Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Lupita on March 01, 2008, 09:25:07 AM
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In response to Violet I am posting this for everyone, in case someone is interested. Love to you all.
What is detachment?
Detachment is the:
Ability to allow people, places, or things the freedom to be themselves.
Holding back from the need to rescue, save, or fix another person from being sick, dysfunctional, or irrational.
Giving another person "the space'' to be him or herself.
Disengaging from an over-enmeshed or dependent relationship with people.
Willingness to accept that you cannot change or control a person, place, or thing.
Developing and maintaining of a safe, emotional distance from someone whom you have previously given a lot of power to affect your emotional outlook on life.
Establishing of emotional boundaries between you and those people you have become overly enmeshed or dependent with in order that all of you might be able to develop your own sense of autonomy and independence.
Process by which you are free to feel your own feelings when you see another person falter and fail and not be led by guilt to feel responsible for their failure or faltering.
Ability to maintain an emotional bond of love, concern, and caring without the negative results of rescuing, enabling, fixing, or controlling.
Placing of all things in life into a healthy, rational perspective and recognizing that there is a need to back away from the uncontrollable and unchangeable realities of life.
Ability to exercise emotional self-protection and prevention so as not to experience greater emotional devastation from having hung on beyond a reasonable and rational point.
Ability to let people you love and care for accept personal responsibility for their own actions and to practice tough love and not give in when they come to you to bail them out when their actions lead to failure or trouble for them.
Ability to allow people to be who they "really are'' rather than who you "want them to be.''
Ability to avoid being hurt, abused, taken advantage of by people who in the past have been overly dependent or enmeshed with you.
What are the negative effects not detaching?
If you are unable to detach from people, places, or things, then you:
Will have people, places, or things which become over-dependent on you.
Run the risk of being manipulated to do things for people, at places, or with things, which you do not really want to do.
Can become an obsessive ``fix it'' who needs to fix everything you perceive to be imperfect.
Run the risk of performing tasks because of the intimidation you experience from people, places, or things.
Will most probably become powerless in the face of the demands of the people, places, or things whom you have given the power to control you.
Will be blind to the reality that the people, places, or things which control you are the uncontrollables and unchangeables you need to let go of if you are to become a fully healthy, coping individual.
Will be easily influenced by the perception of helplessness which these people, places, or things project.
Might become caught up with your idealistic need to make everything perfect for people, places, or things important to you even if it means your own life becomes unhealthy.
Run the risk of becoming out of control of yourself and experience greater low self-esteem as a result.
Will most probably put off making a decision and following through on it, if you rationally recognize your relationship with a person, place, or thing is unhealthy and the only recourse left is to get out of the relationship.
Will be so driven by guilt and emotional dependence that the sickness in the relationship will worsen.
Run the risk of losing your autonomy and independence and derive your value or worth solely from the unhealthy relationship you continue in with the unhealthy person, place, or thing.
How is detachment a control issue?
Detachment is a control issue because:
It is a way of de-powering the external "locus of control'' issues in your life and a way to strengthen your internal "locus of control.''
If you are not able to detach emotionally or physically from a person, place, or thing, then you are either profoundly under its control or it is under your control.
The ability to "keep distance'' emotionally or physically requires self-control and the inability to do so is a sign that you are "out of control.''
If you are not able to detach from another person, place, or thing, you might be powerless over this behavior which is beyond your personal control.
You might be mesmerized, brainwashed, or psychically in a trance when you are in the presence of someone from whom you cannot detach.
You might feel intimidated or coerced to stay deeply attached with someone for fear of great harm to yourself or that person if you don't remain so deeply involved.
You might be an addicted "caretaker,'' "fixer,'' or ``rescuer'' who cannot "let go'' of a person, place or thing you believe cannot care for itself.
You might be so manipulated by another's con, "helplessness,'' overdependency, or "hooks'' that you cannot leave them to solve their own problems.
If you do not detach from people, places, or things, you could be so busy trying to "control'' them that you completely divert your attention from yourself and your own needs.
By being "selfless'' and "centered'' on other people, you are really a controller trying to "fix'' them to meet the image of your "ideal'' for them.
Although you will still have feelings for those persons, places, and things from which you have become detached, you will have given them the "freedom'' to become what they will be on their own merit, power, control, and responsibility.
It allows every person, place, or thing with which you become involved to feel the sense of personal responsibility to become a unique, independent, and autonomous being with no fear of retribution or rebuke if they don't please you by what they become.
What irrational thinking leads to an inability to detach?
If you should stop being involved, what will they do without you?
They need you and that is enough to justify your continued involvement.
What if they commit suicide because of your detachment? You must stay involved to avoid this.
You would feel so guilty if anything bad should happen to them after you reduced your involvement with them.
They are absolutely dependent on you at this point and to back off now would be a crime.
You need them as much as they need you.
You can't control yourself because everyday you promise yourself "today is the day'' you will detach your feelings but you feel driven to them and their needs.
They have so many problems, they need you.
Being detached seems so cold and aloof. You can't be that way when you love and care for a person. It's either 100% all the way or no way at all.
If you should let go of this relationship too soon, the other might change to be like the fantasy or dream you want them to be.
How can being detached from them help them? It seems like you should do more to help them.
Detachment sounds so final. It sounds so distant and non-reachable. You could never allow yourself to have a relationship where there is so much emotional distance between you and others. It seems so unnatural.
You never want anybody in a relationship to be emotionally detached from you so why would you think it a good thing to do for others?
The family that plays together stays together. It's all for one and one for all. Never do anything without including the significant others in your life.
If one hurts in the system, we all hurt. You do not have a good relationship with others unless you share in their pain, hurt, suffering, problems, and troubles.
When they are in "trouble'' how can you ignore their "pleas'' for help? It seems cruel and inhuman.
When you see people in trouble, confused, and hurting, you must always get involved and try to help them solve the problems.
When you meet people who are "helpless,'' you must step in to give them assistance, advice, support, and direction.
You should never question the costs, be they material, emotional, or physical, when another is in dire need of help.
You would rather forgo all the pleasures of this world in order to assist others to be happy and successful.
You can never "give too much'' when it comes to providing emotional support, comforting, and care of those whom you love and cherish.
No matter how badly your loved ones hurt and abuse you, you must always be forgiving and continue to extend your hand in help and support.
Tough love is a cruel, inhuman, and anti-loving philosophy of dealing with the troubled people in our lives and you should instead love them more when they are in trouble since "love'' is the answer to all problems.
How to develop detachment
In order to become detached from a person, place, or thing you need to:
First: Establish emotional boundaries between you and the person, place, or thing with whom you have become overly enmeshed or dependent on.
Second: Take back power over your feelings from persons, places, or things which in the past you have given power to affect your emotional well-being.
Third: "Hand over'' to your Higher Power the persons, places, and things which you would like to see changed but which you cannot change on your own.
Fourth: Make a commitment to your personal recovery and self-health by admitting to yourself and your Higher Power that there is only one person you can change and that is yourself and that for your serenity you need to let go of the "need'' to fix, change, rescue, or heal other persons, places, and things.
Fifth: Recognize that it is "sick'' and "unhealthy'' to believe that you have the power or control enough to fix, correct, change, heal, or rescue another person, place, or thing if they do not want to get better nor see a need to change.
Sixth: Recognize that you need to be healthy yourself and be "squeaky clean'' and a "role model'' of health in order for another to recognize that there is something ``wrong'' with them that needs changing.
Seventh: Continue to own your feelings as your responsibility and not blame others for the way you feel.
Eighth: Accept personal responsibility for your own unhealthy actions, feelings, and thinking and cease looking for the persons, places, or things you can blame for your unhealthiness.
Ninth: Accept that addicted fixing, rescuing, enabling are ``sick'' behaviors and strive to extinguish these behaviors in your relationship to persons, places, and things.
Tenth: Accept that many people, places, and things in your past and current life are "irrational,'' "unhealthy,'' and "toxic'' influences in your life, label them honestly for what they truly are, and stop minimizing their negative impact in your life.
Eleventh: Reduce the impact of guilt and other irrational beliefs which impede your ability to develop detachment in your life.
Twelfth: Practice "letting go'' of the need to correct, fix, or make better the persons, places and things in life over which you have no control or power to change.
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Steps in developing detachment
Step 1: It is important to first identify those people, places, and things in your life from which you would be best to develop emotional detachment in order to retain your personal, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. To do this you need to review the following types of toxic relationships and identify in your journal if any of the people, places, or things in your life fit any of the following twenty categories.
Types of Toxic Relationships
( 1) You find it hard to let go of because it is addictive.
( 2) The other is emotionally unavailable to you.
( 3) Coercive, threatening, intimidating to you.
( 4) Punitive or abusive to you.
( 5) Non-productive and non-reinforcing for you.
( 6) Smothering you.
( 7) Other is overly dependent on you.
( 8) You are overly dependent on the other.
( 9) Other has the power to impact your feelings about yourself.
(10) Relationship in which you are a chronic fixer, rescuer, or enabler.
(11) Relationship in which your obligation and loyalty won't allow you to let go.
(12) Other appears helpless, lost, and out of control.
(13) Other is self-destructive or suicidal.
(14) Other has an addictive disease.
(15) Relationship in which you are being manipulated and conned.
(16) When guilt is a major motivating factor preventing your letting go and detaching.
(17) Relationship in which you have a fantasy or dream that the other will come around and change to be what you want.
(18) Relationship in which you and the other are competitive for control.
(19) Relationship in which there is no forgiveness or forgetting and all past hurts are still brought up to hurt one another.
(20) Relationship in which your needs and wants are ignored.
Step 2: Once you have identified the persons, places, and things you have a toxic relationship with, then you need to take each one individually and work through the following steps.
Step 3: Identify the irrational beliefs in the toxic relationship which prevent you from becoming detached. Address these beliefs and replace them with healthy, more rational ones.
Step 4: Identify all of the reasons why you are being hurt and your physical, emotional, and spiritual health is being threatened by the relationship.
Step 5: Accept and admit to yourself that the other person, place, or thing is "sick", dysfunctional, or irrational and that no matter what you say, do, or demand you will not be able to control or change this reality. Accept that there is only one thing you can change in life and that is you. All others are the unchangeables in your life. Change your expectations that things will be better than what they really are. Hand these people, places, or things over to your Higher Power and let go of the need to change them.
Step 6: Work out reasons why there is no need to feel guilt over letting go and being emotionally detached from this relationship and free yourself from guilt as you let go of the emotional "hooks'' in the relationship.
Step 7: Affirm yourself as being a person who "deserves'' healthy, wholesome, health engendering relationships in your life. You are a GOOD PERSON and deserve healthy relationships, at home, work, and in the community.
Step 8: Gain support for yourself as you begin to let go of your emotional enmeshment with these relationships.
Step 9: Continue to call upon your Higher Power for the strength to continue to let go and detach.
Step 10: Continue to give no person, place, or thing the power to affect or impact your feelings about yourself.
Step 11: Continue to detach and let go and work at self-recovery and self-healing as this poem implies.
``Letting Go''
To ``let go'' does not mean to stop caring.
It means I can't do it for someone else.
To ``let go'' is not to cut myself off.
It's the realization I can't control another.
To ``let go'' is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To ``let go'' is to admit powerlessness
which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To ``let go'' is not to try to change or blame another.
It's to make the most of myself.
To ``let go'' is not to care for, but to care about.
To ``let go'' is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To ``let go'' is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To ``let go'' is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To ``let go'' is not to be protective.
It's to permit another to face reality.
To ``let go'' is not to deny, but to accept.
To ``let go'' is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To ``let go'' is not to criticize and regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To ``let go'' is not to adjust everything to my desires
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To ``let go'' is to not regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.
To ``let go'' is to fear less and LOVE MYSELF MORE.
Step 12: If you still have problems detaching, then return to Step 1 and begin all over again.
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Emotional detachment, in psychology, can mean two different things. In the first meaning, it refers to an inability to connect with others emotionally, as well as a means of dealing with anxiety by preventing certain situations that trigger it; it is often described as "emotional numbing" or dissociation. In the second sense, it is a type of mental assertiveness that allows people to maintain their boundaries and psychic integrity when faced with the emotional demands of another person or group of persons. These senses are within the framework of psychology and academia, not those of everyone else in the world.
First sense: inability to connect
Emotional detachment in the first sense above often arises from psychological trauma and is a component in many anxiety and stress disorders. The person, while physically present, moves elsewhere in the mind, and in a sense is "not entirely present", making them sometimes be seen as preoccupied or distracted. In other cases, the person may seem fully present but operate merely intellectually when emotional connection would be appropriate. This may present an extreme difficulty in giving or receiving empathy and can be related to the spectrum of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. [Johnson, Stephen M. Humanizing the Narcissistic Style. NY: Norton and Co., 1987, p. 125. ISBN 0-393-70037-2]
Thus, such detachment is often not as outwardly obvious as other psychiatric symptoms; people with this problem often have emotional systems that are in overdrive. They have a hard time being a loving family member. They avoid activities, places, and people associated with any traumatic events they have experienced. The dissociation can also lead to lack of attention and, hence, to memory problems and in extreme cases, amnesia.
A fictional description of the experience of emotional detachment in the first sense was given by Virginia Woolf in "Mrs Dalloway." In that novel the multi-facted sufferings of a war veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (as this condition was later named) including dissociation, are elaborated in detail. One clinician has called some passages from the novel "classic" portrayals of the symptoms: Herman, Judith Lewis M.D.Trauma and Recovery Basic Books New York, NY. 1992 pp49 and 52.
[edit] Second sense: mental assertiveness
Emotional detachment in the second sense above is a positive and deliberate mental attitude which avoids engaging the emotions of others. It is often applied to relatives and associates of people who are in some way emotionally overly demanding. A simple example might be a person who trains themselves to ignore the "pleading" food requests of a dieting spouse. A more widespread example could be the indifference parents develop towards their children's begging.
This detachment does not mean avoiding the feeling of empathy; it is actually more of an awareness of empathetic feelings that allows the person space needed to rationally choose whether or not to engage or be overwhelmed by such feelings.
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Part 1: The Incredible Shrinking Relatives
Learning to set boundaries is part of the healing process after any form of abuse. This task can be complicated. It seems there will always be people who want to upset you. They could be family members who deny that abuse took place. They could be the offenders or their allies who are still a part of your life. Their comments, expressions, or attitudes can hurt you and make your life much more difficult.
You handle people like this by using an emotional tool called detachment. Like any other emotional process, it is a skill you can learn. It takes practice. But keep working, and you will diminish the effect these people have on your life.
EMOTIONAL DETACHMENT LESSONS
Make Them Smaller
Let Go
Stock Phrases
Set Boundaries
Handling the Rough Stuff
Take Care of Yourself First
Practice, Practice, Practice
Make Them Smaller
The first step to detachment is to "shrink" the unhealthy person. Make the person a smaller part of your life by making other parts of your life bigger. Start a new hobby, a job, learn something new, focus on other people, join a club, take a class, have more contact with friends - you get the idea. The only way to reduce someone's power over your life is to fill your time with other people, places, and things to squeeze them out.
This equation in emotional mathematics means adding things to your life automatically reduces the space taken up by unhealthy people and relationships. Expand your horizons. Occupy your mind with new ideas. The unhealthy person will occupy a smaller portion of your mind, and therefore your life.
Let Go
The unhealthy people in your life use guilt to keep you enslaved. When you begin to detach, you are upsetting the status quo, and they will use guilt to bludgeon you back into place.
Resisting this tactic is difficult but not impossible. Learn to recognize the guilt trip. Think about why they are doing this. You are trying to take care of yourself, and some people will go to great lengths to stop you. They want to maintain the status quo.
Accept that these unhealthy people will never grant their approval. This is a vital part of letting go. In fact, withholding approval is a most effective weapon to keep you enslaved. When you let go, and honestly don't care if they approve of you, they will have a hard time hiding their surprise. Watch as they mentally scramble to think of another tactic to keep you entangled. Realize that the other person's problem is not yours. One of the hardest lessons to learn is that no matter how hard you try, you can never, ever, ever change how another person acts. The only thing you can change is your reaction to them. You can fight the guilt they inspire. You can take care of yourself.
Stock Phrases
The unhealthy people in your life often try to catch you off guard, or will try to ensnare you in a hopeless problem. The response to both tactics is to memorize some stock phrases. Some examples: "Hm. Interesting." "Wow, that's too bad." Or my favorite: "Huh. What are you going to do about that?" The last one is very effective, since these people want you to fix their problems. This response turns the tables on them. You express interest without offering to fix the problem, and force them to offer solutions. Then you conclude with, "Well, that sounds like a good plan. Good luck with it!"
When I felt required to fix things for other people, I remember my therapist asking, "Has this person been declared incompetent? Has the state institutionalized them? No? Then they have the ability to act responsibly and fix this by themselves."
This good point inspires another type of stock response: flattery. "You're a smart person. I have confidence in your ability to solve this." How can they argue with that? Are they going to insist that they're not smart?
Go to the next page to learn how to set boundaries.
Part 2: Set Your Boundaries
It is critical to spend less time with the person you are detaching from. You can decline invitations. You can make excuses and stay away. You can claim illness. You can complain about your crowded work schedule, or how busy you are with the kids. Sure, you have been taught that it's wrong to lie. Well, in this case, it's good to lie. Taking care of yourself is more important than showing up every time. Besides, they lie to you all the time, don't they?
Another effective tactic using this point is to complain at length about how busy you are. The person you're detaching from doesn't care about your problems. Often, they want to talk about their problems. If they keep hearing about your problems, they may stop calling.
Handling The Rough Stuff
The person you're detaching from can be very abusive. Often, the reward they seek is to see the hurt in your eyes and the feeling of power they receive from being the cause of that hurt.
Recognizing this fact will give you unexpected power. The verbal jab is blunted when you know it's only meant to hurt you. And you can deny them the pleasure they seek. Don't debate the point. They want to keep the topic going because they know it's hurting you. Think of the verbal jab as a spitball thrown at you. If you laugh, or pretend you didn't hear it, or do anything else instead of looking hurt, it's the equivalent of ducking and letting the spitball sail by. Shrug off the comment as lightly as possible, and then bring up a topic of your own -- one that you know is distasteful to your tormentor. Doing this will deny them their reward, and give negative reinforcement. Eventually, they will stop attacking you. Bullies like an easy target. Some examples are in order here. I know a man with verbally abusive parents. He learned to respond -- every time! -- by talking about his brother, who was gay. He described his brother's romantic exploits with enthusiasm, knowing his parents were very uncomfortable with the whole subject.
I know a woman whose uncle was verbally abusive and constantly made comments about her childhood molestation by another uncle. This woman learned to respond by staring at him, appearing distracted (and pretending she wasn't listening), then pointing to a spot on her uncle's face, neck or arms, and asking, "Does that look cancerous to you? Maybe you should get it checked."
Her uncle knew she was saying that as a defense. But he still hated it. And he stopped bothering her.
Take Care Of Yourself
In every life, there are other parts that are good. You have a right and a duty to focus on the good parts. If you have a good husband and child, or sweet pets who adore you, but your mother is making your life a living hell, give yourself permission to focus your time and energy on the good things.
Remember the old phrase, "Listen to your gut?" Don't do that. The unhealthy people in your life use guilt and manipulation to inspire a gut reaction from you. I remember my therapist telling me, "Of course they're good at pushing your buttons! They installed them!" Instead, use your intellect to talk back to your gut feelings. You know that person is no good for you. You know your energies are better spent elsewhere. Take care of yourself. Do what's right for you. Say to yourself over and over again, "Taking care of myself must be my first emotional priority."
There's a book that is very helpful for this step. It's called Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns. Buy it and read it.
Practice, Practice, Practice
When you start this process, realize that you will slip up. You have spent all of your life in your relationship with this person, so give yourself a break. Don't punish yourself if you don't detach perfectly. Learn from every experience and try to do a little better next time. Be patient and persistent.
Detaching is a vital skill to practice on someone you are unable or unwilling to completely shut out of your life. You can even still love that person if you want to, even though you have detached. Your goal is to recognize the relationships that are not good for you, and make them a smaller part of your life. You can still care about unhealthy people, if you choose. But at the same time, you can prevent them from running (or ruining) your life.
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This is great stuff, Lupita.
Reminds me that it's OK to love people the way we need to love them, or relate to them.
We don't have to love them the way they want/desire/insist or try to force/guilt or otherwise intimidate us into relating with them.
Thanks..... you posted more info.
Cool 8)
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Excerpt from the Workbook
BACK TO TOP
The Detachment Paradox – The Workbook is filled with exercises that will help you to transform your life both on and off the job. You only need to pick up the morning paper or turn on the evening news to know that stress-related health problems continue to rise as job satisfaction and productivity continues to dip. This workbook has answers to both of those problems. It is designed to lead you through activities that will help you to rediscover your personal life and to become a more objective and productive employee. You will become a healthier, less-stressed person who discovers that time does exist to pursue activities close to your heart. You will also become a happier, more productive and efficient employee.
Whereas the book, The Detachment Paradox, contains personal anecdotes and a thorough discussion of Anthony Zolezzi’s seven keys to detachment, this workbook is filled with hands-on activities designed to get you moving and working towards a better life. Zolezzi’s seven keys, converted here into thoughtful activities, allow you to implement changes in your life as soon as you put your pen or your pencil down. The activities throughout this workbook are meant to be process oriented. They are meant to take some time. You won’t be able to do them all at once – you shouldn't if you can. Many of them will work better if they are allowed to simmer a little while. They will challenge your current mindset – and possibly cause some necessary discomfort – all while showing you how to take back the control in your life.
