i figured it would be a bunch of people sitting around discussing emotions and lives and relationships, and i love doing that. but i was totally wrong. first of all, the amazing golden rule of EA is that no "cross-talk" (i.e. conversation) is allowed. you go around and you tell stories for your allotted time, and then the next person talks. i can understand the point of this -- so you don't feel like people are passing judgment on you -- but at least for someone like me, it totally defeats the purpose.
the second thing is that the talking (i hope i can say this without violating the confidentiality oath to which i was sworn there) was so mundane. it wasn't, look at my emotional problems. it was more, my job sucks, here's my last week in review, and so on. now don't get me wrong; these things can be fascinating in the hands of a master wordsmith or comedian. but these people were just generally bitching about things, things that had nothing to do with emotions or powerlessness or whatever.
i suppose this too makes sense -- i suppose that part of the point is that you don't want to dwell on the negative past, but rather the functional present. the theory behind emotions anonymous seems to be that you should just take it one day at a time (i suppose i't's parallel to AA, which may or may not have the same credo?). but i find this approach effective but flawed: it's effective, because for those one-days you are happy, but at the same time this temporizing tread (which i did for a few weeks back in february) doesn't actually bring you any closer towards solving your problems. because it isn't a permanent fix (you can't live life one day at a time for the rest of your life), and as soon as you have another trigger you'll just revert to your emotional self. i can see how for addiction problems such as alcoholism simply not doing them would be productive, but for emotional breakdowns and outbursts, i can't imagine that it would work that way.
the other problem i have with living one day at a time is that i get really antsy. the one day is fine -- i can be happy, well-adjusted, whatever -- but then the next morning i wake up thinking that i just wasted a day of my life. i mean, not quite so universally or melodramatically, but essentially so. so i'm really not sure that the one-day-at-a-time thing works when dealing with depression or general emotional instability (i would argue that the latter is my problem more than the former; not that this is the main problem with me, but it's the problem that something like EA is directed towards fixing.)
the other thing about EA which of course put me off (in the interests of fairness; i know that this is a prejudice i have) is the dependence on god. i'm fine with mentioning god every now and then; even if i don't believe in him, i do believe to some extent in miracles (by which i don't really mean something too supernatural, but really random catalytic coincidences, mostly miracles of meeting people; this goes along with my theory of falling in love, which is another entry entirely), and i really don't mind something in a religious framework.
but EA was much more than that. it cast itself in a proselytizing light. the thesis for yesterday (step 2) seemed to be: "you are so weak and can't fix this by yourself; you need god, you need a higher power, you need to trust that something else can fix you." i'm sorry, but i can't buy into that party line, and it would be particularly unhealthy for me if i did anyway, because then i'd just be dependent on god. maybe the lack of dependence on god (or family) for emotional support is why i depend so much on the person i'm dating (and friends, but this is not the sort of thing which screws up friendships as easily, since i think i at least am interesting about it most of the time.) i'd even believe that.
but solving my problems with god is not going to amount to solving my problems. even supposing i were able to just make myself believe that god will fix my screwed-up emotions, i really don't think it would work; things just trigger me, and i need to fix the internal processes, and that's something so intrinsic that it's hard to see someone external having a dramatic effect on it. i'm willing to try most things, and i'm tempted to start believing in god, but i don't think i could anyway so it's kind of a moot point.
another point they seemed to keep making was faith. that you have to have the faith that everything will be okay. this is a very delicate point, because a lot of times these things are self-fulfilling prophecies: if you're happier, your life will be better, and furthermore since you are the one in charge of saying how good your life is, if you believe everything to be okay it by definition is. but also, in my life, things haven't been okay in the past. nothing has ever just worked out. okay, everything has except relationships, but that's really the entire issue. to tell the truth, it seems less and less likely over time that things will just work out with relationships; they are things where you have to put in effort, where you can't really take this laissez-faire approach towards things.
but this is also funny, because at the same time i'm very bad at relaxing (the aforementioned defense mode of a few entries back), but also very bad at putting the right kind of effort into actually making the other person feel the love that i have for them. these things are sort of opposites, so my relationships really do fall apart in contradictory directions at once, like murderers being drawn and quartered. which come to think of it is roughly how i feel physically during these episodes.
work in progress.