Tuesday, January 25, 2011
10 POINTS OF RECOVERY
COMMITMENT
1. Make your "recovery" the first priority in your life.
Become Pro Active in your own life by.
PRO ACTIVE PHASE
2. Become "selfish," i.e., focus on getting your own needs met
more effectively.
3. Courageously face your own problems and shortcomings.
4. Cultivate whatever needs to be developed in yourself, i.e., fill
in gaps that have made you feel undeserving or bad about yourself.
5. Learn to stop managing and controlling others; by being more
focused on your own needs, you will no longer need to seek security
by trying to make others change.
6. Develop your "spiritual" side, i.e., find out what brings you peace
and serenity and commit some time, at least half an hour daily, to
that endeavor.
7. Learn not to get "hooked" into the games of relationships; avoid
dangerous roles you tend to fall into, e.g., "rescuer" (helper),
"persecutor" (blamer), "victim" (helpless one).
OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES
8. Find support (friends, people who are in recovery too, a sponsor, a therapist), people who understand and most importantly people who know their way through all this.
9. Learn to share; learn the business of With, Us and We. Share and listen with someone you are willing to listen to. This one is very important. Then follow their directions.
10. Consider getting professional help and if you do get professional help try working with the pro, after all that is why you are paying them. Most people never think of this because it is too scary, just fessup and tell them it is scary, then get on with it.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Diamond: This is about how I am looking not about what I am seeing!
How Many Facets Are There For You to Use? ...
How Many Are There To Use ...?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
15 Principles ... Understanding Me While Being We
First Principle
Live Life to the fullest ... I have lived with people who do just that and it is that effort that underlies most everything both they and I attempt to do ... Sounds simple. But just how does one get there from here.
Second Principle
“Trust” is about value, not about pain reduction, not about expectations ... this can slip and slide through misunderstanding into the manifestation of all my fears ... “Trust” is about “what has real value” ... not necessarily what I imagine it to be.
Third Principle
Know Thy Self
To Me Means:
Fourth Principle
You are responsible for you ...
Not for your partner ...
Just You!
Your partner is not responsible for you.
Fifth Principle
Spirit and Spiritual
To Me Means:
Sixth Principle
To be Self Soothing
To Me Means:
Seventh Principle
An Exercise To Take You Into Your Future
What Beliefs Do I Follow That Lift Me Up?
What Beliefs Do I Follow That Bring Me Down?
What Beliefs Do I Follow That Are Based In Truth?
Which Of Those Beliefs Are Based On Lies?
When I notice there is something out of balance, something that brings me down, something that is a lie or out of line with the Way of Things, then there are only two things that are necessary.
First, make up a new rule/belief that encompasses you being uplifted. Then Do It.
Second, say to yourself or to whoever may be present:
I’m Sorry
Please Forgive Me
I Love You
The important thing is that you offer this up to your own soul first.
Remember:
You Act Your Way Into A New Way Of Thinking ...
Not Think Your Way Into a New Way of Acting
Eighth Principle
Style
Theirs and Mine
Complimentary / Confrontational
Ninth Principle
EXPERIENCE has taught us that there are PRINCIPLES OF SHARING. I can use these principles to find out more about my world and myself.
A. Most of my partner’s criticisms of me have some basis in reality. (Note the words ‘some basis’; no one said ‘total basis’ by any stretch of the imagination.)
B. Many of my repetitious, emotional criticisms of my partner are disguised statements of my own unmet needs. Of course the same is true for my partner. (Note: the key phrase in this statement is my own unmet needs.)
C. Some of my repetitive, emotional criticisms of my partner may be an accurate description of a disowned part of me. My Blind Spots.
D. Some of my criticisms of my partner may help me identify my own lost self.
One must remember this is not about liking what you see, this is about discovering what is hidden in plain sight.
Tenth Principle
Hope
Hope is shared amongst us all.
It is a universal human experience which brings us together in our diversity and at the same time is a personal experience which shows differently for everyone.
Hope is a quality which is found in the stories of peoples' lives ... not in analysis of the situation. Our news media draws us to the tragedies and melodrama of life but we as individuals have the choice to look in another direction.
It is a complex human quality which:
o -is rooted in our past experiences;
o -has an orientation to the future;
o -is expressed in how we live today.
Eleventh Principle
The Way of Things
Conflict in social interaction comes in many forms: brute force, implacable institutions, and internal divisions among one's friends, fellow workers and family. If there is to be an opening in any situation, a way through to resolution, we are going to have to be willing to listen to what we have to say to ourselves about others and ourselves, (Ninth Principle) and at the same time not be caught in the reactive nature that has brought us to this impasse in the first place. Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements ... “Don’t Take Things Personally.”
Insights don't come easily, as you probably are discovering. It takes a great deal of strength to detach yourself from who you think you are and be honest. After all, we all have vested interests in whom and what we think we are and what is going on around us. What is going on around us is the stuff that gives us our definitions of who we think we are. We tend to seek out those situations, people and events that support what we have come to think about ourselves in the first place.
It’s a cycle. Nothing more, nothing less.
Twelfth Principle
Your imagination is what is creating your reality.
This is True.
Curiosity motivates us to do something with what we imagine.
This is very a powerful concept.
In fact one of the most Powerful things you own.
This Also is True.
Imagination is a force that can actually manifest reality.
You Job is to Use It Wisely
Wisdom Comes From Experience Not Books
Imagine That!
Thirteenth Principle (Expanded)
The respect of and for your team, your partners (Life and Business) is more important than all the laurels the world can provide.
Don't put limitations on yourself.
Don’t think yourself into a place that stops you before you start.
Stay Away From “I Can’t.”
It doesn’t work very Well.
Learn to speak your Feelings as they are.
