Steps 1 & 2

Old 04-14-2009, 12:40 PM
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Steps 1 & 2

I've been reading the step studies for Steps 1 and 2 of the Al-Anon steps, partly to get to grips with whether to go to a meeting (thanks so much to everyone who contributed because it's really helpful to see how you worked things through). I wrote all the steps down in one place to I can read them whenever I need to and, as I read them and the two step studies, some things started coming together for me. I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this but I figure other ACOAs are most likely to understand what I mean. I could accept a higher power other than God for the purposes of the steps but, even if I do, this has still revealed a huge issue for me and I don't think it's something I can ignore in the long term, even if I put a pin in it for now. My relationship with God is one of the things in my life which has been very messed up for a long time. I suddenly realised that I substituted God for AF at some point in my mind. God couldn't possibly love me and everything bad that happened was no more than I deserved.

In my own head I've been telling myself for years that I couldn't go to mass because it would hurt and offend AF. Again and again I have used it as an excuse to avoid ever realising what was really going on inside me. I told myself AF drank because of a religious crisis because I was going through one. Although it is true that I fear that attending mass would rock the boat somehow (and I know that I should let that fear go - he doesn't even need to know, even if it would cause a problem), I've realised that there is a bigger reason I don't go. I don't believe that I'm worthy of God's love and I fear that everyone there will know it and reject me. That's what it all comes down to. When things go wrong I accept it as more proof that God's angry at me, that I'm a bad person.

On top of that it suddenly hit me that as things stand I don't really believe I could ever be good enough for God's love because my standards of what God expects are so incredibly high. I've managed to build the image in my head that everyone in their own religion is a perfect example of faith, a perfect believer who has no doubts (there's that, not knowing what normal is thing again). Looking at it rationally, that's pretty ridiculous (not least because I'm perfectly well aware of the awful things that can happen when people take their faith to extremes) but that's what I've been thinking all this time. If I have any doubts, if I do anything wrong then I'm not fit to sit in God's church and take comfort from mass.

To quote Jon Spencer, I've realised that in order to find my sense of self worth, one of the things I have to do is “get it right with God”. I suppose what I'm asking is, has anyone been through this or something like it? Not necessarily a problem with God but just realising that there was something massive going on that you had no real awareness of? Does anyone have any advice on whether I should try to deal with something so huge so soon? It's been quietly colouring so much of my life for so long and I feel so overwhelmed at the thought of it all.
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Old 04-14-2009, 02:41 PM
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Before I could make much progress on the steps at all, I had to completely throw out my old childhood concept of God and find a new one that worked for me.

I was raised in a very strict Catholic home, and the God of my parents' understanding and of the Catholic church's understanding is not the God I have today.
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Old 04-14-2009, 02:56 PM
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Hiding, what would you like your relationship with God to look like?

How would it look, to an impartial third party observing your life day-to-day? What would you be doing, thinking, feeling differently?

The beautiful thing about our relationship with a higher power is that we can create it in any image we like....the tough thing is that you have to create the image in your mind before you can bring it to life.

I'd be interested in your feelings on this. What's your God like? When I worked out what I truly believed, I was astonished, as you were.
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Old 04-14-2009, 04:33 PM
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I don't really believe I could ever be good enough for God's love
Hiding, were you and I in the same church growing up??
I have had similar feelings, which were, and occasionally still are, expressed as a compulsive need to know exactly how to worship/think about God. My old thoughts were 'I have to get this worship/prayer/image of God EXACTLY right otherwise He won't give a damn'.

Ugh.
So very wrong.

What ever you think you know about God, put it aside. Maybe you will return to that concept but NOW you need to strip away all that history and get down to finding out what a higher power means to you.
One prayer often used in Step 2 is the Set-aside prayer, which spells it out:

God, Please help me set aside
Everything I think I know
About myself, my disease,
These steps, and especially You;
For an open mind
And a new experience
With myself, my disease,
These steps and especially You.
(from: AnonPress, Frequently Asked Questions, http://anonpress.org/FAQ/files/read.asp?fID=149)
(can you guess I work in a school?)

In an obsessive need to figure out EXACTLY what a HP means in AA/alanon I read through many many posts, from fundamentalist christians to jews to all-out atheists.
And at the end of it, I figured out that there is no exact definition, other than this:
a) HP is definitely more powerful than me.
b) HP can restore (or in my case, just give me) sanity.
c) HP wants me better. Period.

If you think you know what God is thinking, then you are saying you are as powerful or more powerful than God.
If that is the case, then please give me a new car, preferably a Hybrid, 110/220 volt plug-in, with a 6-speaker stereo with satellite radio and wireless MP3/Ipod interface and GPS tracking?

Sorry, couldn't resist!

In recovery, one needs focus. We need God's help and we cannot let old ideas get in the way. As I said, you may return to those beliefs in the future, or not, but they are not helping you now. If it is not helping you, it is not your HP.
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Old 04-14-2009, 06:35 PM
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Hey there hiding

Originally Posted by hiding View Post
...but just realising that there was something massive going on that you had no real awareness of? ....
The damage that was done to us as children is definetly massive. It affects every single aspect of our lives, including our souls. What I have found is that as massive and pervasive as the damage was, the recovery is comparably awesome and affirming.

Originally Posted by hiding View Post
... Does anyone have any advice on whether I should try to deal with something so huge so soon?....
Being an obsesive compulsive perfectionist, I jumped into recovery with both feet and decided I would do all 12 steps in 12 days and be all fixed

That didn't work for me. I found that putting presure on myself to get well _now_ was exactly the kind of dysfunction I was trying to heal from. Giving my "inner child" permission to heal at his own pace was the first real change in my life on the way to recovery.

Step 1: Starts with "admited". that's it. All you have to do for step 1 is to admit.
Step 2: Starts with "came to believe". Nothing more.

Nowhere in those two steps do I have to resolve the entirety of my relationship with my HP. That relationship is what I build as a _result_ of working the 12 steps. That what it says at the beginning of the 12th: "Having had a spiritual experience as a result..."

Healing my psyche, my "inner child", my soul and my relaionship is _not_ how I started my recovery. It's what happened when I had worked my way thru the 12 steps.

Mike
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