Anderson Layman’s Blog via Choices……………..
Related articles
- Recognizing Choices (toddlohenry.com)
- June 18: Recognizing Choices (melodybeattie.com)
Choices…
The Good Feelings
Melody Beattie writes:
Let yourself feel the good feelings too.
Yes, sometimes, good feelings can be as distracting as the painful, more difficult ones. Yes, good feelings can be anxiety producing to those of us unaccustomed to them. But go ahead and feel the good feelings anyway.
Feel and accept the joy. The love. The warmth. The excitement. The pleasure. The satisfaction. The elation. The tenderness. The comfort.
Let yourself feel the victory, the delight.
Let yourself feel cared for.
Let yourself feel respected, important, and special.
These are only feelings, but they feel good. They are full of positive, upbeat energy – and we deserve to feel that when it comes our way.
We don’t have to repress. We don’t have to talk ourselves out of feeling good – not for a moment.
If we feel it, it’s ours for the moment. Own it. If it’s good, enjoy it.
Today, God, help me be open to the joy and good feelings available to me.
Source: Daily Meditation ~ The Good Feelings – Miracles In Progress Codependents Anonymous Group
Gossip
A second shot of Melody Beattie for today! The Universe must think I need it:
Intimacy is that warm gift of feeling connected to others and enjoying our connection to them.
As we grow in recovery, we find that gift in many, sometimes surprising places. We may discover we’ve developed intimate relationships with people at work, with friends, with people in our support groups — sometimes with family members. Many of us are discovering intimacy in a special love relationship.
Intimacy is not sex, although sex can be intimate. Intimacy means mutually honest, warm, caring, safe relationships relationships where the other person can be who he or she is and we can be who we are — and both people are valued.
Sometimes there are conflicts. Conflict is inevitable. Sometimes there are troublesome feelings to work through. Sometimes the boundaries or parameters of relationships change. But there is a bond — one of love and trust.
There are many blocks to intimacy and intimate relationships. Addictions and abuse block intimacy. Unresolved family of origin issues prevent intimacy. Controlling blocks intimacy. Off balance relationships, where there is too great a discrepancy in power, prevent intimacy. Caretaking can block intimacy. Nagging, withdrawing, and shutting down can hurt intimacy.
So can a simple behavior like gossip — for example, gossiping about another for motives of diminishing him or her in order to build up ourselves or to judge the person. To discuss another person’s issues, shortcomings, or failures with someone else will have a predictable negative impact on the relationship.
We deserve to enjoy intimacy in as many of our relationships as possible. We deserve relationships that have not been sabotaged.
That does not mean we walk around with our heads in the clouds; it means we strive to keep our motives clean when it comes to discussing other people.
If we have a serious issue with someone, the best way to resolve it is to bring the issue to that person.
Direct, clean conversation clears the air and paves the way for intimacy, for good feelings about ourselves and our relationships with others.
Today, God, help me let go of my fear of intimacy. Help me strive to keep my communications with others clean and free from malicious gossip. Help me work toward intimacy in my relationships. Help me deal as directly as possible with my feelings.” via June 17: Gossip.
Powerlessness
Melody Beattie writes:
Willpower is not the key to the way of life we are seeking. Surrender is.
“I have spent much of my life trying to make people be, do, or feel something they aren’t, don’t want to do, and choose not to feel. I have made them, and myself, crazy in that process,” said one recovering woman.
“I spent my childhood trying to make an alcoholic father who didn’t love himself be a normal person who loved me. I then married an alcoholic and spent a decade trying to make him stop drinking.
“I have spent years trying to make emotionally unavailable people be emotionally present for me.
“I have spent even more years trying to make family members, who are content feeling miserable, happy. What I’m saying is this: I’ve spent much of my life desperately and vainly trying to do the impossible and feeling like a failure when I couldn’t. It’s been like planting corn and trying to make the seeds grow peas. It won’t work!