Understand that each time you finish an activity you will be one step closer to a rich and rewarding life.
Is a repetitive cycle of stress, sleepless nights, and anxiety putting you in a funk?
Do you wonder why you never seem to feel rested? Have you ever gone home depressed and disappointed because your company or division didn’t meet its quarterly number?
Before you start asking your doctor for one of those calming prescription drugs advertised on TV, you might want to give some thought as to what is causing you to feel this way. Could the source of your problems be a series of control dramas that have been inflicted on you by your boss or the faceless corporate culture in which you work? Could another source be your corporation's constant reminder of their unreasonable bottom line and your inability to attain their “golden” number every few months?
Maybe it is a combination of the two that leaves you feeling like you have a constant low-level headache or that you are living in a “cloud of muck."
It’s time to realize that someone is attempting to control you—either through their own hidden agendas, or the corporation's constant brow-beating you receive in regards to the “numbers”. ( the school needs, to keep students no matter what, even if they have been expelled from other schools, and blame it on the teacher's capabilities or lack of creativity or lack of classroom management or lack of class control, etc)sOnce you step back and make this realization, you can begin to detach. You now have a personal mission to keep you grounded. Your mission will help you to see the control dramas and numbers games for what they are — arbitrary and manipulative.
In this section you will:
Learn effective detachment methods
Learn to detach from the "numbers game"
Learn to detach from control
Learn to stay focused on your personal mission
For a deeper discussion on these topics, refer to:
The Detachment Paradox, Exercises Three and Four—pages 61-100
The following exercises will help you put your detachment strategies to work.
1. Stay true to your personal mission.
Earlier, you spent a great deal of time working on your personal mission. Go back to the page
where you wrote the final version of your personal mission. Read it a couple of times. Now,
quickly list what you are working on at the office: ____________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Are your tasks consistent with your mission? YES NO (circle one) If you circled yes, smile, take a deep breath and move on. If you answered no, take a moment and list specifically what diverts your attention.
_______________________________________________________________________
What can you do to move your attention back towards your mission? Maybe all you needed is a reminder to stay focused. Maybe someone is acting manipulative. Maybe it’s the numbers.
Let’s move on and see if any of the following exercises can get you back to your primary purpose—your personal mission.
2. Quit taking it personally.
Look at the organizational structure at the office. Who has the biggest impact on your psychological well being? Make a quick list of people around the office who impact your ability to get your work done.
______________________________________________________________________
Step back and look at him/her/them with objective eyes. What hidden agendas might they have? What insecurities do they harbor? Realize that their agendas and their insecurities are not yours. Detach emotionally from it. Silently empathize with them as people, remind yourself of your personal mission and remember why you are there.
3. Establish your own ‘performance criteria’ and rules of employment.
From your point of view, what is expected of you at the office? Make a list of your responsibilities.
___________________________________________________________________
What do you expect in return? ____________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Establish the limits of this work arrangement. Write your “contract” here: __________________
_________________________________________________________________________
Make a mental recording of this “contract” and stick to it as much as possible.
(See page 23 for a more thorough exercise in “creating” your own job description.)
4. Make sure you are rested and feeling good.
You achieve peak performance, which is what the company wants, when you make time for yourself. In the past 2 weeks, what have you done for yourself? _________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
Did you enjoy these moments? Did you get some exercise? Did you have some “down” time? If not, spend some time working on your schedule. Time for Yourself—Section 4 has activities that will help you prioritize your life and help you to create a reasonable schedule that benefits you. After you have worked on this schedule and you see what is important, don’t be shy about speaking up when you feel you’re being deprived of necessary rest or exercise. If you do, you’ll command respect. If you don’t, your own insecurity, lack of rest, and poor health will make it easy for others to control you.
5. Recognize attempts at control and use them to benefit you.
Who is “in charge” at your office? What types of things does this person do to keep the
employees—you—in line? List a few. _______________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
Once you recognize these types of things, you can often use them to your advantage. Controlling individuals often like things “their way” so you can let them do it “their way”. Don’t worry if what they want seems like the wrong approach or isn’t up to your standards – remember, it’s their issue, not yours. Get your satisfaction elsewhere.
6. When you have to work over the weekend, make it on your terms.
You’ve just been called in and asked to work this weekend. You’d rather not, but your boss explains how important it is. How can you minimize the effect it will have on you?
Assess the situation for what it is—an imposition—and don’t act as if this is something that’s now routinely expected of you.
Clarify the time frame. Is it Saturday only? Mornings? Afternoons? All day? Don’t settle for the “couple of hours” answer. Have them give you a specific time.
Clarify exactly what it is that you are needed to do?
Be specific about your plans. You can work, but on your terms. You can work from 7 until noon. You have a family outing, but you can come in a bit early and take some work home. Next week, however, is out of the question. You have tickets for … Or, you have vacation plans with your wife…etc. Be flexible yet firm. By doing this, you show the boss you have an important life outside of work.
7. Make sure you’re given accurate and realistic time frames.
The next time you are given a deadline, ask a few questions.
Is this deadline a calendar issue? Is a quarter coming to an end? Or some other specific time period set by the company?
Who set the deadline? Is it your immediate boss?
You have probably dealt with many deadlines in the course of your career. You can probably recognize a reasonable one from an unreasonable one. When an unreasonable deadline comes your way, take it for what it is—unreasonable. This doesn’t mean you stop working. You still do your best, but you now understand that this deadline cannot be met and you won’t let it cause added stress. Remember, controlling people love to set unreasonable deadlines.
8. Keep everything in perspective.
So, you’re two weeks out from a major deadline. The stress starts building. A mental fog creeps in. What do you do? Are you afraid you won’t make the deadline? Do you have fears related to this project? Or your job in general? Write down some work fears/insecurities. _________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
Which of these fears/insecurities is being caused by someone else and their agenda?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
The ones you listed, you can do nothing about except detach. So, take a deep breath and remember your mission. You are not your job. Repeat the phrase—“I am not my job” at least three times. Look at the project with a fresh perspective and move on.
9. Be straightforward and honest with everyone.
Sadly, it is all too common to pick up the paper and see another headline about someone else who has been dishonest in the workforce. Has there been a time when have been asked to “fudge” the numbers or misrepresent something? Briefly describe this incident. _____________________________
______________________________________________________________________
What would have happened if you had been honest? Describe a possible scenario and relive this event
honestly. _________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
When a questionable incident arises, let it be known—politely, but firmly—how you feel. If nothing else, you will earn respect. Your candor, in fact, will help you become known as an individual who can be trusted. Above all, be honest with yourself. Truth is your best armor, especially in an office with manipulative management.
10. View the situation as you would a situation comedy.
You interact with a handful of people on a daily basis. Picture each one of these people and give them a new name—something that highlights an interesting/annoying characteristic about them. The screaming boss. The competitive coworker. The guy on the phone. The know-it-all. List your new characters using their new names.
________________ _________________ ________________
________________ _________________ ________________
Now that you have your characters, put them into some situations and imagine how they would act. You’ll find yourself amused at the absurdity of the control dramas you encounter. You will recognize the insecurities that go with them and actually empathize with the characters. One last thing, what would you name your show?
Coming this Fall on Detachment Network….
__________________________________
Your Title Here
BACK TO TOP
Copyright Anthony Zolezzi 2004
ASM Books
P.O. Box 3083, La Habra CA 90631
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Lupita,
This is so full of good stuff. I cut and pasted it into my
"Life" folder. Thanks for this; I want to read it today and really think about it in depth. This ties in so much with everything I am working on about my relationship with Nmom and my issues of self abandonment, independence, voice, etc.; I am especially trying to learn how to "attach" my "self" to my "self" (reparenting my abandoned inner child through EFT tapping and self love affirmations).
Have noticed I am becoming less and less dependent on her approval and affirmation, less and less affected by her verbal barbs and efforts to undermine me. I actually called and talked to her this morning on the phone and the old bitterness and rage did not come up from deep inside me, just pleasant neutrality or maybe what lollie calls "medium chill." This is huge for my life!! I do not think I can move very far forward in my healing until I master detachment.
Thank you so VERY much for posting this; will be a great adjunct to what I am doing with EFT! Love ya! (((((((Lupita)))))))
Violet
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For those who don’t know, “upeksa” or “equanimity” are basically one of the four “Sublime Attitudes” in Buddhism — also called “the Four Immeasurables,” or “the four sublime attitudes” (the others being loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy).
Trina brings up a great point about my attitude towards comments on Zen Habits and elsewhere, and about my attitude towards everyday life. While I don’t always succeed (I get angry or irritated like everyone else), equanimity is a concept I strive for as much as possible. And here’s a tip: the more you practice this, the better you get, and the happier and saner you will become.
If you noticed some of the comments under my guest post at Consumerism Commentary, and especially the Lifehack.org Firefox OS post, there are some extremely negative things said about me and my articles (including but not limited to: I hope you never reproduce; The author is a moron; This guy is an idiot). However, in response, I have several choices:In this article that I found in the internet, I use it for my help In my case as a teacher, I can descend to the level of the student and engage in an unproductibe discussion,and this is exactly what they want, they want to get me out of work side track me so they do not have to do the work, etc.
I can respond with similar negativity, and thereby increase the animosity between myself and the commenter, and the general community. This has the unfortunate side effects of making me feel really angry and negative, and making me look bad in front of everyone else. People tend to judge negative people in a bad light.
I can ignore the comments, which is a valid option but allows them to go unanswered, which isn’t always the best choice if others don’t know that the comments are in error. This is what many people do, ignoring. bad bad.
I can answer the comments but remain positive. This is the choice I try to take in all cases. If a commenter thinks I’m a moron, well, I probably won’t be able to change his mind. But if he makes an erroneous point, I should clarify it, while thanking him for the opportunity to clarify my article. The benefits of this include: a) you clarify an erroneous comment; b) you look like a positive person to the community; c) you don’t get sucked into negative feelings; and d) sometimes you can actually win people over by remaining positive in your interactions with them. This has happened to me several times, and I’ve even developed good relationships with people this way. This philosophy of remaining positive, even under attack, applies to all parts of life, not just in responding to comments. I’ve used it in my everyday dealings with people. It takes two to argue, and even if the person refuses to rise to your level, that’s his problem, not yours.
YEAH RIGHT, AS IF I can do that, lol.
How can you develop equanimity? Here, as always, are my suggestions:
Learn to meditate, even just a little. This is such a deep topic that I won’t get into it here, but basically even the simplest meditation can bring you a peace of mind and the perspective needed for equanimity.
Learn to detach yourself and be an observer. Try this exercise: imagine yourself leaving your body, floating above it, and going higher until you are looking down on yourself and the world and people around you. You are an observer, not involved in the situation. As an observer, you don’t get angry or emotionally involved … you simply observe without judgment. This exercise can help you remove yourself from the heat of things and see with a greater perspective.
Take deep breaths. If you find yourself getting angry or emotional over an issue, take a deep breath, and step back. Often it’s best not to respond when you’re in an emotional state — you might regret it later. I often will leave an email without responding to it, and come back to it later, if it provokes an emotional response. The same thing when getting into an argument with someone in real life — tell them you need a minute, get some fresh air, and step back from the situation. You’ll often find that you come back to it with a completely different approach.
Be Teflon. Let things roll off you. Understand that there will always be people who are angry or rude or who are having a bad day. Their problems do not have to be yours. If they are mean, you don’t need to be mean also. Let their anger and comments and meanness roll off you like water on a duck’s back. Only by letting them engage you will you allow that anger to take seed in your body and grow. If you can let it roll off you, and ignore it, and smile, things will often get better. Seek understanding. If someone says something mean to you, instead of taking it as a personal insult, understand that you are not the center of this person’s world — often they are coming off a very bad morning, or are having marital problems, or perhaps they don’t understand the issue very well. (I add on my own, and the reason is not you)There’s always a reason for anger and rudeness — and if you can understand it, it’s easier to deal with.
In the heat of battle, the mind tends to lose it's balance. It is vital to keep your presence of mind, maintaining your mental powers, whatever the circumstances. Make the mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach yourself from the chaos of the battlefield. There are numerous examples in Roman sources depicting this very strategy in action.
Caesar offers his own version of this, citing bad leadership as equivalent to showing raw emotion in battle.
It is his ability to remain focused that allowed Caesar to manipulate a changing battle to his favor, such as the case when the 9th Legion was faltering, Caesar himself took command, standing among the legionaries and with a calm head giving orders to his troops. The former commander of the Legion let his emotions carry him to a foolhearty charge and early demise.
Sources on the 2nd Punic War recount the same. Hannibal frequently egged on Roman consuls into foolish attacks, bad ground, etc on more than one occasion.
These leaders are often scolded in literary sources for their brashness and use of emotion in battle.
Applied to MA it's the same principle. The calmer and more focused you are, the fewer mistakes and the more adaptability you maintain.
This applies to all levels of the military, from the legionary, to the centurions, to the consuls.
The main complaint about Alexander's Armies were that they were completely useless without Alexander himself on the front lines. The army did not operate without his calm and collected presence, as seen by the sections of his army that faltered in battle (any component not directly under his control essentially).
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DO NOT FIGHT THE LAST WAR: THE GUERRILLA-WAR-OF-THE-MIND STRATEGY
What often weighs you down and brings misery is the past. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment. Be ruthless on yourself; do not repeat the same tired methods. Wage guerrila war on your mind, allowing no staic lines of defense--make everything fluid and mobile. Again, sources abundant in the Roman tradition of warfare.
The breakdown of the legion itself allows an enormous amount of mobility and adaptability, with each cohort led by a centurion and other NCO's.
It was also the fluid motion of Caesar's battle plans that allowed him to be victorious on several battles where he was outnumbered, surrounded, and the underdog.
Originally he started his battles reflecting the Marian style, wait on a hill, throw javelins at army, charge down hill and squash the enemy.
Caesar reiterates this experience in his work "The Conquest of Gaul". For one battle he mimicked the Marian tactic, won his battle, and vowed never to fight that way ever again....and he never did.
The one area where Caesar remained static cost him dearly against Pompey.
Caesar was renowned for always building ramparts and fortifications wherever he made battle. His earthwork style of fighting was a real decisive factor in his conquest of Gaul, seen in numerous battles.
But he never had the need to adapt this style or change it ever.
At Dyrrhachium, Pompey knew EXACTLY what Caesar planned to do, and the battle started as simply a contest to see who was the better earthenworks builder.
Turned out to be Pompey, and Caesar came very close to having his entire army annihilated and himself captured or killed.
do not get political or moral. This is about general raw war strategy. I change war for life. Life strategy.
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Understanding Detachment
By Dr. Sidney Langston
Carol, a 42-year-old mother of three, has struggled for years with compulsive behaviors. She overspends, drinks too much and goes from doctor to doctor complaining of fatigue, multiple aches and pains and inability to cope with her activities of daily living. As a result of her doctor's visits she has a stash of pills which she uses indiscriminately to alter her moods. For years her husband, Jim, begged her to stop drinking, "pill popping" and overspending. Her behavior is financially and emotionally bankrupting the family. He has tried being nice, being tough and even seeking professional help, all to no avail. He simply couldn't fix the problem.
After awhile, Jim began to live like an automaton. He became numb to his feelings and his focus remained on Carol's addictive behaviors. He never realized that he was developing serious problems of his own. His major emotions were anger, self pity and resentment. Resentment fueled his anger, which distorted any accurate perception of reality, and self pity warped his decision-making powers. These emotions began to propel him through life in a dysfunctional/codependent fashion. His emotional pain became a destructive force in which he was trapped. He could see no way out of his dilemma.
In order to save his life, Jim must take some positive action to recover from the family disease of addiction. He needs to focus on his own reactive behaviors rather than on his wife's addictions. He needs to develop the skill of detachment in order to free himself from his own sickness of codependency and dysfunction.
Detachment is often a frightening word with negative undertones. It calls up images of someone who is self-centered and living a solitary, isolated existence. Detachment does not have to be negative. It can lead to a happier, healthier, more effective way of life.
Detachment simply means living a life which isn't centered on someone else's addictive or compulsive behaviors. It is the ability to live one's own life. Detachment helps people learn that they must work on their own problems, that blaming others for their own unhappiness is useless and unrealistic. The most helpful thing they can do is put their own life in order.
Detachment is easy to talk about, but hard to do. The difficulty lies in the fact that many people perceive this coping and recovery technique as selfish and uncaring. Often their circumstances make them feel that there is no way they can detach. They think that if they do, they'll forever destroy any chances they might have for happiness. According to Johnson Institute, a leading research center on addictive and codependent behaviors, one difficulty people have in learning to detach is recognizing that the world doesn't center around them and that they are not responsible for anyone else's behavior. They have to learn that their agony is self-inflicted, and their desperation is self-imposed. The people who find it difficult to learn detachment are over conscientious, often extremely moralistic, and fixed in an attitude in which they feel compelled to live. Most of all, they feel responsible for the dysfunctional person and his or her compulsive behavior. They are committed to an unalterable set of ways they are supposed to feel. They reject any suggestions that there are other right ways to think, feel or behave.
In general these people misunderstand what detachment means from a behavioral perspective. What they need to see is that detachment means disentangling themselves from the compulsive person they love. What they want for themselves and everyone involved is an end to the pain, a safe haven from hurt, some peace and joy. What they need to do is detach themselves from their victimization. That means consciously pursuing alternative ways of looking at the world and at their own lives. Detachment is a learned behavior. It is a behavior which allows us to be responsible for our own actions and obligations. Detachment means, in the face of difficulty, making an informed choice to take time out, to step backwards, to objectively assess the situation and make a decision that will result in self-preservation.
If you are in a dysfunctional, codependent relationship, become aware of the ways in which you try to fix problems and rescue the compulsive person to whom you are attached.
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Leite, Evelyn. (1987). Detachment, The art of letting go. Minneapolis, MN.: Johnson Institute
Springle, Pat. (1989). CoDependency, Emerging from the eclipse. Houston, TX: Rapha Publishing.
Springle, Pat. (1990). CoDepenency, Emerging from the eclipse. Houston, TX: Rapha Publishing.
Copyright 1992, El Rophe Center, Inc.
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Lighter, Lea, Violet, thank you so much for your validation. As a teacher, it is so hard, you have to force your presence into teen agers who do not want you in, and it is hard, not to take it personally, you have to develop a thick skin.
Of course, it is a huge difference when teaching elementary, they are sweet, inocent, receptive, you say, let us watch a movie, and they say yupi!!!!, let us sing, yupi!!!!!, let us dance youpi!!!!
Teens, say neh, let us dance, neh, that is retarded, let us sing, neh, that is stupid. They do not want to do anyting plus, they depise the spanish class, they are used to despise the class, they are tought to dispise the class, spanish is ofr ignorant people, so, I have to detach, and not tot ake it personally, and be very very creative.
Detachment has helped.
And most important, the validation and friendship that I get from some people here, is invaluable.
Thank you violet, thank you Lea and thank you Lighter for always answering in my threads, for counting on you. I love you. I treasure you.
God bless you all.
Ah, there is more to come.
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Reall really really resonating with your post 7 Lupita.
Echos of lessons I know but haven't made into habits yet.
discovering better habits and remaining focused long enough for them to become familiar.....
yes.
