Treat yourself like someone you are responsible to care for
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Join Date: Jun 2013
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Treat yourself like someone you are responsible to care for
Stealing a line from Jordan Peterson - this concept helped me early on in my sobriety and continues to be of use to me today, even in areas that have nothing to do with the ugly beast of alcohol.
I imagine a scenario where you meet yourself and you are tasked with taking care of this person - what would you tell them? How would you guide them away from drinking? What things might you put in place to help them not pick up a bottle on the way home from work? The language you would use in order to help someone else would probably be very different than the language we use on ourselves - you would probably not call them a loser, a waste and helpless.
You might treat this person with a gentle but stern hand. You might try to make them laugh. You would recognize just how much who they want to be is being thwarted by the booze they seem to not be able to help themselves from consuming. You'd see in plain, painful ways just how much they had to stop drinking forever. Maybe you'd make them take a walk when they seemed to be spiraling mentally. Maybe you'd force them to get to a meeting to be around people like them, even though they had every excuse not to go.
What would you do differently in your sober journey if you were someone who you had to take care of?
And then this trick, this simple way of thinking about your decisions, transfers to other things as well - instead of procrastinating at work for another hour, I'm going to clean up my office and get to the gym before I get home. If there was someone taking care of me, those are two things that I would be grateful for - giving my office some peace and orderliness and then getting me to release some endorphins before the end of the day. Might as well do that for myself, my family, my clients wil benefit as well.
I imagine a scenario where you meet yourself and you are tasked with taking care of this person - what would you tell them? How would you guide them away from drinking? What things might you put in place to help them not pick up a bottle on the way home from work? The language you would use in order to help someone else would probably be very different than the language we use on ourselves - you would probably not call them a loser, a waste and helpless.
You might treat this person with a gentle but stern hand. You might try to make them laugh. You would recognize just how much who they want to be is being thwarted by the booze they seem to not be able to help themselves from consuming. You'd see in plain, painful ways just how much they had to stop drinking forever. Maybe you'd make them take a walk when they seemed to be spiraling mentally. Maybe you'd force them to get to a meeting to be around people like them, even though they had every excuse not to go.
What would you do differently in your sober journey if you were someone who you had to take care of?
And then this trick, this simple way of thinking about your decisions, transfers to other things as well - instead of procrastinating at work for another hour, I'm going to clean up my office and get to the gym before I get home. If there was someone taking care of me, those are two things that I would be grateful for - giving my office some peace and orderliness and then getting me to release some endorphins before the end of the day. Might as well do that for myself, my family, my clients wil benefit as well.
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,355
Its a great concept Less - I like how it's expressed here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/b...he-inner-child
True adulthood hinges on acknowledging, accepting, and taking responsibility for loving and parenting one's own inner child.
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Atlanta
Posts: 8,674
Great post and right on target. It took me awhile to believe that I deserved to take good care of myself. Learning the difference between selfishness and self-care was critical (and still needs differentiating at times!).
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Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: DFW area, Texas
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Originally Posted by lessgravity 
I imagine a scenario where you meet yourself and you are tasked with taking care of this person - what would you tell them? How would you guide them away from drinking? What things might you put in place to help them not pick up a bottle on the way home from work? The language you would use in order to help someone else would probably be very different than the language we use on ourselves - you would probably not call them a loser, a waste and helpless.
Thanks for sharing!
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