Freedom1990

"When we're confronted with an uncomfortable dilemma, we often retreat into confusion-as in not knowing your right hand from your left, ethically speaking. I don't buy it. I think we always know the right thing to do. The confusion comes from trying to reconcile what you know to be morally correct with what you want, while avoiding the messy and uncomfortable consequences of your behavior."

~ Dr. Laura Schlessinger in "How Could You Do That?"


I don't agree with a lot of things Dr. Laura says, but that is a powerful statement for me, and also the truth for me.

My 'confusion' in my active codependency was just that...I did know right from wrong, but made the choices that conflicted with my morals, and then claimed confusion.

How about you?

Hammerhead

I could barely comprehend it a year ago.... now with a bit of experience under my belt... couldn't had said it any better and I couldn't agree more!

I really like Dr. Laura... she's Judge Judy on steroids :O

Awesome! Thanks for posting...

Thumper

I can see the truth in that statement for me as well.

At other times I was just seriously confused. Life gets complicated and morals conflict. For instance I have, or had, at the top of my list morals surrounding family. Marriage was forever, you didn't give up, children need fathers, mom and dad make it work. It was a guiding principle in my life.

I'm beginning to accept, a little bit, that sometimes all the choices suck. You simply can not have it all. You just have to pick the least suckiest and I finally reached the point where the least suckiest meant I sacrificed my #1 moral/priority. Then all the others fell into line, and the internal conflict did go away.

I veered off the path of other morals in my dedication to that one. That did create even more confusion because, as the statement says, there was internal conflict. I was making the wrong choice, but I was honestly confused about what the right answer was.

Or maybe I'm still just in denial about my own issues Could very well be!

Freedom1990

Indeed she is!

It is so empowering to finally be honest with ourselves, look at our own behaviors/decisions that created so much pain, and start making changes in our lives.

To thine own self be true.

catlovermi

I'd have to agree. In many cases, confusion = self-bargaining.

Sort of like denial is suppressing a truth we already know to be Truth.

CLMI

Hammerhead

Yes! I recently realized that I don't have "sucker" written on my face... (what a big relief)

I've just been stupid enough to respond to any loser that had enough kahunas to talk to me.... in essence I created my own "suckerdom"!

Brucel

What a great post, and I dont even know who Dr. Laura is. I heard in a meeting one time that the winners do what they're supposed to do, and the rest do what they want to do. Thanks for reminding me of that. God Bless

LaTeeDa

I once posted here that magical thinking confuses us. Reality is not confusing at all.

L

Thumper

These both resonate more with me. Maybe the original will resonate more in another year

ElegantlyWasted

Self will gone wild, delusional thinking, feeding the beast, bad habbit rationalized, the "one last time" thing, and of course the catch all defense mechanism for the aforementioned denial. I totally agree. I think addicts (and codies by exteneded definition) polarize everything into black and white and then hate themselves, others and the world because nothing measures up. It all boiles down to making the best decision in any given circumstance that we can.

Still Waters

Absolutely!

Problem is: We often don't even see the magical thinking.

Far as I'm concerned the disconnect between "trying to reconcile what you know to be morally correct with what you want" is what make me so physically ill.

Startingover2

That is one of her better quotes!

I like SOME of the the beliefs that Dr. Laura has...not all. I was just listening to her yesterday and a female caller said her husband was cheating on her and she was having a hard time getting past it. Dr. Laura's advice was..."what did YOU do to drive him away. Its your fault he cheated. You must have been lacking as a wife." She didn't even let the woman finish her sentence. She assumed it was the wifes fault.

I do not agree with that. I was the best wife, gave sex whenever he wanted and more, took his crap for a long time, kept the house perfect, took good care of his kids and our daughter, walked on eggshells and he still repeatedly cheated.

But she does have some good advice in other areas.

Thumper

I dislike Dr. Laura a lot so maybe that is why I'm ready to drive a nail in her quote I'll try to re-read and re-think pretending I don't know who said it

Learn2Live

Wow, cool question. Thanks for getting my brain working!!

I don't think I ever claimed confusion, or denied or pretended not to know I was making an immoral or wrong decision. Usually I was quite the opposite: I TOUTED that I was the one who was morally RIGHT, and the addict/alcoholic was morally WRONG, and therefore he should live his life according to how I believed would make our life perfect. It even went beyond morality: All I had to do was take a little survey of my family and friends: Tell my story and if they sided with me, I was RIGHT and therefore the same rules applied (do what I wanted).

Good Lord, talk about alcoholic thinking!!!

I also applied this standard of behavior according to righteousness as the one with all the hurt feelings: ("Boo-Hoo-Hoo LOOK AT my feelings!!! LOOK AT how much I have cried, all my pain, blahblahblah") and therefore he again should live his life according to how I believed he should and what would make our life perfect.

I wasn't so much "confused" as I had no self-esteem, self-respect, positive self-image, etc because I had continuously, repetitively and completely degraded myself all in the name of love, (what a crock that turned out to be perfection, and self-righteousness.

Learn2Live

As for Dr. Laura: Take what you like and leave the rest.

Freedom1990

That's what I do. As I said before, I don't agree with a lot of things she says, but there some things that really resonate with me.

Freedom1990

I like that too! Thanks for sharing that because that's another one I'm going to file in my mental filing cabinet of good stuff!

Learn2Live

P.S. I totally agree Freedom, Dr. Laura goes a little overboard sometimes but that book REALLY helped me in my early Recovery. I could not understand how my ABF could do the things he did "to me" and that book allowed me to see that people do $hitty things to others every day all day. Sad, but it helped me to feel not so all alone. It also helped me to see (from an exaggerated viewpoint) how my decisions were not healthy.

Bolina

I mentioned something on another thread about making everything in my life negotiable. By that I meant realising that every decision I make was as a result of a choice and that I had to lay open all of my pre-conceived ideas to scrutiny.

I can't even begin to say how much different my life has been since I followed this train of thought. I am more me if that makes sense. And that is because I am doing less of what I thought lay in the "want" - because to me that is where my knee-jerk, ingrained nonsense lies. My wants are now more thought-out and nuanced than I could ever have conceived.

I lived in some dark times, where even having a shower on a daily basis was a major feat. I can see now it was because I was trying to live against that core of me. Inauthentic, I can guess you might say.

It is all about choice. Everything is.

ElegantlyWasted

"that the winners do what they're supposed to do"

I think that aligning what we want with what were supposed to do is the key. It involves long term planning; whick I'm betting much better at. To me ethics (how we treat each individual decision we make) trumps the legal system and morality.