transformyself

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...tionships.html

This has been in my "Read This Feel Better" folder on my computer for awhile and after reading it, I see this applies more to my CHILDREN than AH. WTF??


Mostly, it's number three: Guilt. It's hard for me to teach autonomy.

3. Guilt

Maybe you are hooked by irrational guilt that you must think, feel and act in ways to insure that your relationships are preserved, secured and nurtured no matter what personal expense it takes out of you. You feel guilty if the your relationship partners are not succeeding or thriving without your personal resources, energy, money, time and effort going in to making such success happen. You have a problem of feeling over-responsible for the welfare of your relationship partners and cannot allow your partners to accept personal responsibility, to make choices and live with the consequences of these choices. This irrational guilt is a driving motivation to keep you tearing down your boundaries so that you will always be available to your relationship partners at any time, in any place, for whatever reason your relationship partners "need" you. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "My relationship partners and I are responsible for accepting personal responsibility for our own lives and to accept the consequences for the choices we make in taking care of our own lives. I am not responsible for the outcomes which result from the choices and decisions which my relationship partners make. My relationship partners and I are free to make our own decisions with no one forcing us to make bad ones which will result in negative consequences to ourselves if they should occur."



I'm trying to not feel overwhelmed by the amount of self fixing I have yet to do, it's probably just lack of sleep cause sometimes I feel gung ho and happy to do it. Now, I just want it all better.. Waaaaahhhhh....

Insulated

feeling overwhelmed is normal. I kind of look at it like laundry. (silly but true) when i only have like one or two loads of laundry, i'm okay with it. zap. no problemo! but when i have all the linens, rugs, towels, clothes, etc. I'm overwhelmed. I learned to break it off into little managable bites and prioritize. then just do one thing at a time no matter how long it takes.

Live

transform...I swing back and forth between managable and overwhelmed (lately more time in overwhelmed!!! change of meds! I know you understand that! LOL)...lack of sleep will do me in in short order!
I do try my best to be accepting rather than beat myself up....what happened yesterday is past..I have this minute, this day....and climbing mountains is out of my league these days....so if I can not lose ground on some days and move forward on others....well, it isn't a race..knim??? LOL
hugs,
Live

transformyself

Brilliant! Thanks youse guys. Funny how easy it is to forget these basic realities...

Live

I had a friend who used the oval walk/run track as a metaphor for life...speed up in the straights and slow down for curves!
LOL...very fitting, I have never forgotten it!
I do hold out hope that overwhelmed isn't normal forever tho'!!!!!!!!!
I like the peace, calm and serenity line of thought!!!!!

freefalling

I try and create peaceful minutes. Then peaceful hours. Then peaceful days. Then peaceful continuing days. I remind myself that every person on earth have to work towards inner peace and not only us - the people that have to recover from abusive relationships. We can do this !

Lilyflower

'easy does it' and 'one day at a time' pop to mind in these situations to me.

You can only do what you can do. I try to be gentle with myself and if I am having a hard day, then thats ok too, I am human and I am entitled to one!

When I feel overwhelmed, I try to just accomplish the little things, the 'quick wins'. It builds on my confidence and I feel that I am able to tackle some of the bigger issues. That thinking gets me through all types of problems household or mental!

So even if I don't get the whole kitchen cleaned out today, I will do the dishes. I may not be able to afford to decorate my house, but I can afford that new kettle!

If I remember correctly Melody Beattie has a chapter about setting personal goals in her 'Beyond Codependency'

Lily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cowgirl1265

I know that regardless of how much work I do on any one of my many many issues there will always be something that causes me pain or distress in my life that I could learn to handle better. Accept what you are handling well; accept also the things that you know you will pay attention to in the future. Know that you don't have to do them all at once. The journey IS the goal.

transformyself

Thanks everybody! all of these simple phrases are true and I'm going to work to keep them in mind.

I'm struggling with realistically facing the damage that's been done to my kids while a) he was drinking and we were all living together and b) I was paying more attention to him then I was to our children.

It just makes me really sad.

nodaybut2day

I completely empathize with this, and I've felt that same sadness, especially as my daughter entrenches herself more and more into toddlerhood and I realize that I feel like I've missed a lot of her "babyhood" because my marriage was falling apart around me. My mother disagrees with me on this point and reminds me that during that period I poured all my energy and love into my little girl, nevertheless I can't help but feel a bit of remorse.

I'd like to point out however that before people marry, there isn't a mandatory "how to deal with an alcoholic spouse" seminar. Perhaps there should be! So, transform, you may feel that you paid more attention to your alcoholic spouse, but then, I think we all did at some point or another. It's kind of hard NOT to when they wreak havoc in our lives on a daily basis.

husbandofacoa

When I first started this program, I felt that I was missing time with my kids by going to alanon meetings. A dear friend of mine convinced me that I would have more time if I got better. He was so very right. Also, the time that I spend with them is better.

Better to be a little absent and a better father next year that to continue to be bad all through their years.

I have also learned that when I am overwhelmed to just do a little, as I can, in manageable bits, and at least I make some headway. Sometimes, before I realize it, I am done.

transformyself

I really love this Live
speed up in the straights and slow down for curves!
thank you!

I'm struggling with great sadness (must be that part of the the walking track again) right now, and am trying to just ackowledge it and let it pass. It's about lots of stuff in my life and I can't tell if that's because of one issue bleeding over into everything or if it's plain old depression. I"m not the depressive type, so I'm not that familiar with it.

I didn't go to yoga for a month, A WHOLE MONTH and now that I'm back--day three in a row--I am overwhelmed with this sadness which confuses me. 90% of the time, this practice strengthens me, levels everything off. And truthfully, I do feel more level-headed and calm but it's accompanied by this sadness.