“By surrendering to powerlessness, I gain the presence of mind to stop wasting my time and energy trying to change and control that which I cannot change and control. It gives me permission to stop trying to do the impossible and focus on what is possible: being who I am, loving myself, feeling what I feel, and doing what I want to do with my life.”
In recovery, we learn to stop fighting lions, simply because we cannot win. We also learn that the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.
Today, I will accept powerlessness where I have no power to change things, and allow my life to become manageable.” via June 20: Powerlessness.
Letting Go of Self-Doubt
A second shot of Melody Beattie for today:
A married woman who had recently joined Al Anon called me one afternoon. She worked part-time as a registered nurse, had assumed all the responsibilities for raising her two children, and did all the household chores, including repairs and finances. “I want to separate from my husband,” she sobbed. “I can’t stand him or his abuse any longer. But tell me, please tell me,” she said, “do you think I can take care of myself?” — Codependent No More
Not only is it okay to take care of ourselves, we can take good care of ourselves.
Many of us, so confident about our ability to take care of others, doubt our inherent strength to care for ourselves. We may have come to believe, from our past or present circumstances, that we need to take care of others and we need others to take care of us. This is the ultimate codependent belief.
No matter where this self-defeating belief was born, we can release it and replace it with a better one, a healthier one, a more accurate one.
We can take care of ourselves — whether we are in or out of a relationship. Everything we need will be provided. We will have loved ones, friends, and our Higher Power to help.
Knowing that we can take care of ourselves doesn’t mean we won’t have feelings of fear, discomfort, doubt, anger, and fragility at times. It means we practice “courageous vulnerability,” as Colette Dowling called it in Cinderella Complex. We may feel scared, but we do it anyway.
Today, God, help me know how I can take care of myself.” via June 19: Letting Go of Self-Doubt.
Few books have been more useful to me in my life — if any of the codependency scenarios resonate with you, I recommend you purchase it, the workbook and ‘The Language of Letting Go‘…
Making Life Easier
Melody Beattie writes:
Life doesn’t have to be hard.
Yes, there are times we need to endure, struggle through, and rely on our survival skills. But we don’t have to make life, growth, recovery, change, or our day-to-day affairs that hard all the time.
Having life be that hard is a remnant of our martyrdom, a leftover from old ways of thinking, feeling, and believing. We are worthy, even when life isn’t that hard. Our value and worth are not determined by how hard we struggle.
If we’re making it that hard, we may be making it harder than it needs to be, said one woman. Learn to let things happen easily and naturally. Learn to let events, and our participation in them, fall into place. It can be easy now. Easier than it has been. We can go with the flow, take the world off our shoulders, and let our Higher Power ease us into where we need to be.
Today, I will stop struggling so hard. I will let go of my belief that life and recovery have to be hard. I will replace it with a belief that I can walk this journey in ease and peace. And sometimes, it can actually be fun.Source: Daily Meditation ~ Making Life Easier – Miracles In Progress Codependents Anonymous Group
Recognizing Choices
Melody Beattie writes:
We have choices, more choices than we let ourselves see.
We may feel trapped in our relationships, our jobs, our life. We may feel locked into behaviors — such as caretaking or controlling.
Feeling trapped is a symptom of codependency. When we hear ourselves say, “I have to take care of this person… .”
“I have to say yes… ” “I have to try to control that person…
“I have to behave this way, think this way, feel this way….” we can know we are choosing not to see choices.
That sense of being trapped is an illusion. We are not controlled by circumstances, our past, the expectations of others, or our unhealthy expectations for ourselves. We can choose what feels right for us, without guilt. We have options.
Recovery is not about behaving perfectly or according to anyone else’s rules. More than anything else, recovery is about knowing we have choices and giving ourselves the freedom to choose.
Today, I will open my thinking and myself to the choices available to me. I will make choices that are good for me.” via June 18: Recognizing Choices.
Surrender
Melody Beattie writes:
Master the lessons of your present circumstances.
