Constructive Examples.

[Dan]

Releasing the Past.

A large number of recovering people have a tough time coming to terms with the abuse and abandonment of childhood days. Sometimes we play those "old tapes" while reliving the past in a mood of self-pity and resentment. This is destructive.
We cannot completely erase the past, but we can turn it over to our friends and our Higher power. Our goal should be to transform past experiences into constructive examples.

We can start by reminding ourselves that all unhappy experience is a product of the world's sickness and ignorance. Far from being unusual, our misery was a common thing that we're only now beginning to overcome.

From the book Walk in Dry Places.

[bartender129]

Cool Topic Dan.

It reminded me af an article from the Encyclopedia of Rational Coping Statements and Disputations at SMART Recovery:

PUTTING THE PAST BEHIND YOU
• What is past is all said and done. What remains to be seen is what I can bring to my present and future.
• Better for me to concentrate on what I'm doing today rather than on what I did or didn't do yesteryear.
• Better to do in the present than to stew about the past.
• The past isn't going to get any better!
• Poor decisions made in the past do not have to be repeated in the present.
• Because something once happened doesn't mean that it has to continue to happen.
• No matter how bad any event was, I do not have to allow it to continue to have a negative influence on my life.
• I cannot rewrite history and change what has already happened.
• Whining and screaming about the injustices and unfairness of the past will only take a bad situation and make it worse.
• I don't have to be the one person in the universe to have been treated with total fairness and kindness — and I don't have to moan and groan about the fact that I wasn't.
• I'm going to put more money down on what can yet be made to happen than on what has already happened.
• Having been treated unfairly in the past is all the more reason to treat myself fairly in the present.
• Now that I have been shown how not to treat people, I can have a better start on how to treat them.
• I don't have to take the unkindnesses of the past and turn them into insults in the present.
• I can use what did not kill me in the past to make myself emotionally strong in the present.
• I may have suffered deprivation in the past, but I have not been degraded or demeaned by it. Demeaningness is a state of mind that only I can give myself, and I've got better things to do than rake myself over the coals.
• People's treating me like dirt in the past does not mean that I am dirt.
• Feeling sorry for myself, angry toward others, guilty, or ashamed for getting the short end of the stick in the past will only continue to keep me from achieving happiness in the present and future.
• I am an active stewing-in-my-own-juices participant in my present victimization and can choose instead to make plans to move forward with my life.
• What I tell myself today is much more important than what others have told me in the past.
• Past experiences do not represent me. Rather, they represent things I have experienced; they do not make me into a better or worse person.
• The enemy is not my past; the enemy is my way of thinking about my past.
• Going on an archeological dig of my past in an effort to explain my present difficulties is like trying to find a needle in a haystack and will only divert me from present problem-solving.
• Everything that has happened in my life happened. Therefore, I'd better get off my high horse and stop pigheadedly demanding that it should not have occurred, when in truth it did occur.
• What has happened to me is not nearly as important as what I decide to do with it.
• I will try to be successful in putting my past behind me by changing my thoughts and feelings about it, but I don't have to put myself down if I fall short of the put-it-behind-me mark.

My favorite line from that article that really applies to this is:

Having been treated unfairly in the past is all the more reason to treat myself fairly in the present.

[Gabe]

Originally Posted by bartender129

Having been treated unfairly in the past is all the more reason to treat myself fairly in the present.

Beautiful bartender. That's a keeper.

[undrunken]

Good advice. A lot of us alkies and substance abusers began our emotional downward spiral very early in life, years before our first drink. I think to dwell on traumatic events is a bad thing; however, these incidents and our reactions to them can help us to understand the nature of our unhealthy beliefs. I think that is helpful in overcoming self-defeating thoughts and maladaptive behavior. Who was it that said, "Know thy enemy", or "your enemy", or whatever it was? Maybe I am confusing substance abuse issues with underlying mental health issues. I certainly do not mean to dispute a word of the earlier posts in this thread. It's just that the tone seems to suggest that we have consciously connected specific events from our past lives to problems in our present. It seems that the above rules can be applied to avoid making excuses when taking a ride in the time machine to check the mental maintenance logs. I think that it can be counterproductive to close our minds to the past and hate our misuse of our lives without trying to understand why and in what manner we turned on ourselves. I think it is important to discover this, at least for those of us with OCD, social anxiety, dysthymia, etcetera that have confounded us since our earliest memory. Many psychological problems are caused by substance abuse. Others contribute to our predisposition for it and are exacerbated by it. (The snowball effect, vicious cycle, whatever you want to call it)Full recovery for dual diagnosis people requires all of the toughness demanded in the original post and follow-ups plus recognition and repeal of destructive thought processes that have grown undetected within us. To that end, I think it is essential to come to grips with horror from the past. Know your enemy and kill him.