What to do when someone in a GA group rubs you the wrong way? Or you dislike the person and/or the feeling is mutual?
And, to complicate matters, what to do when that person is not “merely” a member but a facilitator of meetings?
That is the predicament in which I find myself.
I do not like C. She conducts the meetings poorly (illustrations unnecessary). And I do not trust her. I would not trust her in settings unrelated to GA (i.e., social circles, workplace). I would not and do not trust her to be kind. I would not trust her with an innocuous piece of information, never mind a confidence.
She is a hypocrite and two-faced and deeply judgmental. She is one to gossip behind people’s backs. (Welcome to the worst of womanhood!) She is, in the simplest of four words: Not to be trusted.
And yet she runs the meetings and not well, as I mentioned. I do not feel safe in her presence. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t tell her even my date of birth, weight, place of birth or the number of people in my immediate family.
I was about to write “because I dislike her that much.” But that’s actually not correct (though I am less fond of her than others). I don’t trust her. And I don’t want her knowing anything about me.
Which defeats the healing purposes of GA.
I’ve not attended meetings recently specifically because she is there and leading them. However, I cannot continue in this vein — avoiding meetings, that is. I totally get the “principles before personalities.” After nearly four years in the program, I truly do get it. I truly get that there are people I don’t and won’t like. I’m actually to bothered by that.
Trusting someone … that introduces an entirely new and different level of challenge.
I wish C. would go away, go back to her home state from which she came. However, that is a foolish hope and unlikely scenario. It leaves me with a hypocritical two-faced judgmental woman I truly do not trust.
What to do.
I don’t know. If I knew, I might not be writing about this. If I knew, I might be offering sage suggestions or advice.
What are my options?
Go to a meeting and say nothing, thereby sparing me the tremendous unease and discomfort of sharing my heart with a person who as I said I’d otherwise not even reveal banal information?
Not gonna happen, me saying nothing meeting after meeting after meeting. A VERY dangerous path indeed. It puts me SMACK DAB back into Isolation and Isolation is both the death of me and the start of gambling.
Truly, if C. didn’t facilitate the meetings, the equation would be shifted toward my favor. I’d still wish that my shadings didn’t have to include a woman I deeply distrust. Guess I’d just have to focus on the people whom I do trust to motivate myself into shares.
My relationship with God / Higher Power is at best iffy. Sporadic. Riddled with doubt and uncertainties. Faith definitely is not my middle name!
However, I am trying to learn and I work extremely hard in that learning, probably harder than about any human! That said, if there is a God and if He really does listen and if he really does care — and wow is that an ENORMOUS VAST If! — I would like to pray for C. to step aside from leading meetings. She’s really not that good at it; moreover, her doing so has been to disadvantages of GA members.
It is time for another to gain the experience and skills. It is time for C. to return to a seat in the house and let others who would like to lead or serve to have that opportunity. It would be for the good of all.
That is my prayer to the God that I hope exists.
In the meantime, staying clean one day at a time, even without the meetings (a situation that I hope will correct itself imminently).
bad bets 