We do not move forward by resisting what is undesirable in our life today. We move forward, we grow, we change by acceptance.
Avoidance is not the key; surrender opens the door.
Listen to this truth: We are each in our present circumstances for a reason. There is a lesson, a valuable lesson that must be learned before we can move forward.
Something important is being worked out in us, and in those around us. We may not be able to identify it today; but we can know that it is important. We can know it is good.
Overcome not by force, overcome by surrender. The battle is fought, and won, inside ourselves. We must go through it until we learn, until we accept, until we become grateful, until we are set free.
Today, I will be open to the lessons of my present circumstances. I do not have to label, know, or understand what I’m learning; I will see clearly in time. For today, trust and gratitude are sufficient.
Maybe I should change the name of this blog to The Daily Beattie?! :-D
Related articles
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
- …on Control (toddlohenry.com)
- Are You Making Someone Else Your Higher Power? (toddlohenry.com)
- Codepedence is not just an issue for partners of addicts (toddlohenry.com)
- Letting the Cycles Flow (toddlohenry.com)
- …on feeling good (toddlohenry.com)
- Loving Ourselves Unconditionally (toddlohenry.com)
- Go easy (toddlohenry.com)
Surrender
Melody Beattie writes:
Master the lessons of your present circumstances.
We do not move forward by resisting what is undesirable in our life today. We move forward, we grow, we change by acceptance.
Avoidance is not the key; surrender opens the door.
Listen to this truth: We are each in our present circumstances for a reason. There is a lesson, a valuable lesson that must be learned before we can move forward.
Something important is being worked out in us, and in those around us. We may not be able to identify it today; but we can know that it is important. We can know it is good.
Overcome not by force, overcome by surrender. The battle is fought, and won, inside ourselves. We must go through it until we learn, until we accept, until we become grateful, until we are set free.
Today, I will be open to the lessons of my present circumstances. I do not have to label, know, or understand what I’m learning; I will see clearly in time. For today, trust and gratitude are sufficient.
Loving Ourselves Unconditionally
But most of all? You deserve it from YOURSELF! Melody Beattie writes:
Love yourself into health and a good life of your own.
Love yourself into relationships that work for you and the other person. Love yourself into peace, happiness, joy, success, and contentment.
Love yourself into all that you always wanted. We can stop treating ourselves the way others treated us, if they behaved in a less than healthy, desirable way. If we have learned to see ourselves critically, conditionally, and in a diminishing and punishing way, it’s time to stop. Other people treated us that way, but it’s even worse to treat ourselves that way now.
Loving ourselves may seem foreign, even foolish at times. People may accuse us of being selfish. We don’t have to believe them.
People who love themselves are truly able to love others and let others love them. People who love themselves and hold themselves in high esteem are those who give the most, contribute the most, love the most.
How do we love ourselves? By forcing it at first. By faking it if necessary. By “acting as if.” By working as hard at loving and liking ourselves as we have at not liking ourselves.
Explore what it means to love yourself.
Do things for yourself that reflect compassionate, nurturing, self-love.
Embrace and love all of yourself — past, present, and future. Forgive yourself quickly and as often as necessary. Encourage yourself. Tell yourself good things about yourself.
If we think and believe negative ideas, get them out in the open quickly and honestly, so we can replace those beliefs with better ones.
Pat yourself on the back when necessary. Discipline yourself when necessary. Ask for help, for time; ask for what you need.
Sometimes, give yourself treats. Do not treat yourself like a pack mule, always pushing and driving harder. Learn to be good to yourself. Choose behaviors with preferable consequences — treating yourself well is one.
Learn to stop your pain, even when that means making difficult decisions. Do not unnecessarily deprive yourself. Sometimes, give yourself what you want, just because you want it.
Stop explaining and justifying yourself. When you make mistakes, let them go. We learn, we grow, and we learn some more. And through it all, we love ourselves.
