The use of guilt is a common thread among people who drink. The alcoholic that I dealt with was constantly creating problems and trying to take me on a guilt trip. If you can learn to recognize when they begin to blame you for everything, then you can choose not to ride on the road of the blame game.
When we begin to recognize that not everything that they say is our fault, then we can stop defending ourselves and there will be less arguing with the problem drinker.
One of the things that I say often in the articles that I write is that using the expression “I’m sorry you feel that way” is very freeing. It gives us the power to not get caught up in the moment and buys us time to think about what the alcoholic is throwing our way. At a later time, if what they are saying about us is true and we need to make an amend to someone, then we should keep our side of the street clean and make the amend.
My point is that regardless of the comments that get hurled our way, “We don’t do guilt.” It’s just that simple. When we take everything to heart that gets pushed our way, it’s like we are taking the world on our shoulders. It can cause us to feel as though we have little value. Don’t allow anyone to degrade or belittle you.
When insults are coming at you, I was told to just let them drip off like water dripping from a duck’s back. That expression seems to help for some, but I would rather use the illustration that I raised my armor shield and the insults reflected off.
The reason I say it this way is because the alcoholic who was constantly throwing guilt in my face was a very abusive person. When I say this, I mean in it every for of the word. It was like I constantly had to lift up my deflector so the guilt trip would not hit me.
Once I recognized the power that I had allowed the alcoholic to have over my feelings, I refused to ride the roller coaster anymore.
Statements like: “I’m sorry you feel that way” and “that’s not true” or even, “you may be right,” can protect you tremendously from getting into an argument.
You see, the more an alcoholic can keep us anxious and angry and responding in negative manners to the things they say about us, the more the focus is on our bad behavior and not theirs.
An alcoholic just does these types of things in order to get the focus off of them and on us. This is a common thread among addicts. If they can blame everyone else for their problems, then somehow it makes them feel better in a very dysfunctional kind of way. This is typical alcoholic behavior.
I made up my mind that I was going to love the alcoholic in my life no matter what kind of guilt trip they were trying to give me. I increased the amount of patience and love that I was giving once I stopped responding to all of the blame and guilt trips they were giving.
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