Six Guns A-Blazin'

There's a new woman at our meeting who has been attending for a while - her husband just celebrated one year but she recently drank.  So she's clearly still missing something important.  The not drinking part, obviously, but more importantly how to behave and what actions to take so that she doesn't drink in the future.  She's putting off that manic, defensive, scatter-shot energy that new people express.  Our long-timers have a calm, peaceful aura.  New people are frantic, rushing headlong into the future to ward off imagined disasters, never pausing, always reacting.  I try to listen and to make reasonable suggestions but it's not hard to see the obstinacy present when someone is swirling madly in their own sour stew, fixed in their plans and opinions, adamantly opposed to doing anything but follow their own perceived right course of action.  This is why my preferred technique is to listen and detatch.  Nothing I could say - right or wrong, appropriate or way off the mark - is going to sink into her rock-hard noggin.  She is on a mission to prove her opponents and tormentors wrong.

She has a situation at her teaching job that is causing a lot of distress and she is on the warpath to defend her position, to prove that she's right and everyone else is wrong.  I'm only getting her side of it so I'm loath to give any specific advice - good advice in any case - but I can see that she's not going to help her cause when she's so worked up.  As God's people we all get to stand on our own two feet, not groveling before anyone, while trying to grasp the fact that we're often blinded by our own interests.  I tried to get her to calm down a little bit before her next meeting with her perceived tormentors while assuring her that it was okay to maintain her self-dignity but all she heard was "I'm not being treated fairly and I'm going to stand up for myself."  The results that I get are much different when I come into a situation with my ass on fire and my six guns blazing - blaming, demanding, threatening - as opposed to those times when I can calmly state my concerns while admitting to my faults - few as they are - and asking my tormentor what we can do to improve the situation.  This can be hard in those situations where the tormentor is behaving unfairly but I find that when I'm calm, cool, and collected, that the outcome is usually better for all concerned.