due to certain personalities and that is okay too. Maybe my tears were showing me that. It just felt very hard and brittle there.