We work at it, then work at it some more. One day we’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and find that loving ourselves has become habitual. We’re now living with a person who gives and receives love, because that person loves him- or herself. Self-love will take hold and become a guiding force in our life.
Today, I will work at loving myself. I will work as hard at loving myself as I have at not liking myself. Help me let go of self-hate and behaviors that reflect not liking myself. Help me replace those with behaviors that reflect self-love. Today, God, help me hold myself in high self-esteem. Help me know I’m lovable and capable of giving and receiving love.” via June 16: Loving Ourselves Unconditionally.
Letting the Cycles Flow
Melody Beattie writes:
Life is cyclical, not static. Our relationships benefit when we allow them to follow their own natural cycles.
Like the tide ebbs and flows, so do the cycles in relationships. We have periods of closeness and periods of distance. We have times of coming together and times of separating to work on individual issues.
We have times of love and joy, and times of anger.
Sometimes, the dimensions of relationships change as we go through changes. Sometimes, life brings us new friends or a new loved one to teach us the next lesson.
That does not mean the old friend disappears forever. It means we have entered a new cycle.
We do not have to control the course of our relationships, whether these be friendships or love relationships. We do not have to satisfy our need to control by imposing a static form on relationships.
Let it flow. Be open to the cycles. Love will not disappear. The bond between friends will not sever. Things do not remain the same forever, especially when we are growing and changing at such a rapid pace.
Trust the flow. Take care of yourself, but be willing to let people go. Hanging on to them too tightly will make them disappear.
The old adage about love still holds true: “If it’s meant to be, it will be. And if you love someone, let them go. If they come back to you, the love is yours.”
Today, I accept the cyclical nature of life and relationships. I will strive to go with the flow. I will strive for harmony with my own needs and the needs of the other person.” via June 15: Letting the Cycles Flow.
Related articles
- Hanging on to Old Relationships (toddlohenry.com)
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
- Affirm Yourself… (toddlohenry.com)
- Loving Ourselves Unconditionally (toddlohenry.com)
- Rise to the Occasion (toddlohenry.com)
- On attachments… (toddlohenry.com)
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
- …on Taking One Day at a Time (toddlohenry.com)
- “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It” – An Interview with Melody Beattie (wheretheclientis.com)
Enjoyment
Melody Beattie writes:
Life is not to be endured; life is to be enjoyed and embraced.
The belief that we must square our shoulders and get through a meager, deprived existence for far-off “rewards in Heaven” is a codependent belief.
Yes, most of us still have times when life will be stressful and challenge our endurance skills. But in recovery, were learning to live, to enjoy our life, and handle situations as they come.
Our survival skills have served us well. They have gotten us through difficult times — as children and adults. Our ability to freeze feelings, deny problems, deprive ourselves, and cope with stress has helped us get where we are today. But we’re safe now. We’re learning to do more than survive. We can let go of unhealthy survival behaviors. We’re learning new, better ways to protect and care for ourselves. We’re free to feel our feelings, identify and solve problems, and give ourselves the best. We’re free to open up and come alive.
Today, I will let go of my unhealthy endurance and survival skills. I will choose a new mode of living, one that allows me to be alive and enjoy the adventure.” via June 14: Enjoyment.
Related articles
- Codepedence is not just an issue for partners of addicts (toddlohenry.com)
- Basics of Codependency (toddlohenry.com)
- Choices (toddlohenry.com)
- Fear & Codependency (toddlohenry.com)
- Are You Making Someone Else Your Higher Power? (toddlohenry.com)
- Letting Go of Self Doubt (toddlohenry.com)
- Why does life have to be so hard? (toddlohenry.com)
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
The Key To Healing It Is Feeling It; Embrace All Your Feelings As A Gift!
The challenge with curation is often finding the best 3 paragraphs to share. Kute Blackson’s post is so good today that I just grabbed the whole think. Sorry, Kute – hope you don’t mind…
All of your feelings are a gift.