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Time, there never seems to be enough of it. There are relationship, career, personal interest, family and social demands all screaming for attention in our life. We have the same amount of time available as we begin a new day, 24 hours to use or abuse as we see fit. This is not an article about time management; time management is a misnomer. You can't manage time. Time passes oblivious to your needs, desires, problems, goals, expectations and dreams. You can only manage a variety of activities and attitudes within a framework of passing time. Well, if we can't manage time, what can we manage? We can manage our resources, decisions, thoughts, expectations, problems, people, failures, activities, successes, risks, feelings, goals, money, emotions and a whole host of attitudes. Let's get to the heart of the issue. Many people live with daily frustration unable to manage some or all of the items on the previous list effectively. They are anxious, troubled and often angry at the relentless passage of time that is insensitive to their wishes, demands, frustrations and goals. Many of these people feel stuck, have given up, or have settled thinking this is just the way it is, and has to be. They see themselves as a pawn to the demands and expectations to one or more areas of their life. Therefore, robbing themselves of the pleasure and happiness that is available to everyone. These people are out of balance, and they know it. They are puppets on a string waiting for the next tug that pulls them this way or that. They feel like their life is out of control, and they feel stuck. They see themselves with very few options, and they don't realize that the choices they make, or have made in the past, determine their next options. We all have choices, but if these choices are made with a narrow vision of what can be, an unclear picture of reality, or clouded perceptions and interpretations of people and circumstances, they will always be made with limited resources and understanding. These people remain stuck. Some have moved on, but they still feel unable to shed the feelings of anxiety. There are several major areas in a persons life that demand a portion of their available time. They are: family, career, social, personal development, spiritual development, physical development, personal interests or hobbies, friends, social activities, and let's not forget time to sleep and eat. Is it possible to live a balanced life? Is it possible to satisfy the expectations either from ourselves, our or world on how we should be using our time? Is it possible to have it all? Become it all? Do it all? See it all? Learn it all? Read it all? No, it's not that kind of world. So we are back to choosing. How each of us chooses to use or spend our time is a very individual matter. Juggling the expectations of a boss, customer, a spouse, children, parents, friends, siblings, and the world in general is a difficult and delicate task at best. No one has an answer, or easy formula to this very difficult issue. You will not find an answer in this article. What I hope you will find, is insight or self-discovery as to your feelings, courage to modify any behavior or attitudes that are sabotaging one or several areas of your life. You may have noticed that when one area of your life is out of harmony or balance it impacts every other area as well. When you are devoting too much time to your career, every other aspect of your life is impacted. Every aspect of your life is intricately entwined with every other area. If you choose to devote no time to your personal growth, you will lack skill, understanding or wisdom that could contribute positively to some other aspect of your life. By the same token, if you spend time regularly relaxing or meditating, it could help you find the patience or calmness you need in your career or family issues. Why do people get out of balance? There are a number of causes that include, but are not limited to: Unrealistic goals or a lack of goals, lack of planning, a need for approval and/or acceptance, inadequate personal growth, over estimation of abilities or skills, the inability to say no, the desire to please, lack of discipline, arrogance, greed, insensitivity, lack of spiritual development, un-managed ambition, the need for power, un-checked egos, lack of commitment and a lack of congruence or integrity. Hefty list. I would guess that everyone who is out of balance in their life is guilty of several of these. However, it only takes one. Being out of balance in life doesn't feel good. We often feel like the special people in our lives are being cheated. What you might not realize is that you may from time to time cheat your children, friends or a spouse, but you are always cheating yourself no matter where you are, who you are with or what you are doing. Life is lived in the present, one moment at a time. It is not lived yesterday or tomorrow, but now. Every time you make a decision to spend time in a certain way, like passing time reading this article, you have eliminated all other choices of time. Once you decide to go to a movie, you have eliminated the options of dinner, dancing, golf and so on. Once you decide to work late you have chosen to sacrifice something else. I don't mean to be funny, but you can't be in two places at once. You can't be on vacation and at work too, although many people try. Once you choose one restaurant for dinner you have eliminated all others for that meal. People need to understand that they have choices, and that the choices they make, and the consequences that come with them are a part of the bargain. Frustration sometimes sneaks into people's lives when they believe it is possible to break the rules and have it all, do it all or become it all. You chose your career and life path. You chose your current relationship. You chose your current circumstances by the previous choices you have made. You made them for you. Even if you are in a career that was chosen for you by your parents, and that happens less and less today, than years ago, you have chosen to stay in it even if you are unhappy. You have given the power in your life over to someone else. If you rationalize that you have to work eighty hours a week and weekends because your boss or organization expects it, you have given up your power to someone else. Then you might say, but I need this job or career. I need the money. No, you have chosen to need it. You could have chosen a different lifestyle that would have required less income. You may feel like you are stuck in a relationship emotionally, physically or financially. Again, I doubt that anyone forced you into it. You may have gone into it with closed eyes, but you chose to keep your eyes closed. Like it or not in every situation in life you are where you are because of your choices. Want a better life? Make different choices. I would like to share 15 ideas with you that may help you put balance back into your life, so that you can find time for the people and goals in your life that are possibly being shortchanged, including yourself.
One: Spend some quiet time reflecting on the quality of your life in general. Not just a single area, but consider every aspect, and the relationship of each to your overall life.
Two: Make a list of all the areas or people in your life that are coming up short and why.
Three: Determine which area of your life is getting most of your time and energy, and which is getting the least. Ask yourself why? Is the gain in one area worth paying the price of a loss in another area? Only you can answer that question, and only you will pay the price or enjoy the rewards.
Four: Write a letter to yourself about how you would like your life to look like six months from now. Describe in detail how you spend your time, and what proportions of time are dedicated to the various activities and people in your life.
Five: Give yourself at least thirty minutes a day for thirty days to reflect on your overall life goals and your progress toward them.
Six: Write a personal mission statement. Include your life philosophy, guiding principals, desired outcomes and overall direction you want your life to take.
Seven: Move ahead mentally to age 70. What have you accomplished, what do your relationships look like, who have you become and what is important to you? Now work backwards. What do you need to change now to get where you say you want to be. Remember, you change the quality of your future in the present.
Eight: Ask several people who know you well, and will be honest and non judgmental, to offer some feedback on your life and its direction. Listen and learn with an open and receptive attitude. You may not change because of the feedback they give you, but the insight you gain can give you some ideas that could be life changing.
Nine: Take a few days off from your job, career and/or current relationships. Spend time in a place that you are at peace and alone. It could be the beach, the mountains or anywhere where you can spend quality time with yourself evaluating your life, without the distractions and expectations of others. Go with no agenda other than self-discovery.
Ten: If you do not keep a journal of your thoughts, lessons learned, life progress, feelings, interests, or observations, start one today. Take a few minutes at the end of each day recording whatever you feel in some way contributed to who you are, how you feel, and who you are becoming.
Eleven: Develop an action plan to re-allocate your time and energy to those people or activities that are important to you.
Twelve: It isn't necessary to sell your business, quit your job or end a relationship to find better balance in your life. It requires a conscious awareness of what your life is really like, a desire to modify it in some way, the courage to change, the necessary skills and the commitment to stick with it.
Thirteen: Learn to detach from other people's emotional or physical hold over you. It will not be easy, there will be people who use blame, guilt, manipulation or any number of emotional or physical techniques to keep you stuck in past behavior or thought patterns. They will know how to push your buttons hoping to control you in some way. When you permit others to manipulate you in any way, you give them power over your life. Detachment means letting go of the hold other people have over you. You can still love them and want to be with them, but you no longer have to be a slave to their baggage.
Fourteen: Don't try and change everything over night. It takes time to change attitudes and behavior that have developed over the years. Be patient and loving with yourself, but you must also hold yourself accountable. Letting yourself off the hook or making excuses will not put you on the road back to a balanced life.
Fifteen: Reward your successes. Treat yourself when you accomplish a goal. Make it something symbolic or significant, but whatever it is make sure you take time to bask in the sunshine of success. Then begin again. Don't spend too much time basking, or you may fall back into your old habits. Change, permanent change requires vigilance and persistence. You can't let up until you have achieved total and permanent success. It will always be possible to fall back, even though you have reached your goal, don't become too casual or relaxed. There will be new people and circumstances lurking in the shadows for a vulnerable moment, be watchful. None of these steps may be easy. Only you can decide if the potential outcome of more balance and inner peace are worth the price that must be paid. Don't change because of guilt, other people's expectations, or some casual or superficial whim.
If you like working seventy hours a week and seeing your kids once a month for a few hours, that is fine. If you want to change, that's fine too. If you decide to change, do it for healthy, emotional or physical reasons not ego-driven motives. One final thought. Total balance in life is an ideal. There will always be times when you may be temporarily out of balance devoting extra time to a new career, project, relationship or activity. This is healthy and normal, but be on the lookout that these times don't stretch into years or decades. It is then that you may end up paying the heavy price of regret in one area of your life. Regret weighs tons, but the daily discipline of change weighs only ounces. Which are you willing to pay?
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And Lighter, please, do me a favor and see if you can go deeper in detachment versus make peace with injustice or unfairness as a sign of hopelessness or learned helplessness. Please, please, I need something like that and Have not found it anywhere.
Leah, you also are very resourceful, if you can find something about detachment versus accepting what you cant change. instead or fightinh, balance. I dont know.
Love to you wonderful ladies. I would chnage oyu names of lea and lighter to ladywarriors. Warriors of the pain, warriors of the mind.
Love to you.
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To effectively get your work out to the world, you will need to learn to detach from what others think of you. It is important not to worry about being liked, appreciated, or understood. You are at the forefront of a new consciousness, and many of your ideas are new. It takes an evolved person to appreciate new ideas. Learn to detach from needing praise or validation; others may simply not be awareFeel free to publish the following article in e-zines, websites, printed newsletters and magazines. However, the article has to be published as it is, without any editing and alterations, and to include the resource box below.
The Importance of Inner Detachment for Success
by Remez Sasson
We are often told that success requires motivation, desire and ambition, but there is another important ingredient, and this is inner detachment.
I hear you now saying, "What has inner detachment to do with success? Isn't detachment a state of indifference? How can one attain success with such a state of mind?"
These are erroneous assumptions! Inner detachment is not indifference! I am not speaking here about asceticism or abstinence. One can lead a normal, ordinary life, and yet display inner emotional and mental detachment.
I want to make it clear. True emotional and mental detachment is not a state of indifference, apathy or lack of energy. One can be loving, happy, helpful and energetic, and yet possess and display inner detachment.
True inner detachment manifests as the ability to think clearly and to be immune to what people think or say about you. It enables you to have more control over your moods and states of mind, and therefore enjoy inner balance, harmony and peace. It also helps you handle more efficiently your daily affairs of life, as well difficult situations or emergencies.
This is a state that comes from inner strength and inner peace, and not from apathy and indifference. It coexists with self-control, self-discipline and a focused mind. It brings inner calmness and tranquility that external circumstances cannot disturb or upset.
You will surely agree that all the above-mentioned qualities and abilities are important for the attainment of success!
Not everything always turns out as planned or expected. Plans sometimes do not work out, people don't behave as expected and unforeseen obstacles might stand in the way. All this can dampen one's spirit and weaken the motivation, ambition and faith, but a state of emotional and mental detachment will prevent all that. A person possessing detachment will not be affected or daunted by obstacles or failures and will try again and again.
While others become immersed in self-pity or in thoughts about failure and missed opportunities, the person who possesses detachment will be working on a new venture or trying a different approach. A state of inner detachment helps to forget failure and focus on the future and on success.
Lack of detachment is attachment, which means, among other things, clinging to old or outdated behavior and ways of thinking. Attachment manifests as fear to make changes, to progress or try doing things in a different way.
Lack of attachment is detachment, which equals to inner freedom and the ability to make and accept changes, take advantage of opportunities and adopt new habits.
Detachment goes with the ability to weigh the pros and cons of situations, circumstances and actions in an impartial way, and to make rational decisions, which are not based on moods. It helps to keep a clear and focused mind, and to recognize opportunities that others might not see.
Now you might be wondering whether it is possible at all to acquire this ability. Yes, it is possible, but this requires training and inner work. You will find below a few suggestions to help you start. Don't underestimate these suggestions. Follow them, and you will gain inner detachment, inner strength and inner peace.
1. Pay more attention to your thoughts, feelings and state of mind. A heightened awareness of your thoughts and feelings shows you where you need to develop and progress.
2. Remind yourself every now and then how important it is to be calm, relaxed and in control of yourself, your mind and moods, especially when you feel agitated or unfocused.
3. When you desire to say or do something that is not really important, wait a few seconds before talking or acting.
4. When aware of anger arising in you, delay your reaction for a few seconds.
5. Learn not to take everything said or done too personally.
6. Here is another thing you can do. It is very simple, but in most cases real hard. Try sometimes, not always, to switch off your TV in the middle of your favorite program. Though a very simple act, it requires real inner strength. If you can do so once in a while, you will be able to manifest more and more emotional and mental detachment, which will help you on your road to success and achieving your goals and ambitions.[/[/color]b]-----------------------------------------------------------
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© Copyright Remez Sasson
Remez Sasson teaches and writes on positive thinking, creative visualization, motivation, self-improvement, peace of mind, spiritual growth and meditation. He is the author of several books, among which are "Peace of mind in Daily Life", "Will Power and Self Discipline", "Visualize and Achieve" and "Affirmations - Words of Power".
enough to see the value of what you are doing. Learn to detach from people's reactions and value your work according to your own internal sense of its worth.
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Wow, Lupita, thanks for the addendum about "time." I feel this is all so resonant with what I am trying to reclaim for my own life lately. This really speaks to me, right this moment, having felt extreme frustration with my recent experiences, losing the momentum and ground I had gained before leaving town weeks ago. Now upon returning home, finding myself too ill to resume my "work" and trying to find peace and self acceptance in the "now" and trying to learn to experience this feeling of "cosmic balance" inside myself even when outside circumstances are not going the way I had planned or the way I want. Cuts to the essence of how we determine and define our validity. Am I more successful when I am ticking off things on my to do list, but feeling stressed and hopeless and invalidated inside, or am I "successful" when my circumstances are outwardly sucking and inwardly I feel peace and joy?
I hope this does not sound too weird....
Violet
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November 2007
So? ... But Not So What!
By Paul D. Houston
I was talking with a friend recently when he confided he was having a problem developing one of his talents because he was afraid he might be criticized by others for not doing it well. I introduced him to a powerful philosophy I have worked out over the years that I commend to you as well. Unlike most philosophies, it is simple, easy to understand and easy to remember. It’s one word: “So?”
Don’t get me wrong. It is not “so what?” which is a very different philosophy. So what is a dismissive view of the world. It is aggressive and leaves no room for learning. So what just says you aren’t listening and that you probably think you know better than the other person and you have no real interest in what they have to say. It is the verbal equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and repeating “lalalalalala.”
So is a much deeper view of the world. So is based on two principles — discernment and detachment. Discernment is necessary because it is important to listen to what others say and think. That means you have to take in lots of information and then you have to consider it. That is particularly true in the work we do.
Discerning Minds
Leadership is all about connection and the fastest way to break connection is to fail to listen to others. So listening and caring about what you are hearing is crucial. But it is a good idea to use some discernment once that is done. I can’t imagine everything you hear during the day is useful or even that it all makes good sense. A lot of what I heard in the superintendent’s office was spectacularly idiotic and a lot more didn’t really help me with my work. I have to admit some of that came from my own mouth. The point here is that all of us aren’t wise all the time. You have to filter what is said and suggested.
I also can’t imagine every criticism you hear is worth adopting or taking seriously. You have to discern whether what you are hearing is worthy of your effort to adapt and adopt. It has been my experience that some of what I get from others in the way of suggestions and ideas is valuable and needs to be taken seriously. Other thoughts are best left dormant. Discerning minds want to know, but they don’t always feel the need to act.
Attachment comes when you take in what others think as the way you feel you should live your life. You choose to accept their judgments and views as better than your own and then you feel you need to follow their drumbeat. Detachment comes when you learn that others’ ideas and judgments are just that — ideas and judgments. They are no better or worse than your own. Certainly, not much good can come from you taking them in and living your life based upon them. In fact, a lot of the unhappiness I have observed in life has come from an individual’s inability to detach from what others think.
Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t feel. You don’t have to be numb or dumb. You just have to refuse to own the junk mail that others send you. Do you save all the spam in your inbox? Detachment is simply a way of deleting the spam.
Succinct Philosophy
So that brings us back to “so.” When I laid out my philosophy, my friend laughed and suggested I might be on to something. He marveled at the economy of what I was offering and suggested it might be the shortest philosophic statement he had heard. In fact, it is one of the shortest words in the English language — bested only by “I” as the shortest. And that is the opposing philosophy to so.
The I philosophy leaves no room for listening because no one else is important. I (see it is hard to talk without using the word) have observed too often I appears in the middle of superIntendent. It is pretty easy, when you are the big cheese, to think it is all about you. It also appears much too often in the middle of those the superintendent deals with.
If so is about discernment and detachment, then I is about selfishness and self-centeredness. It assumes Galileo was wrong and that I, not the sun, exists in the center of the universe. Sadly, many start out with a “you” philosophy, but when one is totally selfless, it often leads to feeling abused and used. The you morphs into I and selflessness becomes selfishness. While it starts with self-protection, it quickly becomes destructive to others.
Middle Ground
So there is a middle way — the so way. It can take many forms: “So, what can I do for you?” (being selfless with thought attached); “So, what’s so important about that?” (looking before buying); “So, let’s look at it another way” (opening the discussion to alternative ideas):
So is a conjunction or an adverb. It connects things — sews them together if you will — and it describes. It holds a place in the center of things, but it can also emphasize the quality of an experience. It can make things bigger (“it was so awesome!”). And better (“it was so wonderful!”). So, where was I? I realize if we could master the concept of so, I really think folks would be freed up to do what they are capable of doing. They would not be hemmed in by the limiting beliefs of others. They would not get so distressed about the challenges life offers and they could become unstuck in ways that allow them to be powerful. You might recall the empowering orders offered by Captain Picard on Star Trek: “Make it so.”
Education has to be about lifting limitations on ourselves and on others. So, what’s stopping us?
Paul Houston is AASA executive director. E-mail:phouston@aasa.org
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Lupita's sharing and teaching lessons she's learning.....
I knew this day would come :D
It's the next step in solidifying them for yourself.
The next step is teaching what you, yourself, are incorporating into your world.
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No Violet, not weird at all, it seem too much too familiar. We are in a different field but struggling with the same thing. Depending on others for our validation. leting others define us. Not loving our selves. I seem like a broken disk like Ami, and so many of us, but deep in the soul that is the result. Detachment is a pain killer, a tool for the tool box, but at the end, as Ami broken disk and me and others, is the love of our selves that will save us. and we just dont.
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Discerning Minds
Leadership is all about connection and the fastest way to break connection is to fail to listen to others. So listening and caring about what you are hearing is crucial. But it is a good idea to use some discernment once that is done. I can’t imagine everything you hear during the day is useful or even that it all makes good sense. A lot of what I heard in the superintendent’s office was spectacularly idiotic and a lot more didn’t really help me with my work. I have to admit some of that came from my own mouth. The point here is that all of us aren’t wise all the time. You have to filter what is said and suggested.
Discernment, common sense, and wisdom ~ free gifts!
~ mindfullness.
Leah x
PS are all these articles from that "Teachers Net" website Lupita? it certainly looked a good place to be. happy for you, Lup :)
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Well Lihter, it is the need, need is what kills us. The day we donot need anybody to tell us good job because we know we did a good job, just because we know it, that day we will be free. As long as we need recognition, very human indeed, but that is the secret.
I left the board for several weeks because I was not being understood, the end, my loss, so i came back, and I post, if I care for responses, I suffer, if I only post for the heck of post, I get many good responses, when I just enjoying posting something that I think is useful, something that I know, i do not need to hear it, just know is good, then I get responses that are incredibly validating.
Like the bank, the bnk does not give money to the people who need money, they send money only to people with good credit. So, it is my need at the end of the day, what determines how I feel, and it is how I feel at the end of the day what determins my life.
It is so nice to have friends. I love you so much dear warriors. Lady warriors or the mind.
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Well lea, that is what I pray for everyday, the ability to discern, to know what i can change and what I cannot, so I can pick my battles, with out feeling helpless or hopeless.
Thank you.
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Did you know you are powerless of other people's expectations of you? We cannot control what others want, what they expect from us, or what they want us to be or do. We can however, control how we respond to other people's expectations.Why is that so hard to understand?
WE spend so much wasted time, worrying over what other people, (our ex, our ex in-laws, our neighbors, our friends and church friends) think of us.[/
We do not have to react to every situation with our ex.
Trust and listen to God. Set boundaries that protect yourself from being tossed like a wave. Give yourself time to set goals and a direction for you new life.
What do you want? What does God want from you now that He has your attention. (divorce will do that) Think about responding to others needs rather than consumed by what other people think or demand from you. With God you can choose a path that is right.
I pray today that you can detach peacefully from those you no longer have to please anymore.
"...then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind o teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things, grow up into Him, who is the head, that is Christ."
Ephesians 4:14-15
Copyright 2000-2008
Picket Fences Divorce Recovery Ministry
All Rights reserved
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I don't see it as 'need' that kills us. As humans, we require empathy.... we need contact and reciprocal relationships.
I still discern it as 'hope' in that we're still hoping to fill our needs through some warnped twisted avenue that isn't open to us. Has never been open to us.
And yet we hold expectations that it will clear.... one day, if only, when, because it just has to, etc.
If we accept that mother won't ever be the mother we needed..... if we accept father won;t ever protect us, if we accept that we won't ever be validated or praised by those who should offer unconditional love to us.....
then we can mourne it and turn away toward other, more uplifting healthy people and interests.
When we can sustain ourselves during the lonlier times and say yes to healthy relationships and no to dysfunctional ones.....
enforce boundaries without having to struggle too hard...... are we on our way?
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by Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.
Did you ever have one of those dreams where you were trying to call someone and the telephone did not work? Well, the current Mercury retrograde energy is creating communication issues along those lines. How ironic that Mercury went retrograde on Valentine’s Day in the emotionally sensitive time of Pisces.
Communications within relationships may seem difficult or strained until the end of the month. You may notice people (including yourself) bickering or arguing more than usual. However, as irritating as Mercury retrograde can seem, it always brings blessings in disguise by allowing us to clear away anything that is out of integrity or steeped in lower energy.
This is also a wonderful time to practice the spiritual art of detachment with love. Many Lightworkers experience stress when people around them are not happy because the mission of Lightworkers is to help bring peace. So you may take it personally if your loved one is not happy, and try to fix the situation for them.
Of course we are here to be thoughtful and loving beings. But sometimes, the most loving thing to do is nothing. In the unedited Urtext version of A Course in Miracles, Jesus explains that renowned spiritual healer Edgar Cayce erred by saying “yes” to everyone’s requests for his help. Jesus said that Cayce should have said “no” more often, and that Cayce hurt his body through overwork.
Jesus explained that he himself didn’t say “yes” to everyone, because he chose to treat himself with love. Instead of wearing out his body, Jesus went on frequent fasting and meditation retreats alone in nature.
Jesus said that Cayce was coming from his ego by never declining anyone’s request for help, because the ego believes that it’s special. Saying yes without boundaries is an ego device built on the false belief that our help is special, so it is owed to the other person even if we are exhausted or busy. In contrast, saying no is treating yourself with love, and ultimately it has loving benefits for those around you.
This fits with Archangel Michael’s message that 2007 is a year for us to practice Lightening Up. Each year, Michael gives us a theme with divine assignments and 2007 is geared toward helping us to learn to detach with love. Joy is your highest level of energy, and when you are happy, you uplift those around you.
