Muddling Through Recovery or Dealing With What Ails me!

[teartracks]

Hi everyone,

When I came out of denial I dropped like a rock from space.   I was dazed, directionless, lost, disappointed, and on and on.  I had never felt so low.  Didn't know how I could possibly sink any lower, but feared I would.  I did.  Thought it would literally kill me.  It didn't...couldn't because the human spirit and the will to survive is so powerful.

There was something iside me that stood up and said, we are at war.  It's us or them.  I'm speaking metaphorically of course.  Wrong thinking, my wrong thinking was the enemy.  Going forward, getting well meant walking through the village of my own mind.  That village was a virtual minefield of wrong thinking.   Keeping safe meant walking very carefully, very slowly, very deliberately for the old wrong thinking minefields were everywhere and had hair triggers.   One after the other they had to be dismantled before I could take another step forward. To make matters worse, dismantling it once wasn't always sufficient, for I'd get triggered again and again by the same old thought patterns.  Sometimes I still do. 

I found a site called coping.org.  Reviewing it and looking back to where I was when I crashed and burnt helped me identify and see more clearly some of the wrong thinking that tripped me up.  Here is a list from the site that is deeply personal to me.  These were the minefields I stumbled through, trying to find me in the middle of the mess of my life.

What is accepting personal responsibility?   Accepting personal responsibility includes:

Acknowledging that you are solely responsible for the choices in your life.

Accepting that you are responsible for what you choose to feel or think.

Accepting that you choose the direction for your life.

Accepting that you cannot blame others for the choices you have made.

Tearing down the mask of defense or rationale for why others are responsible for who you are, what has happened to you, and what you are bound to become.

The rational belief that you are responsible for determining who your are, and how your choices affect your life.

Pointing the finger of responsibility back to yourself and away from others when you are discussing the consequences of your actions.

Realizing that you determine your feelings about any events or actions addressed to you, no matter how negative they seem.

Recognizing that you are your best cheerleader; it is not reasonable or healthy for you to depend on others to make you feel good about yourself.

Recognizing that as you enter adulthood and maturity, you determine how your self-esteem will develop.

Not feeling sorry for the ``bum deal'' you have been handed but taking hold of your life and giving it direction and reason.

Letting go of your sense of over responsibility for others.

Protecting and nurturing your health and emotional well being.

Taking preventive health oriented steps of structuring your life with time management, stress management, confronting fears, and burnout prevention.

Taking an honest inventory of your strengths, abilities, talents, virtues, and positive points.

Developing positive, self-affirming, self-talk scripts to enhance your personal development and growth.

Letting go of blame and anger toward those in your past who did the best they could, given the limitations of their knowledge, background, and awareness.

Working out anger, hostility, pessimism, and depression over past hurts, pains, abuse, mistreatment, and misdirection.



How can failing to accept personal responsibility result in negative consequences?
When you have not accepted personal responsibility, you can run the risk of becoming:

Overly dependent on others for recognition, approval, affirmation, and acceptance.

Chronically hostile, angry, or depressed over how unfairly you have been or are being treated.

Fearful about ever taking a risk or making a decision.

Overwhelmed by disabling fears.

Unsuccessful at the enterprises you take on in life.

Unsuccessful in personal relationships.

Emotionally or physically unhealthy.

Addicted to unhealthy substances, such as the abuse of alcohol, drugs, food, or unhealthy behavior such as excessive gambling, shopping, sex, smoking, work, etc.

Over responsible and guilt ridden in your need to rescue and enable others in your life.

Unable to develop trust or to feel secure with others.

Resistant to vulnerability.

www.coping.org/

James J. Messina, Ph.D. & Constance Messina, Ph.D.  Note: Original materials on this site may be reproduced for your personal, educational, or noncommercial use as long as you credit the authors and website.

tt

[sKePTiKal]

So how are you doing now, TT? is the minefield receding into the distance for you?

[sKePTiKal]

I asked my T, why NOW? After 40 years? Why did all this stuff come out of nowhere now?

She said no one knows the why of the timing of the unconscious. But, I thought I could still see faint traces of reasons, connections, causes & effects. And truthfully, while I was responsible & competent those 40 years - I still had plenty of symptoms, issues, and was terribly unhappy all that time. I just thought unhappy was my "natural" state.

So glad you're going through a growth spurt! That's another thing I'm discovering has it's own timetable: how long it takes to really feel that stretching, growing & exploring of new self... after all the drama, horror & shock of piecing together memories, feelings, & old attitudes into a single narrative - it seems there's a lull, a resting point while the unconscious self exhales and I woke up, looked around... and the sun was brighter, the birds louder and I had the energy and the desire to go do something.

[sKePTiKal]

I know the effects of isolation, too. Mine were due to my Mother's growing up in a rural setting and her suspicion and distrust of others, coupled with my Dad's alcoholism. Books were my only escape and I read everything I could get my hands on or sneak past the librarian, who tried to keep me away from adult non-fiction. School was another universe and a great help to me.

I wasn't ever popular in school with my peers. I gravitated to the teachers, who responded to my need for information and guidance as best they could. My subsitute parents, I guess. At a primitive level - at school, I got the attention and validation that I so desperately craved, but was denied at home. I would've gone to school on weekends.

Personal responsibility got inverted for me, without normal healthy boundaries. I felt responsible for EVERYTHING. I was taught that it's par for the course to blame someone else for what I was feeling... and that DUH - those feelings were bad, in any case, if they were different from what my mom thought I should feel. I practically believed that my thoughts and emotions - unexpressed - caused her pain. She claimed often to know what I was thinking/feeling... so often, that I feared it was true... and I developed a vicious inner critic, as a result. What freedom - I could literally feel the weight come off my shoulders - when I learned that people were responsible for their own feelings and that no one can "make" you feel anything!

It's no wonder I was always tired - I was trying to manage everyone else's feelings! Once I stopped that, it finally became possible to look for and claim my own. But that part of my emotional development had a lot of catching up to do. For a while I was as gawky emotionally, as a pre-teen is physically during a growth spurt.

Isn't it interesting how we tell ourselves some of the worst, cruelest, most hope-crushing things about ourselves, when we're actually on the road - albeit at the beginning - of finally putting things right? And isn't it interesting that we not only survive this, but come out of the journey more complete somehow - new and improved! I had to laugh at your image of the piles to keep, toss & work on. I went through - and am still going through - that same process. And it has a physical manifestion, too - in the accumulated stuff in my house!