Yet we often judge feelings as good or bad. We often try to eliminate the bad ones and feel only the good ones. However, in doing so, you end up disconnecting from the full range of your heart, self-expression and power.
To the degree that you suppress what you might think of as the negative feelings is to the degree that you also disconnect from your capacity to fully experience the positive feelings.
Ultimately, there are no good or bad feelings. Feelings are just energy moving through your body. Every feeling is a signal, which if you pay attention to will point you in the direction of something that you actually need to deal with, a part of you that needs loving compassion or needs to be released. Even the feelings you label as bad are simply a signal. They are like a fire alarm trying to get you to pay attention to a part of yourself. If you don’t listen, the signal gets louder and louder until you do. If you keep suppressing, the feelings end up coming out anyway most likely in a not so gracious way (AKA -You lose it, or have a meltdown and explode)!
When you suppress your authentic feelings, those feelings simply remain incomplete buried deep within you. You often end up recreating situations and relationships in your life based on those old incomplete feelings, as there is a deep impulse within us to complete what is incomplete.
What you might call “bad” feelings show you the parts of yourself that need your love and healing. Healing is applying love to the parts of yourself that are hurting. When you hold a space of compassion for yourself and the full range of your feelings without any judgment, this compassion has a transformative effect.
As children we learn to disconnect from our authentic feelings. We disconnect as a way to avoid pain, hurt, rejection, shame etc. And it becomes a survival mechanism in order to function and protect ourselves. That way of being may have “worked” for us as children to survive, but take this way of being into our adulthood and end up recreating those same incomplete childhood patterns over and over, it only creates suffering.
What feelings are you suppressing?
What feelings are you disconnecting from?
What feelings are you afraid of feeling and acknowledging within your self?
Take an honest look.
The feelings that you suppress, or are unwilling to acknowledge and embrace, will run you!
The feelings that you are unable to have will end up having you.
When you suppress your real feelings, whether anger, sadness or hurt – over time, you might end up finding yourself feeling depressed, heavy, irritated and lacking aliveness. The heaviness is a sign that you are suppressing and ends up clouding your ability to now feel joy in the present moment.
No feelings last forever. But we are sometimes afraid to feel the feelings we think are bad because we are worried we will stay stuck there. Know this: all feelings pass. None are permanent. To the degree you can feel them, you will let them go and feel more alive.
So do not resist the negative feelings, feel them fully with total awareness whilst connecting to the sensations in your body. They will move through you and dissolve.
Similarly, no positive feelings will last forever either. So when you feel a positive feeling, simply feel it fully with total awareness, without trying to make it stay, and you might find yourself experiencing it longer. What often happens is in an effort to keep the “good” feelings we try to make it stay, which creates a contraction. In doing so we start to lose the positive feeling even more quickly!
When you are willing to embrace and love the dark in you, you are then able to more fully embrace your light. However, let me be clear, it is NOT about wallowing in your negativity and dark feelings using that as an excuse. Feeling authentically isn’t wallowing or indulging. It is simply about acknowledging and integrating what your feelings have to share with you and allowing them to move through you in a healthy way.
Ultimately you are not your feelings, whether good or bad. You are beyond them all. Your relationship with your feelings is as important as the feelings themselves. No need to be afraid or run away from them.
Your feelings are a portal into a deeper dimension of yourself and thus a deeper dimension of your own Divinity and freedom.
Your feelings are a gift. Sometimes you just need to patiently unwrap them, so you can find the important message inside.
When you feel it, you heal it.
And when you heal it, you can be more of the real you that you are meant to be.
It is time.
Love. Now.
Source: The Key To Healing It Is Feeling It…Embrace All Your Feelings As A Gift!
Hanging on to Old Relationships
More Melody Beattie:
“We want to travel baggage-free on this journey. It makes the trip easier.
Some of the baggage we can let go of is lingering feelings and unfinished business with past relationships: anger; resentments; feelings of victimization, hurt, or longing.