When we “Lighten Up”, we are more motivated to work on our priorities and life purpose, because tension can make us procrastinate out of fear of failure or success. Detach from the outcome of projects you are involved in, and don’t even think about the possibility of failure. (Your angels can help you to keep your thoughts uplifted). Instead just enjoy each present moment of engaging in your priorities and purpose.
Remember to call upon the angels for help with any stressful situation you encounter. The angels want to help you to feel peaceful, regardless of what is going on around you. Here is the angels’ guidance:
Don’t take people’s angry words or actions personally. Know they’re reacting to their internal anger, which has nothing to do with you.
Detach from all drama. Don’t get hooked into plots involving guilt, shame, or anger.
Call upon Archangel Gabriel to guide your communication.
Call upon Archangel Raguel to maintain or rebuild harmony in relationships.
Call upon Archangel Michael to protect you from harsh, competitive, or angry energies.
Take frequent breaks from work, especially if you are involved in stationary work such as sitting in front of a computer.
Engage in daily physical exercise to increase feelings of relaxation and well being. Yoga is especially helpful right now.
Avoid mood altering chemicals.
To benefit from the clearing energy of Mercury retrograde, use the affirmation: “I am willing to release that part of me that irritates me when I think of you.” The ego doesn’t own its shadows, so it projects them onto other people. This affirmation helps us to recognize and heal our shadow sides.
Bring your sense of humor with you whenever you are with other people. Laughter can rapidly uplift any situation.
And most importantly: cut yourself and others a lot of slack right now. Have compassion for everyone, because we are all feeling extra sensitive right now.
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Doreen, known as the "Angel Lady" is a well-known author, lecturer & world traveler. For info and seminar schedules visit her website at www.angeltherapy.com You can call Doreen toll-free in the U.S. by dialing 1-866-903-8255
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Detachment * Can You?
a.k.a. Let go or be dragged ...
I was on this very topic yesterday with a friend. Her parting words were something like it sounded like a good idea but she had “never been good at detaching.” Hours went by before I had the “ah ha!” Detachment doesn’t come easily to anyone! It is one of the most difficult of all the Love Skills to master …
Detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgment or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. Separating ourselves from the adverse affects of another person’s behavior* can be a means of detaching: This does not necessarily require physical separation. Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.
Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another’s behavior and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives, lives with dignity and rights, lives guided by a Power greater than ourselves. We can still Love the person without liking the behavior.
~ Al-Anon Family Groups
Detachment means you can stop:
Suffering because of the actions or reactions of other people
Allowing yourself to be used or abused by others
Doing for others what they can do for themselves
Manipulating situations so others will eat, got to bed, pay bills, exercise, or do whatever you think they “should” do.
Covering up for another’s mistakes or misdeeds
Creating A Crisis
Preventing a crisis if it is in the natural course of events
* Definition of “Another Person’s Behavior”: Often ends with “ing” * thinking, eating, speaking, spending, drinking, worrying, complaining, smoking, gambling, procrastinating, working, not working … dying. Which one is worrying you right now?
Detachment Practices:
SO = Significant Other a.k.a anyone who inspires your need to control or pushes your buttons * anger, fear, resentment … If they weren’t significant, you wouldn’t care!
#1. Agree! Instead of disagreeing with something your SO says try saying “You could be right.”
Detach from your need to be right, smarter, better, …
#2. Pillow Fight! Next time you feel worried about your SOs behavior – what they are doing or not doing – tell yourself that you will worry about it later. In fact, make a Pillow Fight Date with yourself. During that time – say 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. you will do nothing but worry and vent. Beat pillows, talk to your pillow, focus on the worst case scenario and only the worst case scenario. Give yourself permission to wallow and only wallow – no solutions – no hope allowed during this time. BUT (and this is very important) when your time is up – your Pillow Fight is over – get back to detachment.
You can set 5, 10+ pillow fights during the day if that is what it takes – the point is to get “it” out appropriately vs. allow “it” – worry, fear, anger -seep into and spoil your day – your life.
Detach from your habit of anger, resentment, overwhelm, feeling taken advantage of …
What is your emotional habit? Everyone has one.
#3. Walk it off! The next time you start in, get up and walk it off, literally. Walk around the block and smell the flowers, window shop, find a puppy to pet … keep your focus on your body parts – feel your legs pumping – notice your breathing Just a five or ten minute walk break can help you detach and get back into the flow of Love & life.
Detach from the habit of repressing and going “numb.”
Get “it” out in a healthy physical way vs. an unhealthy way … drinking, smoking, eating, ulcering, insomnia, hair loss ….
#4. Breathe! Notice your breathing right now. Is it coming up from your tummy or from high in your stressed out chest? When we are upset we tend to breathe high and shallow, or, at an extreme, suffer from Stress Related Asthma. I ended up in the hospital once at 2:00 a.m. with this and a bad case of denial … that’s another story, another time.
How to Breathe Properly How To Relax At Your Desk
Detach from shutting down, literally, when you are in pain.
How do you shut down? Is it working for you?
#5. Talk it Out! Have coffee with a friend or someone who may have gone through what you’re going through and could share their experience and hope. If you need to talk it out with a “pro” get several referrals from your doctor.
Detach from the need to suffer in silence.
“Isolation is the darkroom in which we develop our negatives.”
Finally … detachment is a Love Skill. Just like any skill – cooking (yikes!), hitting a killer backhand shot, dancing Salsa - it requires practice and patience to master. We are programmed to worry, blame and try to control other people and situations. Just for today try something new and start building a life you’ll Love to share with that very special SO … Love on! Viveca
Detaching
Living Your Own Life
One of the greatest issues facing many Nons is the enmeshment that they feel with their significant others demonstrating borderline traits. Being with someone with borderline traits is extremely hazardous to your self esteem. You may have been led to believe that you aren’t good enough to be with someone better. That you deserve all of the treatment that you receive at the hands of your BPSO. All of these sorts of statements come from your significant other’s fear of being abandoned by you.
In Amistad, Stephen Speilberg’s film, as food runs short some slaves are pushed over the side of the boat while still chained together. Of course, they sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown together. It is a horrifying, chilling scene that you can never forget. Are you chained to a person who is going to drag you someplace you would rather not go? Detaching means simply disconnecting yourself from another, and allowing them to go their own way while you go your own way. This doesn’t necessarily mean separation nor divorce. Emotional detachment can help even if you are a dedicated stayer. You can and must live your own life more fully even if you decide to stay. Critical to this endeavor is emotionally detaching from the effects of the disorder upon you. When your significant other says something that is untrue or unkind, question it in your own mind. Determine if they have a real point, and if so, work on it. If not, detach and don’t allow that unkind or untrue thing to hurt you. Tell yourself that it is the disorder that is talking. Gaining this detached zen-like state will help you to keep a better hand hold on reality. If you get emotionally torn up by everything your significant other says, then you aren’t taking care of yourself. If you can’t take care of yourself , then you certainly aren’t doing your significant other any good by sticking around.
There have been books written on overcoming an addiction to a person. It’s terrible to be emotionally attached to a person who is dragging you down with them. Each Non must walk their own road to recovery from the devastating effects of BPD on their lives, it is up to you to decide whether that walk is a trip you need to take by yourself or with your significant other.
An Exercise
Imagine that what is happening is a movie. You are watching yourself and your partner. If the feelings remain too intense, make it a black and white movie.If it’s still too intense, step back one more.. watch yourself, watching yourself. Carlos Castenada called it first person removed and second person removed.In NLP framework, it’s called ’taking the observer position’. There is a whole process to use if you are not able to do it easily.
This involves taking three pieces of paper.. marking one: Observer, the second: Self, third: Other.Place them on the floor. Then remember an interaction with the ’other, the SO’. Pick one that was ’medium’.. that is, hard but not overwhelming.
Stand in your own position first, ’self’. Remember to step back into that moment in time, feeling what you felt, thinking what you were thinking. Listen to the internal dialogue. If you are really tactile, write down your thoughts, feelings and impressions on the paper. Pay attention to your perceptions. Do you feel your own size or is the SO much taller? ARe you responding at your current age, or have you gone back to a part of your childhood when someone in authority was standing over you and attacking you? If so, make a conscience effort to regain your present age and with all the knowledge you have now. Make sure you are looking ’eye’ to ’eye’, with equality of size. When it is over, take a few long and deep breaths.
Then step back to ’now’. Reorient yourself. Then step into the "Observer’ right on top of that piece of paper. Again, replay the memory but watch yourself watching yourself and the other. Pay attention to how the ’self’ is standing, body tension, facial expressions, like you are watching through a secret window or two way mirror. Listen to tone of voice of both ’self’ and ’other’. What ’triggers’ the ’self’ into acting or responding in less than resourceful ways? Use this to gather a lot of information, like a reporter, reporting a breaking news story. When you are done, take some deep breaths and step back into the present, the ’now’. If you need to make notes, please do so on the paper you were standing on.
Lastly, review.. figure out what words, actions, accusations, etc. are your ’triggers’. Imagine a new response. Think about a similar event happening. Go into detail, what you will say.. focus on YOU, not the SO. Chances are you can predict what they will say, but don’t get caught up in that right now. See things ending in a different way, with you coming out of the experience with your BPSO feeling calm, resourceful, staying in YOUR reality. Repeat this as often as you need to, creating a new ’map’ for you to use in the next similar interaction.If during the interaction, you begin to feel those old feelings of being attacked, move to the ’Observer’ position. Make the images black and white. Or imagine that you are taller than your SO.
Fine tune the process. Review each incident and repeat the exercise until you are acheiving different outcomes.
Some call it ’detaching with love’. Or with caring/compassion. The important part is to hear what’s being said without being over whelmed by the feelings of your partner.
See also Emotional Detachment .
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Lupita,
Wanted to thank you for helping me refocus and giving me some new weaponry for my battle. I am having such a hard time this morning getting the board to "take" my posts!! Grrr!!! I'll try again later....
(((((((Lupita))))))) Violet
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In this Issue:
Quick Manifesting Morsel: Q/A: Confused: If I detach aren't I putting it out of my mind?
** Tele-series invitation: EFT to Attract your Ideal Relationship: Free Audio special.
Quick Manifesting Morsel: With Anisa Aven
Q: I'm using your Conscious Creation e-course and something has me confused! If you're using your thoughts to turn a dream into a reality and the stronger those thoughts the better the outcome then where does the detachment fit in? If I detach aren't I putting it out of my mind? Thanks. Lindsay
A: This is a beautiful question about how to learn the art of detachment. It may feel that as you increase your thoughts and strengthen your focus that you're actually becoming more attached to what you want and thereby preventing its manifestation.
However, what's really happening is that the more you imagine what you want, and the more your taste-buds begin to salivate for the real thing, the more you trigger your level of consciousness to respond.
It's essential, as a conscious creator, to become aware of the two levels of consciousness and where you are at any one time.
One is attached and repels the manifestation. The other is detached and attracts it.
If you feel negative, then your level of consciousness about this particular manifestation is that you don't deserve it, you can't ever have it, or it's not possible for you to manifest it. This is attachment.
It's the FEAR, ANGER, DOUBT, SADNESS, or WORRY that you are NOT unlimited and therefore you cannot expect to have what you want that is at the core of being attached. It's not the 'vision' itself, but the fear of not having your vision that is the attachment.
If you feel positive, allowing, willing, courageous, accepting, expecting or trusting, then you are detached.
Your objective is NOT to stop thinking about what you want but to be able to feel positive when you think about it.
Think about your favorite dessert for a moment. My very favorite ice cream is Haagen Dazs' Dulce Le Leche. The more I sit here and imagine how yummy, creamy, and delectable Dulce Le Leche is, the more I begin to crave it. My mouth is watering as I think about the delicate ribbons of real caramel swirled in the richest, caramel flavored ice cream on the planet.
However, I don't feel like I'll never have it, or afraid that they are going to stop making it, or that for some reason I just don't deserve Dulce Le Leche!
Therefore, I'm not attached. I would be willing to bet you anything that in this moment I just created Dulce Le Leche! I promise that within a week someone will be knocking on my door with a pint, or I'll be in the grocery store and it'll be on sale, or I'll be walking in the mall and the 'free sample' guy will shove a pink spoon in my mouth!
I am thinking about my favorite ice cream and that's all it takes to create it (well, okay I have to actually want it also).
However, shoving my thoughts under the carpet or pretending like I don't have them, won't make it manifest any sooner.
Now, let's say we were prisoners serving life sentences. We're envisioning our favorite dessert now. Our current reality as prisoners incapacitates our ability to believe in our unlimited potential.
I find it hard now to believe in the possibility of ever having Dulce Le Leche again. Now, when I imagine the sweet caramel ribbons swirling in caramel ice cream, I feel really sad because I will probably never taste such sweet perfection again. Ohhhh.I'm attached.
My fear doesn't make me want it any less but it does prevent it from manifesting.
As a prisoner, not thinking about the ice cream won't manifest it. Only releasing my fears can create it.
It may be logical to think that in order to detach we have to remove it from our mind, to stop thinking so much about it in order to let it go. However, detachment does not mean you put it out of your mind or let the 'object' go.
It simply means releasing any and all doubts about manifesting it.
MMMM. can't wait for my Dulce Le Leche.
C Copyright 2006, Anisa Aven, www.CreataVision.com
{FIRSTNAME}, are you single or do you wish your relationship were better?
You know that you want a relationship with your ideal mate, right?
You know that you have been 'envisioning' him/her or this relationship, right?
Then 'why' isn't it working?!?!?!
Maybe you're afraid that manifesting a mate just won't work for you?
Or, maybe it's that you are so attached to having your ideal mate that you are actually repelling your ideal relationship?
If you have attempted to attract a mate without success, or attract an improved version of your current relationship, then I guarantee that there's only ONE reason you haven't been successful.... You have a limiting belief in your sub-conscious that is blocking you from having what you want.
Until you release this block, you will continue to be alone, continue wishing your relationship was better, or continue to manifest less than what you really want.
Join me in this one-time-only teleseries and learn how to apply a very quick, but ancient healing/tapping formula for releasing limiting beliefs.
EFT to Attract your Ideal Mate:
How To Release Negative Beliefs, Cease And Desist Self-sabotaging Behaviors, Stop Attracting The Wrong Partners (or no dates) ...In Less Than 3 Minutes a day! A special 8-part Tele-series for Relationship Ready Conscious Creators. Together we will apply a 3-minute system for releasing our relationship limitations that either keep us away from our ideal mate, or perpetuate the attraction of the 'wrong' mates.
*** FREE Audio of the EFT sessions when you RSVP for the series by January 26th!
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Some of the Creation-Spiritual Tools that I use Personally....
As promised, I'll be including a few of the tools that I personally use to grow spiritually, manifest what I want, and create success.
One tool that I use that has increased my spiritual connection four-fold is the HoloSync meditation program.
A busy mind is normal. However, doing nothing about it is normal too -- but normal is not where you want to be! I never felt like an effective meditator until I invested in the HoloSync program... I just love it!
Meditation has added so much peace, love, happiness and most importantly it's given me the ability to do what my friend and client April Gregory says...'have the water-off a duck's back' philosophy. This makes the soil very fertile when I'm ready to manifest something!
Check it out at Centerpointe
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Next issue. Q/A:
How can I improve the relationship I already have?
Create a Great New Year!
Anisa Aven
www.CreataVision.com
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
Laozi
570-490 BCE, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Daoism
Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, Stephen Mitchell, tr., 1988
The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.
He lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle. Laozi
Daode Jing
Whatever feelings arise – whether pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral – abide contemplating impermanence in those feelings, contemplate fading away, relinquishment, letting go of all those feelings. Contemplating this one does not cling to anything in this world. When not clinging, there is no agitation. When not agitated one personally attains Nibbana.
Buddha
c. 563-483 BCE, Indian Prince, Mystic, Founder of Buddhism
One who has finally learned that it is in the nature of objects to come and go without ceasing, rests in detachment and is no longer subject to suffering.
Ashtavakra Gita
Ancient Sanskrit Sacred Text
You are only to perform your duty without an eye on their fruits. Bhagavad Gita, II.70
400 BCE, Sanskrit Poem in Mahabharata, Sacred Hindu Text
Non-attachment is self-mastery: it is freedom from desire for what is seen or heard.
Patanjali
c. 200-150 BCE, Indian Yogi
How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, 15
Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trs., 1953, 1981
How to live the good life? The ability is in your soul, as long as it remains unattached to things that are morally neutral to it. And the soul will remain unattached if it carefully scrutinizes each of these neutral things both as a whole, and by separation into the elements that compose them. Remember that none of these things are responsible for creating our conception about them; these things are motionless and so can’t even approach us. It is we ourselves who create ideas about things, and, as we might say, drag them inside ourselves. It is in our power not to include them, and even if these conceptions have unconsciously gained admission to our minds, to erase them.
Marcus Aurelius
121-180, Roman Emperor, Stoic Philosopher
The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius, Mark Forstater, tr., 2000
The six supernormal faculties of the enlightened are the ability to enter the realm of form without being confused by form, to enter the realm of sound without being confused by sound, to enter the realm of scent without being confused by scent, to enter the realm of flavor without being confused by flavor, to enter the realm of feeling without being confused by feeling, to enter the realm of phenomena without being confused by phenomena.
Linji Yixuan
d. 867, Chinese Chan Master, Linji (Rinzai) School Founder
in Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom, Thomas Cleary, tr. & ed., 1989
Once you realize universal emptiness, all situations are naturally mastered. You have perfect communion with what is beyond the world, while embracing what is within all realms of being.
Fenyang Shanzhao
947-1024, Chinese Chan Buddhist Master
in Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom, Thomas Cleary, tr. & ed., 1989
Just detach from thoughts and cut off sentiments and transcend the ordinary conventions. Use your own inherent power and take up its great capacity and great wisdom right where you are. Yuanwu Kekin
1063-1135, Chinese Chan Master
Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu, J. C. Cleary & Thomas Cleary, trs., 1994
Live in the nowhere that you come from,
Even though you have an address here.
Jalaluddin Rumi
1207-1273, Afghani-Turkish Sufi Mystic, Poet
Many times the mountains
Have turned from green to yellow.
So much for the capricious earth!
Dust in your eyes,
The triple world is narrow;
Nothing on the mind,
Your chair is wide enough.
Muso Kokushi
1275-1351, Japanese Zen Master, Calligrapher, Poet
Desire nothing, and you’re content with everything
Pursue things, and you’re thwarted at every turn.
Ryokan
1758-1831, Japanese Zen Master, Poet, Calligrapher
Detachment is not indifference. It is the prerequisite for effective involvement. Often what we think is best for others is distorted by our attachment to our opinions: we want others to be happy in the way we think they should be happy. It is only when we want nothing for ourselves that we are able to see clearly into others’ needs and understand how to serve them. Mahatma Gandhi
1869-1948, Indian Spiritual Leader
By detachment I mean that you must not worry whether the desired result follows from your action or not, so long as your motive is pure, your means correct.
Gandhi
in Eknath Easwaran, Gandhi, The Man, 1997
To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away. Shunryu Suzuki
1905-1971, Japanese Zen Master
To desire in the void, to desire without any wishes. To detach our desire from all good things and to wait. Experience proves that this waiting iHOME / AMANDA BUTLER
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The Universal Laws of Detachment & Faith
Amanda Butler , Keenawah & Associates, LLC
Published 06/13/2007 - 1:12 a.m. ESTRate This Article:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Butler
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www.stellargaia.org
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The ‘What if’ game is one that is lived in the past or in the future but for these purposes it is used to illustrate a point. If you could close your eyes and create anything or anyone you desire, would it look the same as to what you currently have in your life? Most would answer, no. Then how can you change what is in your current situation? The first step is to utilize the Universal Law of Detachment.
The Law of Detachment provides a freedom from the past and the future. It asks you to be willing to step into the field of uncertainty, into the unknown. There is a wisdom in the uncertainty as we are willing to step into the unknown because it opens the doors into the energy field of infinite possibilities. When we are not attached as to how something, someone, or a relationship ‘should’ look, then there is space for so much more to occur. In that, there is freedom for you and others to be who they Truly are, to contribute to your life and theirs in the Highest Order, and to fulfill your Divine Plan.
There is no need to control your Self, others, and outcomes in order for you to create what you desire. By letting go, so much more can be manifested beyond your wildest dreams. The solutions and results of problems, situations, and relationships are much more creative, flowing, and expansive if you are detached. The energy is constrictive when you need to push or force the solution or result you deem necessary.
You operate within your limited scope when you impose your views and will to manifest what you desire. If you simply surrender, you will experience a greater scheme of probabilities within your life. If you trust and have the willingness and faith to step into the unknown, solutions can occur spontaneously with ease and grace even in the midst of confusion, chaos, disorder, or destruction.
However, most have the urge to control themselves, others, and situations in order to feel safe and secure thus producing an attachment to the result or outcome. Know that you are safer by letting go than hanging on to what you know. Hanging on to what you think it ‘should be’ actually limits the energy and the possibilities. The other reasons for control are the need to be right, to be acknowledged, or validated by someone or something outside of Self. These needs again provide the attachment that people or things must be a certain way for you to feel safe and secure. But safety and security is an inside job, not an outside one. You cannot achieve safety and security through your relationships, people, job, money, things, or even fulfilling your purpose. Your Divine Plan is only achieved and felt through your connection within your Self and with God, Higher Power, Divine Source, or however you define this for your Self..
Some feel if you detach, then you don’t care or you don’t love someone or something. There is the confusion that love and passion must show up as energies of attachment and enmeshment with someone or something in order for it to be real and true. This is a form of codependency. Within the energy of attachment, there is a check list as to what love equals, how it must show up, and how someone must demonstrate it. The attachment does not allow for the freedom of expression, freedom of one’s heart to express how it feels, or for the possibilities of what can occur and be through the acceptance of the true energies of love and passion within the relationship.
