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addicts don't go NC why do we?

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BonesMS:
If I may share a little more regarding my recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction.  While accepting the fact that I will always be a recovering alcoholic and a recovering drug addict, I also came to realize I was also self-medicating so I wouldn't feel the pain of abuse from the NFOO.  Once that foggy cloud lifted, I no longer craved chemically-induced oblivion.  Dealing with real life, without mood-changing chemicals is hard and, at the same time, committing slow suicide would have made my abusers happy as they had told me, on more than one occasion, since I was a child, that they wished I was dead and that I should never had been born because they have always considered and called me "retarded".  In their view, having a "defective retard" anywhere near them made them look bad to their friends and neighbors.  With NFOO's like that, who needs enemies?

Bones

sKePTiKal:

--- Quote ---The only problem we have in that area is understanding what we can affect, and what actions we can take to achieve an outcome that just might be favourable or something we can live by. The trick is to keep breathing.
The answer in this case is to ignore what society wants.
--- End quote ---

Hear Hear! That last line in particular is spot on.

FW, I think we just said the same thing - only you wrote it better than I did. Acceptance is the better word, because "forgiveness" seems to have little clinging connotations hanging on it; assumptions that everyone "makes up" and lives happily ever after. Yet, "forgiveness" is the word that's used most often... instead of the more appropriate "acceptance". I think that's why I had such a hard time with it, myself. I knew there was no realistic possibility of achieving that "happily ever after"  and total NC didn't feel right either... and I sort of built a box of "can't"s around myself until I realized I could change me... via acceptance, letting go expectations, hopes and the "shoulda, coulda, woulda"s.

Hopalong:
FW, thank you much for pointing at societal expectations and most especially media manipulation...huge.

I like this discussion of nuances about acceptance vs. forgiveness.

For me, forgiveness means "be like Jesus" and refusing to forgive means "turn intentionally away from what Jesus was about." I am no longer Christian or even theist, but these deep definitions and understandings of the christ are still in me. So, in part, I do want to forgive.

The main reason I was/am driven to forgive is that when I don't, I am poisoned. I feel hate (dramatic term but true) for those who damaged, harmed, abused, exploited, etc etc etc-- me. When I intentionally think on forgiveness, something in my chest lightens up. Though the damage/harm/abuse/exploitation is not resolved (at least the PAST) ... my own inner tension is relieved. I more often think of them as human...then I think of how sick they are... I don't want to be vulnerable to them, ever again, and it's sad what they became, but they are what they are.

Another comforting context for me is to zoom WAY out, and think of us all as a species, animals, and ponder the enormous variants in nature and in other animals. We are animals. We keep forgetting we are animals. (Not a negative term, as I mean it.) So....when I think about Nism, or evil, or sociopathy, or cruelty -- I sometimes think about predation, the brutality in nature, the aggression of some members of some species. The hideous (to me) acts of "brutality" in nature, the pain caused, the suffering, the devouring of infants. Then I think of the Ns or abusers as ... like that.

Avoid and self-protect, develop adaptive behaviors. That's the biological survival way.

Acceptance of what I cannot change is the psychological survival way.

Forgiving them, once I accept their biological nature...is nearly moot. But for me, it's the spiritual survival (even "thrival") way.

I need to do it anyway because: a) I am a religious person in many ways, and b) it relieves a feeling of being poisoned, when I don't.

Hops

Guest:
Hops,

is refusing to forgive something that we can choose to do? Without descending into a language mess! I mean, if I retain an attachment to someone's bad behaviour, am I choosing to be upset by them? Or have I not got to the stage where I accept that it's nothing to do with me? I don't really think that people choose to refuse, I think it's because they don't understand the alternative. Some moments I choose to dream up ways of revenge for slights inflicted on me, and that's me processing through to accepting that it really ain't my business how other people are screwed up. Can still annoy the hell out of me though! It's all part of it. Try stuffing the bad feelings and you just stuff them.

I don't know about the poisoning, well, yes it feels bad, but it's part of what we do I think. Feel the poison and dredge it up and out. Or accept the poison! Live with the poison, love it, revel in it, get bored with it. Accept it and .... oh, where did it go?

I'm very very very wary of adopting any position in thinking that implies in any way, any, even slight, feeling of superiority. Coz that's when I get up myself, and ego, whatever you may call it, gets in charge. It's really enjoying this line of argument though!! *slap* :o

Hopalong:
FW, I think you know whereof you speak!


--- Quote ---am I choosing to be upset by them? Or have I not got to the stage where I accept that it's nothing to do with me? I don't really think that people choose to refuse, I think it's because they don't understand the alternative.
--- End quote ---

I think also that some practices (that I am far too undisciplined to engage in) do accelerate the process of that understanding. And those practices are choices.

That I am not motivated enough to make with any consistency, but some deep early impressions do tend to lead me in that direction. So there must be many paths.

Hops

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