DesertEyes

Around here we take out the word "God" and put in the letters "HP". That makes it more useful to a larger number of peeps.

What got me stuck on this step was that world "remove". I had spent my life practicing the lessons I learned as a child: "Don't trust, don't tell, don't feel." I did not trust anybody to speak the truth, never mind be willing to listen to mine. I had no idea _how_ to tell peeps that my childhood had been a nightmare, nor did I really have a good grip on the damage it had caused me because I could not _feel_ the damage.

All my efforts were focused on trying to figure out my own thinking, as if I were some kind of mechanical contraption that could be fixed by replacing a gear, or a lever. None of my efforts worked. The step does _not_ say "Humbly asked HP to show me how to fix myself." It says _remove_ by something _outside_ of myself.

I am not able to fix myself. It is a physical impossibility. It is like trying to drive to the gas station in order to buy gasoline in a car that has no gas. Fixing myself using a brain that was in need of fixing was not _ever_ going to work.

What did work for me was to find people other than me that I could learn from, and use their experience on my own issues. Those were other peeps in ACoA, and a couple of good shrinks. In listening to them I heard what specific actions _they_ did to heal their "emotional injuries", and when I tried their ideas, it worked for me. The shrinks gave me "exercises" which also worked.

The wole secret to this whole "HP" thing has been the realization that _I_ cannot be my own HP. I have to do something that I never learned as a child. I have to go _out_ there into the world and find others that, unlike my "family of origin", I can listen to and learn something positive.

Mike