What the Law of Detachment teaches us is that as you step into the field of all possibilities and surrender your need to control, it allows for you to remain open to the infinity of choices. Life, full of its various kinds of creations, situations, and people, can be embraced as an adventure, an excitement, an enthusiasm to experience it as fulfilling, magical, mysterious, and joyous. The unknown becomes a place that is no longer scary but one of love (Living Only Vibrant Energy), freedom, and possibilities.
To support you in embracing detachment as a way of being is the Universal Law of Faith. The Law of Faith is founded upon recognizing there is much more that we can see, taste, or feel. It is the acceptance and knowingness that there is much more beyond our limited view. It is an understanding that we see only pieces of the puzzle not the whole puzzle, that we are a part of the All and are connected to Universal Love and Wisdom.
We comprehend this when we let go and acknowledge the miracles occurring around us and within our lives. When we open to the possibilities and to receiving our Highest Good. When we experience synchronicities within our lives such as suddenly a person appears that you’ve been thinking about or you meet someone who can help you manifest something that you’ve put your attention upon, or a book falls off the shelf which answers questions you may have, or you go to a grocery store because you listened to your intuition to go at that moment and you meet your Beloved, the relationship you have been putting out to the Universe that you have wanted to create.
How we arrive to this place of recognition and trust is through the energy of Faith. Faith is Feeling Abundance In The Highest. It is understanding and knowing the connection within and with your Higher Self and the Wisdom of the Universe provides you the path to fulfill the Highest Order for your Self. Letting go of the attachments (and your egoic will, the small personality validated by others, the need to be right, safe, or secure) provides a clear path for you to reach your ultimate objectives and creations.
By listening within and through your connection with the Universe, trusting your intuition, and discerning what is in your Highest Order, then Faith is inherent. You are not looking to the outside for validation, you are not letting the past dictate your decisions, and you are not attached to the outcomes. You have the choice to play in the field of infinite possibilities and the unknown when you have the willingness and faith to release the maze of the past and your attachments. You have the freedom in choosing to create your life consciously in doing so. And you have the power to do so each and every moment!
Amanda Butler
s satisfied. It is then that we touch the absolute good.
Simone Weil
1909-1943, French Philosopher, Essayist, Mystic
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Detachment down2basics: Here's an article I've found on detachment from your x's - maybe this will help some of us - it has helped me some! Enjoy and hold your head up...
Detachment is the:
Ability to allow people, places, or things the freedom to be themselves.
Holding back from the need to rescue, save, or fix another person from being sick, dysfunctional, or irrational.
Giving another person "the space'' to be him or herself.
Disengaging from an over-enmeshed or dependent relationship with people.
Willingness to accept that you cannot change or control a person, place, or thing.
Developing and maintaining of a safe, emotional distance from someone whom you have previously given a lot of power to affect your emotional outlook on life.
Establishing of emotional boundaries between you and those people you have become overly enmeshed or dependent with in order that all of you might be able to develop your own sense of autonomy and independence.
Process by which you are free to feel your own feelings when you see another person falter and fail and not be led by guilt to feel responsible for their failure or faltering.
Ability to maintain an emotional bond of love, concern, and caring without the negative results of rescuing, enabling, fixing, or controlling. Placing of all things in life into a healthy, rational perspective and recognizing that there is a need to back away from the uncontrollable and unchangeable realities of life.
Ability to exercise emotional self-protection and prevention so as not to experience greater emotional devastation from having hung on beyond a reasonable and rational point.
Ability to let people you love and care for accept personal responsibility for their own actions and to practice tough love and not give in when they come to you to bail them out when their actions lead to failure or trouble for them.
Ability to allow people to be who they "really are'' rather than who you "want them to be.''
Ability to avoid being hurt, abused, taken advantage of by people who in the past have been overly dependent or enmeshed with you.
Re: Detachment down2basics: Page 2....
If you are unable to detach from people, places, or things, then you:
Will have people, places, or things which become over-dependent on you.
Run the risk of being manipulated to do things for people, at places, or with things, which you do not really want to do.
Can become an obsessive ``fix it'' who needs to fix everything you perceive to be imperfect.
Run the risk of performing tasks because of the intimidation you experience from people, places, or things.
Will most probably become powerless in the face of the demands of the people, places, or things whom you have given the power to control you.
Will be blind to the reality that the people, places, or things which control you are the uncontrollables and unchangeables you need to let go of if you are to become a fully healthy, coping individual.
Will be easily influenced by the perception of helplessness which these people, places, or things project.
Might become caught up with your idealistic need to make everything perfect for people, places, or things important to you even if it means your own life becomes unhealthy.
Run the risk of becoming out of control of yourself and experience greater low self-esteem as a result.
Will most probably put off making a decision and following through on it, if you rationally recognize your relationship with a person, place, or thing is unhealthy and the only recourse left is to get out of the relationship.
Will be so driven by guilt and emotional dependence that the sickness in the relationship will worsen.
Run the risk of losing your autonomy and independence and derive your value or worth solely from the unhealthy relationship you continue in with the unhealthy person, place, or thing.
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Re: Detachment down2basics: Page 3...that's all for now... ;D
Detachment is a control issue because:
It is a way of de-powering the external "locus of control'' issues in your life and a way to strengthen your internal "locus of control.''
If you are not able to detach emotionally or physically from a person, place, or thing, then you are either profoundly under its control or it is under your control.
The ability to "keep distance'' emotionally or physically requires self-control and the inability to do so is a sign that you are "out of control.''
If you are not able to detach from another person, place, or thing, you might be powerless over this behavior which is beyond your personal control.
You might be mesmerized, brainwashed, or psychically in a trance when you are in the presence of someone from whom you cannot detach.
You might feel intimidated or coerced to stay deeply attached with someone for fear of great harm to yourself or that person if you don't remain so deeply involved.
You might be an addicted "caretaker,'' "fixer,'' or ``rescuer'' who cannot "let go'' of a person, place or thing you believe cannot care for itself.
You might be so manipulated by another's con, "helplessness,'' overdependency, or "hooks'' that you cannot leave them to solve their own problems.
If you do not detach from people, places, or things, you could be so busy trying to "control'' them that you completely divert your attention from yourself and your own needs.
By being "selfless'' and "centered'' on other people, you are really a controller trying to "fix'' them to meet the image of your "ideal'' for them.
Although you will still have feelings for those persons, places, and things from which you have become detached, you will have given them the "freedom'' to become what they will be on their own merit, power, control, and responsibility.
It allows every person, place, or thing with which you become involved to feel the sense of personal responsibility to become a unique, independent, and autonomous being with no fear of retribution or rebuke if they don't please you by what they become.
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Re: Detachment down2basics: ok - I've found the rest of this article - posting it now...hope you enjoy this and find it useful! You've heard of the "12 Step Program"? *lol* ;DSorry it's soooo long though, but I think it's worth the read! God Bless!!
How to develop detachmentIn order to become detached from a person, place, or thing you need to:
First: Establish emotional boundaries between you and the person, place, or thing with whom you have become overly enmeshed or dependent on.
Second: Take back power over your feelings from persons, places, or things which in the past you have given power to affect your emotional well-being.
Third: "Hand over'' to your Higher Power the persons, places, and things which you would like to see changed but which you cannot change on your own.
Fourth: Make a commitment to your personal recovery and self-health by admitting to yourself and your Higher Power that there is only one person you can change and that is yourself and that for your serenity you need to let go of the "need'' to fix, change, rescue, or heal other persons, places, and things.
Fifth: Recognize that it is "sick'' and "unhealthy'' to believe that you have the power or control enough to fix, correct, change, heal, or rescue another person, place, or thing if they do not want to get better nor see a need to change.
Sixth: Recognize that you need to be healthy yourself and be "squeaky clean'' and a "role model'' of health in order for another to recognize that there is something ``wrong'' with them that needs changing.
Seventh: Continue to own your feelings as your responsibility and not blame others for the way you feel.
Eighth: Accept personal responsibility for your own unhealthy actions, feelings, and thinking and cease looking for the persons, places, or things you can blame for your unhealthiness.
Ninth: Accept that addicted fixing, rescuing, enabling are ``sick'' behaviors and strive to extinguish these behaviors in your relationship to persons, places, and things.
Tenth: Accept that many people, places, and things in your past and current life are "irrational,'' "unhealthy,'' and "toxic'' influences in your life, label them honestly for what they truly are, and stop minimizing their negative impact in your life.
Eleventh: Reduce the impact of guilt and other irrational beliefs which impede your ability to develop detachment in your life.
Twelfth: Practice "letting go'' of the need to correct, fix, or make better the persons, places and things in life over which you have no control or power to change.
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Re: Detachment down2basics:
Steps in developing detachment
Step 1: It is important to first identify those people, places, and things in your life from which you would be best to develop emotional detachment in order to retain your personal, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. To do this you need to review the following types of toxic relationships and identify in your journal if any of the people, places, or things in your life fit any of the following twenty categories.
Types of Toxic Relationships
( 1) You find it hard to let go of because it is addictive.
( 2) The other is emotionally unavailable to you.
( 3) Coercive, threatening, intimidating to you.
( 4) Punitive or abusive to you.
( 5) Non-productive and non-reinforcing for you.
( 6) Smothering you.
( 7) Other is overly dependent on you.
( 8) You are overly dependent on the other.
( 9) Other has the power to impact your feelings about yourself.
(10) Relationship in which you are a chronic fixer, rescuer, or enabler.
(11) Relationship in which your obligation and loyalty won't allow you to let go.
(12) Other appears helpless, lost, and out of control.
(13) Other is self-destructive or suicidal.
(14) Other has an addictive disease.
(15) Relationship in which you are being manipulated and conned.
(16) When guilt is a major motivating factor preventing your letting go and detaching.
(17) Relationship in which you have a fantasy or dream that the other will come around and change to be what you want.
(18) Relationship in which you and the other are competitive for control.
(19) Relationship in which there is no forgiveness or forgetting and all past hurts are still brought up to hurt one another.
(20) Relationship in which your needs and wants are ignored.
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Re: Detachment down2basics: Step 2: Once you have identified the persons, places, and things you have a toxic relationship with, then you need to take each one individually and work through the following steps.
Step 3: Identify the irrational beliefs in the toxic relationship which prevent you from becoming detached. Address these beliefs and replace them with healthy, more rational ones.
Step 4: Identify all of the reasons why you are being hurt and your physical, emotional, and spiritual health is being threatened by the relationship.
Step 5: Accept and admit to yourself that the other person, place, or thing is "sick", dysfunctional, or irrational and that no matter what you say, do, or demand you will not be able to control or change this reality. Accept that there is only one thing you can change in life and that is you. All others are the unchangeables in your life. Change your expectations that things will be better than what they really are. Hand these people, places, or things over to your Higher Power and let go of the need to change them.
Step 6: Work out reasons why there is no need to feel guilt over letting go and being emotionally detached from this relationship and free yourself from guilt as you let go of the emotional "hooks'' in the relationship.
Step 7: Affirm yourself as being a person who "deserves'' healthy, wholesome, health engendering relationships in your life. You are a GOOD PERSON and deserve healthy relationships, at home, work, and in the community.
Step 8: Gain support for yourself as you begin to let go of your emotional enmeshment with these relationships.
Step 9: Continue to call upon your Higher Power for the strength to continue to let go and detach.
Step 10: Continue to give no person, place, or thing the power to affect or impact your feelings about yourself. Re: Detachment down2basics: Step 11: Continue to detach and let go and work at self-recovery and self-healing as this poem implies.
``Letting Go''
To ``let go'' does not mean to stop caring.
It means I can't do it for someone else.
To ``let go'' is not to cut myself off.
It's the realization I can't control another.
To ``let go'' is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To ``let go'' is to admit powerlessness
which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To ``let go'' is not to try to change or blame another.
It's to make the most of myself.
To ``let go'' is not to care for, but to care about.
To ``let go'' is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To ``let go'' is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To ``let go'' is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To ``let go'' is not to be protective.
It's to permit another to face reality.
To ``let go'' is not to deny, but to accept.
To ``let go'' is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To ``let go'' is not to criticize and regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To ``let go'' is not to adjust everything to my desires
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To ``let go'' is to not regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.
To ``let go'' is to fear less and LOVE MYSELF MORE.
Step 12: If you still have problems detaching, then return to Step 1 and begin all over again.
ok guys - that's it...hope this helps some of you! 8)
God Bless you all!!!
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I guess we are on our way. Lighter. But remember my boundaires are very weak. And almost inexistent, I do not discover boundaries until they have been trespassed. I feel bad and dont even know why. So, I discover that my boundaires have been trespassed, then I discover a new boundary and try to enforce it if i can think at the moment when it is trespassed, each time being shorter to react, so Iguess we are on our way. But it is endless.
LOL
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I think it gets better though.
As we begin making better decisions we encounter different situations..... as a natural by product.
All that "decide who gets a front row seat in the audience of your life" stuff..... we choose to 'file' people in our hearts according to their trustworthiness.
We no longer trust everyone and give them access to our emotions if they aren't worthy once we figure out boundaries.
Boundaries don't just fall into place.
They're unfamiliar and fly in the face of our belief system.
It takes time and mindfulness to keep pretending we're worthy until the habits become less alien.... until they're more familiar then we can settle into them and eventually they become habit.
The key is to keep them in place, even when we're feeling stronger and able to handle anything.
Axa discussed this a while back.
It;s important to remain dligent and not make the first excuse for someone's bad behavior.
We can say.... "You did ABC and that's not acceptable, if you do that again, I'll know you dont' want to have a relationship with me."
That, of course, is an enticing challenge to someone who enjoys manipulating and controlling people.
If we make an excuse for them, after having crossed our boundary again, do we cut them off and refile them under UNWORTHY or.....
do we really need their friendship/approval/affection and find ourselves whining about it and trying to get them to see the error of their way then allow them to make more promises to do better?
That's the difference between enforcing a boundary or not, IMO.
Sure, it hurts to lose something or someone that was making us feel warm and loved and included.... but at what cost?
Extended pain and dissapointment......
I'd rather just accept what's in front of me, make big girl decisions and not look back.
I think that's what healthier people do naturally.... bc they feel wothy of better treatment.... their boundaries are sturdy and they won't tolerate repeated abuse.
I think we can become comfortable with that concept as well..... at least I sure hope so.
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Dear Violet, you have no idea how much you have helped me by asking me today. I am having so much fun, and discovering so much of my life, and as Lea said she was discovering something that she already knew, but I am very impressed. Thank you again.
This is so important for me and for many people perhaps.
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Yes Lighter, to keep them in place.......... if we can........ :shock:
lol, it takes time. It took me 50 years to just realize I was sleep walking. Now I start to grow. Maybe in another 50 years. LOL, when I am 100 I will say che che che, pleache, dearch, that wasch notch appropriate behavior lolch.
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I think you've already started saying it, dear.
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Dear Lea, can you go a little deeper in discerning? what if as a victim of N we do not trust our perceptions?
We know that me process information in a different way and many times we do not percieve things the same way that "normal" people do.
In the cognitive therapy there are several steps to be able to check your perceptions, reality check, like asking others, and looking ofr prove, etc.
But again, how to trust what we think is correct?
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Detaching and Dissociating
Detaching and dissociating are words which describe the act of mentally (and therefore emotionally) leaving the present moment and of becoming distant from it. It can be experienced mildly as a subtle feeling of being separated and apart from everyone and everything around you. It can be experienced more dramatically as actually being outside of your body and looking on. Others may speak with you and you will not respond, though you may know that they are speaking. You are elsewhere. People around you may have difficulty with this, especially if it appears to happen right out of the blue. Some people will take it as evidence that you are mentally ill. You may be treated in a devaluing manner as a result of this. Again, mental pollution is popular.
You may suffer from this thinking error: "Because I detach, I must be a helpless, useless, whacked-out person." Let's dispute that one right away. First of all, congratulations on having an emergency exit. Are you aware that this kind of escape hatch has been used by a whole lot of sexually victimized people? Many of them were victims of sexual violence as little children. You may have developed this means of escape way back then. And good for you too.
The problem is this: Your emergency exit has become habituated and you may be using it when you don't really need to. Are you still at risk of being victimized? No? Then you do not really need it these days. The development of the emergency exit is not only because of trauma, but also because of the re-victimization process, in which a child's normal life gets split mentally from the abusive episodes. The habituation of this process evolves naturally and there is no blame for it. It's a survival device and it probably saved you from more severe mental, emotional and physical pain than you know. So far so good?
Now that the detaching has become automatic, you will doubtless be finding it somewhat inconvenient, inappropriate or downright embarrassing. Get on with the job of disputing any self-downing thinking that goes with this. It is a fact of your life - for the time being anyway. Why do a double whammy and feel bad about it too?
e hike? No you won't. The canoe was a useful vehicle for crossing the lake, but it will be an unnecessary burden for hiking. No big crime - just inconvenient and a lot of extra work. Your emergency exit once was a necessity. Now it is in the way.
As well as accepting the fact that your escape hatch routine has become habituated and is no reason for self-damning, there may be more that you can do. For instance, recall that memories of trauma are only difficult when the thinking that comes with them is troublesome. Your detaching is likely provoked by some kind of habituated stress-making thinking that gets triggered in the here and now. When you think something like: "I can't stand this. This is really horrible. Help! I can't handle this!, I have to get out of here!", you may trigger the habituated emergency exit routine. Good bye. Off you go.
Check this out: While off and away, you still have the ability to think. So relax. Briefly enjoy the sense of safety, and begin purposeful thinking. Challenge the awfulizing. Recognize that you are safe and that you can actually handle what ever is going on. Explain this to yourself. It may be unpleasant, but it is not so tragic really. Challenge the I-can't-stand-its. Work gently towards understanding that you are able to stand whatever it is, even though it may be a royal pain in the butt. Allow yourself to come back. Explain to yourself that it is safe out there. It's just another case of habit thinking - no big deal. Keep the internal chatter and challenge going. Compliment yourself on your return. Buy a hamburger or a yogurt shake. Treat yourself.
In this manner, you can develop some control over your comings and goings. You don't have to just be at the mercy of these habituated escape processes. You can work towards becoming an expert traveller between states - with more control over it. Hey, some of us meditate for years and we still cannot do that kind of thing. Medication might also be helpful with this if it is a big concern.
As your thinking matures, you may be able to live without the emergency exit for longer and longer periods. Don't worry. If you want it, it will still be there. On the other hand, as the quality of your emotional life increases, you may not want the great escape anymore. Give it some thought.
Poetry to Make Sense of the World
I have decided to use this space more as a quasi public journal, to be shared with friends and family, to express my thoughts and ideas and with an open invitation for comments and discussion.The Line and Composure
The line between perseverence and pride. When you know that to be successful you must fight through all challenges to carry your idea to fruition, but you also know that such obession is just filling your own sails when the reality may be that the idea just doesn't have it.
Passion drives you, wisdom tempers you. While remaining open to Divine guidance.
Composure.
- a calmness or repose especially of mind, bearing, or appearance : self-possession.
Self-Possession.
- control of one's emotions or reactions especially when under stress.
Both desireable qualities. But what about when Divine guidance suggests that you should not wait for composure, that waiting for composure is an infinite excuse for inertia.
How does this negotiate the line between perseverance and pride?
Sensitive steps to identify your motive. What it is that you are fighting for? An essential question of Faith and detachment. Define your motive and take the plunge. With passion and wisdom and composure.
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Hi Lupita,
Thankyou for all of the good information re detachment. You've gone to a lot of trouble to post this valuable information. I'm thinking it'll most likely get lost in history. Is there somewhere else it can go on this website as well where it'll be easier to retirieve? Just wondering.
Have you ever read Siddhartha or the Bhagavad Gita? They're great books re detachment.
It never ceases to amaze me how similar the Bhagavad Gita and the Judeo-Christian Bible are.
A very nice family I know are devote Hindu and I've been most fortunate enough to have them generously spend quite a bit of their time telling me all about their religion. They also taught me how to say the words Bhagavad Gita properly! :D I had it so wrong. They are truly a beautiful, intelligent, generous family and very large family who love company, rituals and celebrations. 'OM' :D
Detachment seems to me to be such a vital process in self-actualization, and also such a large focus, function and essence of Hinduism and Buddhism. Personally, to me, that's what makes those philosphies so great.
I'm neither Hindu nor Buddhist by the way, :) but I've personally benefited so much from writings from both, learning from their knowledge and the essence they offer.
I'm finding your whole thread on detachment very challenging - in a good way. There is so much good information here - on this forum. I'm currently reading your thread on 'Detachment" and Gabben's 'Being Envied' simultaneously. They're both very informative and challenging.
Thanks for all the time it must have taken for put in to copy all of that onto this board. Here is a gift from the Bhagavad Gita.
'brahmany adhaya karmani sangam tyaktva karoti yah lipyate na sa papena padma-patram ivambhasa'
"One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus leaf is untouched by water."
'kayena manasa buddhya kevalair indriyair api yoginah karma kurvanti sangam tyaktvatma-shuddhaye'
"The yogis, abandoning attachment, act with body, mind, intelligence and even with the senses, only for the purpose of purification."
'yuktah karma-phalam tyaktva shantim apnoti naisthikim ayuktah kama-karena phale sakto nibadhyate'
"The steadily devoted soul attains unadulterated peace because he offers the result of all activities to Me; whereas a person who is not in union with the Divine, who is greedy for the fruits of his labor, becomes entangled."