Know this:
Being Nice is Not a Nice Thing to do, especially when you do it to yourself.
Others will put limitations on you.
They will drop their stuff and their opinions on you.
Don’t take it personally.
And more importantly: don't do it to yourself.
Remember This:
Your best Thinking may not be your best Friend.
Don't bet against you before you start.
Learn to speak up and speak out.
Not your opinions ... your feelings.
Fourteenth Principle
Take Risks
”Failure is not an option”
This Statement Is Not True.
Failure has to be an option for life to be rich.
Why?
Simple!
It is in the “leap of faith” that Risk Taking Entails
It is here in that space of conscious awareness that life gains its flavour.
Life and its richness is embodied in the attempting to do
what you've never done before.
So failure has to be an option
But fear is not.
Fifteenth Principle
Arthur C. Clarke
The only way of discovering the limits of the “possible”
Is to venture a little way past them into the “impossible”.
Taken from A Course In Miracles ... Manuel for Teachers ... Page 9 ... On Trust ... Foundation for Inner Peace ...
Taken from Experience Has Taught Us 175 Missing Pieces Published Bright Star Press Author Neil Douglas-Tubb
Adapted from How Can I Help ... Ram Dass and Paul Gorman ... Publisher ... Knopf
From Quotes by Arthur C Clarke ... author ... futurist ... visionary
Adapted From Quotes by Arthur C Clarke ...
From Quotes by Arthur C Clarke ... author ... futurist ... visionary
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Roles, Roles
As an example: the children of the co- dependent family system tend to assume the following roles to survive within the family system.
These roles can and do overlap
They change, and it is good to know that the ones listed here are only the umbrella groupings of the roles we play … there are many more.
The present day origins of our roles lay in the ashes of the residuals of all the past and different roles we played in our families systems just to survive being a kid at our house.
Our job if we want to heal is to look and go back and look at our families and the roles that everyone had and to rework our roles.
A. The Hero Role
If they were the hero/little hero in their family of origin, that is always looking good and doing good to make their family look better, then they will continue to act as a hero in their adult world. Continuing the process of doing good and looking good, making the work place, or the marriage or the neighborhood or the school board or what have you ... look good … better than they really know it is.
But in their very efforts to make things appear to be better; usually leaves them in a place of not feeling so good about themselves because they feel a) that they have been ripped off by system and or b) they have actually been ripped off by someone.
B. The Martyr Role
These people tend to offer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of those around them. They are willing to "die" for the cause and very often get crucified in the process.
Or they become the saviour of the system … the system that was never designed to work properly nor did it want saving … in the first place.
C. The Pleaser Role
These people try to do whatever it is that they think people want them to do.
They try to make everybody happy - even if it means making themselves unhappy in the process, or another favourite is for them to sacrifice their integrity and honesty to do whatever it is that they think YOU want them to do. Self-sacrifice is the process … and … melodrama is the game … it is always about someone else and what he or she wanted never about what I did.
The natural outcome is that these people oftentimes get themselves into trouble by trying to please too many people … doing too many different things and then get caught-up ¬in their own dishonesty. They have difficulty being responsible for their own actions. After all what they did was for the good and the benefit of others.
D. The Parent Role.
Many of us parented our parents, and at times parented our younger or even older siblings. The problem is that for some we continue this parenting act into our adult life, usually our work settings but not always.
People caught in the Parental Role Trap try to instruct everyone on how to do this or that. Everything is an opportunity for a lesson to be learned. They see themselves as self-appointed guides and gurus to the mysteries of life … sometimes affectionately referred to as the jello sheriff. They see themselves as a model for life … for everybody. The truth of the matter is that almost to a person, those that are the supposed recipients of the modeling never wanted the help or the modeling in the first place … they loose respect for the supposed helper or model. In fact those who are the targets of the Parent Role will work very hard at not seeing the self appointed parent as helping or being the missing parent(s). Now the oddity of the situation is that this rejection makes the role player … the parent … feel like real parents!
E. The Good-Guy Or Gal Role
These people always try to be good … to look good and most importantly … have everybody like them. They never take a firm stand on any¬thing … therefore it follows that they can never be viewed as bad or inflexible and always be seen as good and flexible … the convenient aspect of this role is that the Good Guy can always change his or her position relative to a situation to suit their need at any given point in time … therefore never be caught out and shamed for not knowing or doing or being something they deem to be important or necessary at the time. They never really give the world a real person to assert against. Being a Good Guy can set up situations with tremendous anxiety and conflict … it is a controlling persona … it is about appearing to do the right thing … it is about avoiding being real at all costs … This is very similar to the pleaser. Bach and Goldberg in their book Creative Aggression suggest very powerfully that the Good Guy persona is a mode of anger transfer.
F. The Rebel Role
They react, defy and rebel against the system.
They pick at and sabotage life’s structure.
They defy authority.
Few rebels mature quickly, but many have a strong following, often called soldiers or soldier gathering and are very impactive on life or the family system.
The rebel’s true problem is that they suffer from being controlled by what it is that they are rebelling against.
G. The Lost Child Role
They do their job(s), fill their roles in life but they believe that they are never noticed or recognized and they definitely go under com¬pensated for what they have done or are doing… at least in their opinion.
They feel lost within and they look lost without.
They isolate or feel unwanted and not belonging.
Their real life is in a fantasy… often times very elaborate fantasy and not reality.
H. The Extension Of Parent Role
They make their boss or their spouse or new friend, their mentor, their new parent in a vain attempt to replace the lost parent they never had.
They model themselves after their new parent – they use their words, aspire to live in their neighborhood, have a family that looks like the new parents … want to be members the new parents social clubs or wear their style of clothes and the list is very extensive..
They take on the new parent's affect and identity.
