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FWIW only

I used to like to smoke pot., regularly.
Once my mental illness was diagnosed and i was put on medications for it, pot no longer had any pleasant appeal, in fact, i disliked it, so I took my meds and didn't want the pot.
so I know for me, I was definitely medicating a mental illness and once I got into treatment for that....the drug use became a non-issue.

I do not know how this applies with alcohol.

FunnyOne

Taking Charge, thanks so much for your response.....Exactly, my sentiments Exactly!

LaTeeDa

And that is exactly the problem. The 'enemy' is not 'them,' it is within. There are people out there who will hurt you who are not addicts. There are people out there who will hurt you unintentionally. It's so not about 'them.'

From the first visit to my therapist, she said it's about trusting yourself. It took several months of hearing that from her before I finally understood it. It really is about trusting yourself.

It doesn't matter if someone else has an addiction, a mental illness, or bad manners. It matters how we take care of ourselves. How we act and react with the world around us.

Not one response in this thread, including mine, suggested 'moving on,' or 'stuffing feelings away.' Changing the focus from the other to the self doesn't mean you ignore your feelings or just forget about others. Quite the opposite, actually. Focusing on one's self reduces the need to obsess over others. Obsessing over someone else does not help them, and although you may argue that it helps you, it really only distracts from the real issues. Digging down into all those dark, scary corners of your own psyche to find the reasons why you obsess is the only way to truly feel better. Learning to be comfortable in one's own skin makes all the outside forces less scary and threatening. Truly trusting yourself makes acceptance of others--exactly as they are--possible.

L

FunnyOne

Thinking about, grieving about, coming to terms with are not the same as obsessing.
But I beg to differ on the "enemy" part....until you have been the target of another persons self hatred, you may never know what it means. Is it my fault? No. Can I think about it different ways, YES. Does dodging the incessant bullets intended solely to destroy me get tiring.....YOU BET!

LaTeeDa

Married to an abusive A for 20 years. I know what it means.......

He is not my enemy, however. I put myself in the range of his hatred. I obsessed over WHY he did what he did. I tried so very hard to get him to SEE what he was doing. As it turns out, none of that helped me at all. Figuring out why I stayed in such a situation, why I thought I was powerful enough to change him, why I needed so desperately to be needed--those were the questions I had to ask. And those were the answers that made all the difference in my life......

L

FunnyOne

And if it were not for a child that is still a minor and property that wont sell in this economy, I would be so far out of his range he wouldn't know which direction to spray his fire! Until then, still dodging bullets.

LaTeeDa

Two minor children here. Dodging bullets is exhausting. I chose to work on my armor. Best wishes to you.

L

Ago

This was the key for me as well.

Every situation I have ever been "stuck" in, every time I have ALLOWED myself to be abused, it was either because I had such low self esteem I felt I deserved it on some level, or I was afraid somehow.

Afraid of being alone or financial insecurity in some form usually (not enough $$$ to leave).

But it ALWAYS comes back to me.

If I can take the focus off of them long enough to ask myself, truly ask myself why I am allowing this, what am I getting from this situation?

They are not "the problem". or, as I have heard it said, they may be my problem, but my solution has MY name on it.

The first time the dime dropped for me about "trusting yourself" was actually seeing it in couples counseling with my GF. She had a history of men being unfaithful to her (we were a brand new relationship) and was obsessing about me, every interaction at a Starbucks was cannon fodder, every meeting I went to, she was going nuts.

She told her story, I told mine, I cried out, "she has to trust me, she HAS to just start trusting me, I haven't done anything wrong!!!!"

The therapist looked me dead in the eye and said "No, she doesn't, she has to learn to trust herself, she has to learn to trust her own gut."

The dime dropped for both of us and it was never an issue again. (she had been carrying that issue for her whole adult life, from her teenage years when something happened with her parents that made her refer to love as "the big lie")

Living in an unhealthy situation makes us "override" our "gut" feelings, since we are going against them.

Being in healthy, nurturing, safe situations for some time allows our intuition, or trust in ourselves to come back.

Then the trick is learning to listen to it.





It wasn't twenty years for me but the truth is, I STILL don't understand what made my xagf (different woman then previous story) tick.

I thought I could "save" her and show her that love was real since she had never had it in her life, not from her parents who abused her sexually and beat her, not from her boyfriends, the long term one(s) who lasted for six months, and certainly not from the married men she met on "adult" (not dating) sites.

My "gut" said leave after our second date.

I didn't listen.

I ended up staying in the range of her hatred for nearly two years.

Even when she supposedly "loved" me she hated me.

When I finally did leave her, the gloves were OFF for her hatred.

I have never seen or even heard of anything like it. Not even here.

I'm onna pay more attention now. I'm onna try and be "quiet" enough to hear it when my gut tries to tell me something.

My problem, My solution.

Some people are just insane, trying to make sense of them just makes us insane too.

That's why they call it "vote with your feet"