Today I have my first meeting with a new shrink/therapist and am VERY apprehensive about it. I literally have to keep tricking myself to go. I thought you were so brave, Transform. Liked looking at yourself did you? Now I'm just scared and frustrated that I still, at 45, have to go back into someones office and cry about my life. I feel impaired. I AM impaired. I can't just heal up and move on.

I"m sad about my husband. Lately I look at him and remember how i used to love him. That's gone. I miss being in love. I want someone to adore me and feel lonely. I think the spell is broken wtih him, all though there are plenty of dynamics in place, none of them are love.

I"m sad about my children. Sad for them. I can't get a "real" job, when I apply to menial positions, I'm competing with hundreds of unempoloyed auto workers and freshly graduated students. I screwed up recently and sent an earlier version of a draft to a boss who freaked out on me about hte quality of my work, and even though I sent the finished version right away, I don't think I'll get work from her again. So I feel like a failure. AH told me he worries about my ability to care for the kids, because he's got a job that pays him every two weeks and i'm self employed. I'm afraid he's right.

And i was attracted to a man I work with. He's brilliant, kind, funny, present and married. His wife is amazing too and he adores her. Just met her the other day. I want one of those! I want that...

Well that's my self pity party for the day. Thanks for listening. At least I'm not angry..yoga is knocking that out of me and I guess this is what's underneath..I had been anxious and bitchy, maybe this is what's underneath all of that all along. Makes sense in many ways. There is much to be sad about in my life I guess it's gotta come out sometime.

Wish me luck in therapy. I'll go to the 10 am class first so I'll be stinky but calm..
love transformie...

Cowgirl1265

Transformie, it is interesting to me that going back to yoga would also be accompanied by such sadness. I think that yoga is so meditative that it allows those thoughts and feelings to flow through you, and you can do a lot of working through all that stuff.

I had a very rough therapy session last weekend, rough but so very good. I had had a bit of a set-to with my husband on the phone the night before - he was a little confrontational about something minor and I got mad at him, which as usually started to spiral downward, but unlike the past, we both said "OK, time to stop talking" and hung up. My therapist asked me to describe how I was feeling when I reacted to what he said. I said I felt defensive and angry, so she asked why I felt defensive and angry and we explored how those feelings of defensiveness arose from feelings of guilt and shame and "I'm a bad person," all that stuff from when I was little...and I have never cried so much or talked about so much of the pain and hurt I felt from the way my parents treated me when I was a child, the way I was treated by classmates. All of that stuff that we sort of acknowledge on the surface but so rarely go back to tell that little kid we once were that they are OK, they are loved. The feelings we experience today are not only situational to what is happening to us now, but directly related to pain we have felt in the past.

I hope your therapy appointment is productive. I hope you experience some healing of your pain today.

Live

It takes GUTS to see a psychiatrist, Transform! The point is you feel nervous but you are going ANYWAY!

Bruno Bettleheim has a book about the "good enough parent"...this helped me some years ago to be able to drop that super-parent perfectionism expectation that I carried around and believed others expected of me. Losing the guilt freed me to be a better parent.

I am glad you liked the walk/run metaphor..someone said it to me in 1993 and I have remembered it, tho' not always when I need it! LOL

hugs!
live

GiveLove

Transform....I am a trail runner, and am always amazed at how, when we push ourselves physically (through yoga, running, etc.) the emotions just flow. It's almost like we lose that thin membrane that keeps them all compartmentalized inside.

A friend runs 100 mile races, and he said to me one day after a training run, "When you've just done something really hard physically, don't you sometimes feel like crying, out of nowhere?"

Uh, yeah I do.

I also look at therapists like I look at doctors, or fine auto mechanics, or machine tuner-uppers of any kind: I hire them for what they're good at. They work for ME, mofo. It's all about me contracting the fixage of what needs to be fixed. Though I used to feel like you do today, I try really hard to keep the focus OFF what's broken and onto the empowerment of making it "go" again....and if it takes a mind mechanic, well, so what. If it were a physical ailment, would you beat yourself up because you had cancer and went to a physician or a naturopath for help?

I hope it's a good session. Keep wrapping your entire support network around you, and keep chipping away at the clutter (inside and out) that's pressing you down emotionally.

transformyself

GL you're right on the money as usual. Does trail running mean you run long distances outside?

Yesterdays class was tough, I cried after Camel, a deep backbend where you literally grab your heals from behind and lift your chest to the sky. No getting around opening up all kinds of stuff in that posture. But then I prayed one of my prayers that I dont' remember until its coming out of me which is a deep heartfelt simple plea HELP ME PLEASE.

And it came. Like it always does. I felt a lot stronger and more calm after that.

The therapist is a man, first ever for me. That'll be interesting.

The really scary stuff is how bad I feel about myself, about my kids and about mismanaging my life for so long. It's hard when others give me compliments, in fact, that was the only time I cried in therapy yesterday, when he told me I have way more self awareness than lots of folks and that we should be able to get some work done because I seem ready to look at myself. Then I was aware of how bad I feel about myself.

But I just want it to be over all ready--and we haven't even started! I don't want to trigger anymore. I want my AHs affair and my relationship with him to be healed without the trauma. I mean come on, it's been years now. I know i"m being impatient but I'm seriously scared to drag out all this stuff.

yesterday someone asked me if i was going to the work party at my AH work, where he went last year and eviscerated me while we were trying to reconcile-sorry while I was --and now I know the date- feb 23- and know he'll be going there and talking to her again or at least I'm afraid of that Why do I care!!! GO. A. WAY!!!

transformyself

AND I think it's hilarious that you've got everyone calling me Transformie...