The interesting twist to the whole thing is they can’t and don't lose their own identity, because for the simple reason they were always an extension of their original parents and never had their own identity.
I. The Mediator Role
They muck around in other people's business. They try to fix everything for them, often as not before they are asked to do so.
Anytime there is a problem, they are there to solve it.
They are good at solving problems, but those they help with their problems end up resenting them for their meddling . . . time after time.
They then feel used and unappreciated.
J. The Clown, Mascot Or Entertainer Role
They distract everybody from their pain, from the seriousness of their life. They joke around, clown around, sometimes acting the fool, sometimes act¬ing the comic, but usually minimizing their own needs, their own pain, their own feelings and their own processes in their very own relationships both at home and at work or at school.
The office or class clown is not taken seriously and does not take self seriously and that's serious!
K. The Charmer Role
They seduce people. They don't have to contribute because they can make sure that people are well fooled by their insin¬cerity. They charm their way through tests, contracts and the work¬days with their teachers with their parent and eventually with their supervisors. If they are charming enough, they can become the surrogate spouses to the teacher, the parent, supervisor, administrator, boss or owner - maybe even become the boss.
L. The Victim Role
They feel buffeted around by the winds of chance, unable to make choices. It feels as though other people are doing it to them and they frequently blame others or the system. They know the "art of the fine whine." Their anger goes inward and they appear perfectly helpless and act perfectly hapless.
M. The Offender Role
They also feel buffeted around by the winds of chance and think that other people are doing it to them - except they are doing it to themselves with their intrusiveness, bullying, aggression, arousal, irritability and impatience.
We hurt other people and offend them.
We blame others; still assuming they were doing it to us.
N. The Enabling Role
The enabler/co-dependent, usually the spouse or significant other of the dependent … as the classic symptoms of addiction progress … so do the compulsions of the enabler to protect the dependent and the family system by assuming the responsibilities in the family that the dependent has abandoned.
The co-dependent will constantly ignore his or her own needs for the needs of the dependent and the addiction. They will circumvent or facilitate any crisis the dependent may have … oddly enough those things that might motivate the dependent to change, without any awareness that their "help" is in fact supporting the continued dependency and the problem. This is the concept of "negative enabling". That is, the dependent is enabled to continue in his problem behaviours.
The co-dependent can be recognized by the exhibition of symptoms of extreme anger and feelings of powerlessness. He or she develops symptoms of stress related illnesses, such as ulcers, colitis and arthritis that endanger his/her physical health.
They seem to have an altered baseline tolerance level for dishonesty, violence, anger, pollution and chaos that goes on around them. They are able to enable because they wear blinders about the facts of life that are transpiring before them or by being and/or acting naive, or by simply not knowing what to do about the problem nor bothering to find out. They may not participate in what they don’t approve of, but they still have the co-dependent posture of enabling.
O. The Addict Role
Nothing is ever enough. They keep doing things that alter their feelings and their consciousness. They keep doing things for the high, for the excitement and distraction, whether that be work, sex, sexualizing relationships, drug use, three-martini lunches, whining and/or dining.
These people seem to lack boundaries in several areas of their life … have little impulse control … become preoccupied and obsessed with those things that might distract or make them feel better temporarily… and temporarily is the key word here. Fore instance they try to sell their addiction processes to those they work or live with … if a drinker, get others to drink with me after work … it is what we do to bond … if a drug user etc etc … this is especially true for the concept of addiction around work ethic and work addiction … work addiction is often times rewarded as good work ethic … similarly it is true for those who need to feel needed … it is a form of compulsion/addiction … they do so at the expense of themselves … never recognizing that in fact it is a disease and if allowed to continue will at some point consume the beholder.
P. The Scapegoat Role
They are similar to the victim, but they actively get blamed and set up to take the dive for a system gone awry.
They carry the burden and very often do the acting out to insure that the burden will be placed on them.
Scapegoats are particularly susceptible to chemical addiction and suicidal tendencies … they are often Dxed with Personality Disorders and treated for depression.
Q. The Organizer Role
They are constantly organizing - our desk, their desk, the office, the kitchen, the basement, the yard, the company picnics, the volleyball matches, and the teams - they organize until they lose all sense of direction.
They become disorganized to the point of fractured frustration!
R. The Healer Role
They listen and placate - always fixing, giving advice, caring for others, until they burn out.
Usually they are not too great at caring for those immediately and intimately around them.
The closer people are, the less they are able to give because those closest to them can see through the role.
Those close others can see that real intimacy isn't there.
They never allow themselves to be cared for or be vulner¬able with others … always present false fronts … and are difficult to pin down on life issues.
S. The Jeremiah Or Prophet Role
These people foretell of the demise of the system or the end of the world. They know what is and what is about to happen.
Mostly you don’t even have to ask they will just tell you.
They are always foretelling what will happen and are constantly obsessed with the future and negativity and how to avoid it … the golden rule of the Prophet (and this spill over in to many other of the roles but it has it origins here) is:
T. The Queen Bee Role
They have everybody covering for them, doing their work and running around for them.
They are bossy, demanding, distant and unable to offer support for people around them.
They send the workers and warriors out into the world so they can stay home and lay eggs.
U. The Gadfly Role
They are always buzzing around, noticing and prodding, generally noticing what is wrong with everyone else. They work toward change - sometimes positively, some¬times destructively - but always buzzing and usually never completing anything.
V. The Odd-Duck Role
Whatever is happening, they have to do it differently. They dress, act and do their work in an unusual way. It gets to be a repetition in sameness of how different they are always trying to be.
These roles overlap and change, and there are many more.
They are residuals of all the different roles we played in our families.
We must go back and look at our families to rework our roles.
These roles can and do overlap
They change, and it is good to know that the ones listed here are only the umbrella groupings of the roles we play … there are many more.