'na kartrtvam na karmani lokasya srjati prabhuh na karma-phala-samyogam svabhavas tu pravartate'
"The embodied spirit, master of the city of his body, does not create activities, nor does he induce people to act, nor does he create the fruits of action. All this is enacted by the modes of material nature."
Papillon
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Thank you Papillon, you added very insightful thoughts. And thank you for your kind words.
I need to read about detachmetnt everyday before I go to work. It is a good tool for the toolbox. So not to suffer at work or in any place.
Not that I can do it. But I am trying.
God bless you all.
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This is so important or all of us that I will continue to study it and post until I am told not to do it anymore. And hope that it never happens. LOL
Love to you all.
Detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgment or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. Separating ourselves from the adverse affects of another person’s behavior* can be a means of detaching: This does not necessarily require physical separation. Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.
Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another’s behavior and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives, lives with dignity and rights, lives guided by a Power greater than ourselves. We can still Love the person without liking the behavior.
~ Al-Anon Family Groups
Detachment means you can stop:
Suffering because of the actions or reactions of other people
Allowing yourself to be used or abused by others
Doing for others what they can do for themselves
Manipulating situations so others will eat, got to bed, pay bills, exercise, or do whatever you think they “should” do.
Covering up for another’s mistakes or misdeeds
Creating A Crisis
Preventing a crisis if it is in the natural course of events
* Definition of “Another Person’s Behavior”: Often ends with “ing” * thinking, eating, speaking, spending, drinking, worrying, complaining, smoking, gambling, procrastinating, working, not working … dying. Which one is worrying you right now?
Detachment Practices:
SO = Significant Other a.k.a anyone who inspires your need to control or pushes your buttons * anger, fear, resentment … If they weren’t significant, you wouldn’t care!
#1. Agree! Instead of disagreeing with something your SO says try saying “You could be right.”
Detach from your need to be right, smarter, better, …
#2. Pillow Fight! Next time you feel worried about your SOs behavior – what they are doing or not doing – tell yourself that you will worry about it later. In fact, make a Pillow Fight Date with yourself. During that time – say 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. you will do nothing but worry and vent. Beat pillows, talk to your pillow, focus on the worst case scenario and only the worst case scenario. Give yourself permission to wallow and only wallow – no solutions – no hope allowed during this time. BUT (and this is very important) when your time is up – your Pillow Fight is over – get back to detachment.
You can set 5, 10+ pillow fights during the day if that is what it takes – the point is to get “it” out appropriately vs. allow “it” – worry, fear, anger -seep into and spoil your day – your life.
Detach from your habit of anger, resentment, overwhelm, feeling taken advantage of …
What is your emotional habit? Everyone has one.
#3. Walk it off! The next time you start in, get up and walk it off, literally. Walk around the block and smell the flowers, window shop, find a puppy to pet … keep your focus on your body parts – feel your legs pumping – notice your breathing Just a five or ten minute walk break can help you detach and get back into the flow of Love & life.
Detach from the habit of repressing and going “numb.”
Get “it” out in a healthy physical way vs. an unhealthy way …
drinking, smoking, eating, ulcering, insomnia, hair loss ….
#4. Breathe! Notice your breathing right now. Is it coming up from your tummy or from high in your stressed out chest? When we are upset we tend to breathe high and shallow, or, at an extreme, suffer from Stress Related Asthma. I ended up in the hospital once at 2:00 a.m. with this and a bad case of denial … that’s another story, another time.
How to Breathe Properly (http://panicdisorder.about.com/cs/shbreathing/ht/breatheproperly.htm)
How To Relax At Your Desk (http://panicdisorder.about.com/cs/shrelaxation/ht/relaxdesk.htm)
Detach from shutting down, literally, when you are in pain.
How do you shut down? Is it working for you?
#5. Talk it Out! Have coffee with a friend or someone who may have gone through what you’re going through and could share their experience and hope. If you need to talk it out with a “pro” get several referrals from your doctor.
Detach from the need to suffer in silence.
“Isolation is the darkroom in which we develop our negatives.”
Finally … detachment is a Love Skill. Just like any skill – cooking (yikes!), hitting a killer backhand shot, dancing Salsa - it requires practice and patience to master. We are programmed to worry, blame and try to control other people and situations. Just for today try something new and start building a life you’ll Love to share with that very special SO …
Love on! Viveca
Viveca Stone is the author of two ebooks 88 MONEY Tips, Tools & Techniques & 88 HOURS Love Advice & Romance Talk. She also hosts Get Ready for Love! Radio. Please visit her website at www.GetReadyForLove.com
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Start loving yourself- Well this is what most desperate men are missing and this is the reason why they are desperate. You see you are thinking about the negative aspects of your personality and that's why you get desperate with time. You need to concentrate on the positive side of your personality and see what you are good at instead on thinking about what you lack. This simple shifting of mental attitude can get you the results you desire within no time.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself- Another thing most desperate guys do is they feel sorry for themselves all the time. They feel that no is ever going to be around them and they might end up alone. This very fear of maybe ending up alone eats them out and they get desperate. Learn to be positive and stop feeling sorry for yourself instead do something which would make you feel good about yourself. You see your actions alone in the right direction can get you what you want.
You lack the personal power that would keep you separate from others to the point you hardly recognize your own life because it is so wrapped up in another’s. The mistreatment continues as your self-esteem plummets. Your inner peace is damaged so that you can receive the love and approval you seek.
You believe that if you continue on the road you are traveling you will help heal the other. That is the goal in your mind, but a codependent will never heal another by putting up with abuse or by continuing to rescue them and bail them out of circumstances, or make excuses for them.
In order for you to begin building your life with sights on your own life and not another’s, you will have to detach yourself from the other. You do not have to totally detach from the other, only from the areas of their life you wish not to be involved with. Be strong enough to separate yourself from those areas of the others’ life and stop spending time making excuses for them.
We are all responsible for ourselves and the choices we make. And once we make those choices there are consequences that follow. There is an old parable regarding an older Cherokee man teaching his grandson about life. He tells the boy, “A fight is going on inside me. It is a fight between two wolves. One is evil, one is good.” He goes on to describe the emotions of each. He tells the boy the same fight is going on inside him as well as every other person. The boy asks “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee replies, “The one you feed.”
Start to focus on your own life again. Set limits and boundaries on the areas you do not want to be associated with. Do not blame the other or get stuck in anger regarding past situations. This is not empowering to you. It was your choice as much as the other person’s.
Begin to start looking at your own life and ways you can improve it. Start to listen to your inner voice. Remember what your dreams are. Begin to build them. Learn to trust yourself. You cannot fill a void you feel within your life by someone or something outside yourself. Stand up for yourself and do not let the situation continue as it has. Require the respect you deserve.
You can begin to build your life with the dreams you may have forgotten about. Awaken those dreams. You deserve to chase and find those dreams. Don’t stop until they are yours.
© 2007 Lori Klauser
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I am coloring the parts that are most representative for my self, but since we suffer of the same thing it will probably be also for many fiends.
Love to you all.
God bless you all.
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Highlighting the important passages is such a great idea when you;re dealing with so much information.
Good idea, Lupita.
I've done it in some favorite books I revisit every so many years.
I always highlight in a different color with each reading...... it's interesting to see what parts speak to me.
it's always different.
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I am sorry to interrupt my own thread but the F*ck with detachment.
I read my thread this morning. It made me feel very positive. I had my fisrt opportunity to use my new skills during second period, when a student who is always looking fro problems, told me that I almost poked her eye when I passed a pencil to her. That never happened. She always makes drama from everything.
In third period I have a student who always find excuses for not being in class, then she needs to make up all the work while she is having fun outside the class, then she balmes me for all the information that she does not get.
Then in fourth period a sutudent told me that I never said they had a quiz, when the sign is on the board since one week ago.
I did my best, still I was coming home in a good mood, when I found an assistant principal who told me that I got five minutes late and she was going to add it up and if she gets an hour she will descount it from my pay check, then I worked it all again and it worked. I came home feeling better. Then my son called me that his car need a new engine when he just put anew engine. We have to barrow five thounsand doolars dfeom the bank to fix his car. I have to help him I have to cosign for him to get his loan, I am his mother. I cannot with somuch pressure. Stil I have to be thankful that my son is fine and it is only money.
WEll, I am very upset, and after all day fighting to be in a good mood, it is impossible when I recieve one kick after the other in the stomach. I am going to have a drink and take a pill to sleep, that will work.
FFFFFFFFF******************kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Yep, a drink and a couple of pills will do the work I could not all day trying.All day, all day, all day trying to fight all day trying to feel better. I give up.
:(
Es inutil. Todo mi esfuerzo es inutil.
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is the love of our selves that will save us. and we just dont.
YET.
This is an extraordinary thread, Lupita.
Thank you for it.
love,
Hops
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Hi Hops, thanks for your kind words. It is so difficult. I consider part of my job to deal with difficult kids, or challenging kids, however is called, but what makes me upset is when parents do not believe me.
For example, yesterday, a student female, put her feet to touch the buttoks of the male student in front of her. He yelled "yiked!" and got up. I told my assistant principal and she said "write her up", I write her up and the mother comes today and tell me how come I am writing her up, that she said it was an accident. I said I saw what happened, I was there. The mothetr said but my daughter is telling me something doifferent, why she only has problems in your class. I have seen her in detention other times, I do not believe she misbehaves only in my class, but since the other teachers do not tell me anything, I have no way to know. And I sont know why she misbehaves in my class specially.
So, now I have to feel good becuase I am at home and I have a date since a very long time ago. But, I cant let go. I feel tense because the mom does not believe me.
I am tired, very tired. And sad, and lonely.
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It seems that the more I read on detachment, the more it works. I just read it, and it sinks in, into my brain, little by little.
I had a problem yesterday at shool. I sent some kids to the library. Five minutes later, the librarian came to my class and yelled at me in front of the other students. She said that I was not controlling my classes because I was sending them to the library, and I was putting too much stress on her and that nobody liked me and that ....I dont rememeber how muhc more she told me. So unprofessional. I talked to the elementary principal who has been very supportive of me. She said that I have to pray about it and I had to read Mathew 18 and talk to her and bring peace to my self by resolving the situation with her. On my own.
I was wondering if I did somting like that if they would tell the other person to resolve it on her own. I am shure I was going to eb called to the office and be accused of unprofessionalism. But if somebody does something to me I have to resolve it on my own.
Today I am just feeling a little unfomfortable for the injustice but not the huge pain I used to feel in the past when something like that happened. I have beel always disrespected by others.
It does not hurt that muhc now.
In the future, probably I will deffend my self better.
But starting by not feeling so bad is a good start.
After I can feel not bad I will start to have a better reaction with more assertiveness.
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Very sad today. I have 176 students. I have problems with four of them. I have six classes. I have five very successful classes. I have problems with only one class. The four students that give me problems are all in the same class.
Still, the parents and the administration think that is is my fault. If it is my fault, how can I be successful with all the others?
Why is it always me?
I guess I have to post this in the thread of why me.
:(
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Should I just lower my standards and play by different rules? I am so cunfused! Dont they realize that I am going to be shaped by what they do? I am learning! I should not give true grades!!! That is what they want! Is it? I am totally confused. I feel sorry for my self. Sorry. Sorry that I feel sorry for my self. I shoudl give an A to everybody. Then they would be happy with me.
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Why, and just why, are parents just wnt to back up kids at all costs? No matter what! Do not they realize that they have to deal with them for the rest fo their lives and the teahcer just for 45 minutes a day?
The kis will be a probelm for them forever!the teacher only 45 min a day!
Why parents dont want to help????????????????????????????????
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I better go to apply for a job a Wal Mart and stop worrying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is it worth it?
Why am I the only one to be concerned?
We are building ofr the duture!!!!!!!!!!!!1 and Nobody cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so sorry for us, for all of us who do not believe in accountability for our kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is very sad. But one day somebody will say, that ols Lupita was talking about it.
:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :? :? :? :? :? :? :? :? :? :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
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Lupita,
It's all I got but here goes....
(((((((Lupita)))))))
v
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((((((( Lupita ))))))
Sincerely, and honestly, my heartfelt thoughts too.
As I read the news of the day, regarding children and young people, both in my country, and in your country too. It is heartbreaking, as children are our future. Materially, they may have much, yet, they have so little, to live on, in the future, seemingly. No-one likes to talk about the subject, hoping it will go away? Nothing new under the sun.
Love, Leah
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Thank you Lea and Violet. Thank you so much for your kind words.
I have 176 students. Zero failures. Zero "F". My lowest student got a 64. And they are truely learning what they are suposed to learn.
I only have problems with four students. But administration thiks it is my fault.
All my classes are learning. You have to see them speaking Spanish. I am doing a very good job. Still they do not like me. My administration do not like me.
They say that I have too many problems. They dont like me.
My friends have told me that I should start looking for a job somewhere else. I feel very disappointed and sad, because I work very hard for them, and not even in a school where they demand so much, and I work so hard, for a very low salary, not even there they like me. I am not welcome anywhere. I am not welcome in this world, period.
Nobody welcomed me into this f**nk world.
I am so sad. So sad!!!
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Lupita,
I think if we lived in the same town and knew each other, we would be friends. I would be deeply honored to have a friend like you. You seem so fearlessly honest, intelligent, and giving. I think you are really hard on yourself, though. I wish I could magically reveal to you how absolutely divine and worthy of cherishing you truly are. I don't know how to give you this gift, though, maybe it is a gift only one can give oneself, I don't know....
Violet
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Dear Lupita,
I honestly don’t know what kind of advice I can give that might help. I would be extremely frustrated in your situation.
From what you have written, it sounds like you are trying to control the situation but you are not getting any support from the administration or the parents. And I’ll bet those kids know it and are taking full advantage of it.
I have some ideas, but doubt they are feasible (not sure they would work in a privately funded school):
Can you make part of the grade dependent on positive interaction in the class – with x number of slip ups (and you would have to give them advance notice of this) they fail. Period. At that point, if they want to improve their grade, they have to earn it back by helping out in the class or extra credit. Maybe start with a contract, have the student sign it and have their parent’s sign it?
Another thought. Set-up a video camera in the corner of the room and tell the class that from this point forward, you will be video taping the class.
Or a more positive spin – they sound like cocky little things - can you challenge them in some way – make a bet with them that given their behavior so far, you don’t think they can behave for a week – and if they win – they get a homework pass (and the other kids could get this too for good behavior) and if you win they have to do something for you (like clean the classroom or do more homework?). If they win so many weeks running, they get a field trip?
As far as the librarian – that was extremely, extremely unprofessional on her part. She had no right 1) to interrupt your class, 2) to say those things, and 3) to say those things in front of your students - she undermined you in front of your students. If you are up to it, I would lodge a formal written complaint with human resources (if you have that) or with the administration. There is no excuse for her unprofessional behavior. It is one thing for her to come to you privately and with respect and courtesy to discuss the situation – but to do it the way she did it – unacceptable.
I used to work at a place that was pretty bad. The politics were unbelievable. I came to realize that there was no fixing it – and that the only thing I could do was change my outlook. I got to the point where when I got in my car to leave for the day, I would close a mental door on work and open a new door in my mind that this was my time. I refused to allow the frustration of work to carry over into my private life. It wasn’t always easy – it would sneak back, but as soon as I realized what I was doing, I would shut that door again. I needed that time to unwind and recoup.
Is teaching your passion? It seems to me with your education you have a tremendous amount of opportunities open to you. You could do translation work (particularly for drug companies – informed consent forms, package inserts in foreign languages), safety surveillance – all of which would pay quite a bit. I am not sure of the requirements, but you might be able to teach at the college level (where I think the attitude might be improved), or even adult language/science classes at local colleges.
Hang in there Lupita – 3 more months till summer? Maybe we should start a count-down to your last day?
(((((I care Lupita)))))
Peace
PS – Sorry in advance if I am not making sense or misunderstanding – I have the plague (the flu), which has knocked me on my butt. Haven’t been this sick in a long time. Any good home remedies for the flu? I asked my doctor to put me in a coma till it passed, but he didn’t go for the idea – ha!
BTW – that lack of accountability you speak of – I believe that is one of the factors that made my father what he was. It is sad to see it happening to children, it saddens me to think of where they will be 20 years from now, and wonder how many they might hurt along the way. Maybe the only option you have is to focus on the majority of kids who are trying and learning. With those 4 trouble makers, maybe the best thing you can do is ignore them. For some kids and people, negative attention is attention.
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Thank you Violet. I am working on that. Thank you for caring, I need so much of friendship. I feel very lonely.
Thank you FP. I gace them extra points for silence. They stay at their desks, and talk in a low voice.
If they do not talk at all, they get one full point for the exam for each day. They can talk about Spanish work. Not gossip or movies, etc. So, for that they get a full point for next exam. And one full point for general grade at the end of the quarter.
The four students that are the problem, do not take advantage of that. The others do. But, the others do not need the points because they are very good students. When there are conferences, the parents of the good students come to the ocnferences and the four bad do not even show.
I promised a filed trip but it was not aproved.
I was giving them one day pass for the library, but look what the librarian did to me.
So, there is no reward. I promised a movie, the day of the movie, the four bads, un-plug the cables of the DVD player and it took me several minutes to find out what was wrong. Then they put the cable away so I could not find it. They destroyed my activity.
Those four, are very rich people. One of them own a bank, very old money, his family have been reach for more than 200 years.
And that kid has at least six cousins and friends, who come to the school. They belive they own the school because their family donate a lot of money to the school. The administration love them too much.
The pastor just bought three new cars. They are good friends. So, I am just a piece of trash, disposable. They can get a Spanish teacher any moment they want. It is very sad.
The websites are empty. No jobs. No Spanish jobs. Very difficult.
I know they cannot fire me because I have not done anything bad, but they want me to leave, and that is why they allow people to mistreat me. They want me to feel so uncomfrotable that I leave on my own.
And I will. I will leave. They do not deserve a person like me. I am very hard worker and if I have a quality it is HONESTY.
I do not match their needs. I am aware of that. I am just afraid that there will not be jobs. The economy is bad and society does not want to spend moeny ine ducation, if they do it is math and English, they do not want to spend in art, music or foreign langage. That is why I am so sad.
I am afraid not to find another job. I do not think I should come back to this school wher ethey have been so mean and so unfair to me. Plus, they pay very little.
Thank you FP for caring.
Love to you.
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Dear Lupita,
Sounds like you are fighting the enemy that can’t be beat – money. Seems to me that the god worshiped at that school isn’t god, but money.
Sad – but there it is.
Can’t fight it Lupita.
It isn’t you – it is a situation that is beyond your control to change. No matter how hard you fight, seems to me that the money will win. The irony is that this is a Christian school isn’t it?
Reminds me of my family. I fought for years and years to be seen for who I really was and not the malignant evil child ….. but in fighting, it just reinforced their opinion of me. No matter what I did – it didn’t matter.
The only way I could attain a semblance of peace was to step out of the situation – there was no changing it - I had to let go. Sounds like your situation is similar?
I have found that, in general, people tend to dislike people who rock the boat; people who challenge the status quo (no matter how right it is to do so). You are between a rock and a hard place.
How about allowing yourself to let go for the weekend. Forget about school. Go out and do something nice for yourself – even if it is a trip to a museum, beach for a walk, anything. Give yourself permission to forget about the four trouble-makers and reward yourself for the more than 100 kids who are doing well.
When you go back to school on Monday, focus your energies on those kids who want to learn.
I am sorry Lupita – not much help I know.
((((Lupita))))
Peace
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Well, yes, you helped. Because I am always blaming my self, I dhould have done this or that, etc. If I just was more this or less that.
And you just said it.
Evil people do a lot of projection, they shape you and provoke you and then complain how imappropriate youa re.
They go in to my class room when I am not there, and move things, take things, then sy that I am disorganized and I dont know where I put things, and tnen when I complain that somebody was in my classroom the accuse me of being paranoid.
There is no way I can win.
And you just said it. You just said it. It is beyond my control.
I have tu finish the year and pray the Lord that I find another job.
I started sending resumes last night.
I will continue doing it every weekend.
Well, thank you Finding Peace becuase you reminded me that it is not me. I was feeling so inappropriate. It was not me.
I did not to any thing wrong.
Love to you.
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Interesting article. Not that I can do it but that is good to know.
Here’s an important rule for life: It’s not all about you. To develop a thick skin you must first remember that you are not the center of the universe. Yes, sorry to say, you are not the fixed point around which the universe turns.
Say someone isn’t paying you enough attention. You brood and brood. “Is she mad at me?” “Did I say something wrong?” Your gloomy thoughts intensify, leaving you emotionally crippled and thinking that you have ruined everything.
Yet there may be a good reason for her inattention. Maybe she’s having a rough week at work, and she has ten projects to complete by Friday, all of which are putting her in a foul mood. Or think about it in another way. Maybe she is behaving badly and being a jerk. But why are you fussing over it?
If this is how your mind works, you may indeed be overly thin skinned. And some rethinking is in order. You will need to learn a few skills and think outside yourself.
Here are a few tips to developing a thick skin:
Don’t take things personally. Sometimes you may need to reframe a person’s bad behavior by remembering that it’s not about you.
Don’t let others get to you. Refuse to get overly responsive to the negative feelings and provocations of others. Adopt strategies that regulate emotional arousal; otherwise negativity hijacks the thinking brain. Try simple deep breathing or declare time out. Remember that everyone gets rejected sometimes. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on. Don’t be discouraged if it takes a few times to get it right. Successful people are rejected over and over, but never stop trying.
