emotional boundaries

What is Emotional Sobriety?

Emotional sobriety is a phrase that was used by Bill Wilson in a Grapevine article, entitled The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety, published in 1958, some 20-plus years after he got sober.

Originally a letter to a friend, he charts his journey in recovery in a very specific way.

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Al-Anon

Al-Anon is perhaps the 12 step fellowship most closely associated with Alcoholics Anonymous.

In the early days of AA virtually all members were men, and their wives would go with them to meetings and normally sit in the kitchen and chat to each other.

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Why People Struggle with Being Vulnerable

People quite often like to categorise emotions as being good or bad, with emotions such as anger and self-pity being thought of as bad or weak.

Emotions such as gratitude and a positive outlook are thought of as good healthy emotional states. Truth is that judgement of any emotional state is itself counterproductive. Emotions are neither good nor bad themselves, neither strong nor weak, they simply are.

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What Does it Mean to Respect Boundaries?

Quite a simple question in many ways, but one that many people struggle with, both in terms of trying to set boundaries of their own, and dealing with other people who don’t respect, or don’t seem able to respect anyone else’s boundaries at all.

The issue of boundaries is not unique to people in 12-step recovery but is perhaps more acute because so many of them have grown up either in alcoholic homes or enmeshed homes of one type or another.

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