The present day origins of our roles lay in the ashes of the residuals of all the past and different roles we played in our families systems just to survive being a kid at our house.
Our job if we want to heal is to look and go back and look at our families and the roles that everyone had and to rework our roles.
A. The Hero Role
If they were the hero/little hero in their family of origin, that is always looking good and doing good to make their family look better, then they will continue to act as a hero in their adult world. Continuing the process of doing good and looking good, making the work place, or the marriage or the neighborhood or the school board or what have you ... look good … better than they really know it is.
But in their very efforts to make things appear to be better; usually leaves them in a place of not feeling so good about themselves because they feel a) that they have been ripped off by system and or b) they have actually been ripped off by someone.
B. The Martyr Role
These people tend to offer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of those around them. They are willing to "die" for the cause and very often get crucified in the process.
Or they become the saviour of the system … the system that was never designed to work properly nor did it want saving … in the first place.
C. The Pleaser Role
These people try to do whatever it is that they think people want them to do.
They try to make everybody happy - even if it means making themselves unhappy in the process, or another favourite is for them to sacrifice their integrity and honesty to do whatever it is that they think YOU want them to do. Self-sacrifice is the process … and … melodrama is the game … it is always about someone else and what he or she wanted never about what I did.
The natural outcome is that these people oftentimes get themselves into trouble by trying to please too many people … doing too many different things and then get caught-up ¬in their own dishonesty. They have difficulty being responsible for their own actions. After all what they did was for the good and the benefit of others.
D. The Parent Role.
Many of us parented our parents, and at times parented our younger or even older siblings. The problem is that for some we continue this parenting act into our adult life, usually our work settings but not always.
People caught in the Parental Role Trap try to instruct everyone on how to do this or that. Everything is an opportunity for a lesson to be learned. They see themselves as self-appointed guides and gurus to the mysteries of life … sometimes affectionately referred to as the jello sheriff. They see themselves as a model for life … for everybody. The truth of the matter is that almost to a person, those that are the supposed recipients of the modeling never wanted the help or the modeling in the first place … they loose respect for the supposed helper or model. In fact those who are the targets of the Parent Role will work very hard at not seeing the self appointed parent as helping or being the missing parent(s). Now the oddity of the situation is that this rejection makes the role player … the parent … feel like real parents!
E. The Good-Guy Or Gal Role
These people always try to be good … to look good and most importantly … have everybody like them. They never take a firm stand on any¬thing … therefore it follows that they can never be viewed as bad or inflexible and always be seen as good and flexible … the convenient aspect of this role is that the Good Guy can always change his or her position relative to a situation to suit their need at any given point in time … therefore never be caught out and shamed for not knowing or doing or being something they deem to be important or necessary at the time. They never really give the world a real person to assert against. Being a Good Guy can set up situations with tremendous anxiety and conflict … it is a controlling persona … it is about appearing to do the right thing … it is about avoiding being real at all costs … This is very similar to the pleaser. Bach and Goldberg in their book Creative Aggression suggest very powerfully that the Good Guy persona is a mode of anger transfer.
F. The Rebel Role
They react, defy and rebel against the system.
They pick at and sabotage life’s structure.
They defy authority.
Few rebels mature quickly, but many have a strong following, often called soldiers or soldier gathering and are very impactive on life or the family system.
The rebel’s true problem is that they suffer from being controlled by what it is that they are rebelling against.
G. The Lost Child Role
They do their job(s), fill their roles in life but they believe that they are never noticed or recognized and they definitely go under com¬pensated for what they have done or are doing… at least in their opinion.
They feel lost within and they look lost without.
They isolate or feel unwanted and not belonging.
Their real life is in a fantasy… often times very elaborate fantasy and not reality.
H. The Extension Of Parent Role
They make their boss or their spouse or new friend, their mentor, their new parent in a vain attempt to replace the lost parent they never had.
They model themselves after their new parent – they use their words, aspire to live in their neighborhood, have a family that looks like the new parents … want to be members the new parents social clubs or wear their style of clothes and the list is very extensive..
They take on the new parent's affect and identity.
The interesting twist to the whole thing is they can’t and don't lose their own identity, because for the simple reason they were always an extension of their original parents and never had their own identity.
I. The Mediator Role
They muck around in other people's business. They try to fix everything for them, often as not before they are asked to do so.
Anytime there is a problem, they are there to solve it.
They are good at solving problems, but those they help with their problems end up resenting them for their meddling . . . time after time.
They then feel used and unappreciated.
J. The Clown, Mascot Or Entertainer Role
They distract everybody from their pain, from the seriousness of their life. They joke around, clown around, sometimes acting the fool, sometimes act¬ing the comic, but usually minimizing their own needs, their own pain, their own feelings and their own processes in their very own relationships both at home and at work or at school.
The office or class clown is not taken seriously and does not take self seriously and that's serious!
K. The Charmer Role
They seduce people. They don't have to contribute because they can make sure that people are well fooled by their insin¬cerity. They charm their way through tests, contracts and the work¬days with their teachers with their parent and eventually with their supervisors. If they are charming enough, they can become the surrogate spouses to the teacher, the parent, supervisor, administrator, boss or owner - maybe even become the boss.
L. The Victim Role
They feel buffeted around by the winds of chance, unable to make choices. It feels as though other people are doing it to them and they frequently blame others or the system. They know the "art of the fine whine." Their anger goes inward and they appear perfectly helpless and act perfectly hapless.
M. The Offender Role
They also feel buffeted around by the winds of chance and think that other people are doing it to them - except they are doing it to themselves with their intrusiveness, bullying, aggression, arousal, irritability and impatience.
We hurt other people and offend them.
We blame others; still assuming they were doing it to us.