If we have not put closure on a relationship, if we cannot walk away in peace, we have not yet learned our lesson. That may mean we will have to have another go-around with that lesson before we are ready to move on.
We may want to do a Fourth Step (a written inventory of our relationships) and a Fifth Step (an admission of our wrongs). What feelings did we leave with in a particular relationship? Are we still carrying those feelings around? Do we want the heaviness and impact of that baggage on our behavior today?
Are we still feeling victimized, rejected, or bitter about something that happened two, five, ten, or even twenty years ago?
It may be time to let it go. It may be time to open ourselves to the true lesson from that experience. It may be time to put past relationships to rest, so we are free to go on to new, more rewarding experiences.
We can choose to live in the past, or we can choose to finish our old business from the past and open ourselves to the beauty of today.
Let go of your baggage from past relationships.
Today, I will open myself to the cleansing and healing process that will put closure on yesterday and open me to the best today, and tomorrow, has to offer in my relationships.” Source: Hanging on to Old Relationships
Related articles
- Choices (toddlohenry.com)
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
- Living Our Lives (toddlohenry.com)
- Codepedence is not just an issue for partners of addicts (toddlohenry.com)
- Letting Go of Self Doubt (toddlohenry.com)
- Rise to the Occasion (toddlohenry.com)
Moving Forward
Melody Beattie writes:
Much as we would like, we cannot bring everyone with us on this journey called recovery. We are not being disloyal by allowing ourselves to move forward. We don’t have to wait for those we love to decide to change as well.
Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to grow, even though the people we love are not ready to change. We may even need to leave people behind in their dysfunction or suffering because we cannot recover for them. We don’t need to suffer with them.
It doesn’t help.
It doesn’t help for us to stay stuck just because someone we love is stuck. The potential for helping others is far greater when we detach, work on ourselves, and stop trying to force others to change with us.
Changing ourselves, allowing ourselves to grow while others seek their own path, is how we have the most beneficial impact on people we love. We’re accountable for ourselves. They’re accountable for themselves. We let them go, and let ourselves grow.
Today, I will affirm that it is my right to grow and change, even though someone I love may not be growing and changing alongside me.
Related articles
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
- Codepedence is not just an issue for partners of addicts (toddlohenry.com)
- …on Control (toddlohenry.com)
- Go easy (toddlohenry.com)
- “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It” – An Interview with Melody Beattie (wheretheclientis.com)
- Loving Ourselves Unconditionally (toddlohenry.com)
- Are You Making Someone Else Your Higher Power? (toddlohenry.com)
- Fear & Codependency (toddlohenry.com)
- …on feeling good (toddlohenry.com)
Sadness
Melody Beattie via:
“Ultimately, to grieve our losses means to surrender to our feelings.
So many of us have lost so much, have said so many good-byes, have been through so many changes. We may want to hold back the tides of change, not because the change isn’t good, but because we have had so much change, so much loss.
Sometimes, when we are in the midst of pain and grief, we become shortsighted, like members of a tribe described in the movie Out of Africa.
“If you put them in prison;’ one character said, describing this tribe, “they die:’
“Why?” asked another character.
“Because they can’t grasp the idea that they’ll be let out one day. They think it’s permanent, so they die:’
Many of us have so much grief to get through. Sometimes we begin to believe grief, or pain, is a permanent condition.
The pain will stop. Once felt and released, our feelings will bring us to a better place than where we started. Feeling our feelings, instead of denying or minimizing them, is how we heal from our past and move forward into a better future. Feeling our feelings is how we let go.
It may hurt for a moment, but peace and acceptance are on the other side. So is a new beginning.
God, help me fully embrace and finish my endings, so I may be ready for my new beginnings.” via June 11: Sadness.