When you’re rejected or something doesn’t go your way, counterpropose a new solution. Often, the person declining your offer is not rejecting you. He may even want to hear another idea. Successful individuals come back from rejection with new proposals. They’re creative at coming up with additional ways of looking at things and solving problems.
Don’t hesitate to unstick sticky situations. If you’re discussing an issue and the conversation is going off track, stop it and restart it on the right track. You could say: “This isn’t going productively. Let’s reshoot this scene from the beginning” or “Can we take it from the top?”
Don’t be self-focused. If you do focus on yourself, you’ll likely dwell on your shortcomings. Instead, think about your goals and what steps you need to get there.
Stop the self-talk. Counter self-defeating self-talk with truth talk: “You can be your own worst enemy, so give yourself a break.”
Don’t worry about looking stupid. If you are asked a question and you don’t know the answer, you can simply say, “I need to think about that and get back to you later.”
Learn to be patient. Don’t be impulsive or react to a situation without giving yourself time to cool off. Don’t be quick to blame. Recognize that other people have their ups and downs.
Think about others. Enter social interactions with this thought of making the experience itself enjoyable. Ask yourself, “What can I do to make you feel more comfortable?” This content is Copyright Sussex Publishers, LLC. 2008. This content is intended for personal use and may not be distributed or reproduced without the consent of Sussex Publishers, LLC. Please contact licensing@psychologytoday.com for more information.
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Reminds me of my family. I fought for years and years to be seen for who I really was and not the malignant evil child ….. but in fighting, it just reinforced their opinion of me. No matter what I did – it didn’t matter.
Peace
That would be me.... Violet
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Me too, Violet. Coincidence? I dont think so. as Finding peace too?
We suffer from the same "Decease"
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Dear Lupita,
I will by praying that you can find a new job. I am hoping that something opens up for you in a public school. I think the pay, benefits, and support from administration would be a lot better.
((((Lupita)))))
Dear Violet,
I am very sorry that you related to what I wrote - the futility of it all still gets to me. ((((Violet)))) I hope you are feeling better from the flu. I am on the tail end of it - thank goodness, it was a nasty one!
Hey Lupita, Maybe we can come up with a technical term - how about Ncephalitis? (Inflammation in the brain resulting from N trauma), with the only treatment an Nectomy? :)
Take care,
Peace
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Finding Peace, that term, "Ncephalitis" sounds from a genious, from a mastermind, sounds great!!!!!!!!! just so perfect!!!!!!!
Inflamation of the encephalus, inflamation of the head!!!!!!!!!!!
You just had the most creative term creation!!!!!!!!!!
Loved it.
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
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Hi Lupita,
Glad you liked it!! :lol:
I thought of another one this morning - since the thought of an N can induce vomiting, how about N-emesis (I wrote that and took a second look :shock: - put together it spells Nemesis - how very appropriate!!)
Take care,
Peace
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Finding Peace, that is brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Simply Brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!
I am at home trying to practice some relaxing and trying to forget about work, trying to practice some detachment. Very hard.
But I feel a little better.
Second period, after the librarian has yelled at me in front of my students, not to send students to the media center, she sent a note during my class time, to send a student there because she had sent aproval. I said if my boss gives the order I will do it, not for the librarian. The kid was upset, but I called her father and explained. Hope that they understand.
Third period, a student asked for permission to go to the bathroom. She went to the icecream shop one block down the school, with another teacher. I called the office to ask them to get her back because she had taken too much time in the bathroom. I had to write her up. What is a surprise to me is that a teacher does not ask her where is she coming from, why dos he take her outside the school, why did not he sent her back to my class. So, she got a detention, but they did not blame the teacher at all for being such a jerk. He wanted to get me in trouble, the idiot. But I did the correct thing calling the office and write them up.
Sixth period, the usual abuse.
The rest of the week was very nice, exceptionally nace. No problems at all Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
But spring brake is coming up and will rest. Summer I will try to get into public school.
Please, dear friends of the board, pray for me, I need to detach. The Detachmetn Paradox book says that the most you detach the more successful youa re in your job.
Also I need to feel well for the 176 students that do nice things and work hard for me, and not allow four "bad appoles" make me feel bad. It is silly of my part to feel bad with 98% success and feel bad for 2% of failure.
But I am trying to work in my error thinking.
Help me out friends, if you can,
Love to you all.
God bless you all.
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Happy Sunday to everyone.
I have time today. But not the energy to do anything I would like. Losing interest in almost everything.
God bless you all.
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Hi, I needed to give it a bump to this thread because my printer is not working and I need to read it constantly, it is helpful for me, and it might be helpful for others too. And then I have to go page by page trying to find it.
Please, ofr anybody that is seeing this for the first time, please, start from the beginning. Do not read just a part, it is important that you read it all.
Thank you, I am just trying to help. I read this articles and they calm me down in difficult moments where I am being proviked everyday at work.
Love to you all and God bless you. Thank you for being my friends.
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Signs of unresolved anger in mind and body
How do you know you have unresolved anger or bitterness towards someone? You're constantly fantasizing about their downfall or dreaming about them. "I tell patients that if they're thinking about the incident twice a year, then it's really not an issue," says psychologist Catherine Gildiner. "If they're thinking about it several times a day, they need to do something about it."
Paying attention to what your body is trying to tell you will also clue you in. Anger can express itself in a clenched jaw, dry mouth, shallow breathing and a raised voice, for instance. Inside the body, your blood pressure is probably spiking, your heart pounding and your gut tightening. The brain releases the "fight or flight" chemicals which flood your body, constricting blood vessels and potentially leading to problems such as migraines, high blood pressure, and even cardiovascular disease.
Learning to let go of negative feelings is good stress management
At the very least, holding on to resentments means you're investing time and energy in the past, not the present. "It siphons off energy that you need in the present to get healthy," says Mark Cummings.
Here's what the experts recommend to start unpacking some of that health-threatening emotional baggage:
Six steps to letting go of anger and resentment
Stop blaming yourself. In our stressful world, many people tend to blame themselves when things go wrong.
"You will never be able to forgive anyone if you can't forgive yourself first," says Dr. Gildiner. "When you let go of feelings of self-blame, you will immediately find it easier to forgive others."
Try not to take it personally. Anger about slights or wrongdoings and an inability to forgive arises from deep-seated issues back in childhood, such as feeling that your mother always favoured your brother or sister. Now, when your close friends don't seat you at the head table at their wedding, unresolved feelings of inadequacy surface with a vengeance.
Instead of thinking to yourself, I'm not good enough and that's why they didn't seat me at the head table,' recognize that the reason probably has nothing to do with you, like the fact that they didn't have any room left at the head table. Not personalizing an event makes it much easier to let go of resentment.
Deal with your feelings. Unresolved anger or bitterness may make it difficult for you to focus on the rest of your life.
Acknowledging your feelings is the first step to dealing with them. You may then to decide to approach whoever's upset you and discuss how you feel. Or if you feel that's not an option, you may find that understanding why you feel the way you do is enough to let you move on.
Put yourself in the other person's shoes. When someone says or does something that hurts you, recognize that often it's because they feel jealous or frustrated themselves.
Maybe you got the promotion, for instance, and they didn't. See the sadness in their actions and use it to let go of your negative feelings.
Make peace with the past. Even if a person you feel anger toward is no longer alive, you still need to forgive and let go of those feelings.
There are different ways to do this. Some people find it helpful to write down all their hurt feelings and then to let them go by tearing up the list or burning it. By laying your resentments to rest you are less likely to be haunted by them.
Seek professional help. If anger and frustration patterns are taking over your life, you may need to get expert assistance to let it go.
If you have a family doctor, this is a good person to talk with. He or she may also refer you to other health professionals or programs in your community. The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) also offers a wide range of specialized mental health programs and services in locations across Canada.
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5. Change what we can,
let go of what we can't change
Learning to see the difference between things that we can change and things that we can't is the first step to letting go and freeing ourselves inside.
6. Emotions can be red flags or red lights
Guilt, regret, anger and anxiety can sometimes help us to see things in our lives that need to be fixed and changed and worked on. But they are useless emotions when they paralyze us. They are useless when there is nothing that we can do to heal them. When they are useless, we need to let them go.
7. Learning to tell the difference
We can learn to figure out when our emotions are trying to tell us something useful, or when they're causing us to lose track of what's important. The first step is to slow down, and find that place of peace inside. Then examine what exactly it is that you're angry or sad or anxious about. What would it take to make it right? Is there anything that you can do about it now? Is there anything you can do about it at some other time? If not, let it go. If so, set a new course.
8. Redirecting our focus
When we find our emotions have led us to a fork in the road, we can refocus and redirect the paths we have chosen to walk. What path can we take to lead us towards making whatever is wrong right? It helps to write down our thoughts and concerns and resolves. It helps to keep our focus on the paths we choose, and to let go of paralyzing emotions until the time when they can be resolved, and to concentrate on the moment at hand. We can all benefit from keeping a peace journal.
© 1996-2004 The People For Peace Project
www.WeWantPeaceOnEarth.com
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Featured in: Nutrition & LifeAccepting the things one cannot change is a very important skill to develop in order to reduce stress and stay healthy.
"May I have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."
Reinhold Niebuhr, 1926
Probably when you get right down to it, all unhappiness in our lives stems from having difficulty with part one or part two of the above saying. When we find ourselves wishing for something different in our lives, it is worth asking ourselves whether or not what we are wishing for is something that is within our control. If our wish is something that is not within our control, then it is perhaps best to accept what is, and let go of that desire. In the simplest of situations, it is a merely a matter of adjusting one's thinking. For example, if you are in a hurry and find yourself stuck in a traffic jam, the reality is there is nothing you can do to make traffic move more quickly no matter how hard you may wish otherwise. Tying oneself in emotional knots is not helpful nor healthful. Let go of the worry of being late. Instead, have the presence of mind to accept your current reality, and be at peace. The difference between being at peace and being extremely stressed comes down to the difference in how you think. Nothing has changed in terms of the physical reality of the situation, but the hormone and neurotransmitter response in your body will be radically different.
Letting go is a vital part of maintaining emotional health in the most difficult of times in our life. Life is forever changeable, never remaining the same, and it is certain that we will be parted from those we love either through a relationship ending, or through death. How we deal with these realities can mean the difference between health and disease. Hanging onto the past and not letting go can mess up hormone, neurotransmitter and peptide balance and over time this can create major problems in the body. So mourn, accept what is, say good bye, and let go.
Related Posts:
Recognize your Reality
How hormones, neurotransmitters and steroids work
Mind and body; psyche and soma
Katie, Byron Loving What Is Three Rivers Press, New York NY, 2002.
www.wellnesstips.ca
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Twice a month my children meet other kids and young adults to play Hero Clix. It's an action figure game hosted by Wiz Kids and our local collector's shop and it last five hours! I'm not comfortable leaving my 10-year-old daughter with a bunch of boys, so while they play, I spend the afternoon sitting in my car, catching up on work (with an occasional peek inside). Today, I read several short books which I had been putting off reviewing. And to my surprise, the time flew by. My husband even surprised me by showing up and taking me to lunch, next door.
But something strange happened when I returned home with the kids 2 � hours later. I walked into the house, sat down to check emails and went from relaxed, carefree mom to instant stressed-out mom. All of a sudden, the successful month I had last month didn't matter. It wasn't good enough.
I had to take a step back to see what triggered this reaction.
What in the emails I read sent me in a panic to find a way to earn more money? What made me feel as though I wasn't a success? And why did I allow this to happen? Why am I not content with where my life is and where it's headed?
And that's when it hit me. I have really high expectations of myself.
Instead of seeing the successful things I've accomplished, I see the things I didn't accomplish.
Instead of being proud of the fact that I brought in enough income to pay our bills and have a little spending money, I think it wasn't good enough because I didn't make enough to pay off a credit card bill in full.
Instead of realizing I was able to take my kids to school, bring them forgotten assignments, meet them for lunch, and do countless other things with them�because I work from home�I think of what I am not doing with or for them.
Instead of enjoying the free time I have, I feel guilty because the time isn't being used to pull in more income.
And that's when I realized I desperately need a change!
When did I get like this? When did this shell of a person become me? How can I have a successful, growing home business, and feel as though I am not meeting some standard? And whose standard am I trying to meet anyway?
Surely not the one I set for myself when I decided to raise a family and have kids. If I remember correctly, I didn't want to be a millionaire. I just wanted to make enough money and work a business that allowed me flexibility in watching my kids grow up.
If you find yourself wound so tight you can't enjoy the simple pleasures of life, it's time to take a look at your own life and make some drastic changes. Remember, we only have one life to live--live it well!Alyice Edrich is the author of several work from home e-books, and the editor of a national publication for BUSY parents. Subscribe to her free e-newsletter to get a free e-book and updates on her blog, Finding Me. http://thedabblingmum.com/joinezine.htm
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Before you can get rid of haunting memories, you must come to terms with the origin of those memories. You can not let go of anything that you try to suppress. Suppression is not a solution, it is only a band-aid on the problem. Talking to someone about these memories can assist you in coming to terms with them. If that is too much for you to do, buy a journal and write it down. Writing can be very therapeutic. Really, all you need is a way to get your feelings about these experiences out.
Now that you have mentally cleansed yourself, you can begin to "let go." Letting go means that you allow yourself to understand that any experience you have had, good or bad, is not your fault. You can get to the point where you know that each experience you've had the opportunity to witness is meant to be a lesson to you. You were meant to learn something from the situation so that you could advance to where you need to be in this life. When learning to let go, internalizing this first point is the most important.
Decide what lesson it is you were to learn from the experience that produced the memory. There is always a lesson in everything.
When you define the lesson you were meant to learn, create a mantra on paper, that you can commit to memory. This mantra should include the experience itself, as well as what you have learned from it. For example, if you have a painful memory of abuse, your mantra can read: "Through the memory of being emotionally abused, I am learning to be a stronger person and I will no longer allow anyone to take advantage of me."
Take the time to sit with this mantra and let your mind grab a hold of it. Allow yourself to make the memory of your mantra stronger than the memory of the experience you have had. Repeating it to yourself frequently will accomplish that goal.
Next, take your mantra and put it in a safe place so that if you ever forget it, or the memories are still painful, you can return to it easily.
Lastly, allow peace to enter your being. When you are at peace, and calm has become part of your life, it very difficult for negativity to live inside of you. In order for you to let go, you must accept peace.
Try doing easy breathing in and breathing out processes, once you have relaxed try thinking of a happy place, or try focus on the one thing you want best. for example: think of ice-cream or candy, anything that will take these bad memories out of your head. If you are stressing so much try sit down and calm your self by listening to classical music this will sooth your soul.
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Lupita!
Wow, there's a tonne of information here... I scanned through it (loved the part on Caesar), but will have to save it for more concentrated reading.
Thank you.
Bee
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Thank you Bet, thank you Iz. Thanks for your kind words.
I love this kind of threads, not for everybody, but many people like it too. I come to the thread and read it and calms me down when I have nxiety. When I fix my printer I am going to print it. It has a select group of readings that are of particular help to me and it might help to others too.
I have taken time to color special parts and to put together articles of the same kind. I like it very much and I know that some others like it too. So, I will keep working.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
God bless you.
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How to forgive
Step 1Think about what happened.
Step 2:
Acknowledge all of your feelings. There is often anger lurking behind any hurt or sadness you might feel.
Step 3:
Express your feelings - write them out, talk to a friend or simply allow yourself to feel what you feel.
Step 4:
Accept responsibility for your own emotions. Although you were wronged and your emotions may be justified, it is still up to you to decide when you're ready to stop feeling angry or upset.
Step 5:
Talk to the other person about the behavior that upset you and how it made you feel. The odds are that you won't feel truly ready to forgive until you know this person has heard and understood your perspective.
Step 6:
Try to understand the other person's perspective, even if you don't really agree with it.
Step 7:
Rebuild trust in the relationship. Make agreements about acceptable future behavior whenever appropriate.
Step 8:
Make the decision to forgive, and communicate your forgiveness to the other person. Once you've done this, make every effort to move on and let it go completely.
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This is a very nice website that you can visit. It was helpful for me. It might be helpful for some ofmy dear friends here in the board. You can see that I am feeling wonderfuly. I am on spring brake and working very hard on meditation, let go, detahcment and forgiveness. Sorry for the redundance, and abundance. Thank you God.
http://www.forgive-yourself.com/
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Thank you ((( Lupita )))
Your thread is one of many that is permanently bookmarked as a much valued resource. We seem to work in a similar way.
So glad to know that you are feeling wonderful and sounding refreshed, during your much deserved Spring break.
Thanks for this new link: forgive-yourself ........ which was something that I came to realise with insight regarding a real need to forgive myself and stop berating myself.
God Bless you. Still praying for you regarding a new, better, job, come summer break time.
Love, Leah
Like a river of love and self-acceptance flowing into a pool of healing; ...the energy of forgiveness exists
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Lea, dear very dear lea very very very dear lea:
We are not working in a similar way. With out knowing you were modeling for me. I confess that I copied your way because I noticed that it was very productive for me and many others. So, I decided to do it too. And it is working.
God put you here on this board ofr a reason.
Thank you Lea. You are not here by accident. Thank you lea and thank you God for people like you.
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Also, Lea, you made me realize that writing threads of whining and complaining brought a lot of answers from nice well meaning people, but did not bring any peace to my heart. Doing this kind of threads makes me feel better. You helped me because you set an example. There is no better way to teach than setting a good example.
I admire you Lea, I have never seen you makeing a pitty party of thread, never. That is the best example you can give to others.
Again Lea, you are not here by accident, God put you here for a reason. God does not MAke junk and God made you and me.
LOL
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Truly, God Bless You dear (((( Lupita ))))
I really do believe that your words from your dear heart were delivered as a blessed encouragement, truly because, of my hearts cry and personal prayer, recently.
And you speak such truth Lupita, God does not make junk, and also, He knew us before we were formed, each of us in our mother's womb, you and me -- God sees us as being worthy in His eyes. God lifts up those of whom the world looks down on and tries to trample on, yes, He truly does lift us up into His arms and steady us on a better pathway.
Praying that you find a much deserved, much better teaching placement, come summer break time.
God Bless You.
"Thank You" for your kind words of encouragement, of which I am so truly grateful.
Love, Leah
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Thank you Lea for your kind words.
Here is more about forgiveness.
Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK. Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience.
2. Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else.
3. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, or condoning of their action. What you are after is to find peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the "peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story."
4. Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes - or ten years -ago. Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings.
5. At the moment you feel upset practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body's flight or fight response.
6. Give up expecting things from other people, or your life , that they do not choose to give you. Recognize the "unenforceable rules" you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace and prosperity and work hard to get them.
7. Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you. Instead of mentally replaying your hurt seek out new ways to get what you want.
8. Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you. Forgiveness is about personal power.
9. Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive.
The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health. It also influences our attitude which opens the heart to kindness, beauty, and love.
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For many people forgiveness is one of the hardest steps of all in our progress toward freedom of spirit. Yet it is essential. For as long as we are unable to forgive, we keep ourselves chained to the unforgiven. We give them rent-free space in our minds, emotional shackles on our hearts, and the right to torment us in the small hours of the night. When it is time to move on, but still too hard, try some or all of these steps. (Note that these steps are appropriate for events resulting from an ongoing adult relationship with anyone. They may not all be appropriate for the random act of violence from a stranger, nor for someone who was abused as a child or while in some other position of true helplessness.)
1. Understand that forgiving does not mean giving permission for the behavior to be repeated. It does not mean saying that what was done was acceptable. Forgiveness is needed for behaviors that were not acceptable and that you should not allow to be repeated.
2. Recognize who is being hurt by your non-forgiveness. Does the other person burn with your anger, feel the knot in your stomach, experience the cycling and recycling of your thoughts as you re-experience the events in your mind? Do they stay awake as you rehearse in your mind what you would like to say or do to 'punish' them? No, the pain is all yours.
3. Do not require to know 'why' as a prerequisite to forgiveness. Knowing why the behavior happened is unlikely to lessen the pain, because the pain came at a time when you did not know why. Occasionally there are times when knowing why makes forgiveness unncessary, but they are rare. Don't count on it and don't count on even the perpetrator knowing why.
4. Make a list of what you need to forgive. What was actually done that caused your pain? Not what you felt, what was done.
5. Acknowledge your part. Were you honest about your hurt or did you hide the fact that the behavior hurt you? Did you seek peace by reassuring the perpetrator that it was all right? Did you stay when you could or should have left? If so, then you, too, have some responsibility. (Here you start to move away from being a victim.)
6. Make a list of what you gained from the relationship, whatever form of relationship it was. Looking back you may be focusing on the negatives, the hurts. Yet if they were repeated, you must have stayed to allow the repetition. You did not remove yourself. Why? There must have been some positives if you chose to stay around. What were they?
7. Write a letter to the person (no need to mail it). Acknowledge what you gained from the relationship, and express forgiveness for the hurts. Allow yourself to express all your feelings fully. Do not focus only on the hurts.
8. Create a ceremony in which you get rid of your lists and the letter, so symbolizing the ending of the link between you. You may choose to visualize placing them on a raft and watching it drift gently away down a river. You may prefer to burn them and scatter the ashes. You may invent some other form of ritualized separation.
9. Visualize the person you are forgiving being blessed by your forgiveness and, as a result, being freed from continuing the behavior that hurt you.
10. Now that you have freed yourself from the painful links and released the pain, feel yourself growing lighter and more joyous. Now you are free to move on with your life without that burden of bitterness. Do not look back in anger.