N. The Enabling Role
The enabler/co-dependent, usually the spouse or significant other of the dependent … as the classic symptoms of addiction progress … so do the compulsions of the enabler to protect the dependent and the family system by assuming the responsibilities in the family that the dependent has abandoned.
The co-dependent will constantly ignore his or her own needs for the needs of the dependent and the addiction. They will circumvent or facilitate any crisis the dependent may have … oddly enough those things that might motivate the dependent to change, without any awareness that their "help" is in fact supporting the continued dependency and the problem. This is the concept of "negative enabling". That is, the dependent is enabled to continue in his problem behaviours.
The co-dependent can be recognized by the exhibition of symptoms of extreme anger and feelings of powerlessness. He or she develops symptoms of stress related illnesses, such as ulcers, colitis and arthritis that endanger his/her physical health.
They seem to have an altered baseline tolerance level for dishonesty, violence, anger, pollution and chaos that goes on around them. They are able to enable because they wear blinders about the facts of life that are transpiring before them or by being and/or acting naive, or by simply not knowing what to do about the problem nor bothering to find out. They may not participate in what they don’t approve of, but they still have the co-dependent posture of enabling.
O. The Addict Role
Nothing is ever enough. They keep doing things that alter their feelings and their consciousness. They keep doing things for the high, for the excitement and distraction, whether that be work, sex, sexualizing relationships, drug use, three-martini lunches, whining and/or dining.
These people seem to lack boundaries in several areas of their life … have little impulse control … become preoccupied and obsessed with those things that might distract or make them feel better temporarily… and temporarily is the key word here. Fore instance they try to sell their addiction processes to those they work or live with … if a drinker, get others to drink with me after work … it is what we do to bond … if a drug user etc etc … this is especially true for the concept of addiction around work ethic and work addiction … work addiction is often times rewarded as good work ethic … similarly it is true for those who need to feel needed … it is a form of compulsion/addiction … they do so at the expense of themselves … never recognizing that in fact it is a disease and if allowed to continue will at some point consume the beholder.
P. The Scapegoat Role
They are similar to the victim, but they actively get blamed and set up to take the dive for a system gone awry.
They carry the burden and very often do the acting out to insure that the burden will be placed on them.
Scapegoats are particularly susceptible to chemical addiction and suicidal tendencies … they are often Dxed with Personality Disorders and treated for depression.
Q. The Organizer Role
They are constantly organizing - our desk, their desk, the office, the kitchen, the basement, the yard, the company picnics, the volleyball matches, and the teams - they organize until they lose all sense of direction.
They become disorganized to the point of fractured frustration!
R. The Healer Role
They listen and placate - always fixing, giving advice, caring for others, until they burn out.
Usually they are not too great at caring for those immediately and intimately around them.
The closer people are, the less they are able to give because those closest to them can see through the role.
Those close others can see that real intimacy isn't there.
They never allow themselves to be cared for or be vulner¬able with others … always present false fronts … and are difficult to pin down on life issues.
S. The Jeremiah Or Prophet Role
These people foretell of the demise of the system or the end of the world. They know what is and what is about to happen.
Mostly you don’t even have to ask they will just tell you.
They are always foretelling what will happen and are constantly obsessed with the future and negativity and how to avoid it … the golden rule of the Prophet (and this spill over in to many other of the roles but it has it origins here) is:
Avoid Negativity at all cost … Negative = Bad.
T. The Queen Bee Role
They have everybody covering for them, doing their work and running around for them.
They are bossy, demanding, distant and unable to offer support for people around them.
They send the workers and warriors out into the world so they can stay home and lay eggs.
U. The Gadfly Role
They are always buzzing around, noticing and prodding, generally noticing what is wrong with everyone else. They work toward change - sometimes positively, some¬times destructively - but always buzzing and usually never completing anything.
V. The Odd-Duck Role
Whatever is happening, they have to do it differently. They dress, act and do their work in an unusual way. It gets to be a repetition in sameness of how different they are always trying to be.
These roles overlap and change, and there are many more.
They are residuals of all the different roles we played in our families.
We must go back and look at our families to rework our roles.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
When you need to practice patience
When you think you have been patient for as long as you possibly can be patient ...
That's when you need to
Practice Patience
Tom Harvey TVS ... 1979
The Essense
The very nature of the healing process is to get to a place where life and life's processes are seen differently; where Spirit can become a part of the internal process of healing, not just contributing to the healing, but being the essence of the healing process.
The definition of therapy is to make the unknown known, thus returning choice to the individual. A Course in Miracles defines a miracle as something that takes us back and releases the past in the present and gives us back our future. Within the therapeutic context this 'miraculous' definition of healing is also the working definition of grief.
Susanne Forward writes in her book, Toxic Parenting, that there are five basic levels of recovery. She implies that we have to be prepared to implement each of the levels as follows:
1. Know what happened to us.
2. Know how we felt as it happened.
3. Understand the legacy of those experiences: the ghosts, the monsters, and the demons.
4 Come to understand what it is that we want now.
5. Finally answer the question: Do I have the courage to do what is necessary to make it all work?
You will find that as you identify yourself (willingly or not) as co-dependent you will have to go through a process of unraveling and processing if you want to free yourself. This thought stems from Alice Miller’s benchmark work 'Drama of the Gifted Child':
"When we are in touch with our true feelings and can express them and not have to repress them, the energy to act them out at inappropriate times and places diminishes over time."
It is a given that if we lost our voice to speak about our pain then we will act it out. Conversely as we recover and regain our ability to speak and process our deep-seated feelings then the need to act out to be heard will diminish. Alice Miller writes:
"It is very striking to see how...acting out ceases
when the patient begins to experience his/her own feelings."
So today we are going to write about our feelings about mom/dad
Papa Bear, Momma Bear and Baby Bear come home to find: a page or two please, more if you like.