Related articles
- “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It” – An Interview with Melody Beattie (wheretheclientis.com)
- Coping With Grief: How to Handle Your Emotions (everydayhealth.com)
- I’m Grieving and I’m Healing (bellableue.com)
- Group Uses Art Therapy to Work Through Grief (fox4kc.com)
- Grieving Dads Interview with Kelly Farley (miscarriedmom.wordpress.com)
- sitting with our sadness [daily om] (truelovejunkie.com)
- Coping With Grief (seedsofempowerment.wordpress.com)
- Teaching Children the Skill of Grieving (psychcentral.com)
- How can you be happy after someone you love with all your heart has died? (angelabrentharris.com)
How to Release Shame and Love All of You
From the Tiny Buddha blog:
“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” African Proverb.
If you’ve had any experiences where you had to keep your truth quiet, particularly as a child, it’s time to reclaim your truth and value its power. By doing so, you will release energy, old shame, and subconscious blocks that may now be holding you back from living your life to the fullest.
It could be that you had lots of family secrets that your parents made sure you told no one about (which creates shame), or it could be you were bullied and felt unable to confide in anyone about it.
There are many circumstances where we have our truth kept locked in, and unintentionally we create shame around our truths. If you feel unable to speak your truth, then you feel shame. It’s nature’s law.
When we become shameful of our truths, we end up cutting off, discrediting, and devaluing a hugely important chunk of who we are and how we show up in the world.” Get more here: How to Release Shame and Love All of You | Tiny Buddha: Wisdom Quotes, Letting Go, Letting Happiness In.
Solving Problems
Melody Beattie writes:
“Shame is the first feeling that strikes me whenever I, or someone I love, has a problem;’ said one recovering woman.
Many of us were raised with the belief that having a problem is something to be ashamed of.
This belief can do many damaging things to us. It can stop us from identifying our problems; it can make us feel alienated and inferior when we have, or someone we love has, a problem. Shame can block us from solving a problem and finding the gift from the problem.
Problems are a part of life. So are solutions. People have problems, but we, and our self-esteem, are separate from our problems.
I’ve yet to meet a person who didn’t have problems to solve, but I’ve met many who felt ashamed to talk about the problems they actually had solved!
We are more than our problems. Even if our problem is our own behavior, the problem is not who we are — it’s what we did.
It’s okay to have problems. It’s okay to talk about problems at appropriate times, and with safe people. It’s okay to solve problems.
And we’re okay, even when we have, or someone we love, has a problem. We don’t have to forfeit our personal power or our self-esteem. We have solved exactly the problems we’ve needed to solve to become who we are.
Today, I will let go of my shame about problems.” via June 10: Solving Problems.
Responsibility
Melody Beattie writes:
Self care means taking responsibility for ourselves. Taking responsibility for ourselves includes assuming our true responsibilities to others. Sometimes, when we begin recovery, we’re worn down from feeling responsible for so many other people. Learning that we need only take responsibility for ourselves may be such a great relief that, for a time, we disown our responsibilities to others.
The goal in recovery is to find the balance: we take responsibility for ourselves, and we identify our true responsibilities to others.
This may take some sorting through, especially if we have functioned for years on distorted notions about our responsibilities to others. We may be responsible to one person as a friend or as an employee; to another person, we’re responsible as an employer or as a spouse. With each person, we have certain responsibilities. When we tend to those true responsibilities, we’ll find balance in our life.
We are also learning that while others aren’t responsible for us, they are accountable to us in certain ways.
We can learn to discern our true responsibilities for ourselves, and to others. We can allow others to be responsible for themselves and expect them to be appropriately responsible to us.
We’ll need to be gentle with ourselves while we learn.
Today, I will strive for clear thinking about my actual responsibilities to others. I will assume these responsibilities as part of taking care of myself.
Related articles
- Sadness (toddlohenry.com)
- Codepedence is not just an issue for partners of addicts (toddlohenry.com)
- …on Control (toddlohenry.com)
- Are You Making Someone Else Your Higher Power? (toddlohenry.com)
- …on feeling good (toddlohenry.com)
- Fear & Codependency (toddlohenry.com)
Bright, shiny objects! 
comments