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About the Submitter
This piece was originally submitted by Diana Robinson, Ph.D., Professional Life Coach, Writer, Editor, Counselor, who can be reached at Diana@choicecoach.com, or visited on the web. Diana Robinson wants you to know: As a Professional Life Coach I welcome the chance to work with people seeking to reconnect with their own strengths and their own authenticity, people who are seeking balance in their lives, and to whom inner, as well as outer, success is important. I offer a half-hour complimentary coaching call and a free twice-monthly e-mail newsletter. For more information see my web site.
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Forgiving the Unforgivable
Religious teachings say that we have to forgive each other. Turn the other cheek. From our earliest childhood memories, our parents were telling us that we have to forgive our siblings when they hurt us or break our things. Forgive and forget. To hold a grudge will get you shunned and even ridiculed by others in society, “Ah just get over it. They said they were sorry.” We get this huge guilt complex dumped on us from all directions. We are expected to forgive everyone no matter what they do and no matter what their motivation was for doing it. Often, people aren’t even sorry that they have caused us pain and sorrow, yet we still have to offer up our forgiveness anyway. To refuse to forgive someone is often considered a greater sin then whatever the original crime was. But what about big stuff like infidelity, murder, kidnapping, and rape? What about the crimes of one society against another, like slavery, genocide, or destroying all of the art and history books of the losing team in a war? How do you forgive the really bad stuff and what if deep down in your most private heart you really don’t forgive them? Then what?
I tell you this, you are human, a perfectly natural normal human being. Do not treat yourself like you are the bad guy because you are honest with yourself and you refuse to live the lie of a forgiveness that you do not feel. If someone has committed a crime against your body, a crime against your heart, or a crime against your soul, you have a natural right to feel fear, anger, resentment, outrage and whatever else rushes through your heart and mind. What you do with that anger and rage is one thing, but you have the right to feel what you feel. Do not lie to yourself and pretend that you do not feel it. Do not try to force yourself to begin feeling something completely different. Real forgiveness will come if and when you are ready and not a moment before.
Does that mean that you are going to let that anger control you? No! You already had to suffer through the ugliness of someone else’s behaviors and choices, you should not allow the anger you feel to also rule over your life. Part of taking back your life and walking a path that is happy and healthy and eventually healing is by controlling what will and will not be allowed to dominate over you. That is why our personal freedoms are so vital to our well-being. A woman who has been raped has every right to hate the man who did it to her and she has the right to forgive him or to not forgive him in her own time. Until she is ready to forgive, she needs to make sure that the memory of that crime against her body and soul does not rule over her and keep her from moving forward with her own healing, her own life, and her own dreams. A group of people that are persecuted for their religious beliefs have a right to be angry and to not forgive those who would deny them religious freedom. However, if they allow that anger to control them, then they are never really free are they? Feeling anger and living anger are two very different things. Denying someone the right to feel anger insures that they will live the anger instead. Therefore, real forgiveness never happens.
Real forgiveness requires time - time to heal, time to forget, time to laugh, time to cry, time to breath deeply, time to rebuild, time to thrive, and time to detach. Then and only then can we really forgive each other for the horrible things that we do. Some things like a broken toy can be forgiven after a day or two. Other things like infidelity may take months and even years. Sometimes it never happens. Something like slavery can take many generations of time and distancing before we can detach enough to fully forgive. It is a matter of perspective and directionally proportional to the amount of pain and psychological damage that was caused.
It is naturally easier to forgive someone that appears to be truly sorry for their actions. It also helps if someone shows signs of trying to make things right again. Sometimes the person who is sorry is not always the one who makes things right again. One man may rape a woman, but a second man comes along and teaches her again that her body is a sacred and holy temple to be treasured. That second man makes her healing and forgiveness of the first man easier. A society who realizes that they have harmed a minority group but then later tries to make it right by educating their children and providing medical care with no strings attached goes a long way to begin the healing process.
Yes, we are the ones who ultimately benefit the most from being able to forgive those who harm us, but it must be a real forgiveness and not someone else’s dogma thrown in our face. Forgive those who have harmed you as much as you can in the moment. Be honest with yourself. Then forgive yourself for not being able to forgive 100%. Later when you have had some time to heal, forgive them a bit more. Do not torture yourself with guilt, just allow yourself real honest healing, in real honest time. If you never forgive them, then so be it. Perhaps in generations to come, your children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren will forgive them for having hurt you so deeply. Some things are simply too big to forgive in one lifetime. I am sorry that we still do such things to each other. I am also sorry that we further complicate the victims’ lives by requiring them to live the lie of forgiveness when there is no possible way for them to ever really feel it.
Copyright 2005, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow’s Edge
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Interesting article about forgiveness.
Unforgivable injuries are the injuries of intimate people. When they happen, hearts are broken, and the essence of intimacy is destroyed. So, the worst kind of human wounds occur not on battlefields but in our homes. The worst injurers are not enemies or strangers in a foxhole but our husbands and wives, children, parents, and friends. Where love has been a part of the relationship, the shrapnel of human destruction is strewn in our living rooms and bedrooms in the form of aborted dreams and wounded hopes. Wars may terminate with the signing of peace treaties, but intimate injuries have no such formal mechanism for ending them. The most intimate of injuries are often left festering and unresolved-either unforgiven or unforgivable.Still, forgiveness is possible to achieve. The reality is that more often than not, forgiveness occurs not as part of a transaction with the injurer but as the result of a solitary process doggedly and painfully pursued by a person who has been badly injured. In other words, forgiveness happens, but it too often happens with no outside help at all.
Unfortunately, an unforgivably wounded person must heal himself. The church or therapists may help, but without the opportunity to confront an offender directly, the offended person must still repair his own heart. Otherwise, he might waste his life waiting for either a chance to face his injurer, or a sincere apology that might never come. It is the “solitary model” of forgiveness and its phases that we will be discussing here. The ability of human beings to forgive the unforgivable-even if they have to do it alone-is a testament to all that is right about our species. It speaks to the fact that there remains, even at the start of the twenty-first century, an inner conscience-a need to make things right when people have hurt and been hurt by each other. Forgiveness, whether a mechanism for survival or a basic need of the conscience, nonetheless happens. And when it is final, it imparts peace to the forgiver and restores a modicum of kindness to the human community as a whole.
http://www.iloveulove.com/forgiveness/unforgivable1.htm
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Interesting books
http://www.forgivenessweb.com/RdgRm/forgiving_the_unforgivable.htm
Home Reading Room Message Board
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Forgiving the Unforgivable
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Forgiving the Unforgivable by Beverly Flanigan
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Aba Gayle's Story
Forgiving the Unforgivable
Forgiving the Unforgivable: Part 1
Sandy MacGregor Forgave the Unforgivable
Forgiving the Unforgivable by Lisa Collier Cool
Forgiving the Unforgivable - An Interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Forgiving the Unforgiveable by Lynn Kaska
13 Steps to Forgiving the Unforgivable
Forgiving the Unforgiveable
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Hi Lupita,
Have quickly read through the 3 articles just posted and intend to read them again, and post, later on.
Really interesting subject "Forgiveness"
Personally, initially, I forgave too soon, then sometime later on, as healing had progressed, I felt a deep desire to forgive, which I did.
Love, Leah
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Dear Lea, as I start to understand my mother, I start to forgive her. I want to forgive my coworkers. It is difficult. I have never been able to confront my abusers. Never.
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OK Lea, let us work together, I need to forgive the librarian who is poisoning children against me and behaves like a maffia person, and I need to forgive the bible teacher who also behaves like a maffia person.
I will not be able to confront them in the next couple of months. I just cant.
So, I have to forgive on my own with out any external locus of control. Just my inner strenght.
How did you forgive your abusers?
I need to survive the year the school year. Just four students misbehave, but four too many. Handfull. But if librarian and bible teacher are constantly "helping" I will never end.
OK, I need to renew my self.
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Accepting Powerlessness
Some of us have an easy time accepting the premise in this Step: that we are powerless over others. By the time we get to this Step, we're ready to give up and give in, Others have a struggle accepting powerlessness.
I love this Step. But I hate that I can't control. I hate being vulnerable and helpless. I don't like feeling uncomfortable or being in emotional pain. I get sick of having to detach and surrender. But the love affair with this Step comes in when I admit the truth. I am powerless over much in life, and when I try to have power where I have none, I get crazy. I can't control others, no matter how much I want to, no matter how much better I think I know what's right for them.
I can't control what others do, think, or feel, whether or how they choose to interact with me, whether or when they choose to grow and change, and whether or when they choose to recover from their addictions.
Sometimes I can't control myself.
I'm powerless over the backlog of feelings and negative beliefs I've accumulated. I'm powerless over my own and other people's addictions, including addictions to alcohol and misery. I can't control my children or other people's children. I'm powerless over results, life, circumstances, events. I can't control the course of relationships. I can't control timing.
God, I wish I could control timing.
But I can't.
When I try to control myself by rigidly repressing my thoughts and feelings, I lose myself. I fall deeper into the pit of myself and the morass of codependency.
When I try to control other people, I make them and myself crazy. When I try to control addictions, the addictions control me. When I try to control what others think of me, I turn into a puppet on strings. Controlling makes me and others crazy. It puts me under the control of whatever I'm trying to influence, I lose myself. I lose touch with myself.
And other people get angry with me and tend to back off.
When I try to control situations and circumstances, I set up blocks to events moving forward. When I spend my time and energy trying to have power when I have none, I lose my ability to live my own life.
Controlling sets up a peculiar energy. People can feel it — even if we're just thinking about it and not acting on it. People react to it — sometimes by deliberately doing what we are trying to make them stop doing, or not doing what we are trying to make them do. It's an energy controlled by fear.
It's natural to want to control others, especially when they're hurting themselves or us, or when things aren't working out to our liking. But it isn't our job to take care of others — to take care of their feelings, thoughts, decisions, growth, and responsibilities. It is our job to do that for ourselves.
Step One does not imply irresponsibility or helplessness. We are not saying, "I can't help myself because of what others are doing or have done to me." We are saying the opposite: that we are responsible for ourselves and our affairs. Others are responsible for themselves and their affairs — whether or not we like how they are handling them.
We are responsible for ourselves, for directing our life energy toward our path, for creating a wholesome, fulfilling life for ourselves. When we become open to allowing that to happen, then it will.
We are responsible for stopping our own pain, facing and dealing with our own fears, saying no, giving ourselves what we need, setting boundaries we need to set, and making choices and decisions we need to make to take care of ourselves — in any circumstance or situation.
We are not victims.
When we accept powerlessness, we will become empowered to take care of ourselves. When we begin taking care of ourselves, we will begin living our lives, and all that is meant to come to us will be ours. When we stop controlling others, we can allow and trust them to live their lives.
This Step grounds us in reality and in ourselves. It centers us. It balances us. It brings us back home to ourselves.
When we stop controlling, things fall into place. And we find that our place in this world is a good place. Eventually, we become grateful for the way things work out because it's better than what we could have accomplished with our controlling behavior.
We are powerless over so much more than anyone taught us. Accepting that means we're free to own our true power in life, which is also so much more than anyone told us. We have power to think, feel, solve problems, set boundaries, set and reach goals, create, heal, take care of and love ourselves unconditionally, and love those around us unconditionally.
What am I powerless over? Almost everything I want to control.
The Detachment Step
The First Step is the Step that helps us begin detaching — a recovery concept that means we release and detach from others — lovingly, whenever possible.
This Step helps us begin to identify the proper use and abuse of willpower. We begin feeling instead of running from our emotions. We identify how we have neglected ourselves, so we may better love ourselves in any circumstance.
It is the first step toward removing ourselves as victims of others, of ourselves, of life.
This is the Detachment Step.
This Step is about boundaries. We learn the limits and extent of ourselves and our responsibilities. We learn to identify what we can and cannot do. We learn to identify when we're trying to do the impossible or trying to do that which is not our job.
Then, we stop doing the impossible and focus our attention on the possible — living our own lives, taking care of ourselves, feeling and responding appropriately to our feelings. We can love ourselves and others without feeling the overwhelming need to control and manipulate them and their situations to our liking.
Often, this Step puts us in touch with our feelings: feelings of fear, hurt, or shame. It puts us in touch with grief. At first, this Step can feel dark and frightening. It doesn't have to, not for long. It renders us powerless over what we cannot control, so we can become empowered. Once we accept whatever loss or area of powerlessness we're facing, we're free to feel and deal with our feelings, then move forward with life.
We'll take this Step when we're ready. When we're worn out, when we've exerted all our attempts to manage and control, when we're tired of feeling crazy and fighting battles we cannot win, we'll surrender. When it's time, this Step will find us and do its work.
Let it. Let it bring us home. Let it take the burden of controlling and feeling so responsible for others off our backs. Let the peace, relief, and comfort of this Step sink in.
Detach. Detach from the fear. Detach from the need to control. Focus on ourselves, and let ourselves be. Stop trying so hard and doing so much, when doing so much doesn't work.
Love and accept ourselves, as is, no matter what our present circumstances. The answer will come. The solution will come. But not from trying so hard.
The answer will come from detachment.
We are powerless over others, and our lives have become unmanageable. And for now, that's all we need to be. That's who we are, and it's good enough.
Become sensitive to feelings of powerlessness and unmanageability. Become sensitive to what it feels like — on the overt and the more subtle levels.
Take this Step in the beginning of recovery. Then take it again as needed. Take it whenever the codependent crazies set in. Take it whenever we believe that things are out of control and our lives are a mistake. Take it when we find ourselves taking care of others and wondering if we have a right to take care of ourselves. Take it when we start ignoring our feelings. Take it when we start obsessing about others or worrying about our future or the future of another. Take it when we start believing others control our happiness.
Take it when we neglect ourselves.
Take it when we get stuck.
When we don't know what to do next, we can take this Step.
Think about it. Let it sink in. Let it define us, and our present and past circumstances. Let it heal, help, and comfort. It always brings us home — to ourselves, to reality, and to mastering the spiritual lesson in our current circumstances.
The first word in this First Step is we. Self-acceptance, based on this simple definition of ourselves, feels good. We are not alone, not anymore. There are many of us practicing this Step daily. There are many of us who share the problem. We may have felt alone, but we are not unique in our pain or our dilemma. Neither are we isolated in our solution. There is power in the community of recovery, power in taking this Step in the privacy of our own homes, and in group settings with others. We come together in this Step, as a "we," to share our common problem and solution. The sharing in community makes the problem grow smaller and the solution more imminent.
There is a place I get to in my relationships with people, and life, that is dark and ineffective. It is a place ruled by fear and an instinctive desire to control.
I have done it overtly — trying to control an alcoholic's drinking by focusing my life around that person.
I have done it quietly — trying to control and repress my feelings, trying to control a particular situation, ferreting into myself until I barely existed, repeating unsuccessful similar efforts to solve a problem, or pretending a particular problem doesn't exist. I get to that dark place when I allow others to control me or when I allow negative beliefs or unresolved feelings from my past to control me.
I get to that place when I don't do what I need to do to take care of myself with people, because I am afraid to do so.
This Step takes me out of that dark place. It helps me remember who I am. I can't control others, and I get crazy when I try to. I don't have to control others. I don't have to take care of them. I don't have to control life, or situations, for life to work.
It is safe now to trust. It is safe now to detach. I can accept myself, my problems, my current situation, and all my unmanageability. I can detach, because holding on so tightly doesn't work. I can relax and just be me. And I can love, accept, and take care of myself.
The first time I took this Step on my codependency issues, when it really sank down from my head to my soul, it brought freedom and the gift of detachment. For the first time, I understood, in my heart, that I could not control another. This Step brought relief and the ability to begin tending to the affairs of my own life.
This Step still brings relief, each time I take it.
This Step gives us permission to be who we are. This is the Step where we accept ourselves, our powerlessness, and our present circumstances, in peace, grace, and trust that all is, and will be, well.
We surrender. Then we watch as manageability sets in.
This Step takes us to a safe place, a comfortable place. Let ourselves go there, as often as we need to. We can trade in lives based on fear, control, and shame for lives that are manageable.
Each Step has its own work to do in our lives. Each Step is important,
The work, the healing, begins with the First.
Activities
1. Have you been trying to exert power or influence where you may, in reality, have none? Have you been trying to control someone or something, trying harder and harder with less and less beneficial results?
2. Who or what in your life is making you feel crazy and causing you stress? Whom do you feel victimized by? Who do you feel is now controlling you, your emotions, or some other area of your life? What situations, feelings, or realities have you been running from, denying, or avoiding?
3. What would you have to face in your own life if you stopped trying to control someone or something? What might happen if you stopped allowing someone or something to control you?
4. What are some areas in your life that may reflect unmanageability? What is your current condition in these areas: emotions, finances, spirituality, physical health, career? What are you doing for fun, pleasure, and enjoyment?
5. What is the current state of your relationships with these people: family, friends, co-workers. Do you have any relationships, or are you feeling alone and isolated?
6. Does your mind feel clear and consistent? Who are you holding responsible for your emotions, finances, and health? Who are you holding responsible for the state of your relationships?
7. What are you doing in your life that you feel resentful about? What do you feel you have to do but don't want to? In what areas of your life do you feel you have no choices, no options? Who or what is trapping you? Whom do you most want to say something to? Why do you feel you can't say it?
8. What is the particular incident that propelled you to begin attending a Twelve Step group? If attending for a time, what is the issue that has been plaguing you most recently? Who or what are you most Worried about? When was the last time you did something loving and nurturing for yourself? Is there someone in your life that you feel is causing you misery? Do you feel that if he or she behaved differently, you would be happy?
« Previous
Copyright © 1990 by Melody Beattie
About the Author
Melody Beattie is the author of numerous books about personal growth and relationships, drawing on the wisdom of Twelve Step healing, Christianity, and Eastern religions. With the publication of Codependent No More in 1986, Melody became a major voice in self-help literature and endeared herself to millions of readers striving for healthier relationships. She lives in Malibu, California.
More by Melody Beattie In this book
» Step One
» Other Stories of Unmanageability
» The Roots of Control
» Accepting Powerlessness, The Detachment Step
Related Topics
Addictions
Self-Esteem
Reflection and Self Discovery
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Thank you Besee, thenk you so much. Vwery few people thank me for my work. But I am trying to detach from teh results, just enjoy the journey. Thank you again Besee. God bless you for giving me some validation.
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Just wanted to add to not to be discouraged if cannot detach perfectly. Just hurting less and less is good anough. Just being better today than yesterday, just a little bit. That is good anough at least for me. I am going very slowly but still going and that is good ebough for me.
Love to you all.
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Just wanted to add to not to be discouraged if cannot detach perfectly. Just hurting less and less is good anough. Just being better today than yesterday, just a little bit. That is good anough at least for me. I am going very slowly but still going and that is good ebough for me.
Love to you all.
((((( Lupita ))))))
Love to you too - thank you for this encouragement.
Leah
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Thank you Lea, Love you.
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Just wanted to add to not to be discouraged if cannot detach perfectly. Just hurting less and less is good anough. Just being better today than yesterday, just a little bit. That is good anough at least for me. I am going very slowly but still going and that is good ebough for me.
Love to you all.
Thank you for reminding me that being better today than yesterday, even a little bit is good.
This thread is a work of hope. Thank you so much ((Lupita))
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"By George I think she's got it!"
Accepting powerlessness.
::nodding::
One more important piece of the puzzle (we've discussed detachment here so much) but....
you've just layed it all out, haven't you?
Thanks,
Lighter
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Thank you Lighter. Working on this thread helped me a lot. I need to start one on let go the need to be right. I need that so much. Let go the need to be ricognized. Let go the need of wanting more.
Sotp being offended, let go the sense of self importance. Let us do an ego-ectomy. NO ego, no problems.
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Let us do an ego-ectomy
(((( Lupita )))) you are truly lovely!
Love to you,
Leah
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I needed to read about this and could not fins it.
I need to shrink M to its minimum exponent. and I do notknow how to look at him and not to feel anything.
It is hard.
I better do not even tell you trhe last things he has done because youa re going to get mad at me not at him.
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Lupita:
You can say or tell anything you want.
Don't worry about whether anyone gets "mad at you" - 99.99% of the time if any of us gets angry, we're just getting "mad FOR you" because we CARE about YOU. It may not be the healthiest reaction on our parts... but truly, caring about you is the reason for the emotion you're worried about. And you might be surprised! We might feel other kinds of things instead... but you really don't need to concern yourself about how we feel; that's our job and it doesn't change the fact that we care about you.
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I cannot believe I said these things years before. Some are very good stuff. I think, this year with M kind of made me go backwards a little but at the same time gave me a lot of understanding.
I hope I can detach and see him as the idiot he is and not to feel anything when I see him.
I will not feel anything when I see him. I tell my self that every day.
I visualize my self seeing him dancing very close with other women and visualize my self not feeling anything. Hope it happens.
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Recently, for the first time, I could enjoy my dancing with out thinking what M was doing or who he was danicng with. For the first time I could dance and enjoy the other gentlemen without fearing that M would be touching and flirting with another woman. These articles in this thread are very powerful.
Hope that you read them too.
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Well, I am trying to detach from M but it is very difficult. Reading this thread is my meditation. This thread has helped me a lot. Hope that it helps somebody else too.
So, I tell my self, he is not good for me. He is hard on me. He constantly hurts me. He does the things that I tell him I do not like, and he does it in purpose. Why do I want to be with somebody who hurst me? I do not understand my self but I am trying to logically detach from him.
I will not go tonight, intentionally to the place where he dances salsa knowing that I love to dance salsa, just not to see him. That is something I do rationally, but my heart is dying to go there and dance with him.