My Dad often made me feel: 10 replies
My Mom often made me feel: 10 replies
Dad's ways to show caring was to: 10 replies
Mom's ways to show caring was to: 10 replies
If my dad touched or held me, I felt: 10 replies
If my mom touched or held me, I felt: 10 replies
Dad helped mold my view of me into: "
Mom helped mold my view of me into:
Dad's view & opinion of women was:
Mom's view & opinion of women was:
Dad's view of men was:
Mom's view of men was:
My view of women is:
My view of men is:
Dad's opinion of love was:
Mom's opinion of love was:
My opinion of Love is:
Saturday, January 8, 2011
To Journal and Discovery Me
It's amazing how totally unaware of how disconnected we are of our own feelings. Caregivers are aware of everybody else's feelings around them and yet they have such a difficult time recognizing their own.
It is important to know that before you can come full cycle and heal it is imperative that you come back in contact with your feelings … not just theirs, knowing their feelings and thoughts is a defense strategy learned many years ago in a vain attempt to deal with something that over whelmed you. It is now a requirement of the process to get in touch with your own buried sadness, hurts and repressed feelings so that you can do your own grieving so that you can really come to remember who you are and what you were intended to be.
No one said it was simple and no one said it would not be painful. Doing this has been likened to root channel work of the soul except with no freezing, but it is necessary and we are all stuck with that as a fact of life. Our only choice is the time that you set aside to do it, this is all that is optional … and it is important to know that you understand that what you get out of it will be directly proportional to what you really put into it, and not just appear to put into it but actually but forth in real effort. That is simply the way it is. The deep grieving and pain will eventually set you free. The grief is part of the process that releases the past in the present and give you back your future .
The essence of the change and recovery process is the absolute necessity of seeing what it is that you have been “blind to” for most of your life. It is a two-fold process. First, one of the key ingredients to recovery is to have the individual process him or herself through a deeply introspection, in 12 steps this is reflected in steps Four and Five. This process can be summed up briefly as ‘who am I anyway’, or ‘the good the bad and the ugly’.
In reality this is a process of you searching for you by looking into yourself in a fashion that you may never have thought of. It is truly a look at you, warts and all, not just the carefully selected stuff that each of us uses to help us maintain either the particular false front that may be ‘in season’ or ‘in fashion’ that day or the stuff that supports some crappy self image we may have of ourselves.
The second aspect of this process is you sharing all of the above with someone, all of the things that you have come to realize yourself during the first phase. That someone you share with is actually someone who draws breath, someone who can be deeply trusted, and this is all done in the presence of what it is that you have come to believe in as your Higher Power, Creator or God.
The things that are shared are what you discovered about yourself. To be most specific what is being shared are those things or patterns that:
• I do or did on a regular basis that kept me stuck in this rut that some other anal aperture (just me being polite) pushed me into years ago.
• Or how am I my own worst enemy.
There are literally hundreds of phrases used to describe the nature of what is hidden away deep down inside the introspection process. You can use whatever phrase helps you.
I say this ‘being stuck in a rut’ with some reverence.
Here is why. I can’t be responsible for what was done to me, but one of my deeper discoveries I made was that I spent most of my life trying to do just that, but to heal, I have to become willing to be responsible for what I do and what I did and with where I am now and more importantly I have to become willing to be responsible for getting me out of that metaphorical rut that I got pushed into.
Over and over, I have followed my own advice on what I think I should do and how I think I should do it and each time it came up the same, I have failed.
There are times when the desperation inside of me becomes so overwhelming; I don’t think I can go on another moment.
But as I quiet my mind and close my eyes I notice, for the first time in years, that there is a part of me that remembers the truth of whom I am. It speaks to me in a voice that is neither male nor female and reassures that all is not for not.
Imagine that, from deep inside me, a Voice of sanity, reassurance, comfort and truth. This is a voice that I recall from my childhood, soft and certain, it reminds me of my Maker and It tells me I am part of all that is. One with! I am part of the plan too and I belong, no longer left out.
"No Child of God, can be less than perfect."
There is warmth and a comfort that comes over me as I sense this presence deep within me. Oh, it is hard to discern at first, but each time I acknowledge it to be alive and well within me, I feel it grow and become more pronounced and defined, and more a part of my life.
I feel the pieces of me beginning to come home from their hiding places and take their rightful place within me.
The missing parts of me are beginning to fall into place, as if some giant hand is now beginning to put me, the jig saw puzzle, back together again.
So why is it a demand for this process to have such a deep introspective aspect as a perquisite to healing?
Here is the primary reason. Those people who work nearly exclusively with recovery in treatment centers have found that, before the individual is really stable enough to be placed back in the real world and make it, the individual must in some way come to terms with the hidden demons they carry. That does not necessarily mean coming to a resolution; simply acknowledging reality as it is, seems to be what is called for.
Working the deep introspection (the steps if you are following the Minnesota model) creates the opportunity to begin to notice the following:
(A) We have blind spots in our psyche;
(B) There is something hiding in those blind spots;
(C) And whatever is in those blind spots may be a major contributing factor to our experiencing life as unpleasant. (Please pardon the understatement.)
So, if it is true that the hidden demons are running the show, then it extends naturally to the assumption that any or all hope of change and/or recovery is lost on our own unhealthy dependence upon What We Know. This is where being your own worst enemy comes in … no matter how hard you try you, depending on you will bring you back to the beginning. If you can see into our blind spots then it follows that you cannot see the real monsters that control your life.
Journaling
Journaling is the facility that takes you into the process of you discovering you. It gently brings us to face ourselves; to look at our choices, clarify our feelings, thoughts and ideas. It brings you to a point of being able to see that you have choices and you can examine your choices and create options; it is the beginning of us building an intimate relationship with yourself, it is a deep soulful conversation you with yourself. It naturally leads to increased awareness by you of you.
