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Old 07-16-2007, 06:20 AM
  # 2 (permalink)  
GingerM
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Under the Rainbow
Posts: 1,086
I don't think you lied to yourself. I think you set your expectations higher than was realistic and then, when you failed to meet them, you beat yourself up for it. Very typical pattern for ACoAs. You expect perfection from yourself and you weren't perfect.

Repeat after me: I am human. Humans are fallible. Therefore I am fallible (some days for me, this is a mantra and gets repeated hundreds of time in my head).

but something in my mind kept telling me how these people didn't value me, how I wasn't good enough, then I began to feel lonley....as if I was totally disposiable to these people who I call my friends and from there I came up with EVERY reason I could think of as to WHY I wouldn't be good enough. I feel so awful. Just out of no where. I feel like I did before ACOA recovery. I am finding every flaw and using it agianst myself to hurt myself and I don't know why? Why do I want to hurt myself? What the **** is wrong with me?
You slipped. We all do. Something triggered the slip, something reminded you of how things used to be at home. Those things at home are so deeply embedded in our psyches that sometimes we may never know what they are.

Or, using a metaphor, you fell off the recovery wagon. But you don't have to stay off it. There is hope. You can accept your own fallibility, get back on the wagon and start working your program again. You have that CHOICE, something you didn't have growing up.

Because you were "bad", you repeat the behaviors you were trained to repeat - self abuse, negative thoughts and images about yourself, putting yourself down, accusing yourself of things, LOOKING for fault so you can continue your internal diatribe against yourself. It the old tapes playing out, only since you don't have your family to say these things to you in person, you say them to yourself. You don't have to. You can choose not to. You can make a conscious effort to not continue the cycle within your own head. It's not easy, and I am by no way saying it is, but you CAN do it. It takes a lot of work.

What the **** is wrong with you? Absolutely nothing, that's what. You learned that certain behaviors/patterns in the world were "normal" (they were normal to you, even if they weren't normal to other people), and you are now trying to maintain your own personal "normalcy". I have quit trying to be "normal" and am now focussing on "healthy".

I really feel for you. We all backslide from time to time. We all have reactions where we don't know where they're coming from. We all get back on the wagon and keep on working towards healthy and peacefulness. It isn't like chicken pox - you don't just 'get over' it. It is a process which will continue for the rest of your life.

I do hope you're feeling better today, and can see things more clearly. I truly wish you all the best.
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