Self-Centered Fear
This was posted by gr8ful2day on July, 2007:
Self-centered Fear
My resentment, resistance, and obsessive rumination come from a self-centered fear. I never thought of my self as self-centered - that is something spoiled celebrities of sports, movies, and rock do, right?
Well, I am definitely self centered, in a dark, fearful, and bad way.
It might well have started with my AF. AM was a quiet drinker, unlike my dad who had a highly dominating and aggressive personality. This sounds like a 'its my dad's fault' whine, but I really got stuck on wanting some caring words, something along the lines of 'I will change the way I treat you and talk to you, the way I treat your siblings, the way I act that is so embarrassing to you, to make you feel better."
Wow, now that I think about it, most memories of him are embedded with a the idea 'that's him, and I wish he could have been different'. Now THAT is classic codie controlling stuff!
I now realize that he had a limited toolbox, a few tools, really really big tools, but still only a few.
I could never have changed him. Even sober, he was not a 'hand-on-the shoulder with a few kind words' kind of guy. He would donate money to a men's homeless shelter 100% anonymously - he didn't even like to talk about it. He wasn't comfortable with the appearance of compassion. I think I, and my siblings and AM, knew that compassion was there and lived for the day that it would be openly expressed in a big personality change. I remember how much he admired Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley, but he could never have emulated the concern that they expressed so eloquently. (OK this is a can of political worms - their politics and methods are debatable, yes, but not their motivations.)
My self-centered fear, upon which I built resentment and resistance, was dependent on him changing. I had made a child's bargain - you change I will change. You don't change I will keep up the resentment and resistance.
In many ways, I never understood my father and to a degree I did not want to try, so strong was ego and my resentment. So in the present my fear is, to a degree, rooted in ignorance. To this day I have a lot of trouble reading other's emotions - sort of self-imposed autism. What I did toward AF, and AM, I am still doing to others.
The rumination, the endless obsessive psuedo-intellectual bull**** thinking, analyzing, anywhere-but-the-present brainwork, is just my drink to drown the fear a little. It never helps. I wish I could get a hangover from it so I'd know when to stop. Maybe if I held my breath when I think too much - that'll get me back to the present!
Ok, great, wonderful, and so now what?? I have a hint at where this passive resistance comes from - typical ACOA codie habits and continuing this behavior with the rest of the world. Getting rid of it - well, I need the HP's help to do that.
And I am making that request every day (although I forget occasionally).
And a little message to that little boy, JJ, who could not make his AF be different kind of dad: Go and tell him, and mom, that you love them, but don't get any expectations, ANY, as to the reaction, and DON"T expect change; but it will do you a lot of good to say it, especially if done with no expectations. Work on you - do things that are good for you, that make you healthy, that aren't meant to change others.
Postscript: I really didn't address the fear. I feared my AF and I fear others, just about everyone I encounter. How does that work with the codie stuff?
A child instinctively lets the parents control how they feel. The child's emotional life orbits around the parent's emotional life. The child trusts that if they feel bad the parent will make it better. Fear happens when the child has no sense of predictability in the parents' moods and a knowledge that the parent is sometimes very angry. So anger from the parent is very scary. A child knows instinctively that they have some control over their parents actions, as when a child acts/is lovable and cute when he/she seeks a hug or a cookie. If a child doesn't know if their limited power has any effect, then they are even more scared.
There is a conflict of instinct and reality: 1) The child 'knows' that a parent should be predictable, but in reality they are not. 2) the child 'knows' that they should be able to predictably create a positive response, but in reality they can't. This creates a lot of fear -self centered fear. And, for some children, (such a me) resentment and resistance is the reaction because they want to make a change that will never come.
It is a bit like the weather. We trust that it will get warmer from January onward. If it does not get warmer, we are unhappy. If it gets really cold one may actually get scared, because the earth is not only unreliable, it has become threatening. If we have no warm home and the only provider of warmth is the weather, then we are very scared and very angry when we are denied a spring that the earth should provide.
We have to let go of that expectation, and realize that we must make our own warmth, even if we cannot change the weather (or any person).
Self-centered Fear
Quote:
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear --
primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed
or would fail to get something we demanded.
Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands,
we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.
Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means
of reducing these demands.
The difference between a demand and a simple request
is plain to anyone.
c. 1953 AAWS, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 76
With permission, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed
or would fail to get something we demanded.
Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands,
we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.
Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means
of reducing these demands.
The difference between a demand and a simple request
is plain to anyone.
c. 1953 AAWS, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 76
With permission, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Well, I am definitely self centered, in a dark, fearful, and bad way.
It might well have started with my AF. AM was a quiet drinker, unlike my dad who had a highly dominating and aggressive personality. This sounds like a 'its my dad's fault' whine, but I really got stuck on wanting some caring words, something along the lines of 'I will change the way I treat you and talk to you, the way I treat your siblings, the way I act that is so embarrassing to you, to make you feel better."
Wow, now that I think about it, most memories of him are embedded with a the idea 'that's him, and I wish he could have been different'. Now THAT is classic codie controlling stuff!
I now realize that he had a limited toolbox, a few tools, really really big tools, but still only a few.
I could never have changed him. Even sober, he was not a 'hand-on-the shoulder with a few kind words' kind of guy. He would donate money to a men's homeless shelter 100% anonymously - he didn't even like to talk about it. He wasn't comfortable with the appearance of compassion. I think I, and my siblings and AM, knew that compassion was there and lived for the day that it would be openly expressed in a big personality change. I remember how much he admired Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley, but he could never have emulated the concern that they expressed so eloquently. (OK this is a can of political worms - their politics and methods are debatable, yes, but not their motivations.)
My self-centered fear, upon which I built resentment and resistance, was dependent on him changing. I had made a child's bargain - you change I will change. You don't change I will keep up the resentment and resistance.
In many ways, I never understood my father and to a degree I did not want to try, so strong was ego and my resentment. So in the present my fear is, to a degree, rooted in ignorance. To this day I have a lot of trouble reading other's emotions - sort of self-imposed autism. What I did toward AF, and AM, I am still doing to others.
The rumination, the endless obsessive psuedo-intellectual bull**** thinking, analyzing, anywhere-but-the-present brainwork, is just my drink to drown the fear a little. It never helps. I wish I could get a hangover from it so I'd know when to stop. Maybe if I held my breath when I think too much - that'll get me back to the present!
Ok, great, wonderful, and so now what?? I have a hint at where this passive resistance comes from - typical ACOA codie habits and continuing this behavior with the rest of the world. Getting rid of it - well, I need the HP's help to do that.
And I am making that request every day (although I forget occasionally).
And a little message to that little boy, JJ, who could not make his AF be different kind of dad: Go and tell him, and mom, that you love them, but don't get any expectations, ANY, as to the reaction, and DON"T expect change; but it will do you a lot of good to say it, especially if done with no expectations. Work on you - do things that are good for you, that make you healthy, that aren't meant to change others.
Postscript: I really didn't address the fear. I feared my AF and I fear others, just about everyone I encounter. How does that work with the codie stuff?
A child instinctively lets the parents control how they feel. The child's emotional life orbits around the parent's emotional life. The child trusts that if they feel bad the parent will make it better. Fear happens when the child has no sense of predictability in the parents' moods and a knowledge that the parent is sometimes very angry. So anger from the parent is very scary. A child knows instinctively that they have some control over their parents actions, as when a child acts/is lovable and cute when he/she seeks a hug or a cookie. If a child doesn't know if their limited power has any effect, then they are even more scared.
There is a conflict of instinct and reality: 1) The child 'knows' that a parent should be predictable, but in reality they are not. 2) the child 'knows' that they should be able to predictably create a positive response, but in reality they can't. This creates a lot of fear -self centered fear. And, for some children, (such a me) resentment and resistance is the reaction because they want to make a change that will never come.
It is a bit like the weather. We trust that it will get warmer from January onward. If it does not get warmer, we are unhappy. If it gets really cold one may actually get scared, because the earth is not only unreliable, it has become threatening. If we have no warm home and the only provider of warmth is the weather, then we are very scared and very angry when we are denied a spring that the earth should provide.
We have to let go of that expectation, and realize that we must make our own warmth, even if we cannot change the weather (or any person).
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