Our journal becomes a reflection of our thought and our self-talk.
Exercise: Work Notes:
Over and over, I have followed my own advice on what I think I should do and how I think I should do it and each time it came up the same, I have failed.
There are times when the desperation inside of me becomes so overwhelming; I don’t think I can go on another moment.
From your own perspective give definition to the above: Line by line if you have to, just make it real for you. Allow yourself to come to terms with the reality about you.
Exercise: Work Notes:
But as I quiet my mind and close my eyes I notice, for the first time in years, that there is a part of me that remembers the truth of whom I am. It speaks to me in a voice that is neither male nor female and reassures that all is not for not.
Imagine that, from deep inside me, a Voice of sanity, reassurance, comfort and truth. This is a voice that I recall from my childhood, soft and certain, it reminds me of my Maker and It tells me I am part of all that is. One with! I am part of the plan too and I belong, no longer left out.
"No Child of God, can be less than perfect."
From your own perspective give definition to the above: Line by line if you have to, just make it real for you. Allow yourself to come to terms with the reality about you.
Exercise: Work Notes:
From your own perspective give definition to the above: Line by line if you have to, just make it real for you. Allow yourself to come to terms with the reality about you.
Next, simply start telling your story, develop your own autobiography, the story of your life, as you see and remember it, or as it was told to you by others. It can be a collage of story lines that describes you to you and it can include early childhood memories, preschool issues, those are important and what we know about our infancy. What was going on in our families and in the world at the time were children. Anything that may have impacted on you, what your early days at school were like, what and who your first friendships were made up of. Include patterns, problems, things you like, people that were important, abusive, friendly or supportive. Teachers, romantic relationships, early sexual experiences, recreational activities, sports, academics, family time, vacations and losses are all part or your history. This is simply you telling your story in front of you on a page so you can finally see it for yourself - coming to know yourself - slowly. Include your hopes and dreams, your successes and failures. Slowly you will begin to see the patterns in your life. You can see your early adulthood; trace your 'dis-ease’. You can see more of who you really are.
Know this, that as you do this process it slowly brings you back on track to becoming yourself and filling your destiny. It is important that you do this yourself, for yourself. Do not do this because I asked you to - do it for you.
This workbook/journal is designed-hopefully-to allow you to get past you being you, so that you can reach into the deep and perhaps darker areas or arenas of your own awareness to make 'affective change' possible.
Exercise: Work Notes:
Describe: The hands that nurtured me: (several pages please)
Exercise: Work Notes:
Describe: The hands that betrayed me: several pages please
Exercise: Work Notes:
Describe the crimes that affected me: The ones I still carry to this day because of the betrayal.
It is important to know that before you can come full cycle and heal it is imperative that you come back in contact with your feelings … not just theirs, knowing their feelings and thoughts is a defense strategy learned many years ago in a vain attempt to deal with something that over whelmed you. It is now a requirement of the process to get in touch with your own buried sadness, hurts and repressed feelings so that you can do your own grieving so that you can really come to remember who you are and what you were intended to be.
No one said it was simple and no one said it would not be painful. Doing this has been likened to root channel work of the soul except with no freezing, but it is necessary and we are all stuck with that as a fact of life. Our only choice is the time that you set aside to do it, this is all that is optional … and it is important to know that you understand that what you get out of it will be directly proportional to what you really put into it, and not just appear to put into it but actually but forth in real effort. That is simply the way it is. The deep grieving and pain will eventually set you free. The grief is part of the process that releases the past in the present and give you back your future .
The essence of the change and recovery process is the absolute necessity of seeing what it is that you have been “blind to” for most of your life. It is a two-fold process. First, one of the key ingredients to recovery is to have the individual process him or herself through a deeply introspection, in 12 steps this is reflected in steps Four and Five. This process can be summed up briefly as ‘who am I anyway’, or ‘the good the bad and the ugly’.
In reality this is a process of you searching for you by looking into yourself in a fashion that you may never have thought of. It is truly a look at you, warts and all, not just the carefully selected stuff that each of us uses to help us maintain either the particular false front that may be ‘in season’ or ‘in fashion’ that day or the stuff that supports some crappy self image we may have of ourselves.
The second aspect of this process is you sharing all of the above with someone, all of the things that you have come to realize yourself during the first phase. That someone you share with is actually someone who draws breath, someone who can be deeply trusted, and this is all done in the presence of what it is that you have come to believe in as your Higher Power, Creator or God.
The things that are shared are what you discovered about yourself. To be most specific what is being shared are those things or patterns that:
• I do or did on a regular basis that kept me stuck in this rut that some other anal aperture (just me being polite) pushed me into years ago.
• Or how am I my own worst enemy.
There are literally hundreds of phrases used to describe the nature of what is hidden away deep down inside the introspection process. You can use whatever phrase helps you.
I say this ‘being stuck in a rut’ with some reverence.
Here is why. I can’t be responsible for what was done to me, but one of my deeper discoveries I made was that I spent most of my life trying to do just that, but to heal, I have to become willing to be responsible for what I do and what I did and with where I am now and more importantly I have to become willing to be responsible for getting me out of that metaphorical rut that I got pushed into.
The Metaphor
Over and over, I have followed my own advice on what I think I should do and how I think I should do it and each time it came up the same, I have failed.
There are times when the desperation inside of me becomes so overwhelming; I don’t think I can go on another moment.
But as I quiet my mind and close my eyes I notice, for the first time in years, that there is a part of me that remembers the truth of whom I am. It speaks to me in a voice that is neither male nor female and reassures that all is not for not.
Imagine that, from deep inside me, a Voice of sanity, reassurance, comfort and truth. This is a voice that I recall from my childhood, soft and certain, it reminds me of my Maker and It tells me I am part of all that is. One with! I am part of the plan too and I belong, no longer left out.
"No Child of God, can be less than perfect."
There is warmth and a comfort that comes over me as I sense this presence deep within me. Oh, it is hard to discern at first, but each time I acknowledge it to be alive and well within me, I feel it grow and become more pronounced and defined, and more a part of my life.
I feel the pieces of me beginning to come home from their hiding places and take their rightful place within me.
The missing parts of me are beginning to fall into place, as if some giant hand is now beginning to put me, the jig saw puzzle, back together again.
. . . Experience Has Taught Me That . . .
I know that I have many avenues open to me and it really is a simple decision.
A or B.
Choose the new and unfamiliar, take the risks and begin to experiment with something that I have discovered within me, something totally new and unfamiliar or
Do it the old way and take one more step towards death.
Which will I choose?
So why is it a demand for this process to have such a deep introspective aspect as a perquisite to healing?
Here is the primary reason. Those people who work nearly exclusively with recovery in treatment centers have found that, before the individual is really stable enough to be placed back in the real world and make it, the individual must in some way come to terms with the hidden demons they carry. That does not necessarily mean coming to a resolution; simply acknowledging reality as it is, seems to be what is called for.
Working the deep introspection (the steps if you are following the Minnesota model) creates the opportunity to begin to notice the following:
(A) We have blind spots in our psyche;
(B) There is something hiding in those blind spots;
(C) And whatever is in those blind spots may be a major contributing factor to our experiencing life as unpleasant. (Please pardon the understatement.)
So, if it is true that the hidden demons are running the show, then it extends naturally to the assumption that any or all hope of change and/or recovery is lost on our own unhealthy dependence upon What We Know. This is where being your own worst enemy comes in … no matter how hard you try you, depending on you will bring you back to the beginning. If you can see into our blind spots then it follows that you cannot see the real monsters that control your life.
Journaling
Journaling is the facility that takes you into the process of you discovering you. It gently brings us to face ourselves; to look at our choices, clarify our feelings, thoughts and ideas. It brings you to a point of being able to see that you have choices and you can examine your choices and create options; it is the beginning of us building an intimate relationship with yourself, it is a deep soulful conversation you with yourself. It naturally leads to increased awareness by you of you.
Our journal becomes a reflection of our thought and our self-talk.
Exercise: Work Notes:
Over and over, I have followed my own advice on what I think I should do and how I think I should do it and each time it came up the same, I have failed.
There are times when the desperation inside of me becomes so overwhelming; I don’t think I can go on another moment.
From your own perspective give definition to the above: Line by line if you have to, just make it real for you. Allow yourself to come to terms with the reality about you.
Exercise: Work Notes:
But as I quiet my mind and close my eyes I notice, for the first time in years, that there is a part of me that remembers the truth of whom I am. It speaks to me in a voice that is neither male nor female and reassures that all is not for not.
Imagine that, from deep inside me, a Voice of sanity, reassurance, comfort and truth. This is a voice that I recall from my childhood, soft and certain, it reminds me of my Maker and It tells me I am part of all that is. One with! I am part of the plan too and I belong, no longer left out.
"No Child of God, can be less than perfect."
From your own perspective give definition to the above: Line by line if you have to, just make it real for you. Allow yourself to come to terms with the reality about you.
Exercise: Work Notes:
. . . Experience Has Taught Me That . . .
I know that I have many avenues open to me and it really is a simple decision.
A or B.
Choose the new and unfamiliar, take the risks and begin to experiment with something that I have discovered within me, something totally new and unfamiliar or
Do it the old way and take one more step towards death.
Which will I choose?
From your own perspective give definition to the above: Line by line if you have to, just make it real for you. Allow yourself to come to terms with the reality about you.
Next, simply start telling your story, develop your own autobiography, the story of your life, as you see and remember it, or as it was told to you by others. It can be a collage of story lines that describes you to you and it can include early childhood memories, preschool issues, those are important and what we know about our infancy. What was going on in our families and in the world at the time were children. Anything that may have impacted on you, what your early days at school were like, what and who your first friendships were made up of. Include patterns, problems, things you like, people that were important, abusive, friendly or supportive. Teachers, romantic relationships, early sexual experiences, recreational activities, sports, academics, family time, vacations and losses are all part or your history. This is simply you telling your story in front of you on a page so you can finally see it for yourself - coming to know yourself - slowly. Include your hopes and dreams, your successes and failures. Slowly you will begin to see the patterns in your life. You can see your early adulthood; trace your 'dis-ease’. You can see more of who you really are.
Know this, that as you do this process it slowly brings you back on track to becoming yourself and filling your destiny. It is important that you do this yourself, for yourself. Do not do this because I asked you to - do it for you.
This workbook/journal is designed-hopefully-to allow you to get past you being you, so that you can reach into the deep and perhaps darker areas or arenas of your own awareness to make 'affective change' possible.
You Can't Make Things Different By Keeping Them The Same
Exercise: Work Notes:
Describe: The hands that nurtured me: (several pages please)
Exercise: Work Notes:
Describe: The hands that betrayed me: several pages please
Exercise: Work Notes:
Describe the crimes that affected me: The ones I still carry to this day because of the betrayal.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Lesson 33 ACIM
3. The shorter exercise periods should be as frequent as possible. Specific applications of today’s idea should also be made immediately when any situation arises which tempts you to become disturbed. For these applications say:
There is another way of looking at this.
4. Remember to apply today’s idea the instant you are aware of distress. It may be necessary to take a minute or so to sit quietly and repeat the idea to yourself several times. Closing your eyes will probably help in this form of application.
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