ToughChoices

I’m not sure what it says about my personality, but I ADORE the writer and lyricist Steven Sondheim, particularly the dark musical Sweeney Todd. If you haven’t seen it, prepare yourself for gore and despair, but also, a LOT of laughter. It’s hilariously brilliant!

One of Todd’s famous lines reads (sings):

“In all of the whole human race….there are two kinds of men and only two. There’s the one staying put in his proper place, and the one with his foot in the other one’s face.”

Oppressed vs. Oppressor

Bleak!!! This doesn’t strike me as an attitude of recovery. But…it’s coming from a murdering, singing, demonic barber, so I shouldn’t really be surprised! 😜

In recovery, I don’t want to be oppressed or oppressor. But, when I was active in addiction, I absolutely played both roles (in different relationships).

I used because I HURT. I hurt because someone else was had his flippin’ foot in my face!!! I was just going along, in my proper place, and I didn’t deserve someone’s foot in my face. Not fair!!! I used because I was victimized, and use numbed the pain.

But my addiction ended up harming so many others! I was like a small child kicking everyone around me during a temper tantrum over being kicked. 🤦‍♀️ I became the victimizer.

So, in honor of Stephen Sondheim and Sweeney Todd and Halloween and recovery, I might venture there are 2 kinds of (wo)men and only 2:
1.) Those whose determine their own place and stand in it victoriously.
2.) Those who participate in the tired cycle of victim/victimizer.

Sober, we can all make conscious decisions to be part of the first group!!!

Happy Spooky Season!
-TC

Obladi

You know, I used to think of things in those terms. You know, the ones that seem to beg for a modifier - or at least some sort of dichotomy.
I stand victoriously. I fall down pitifully.
Nothing is as it should be. Everything is as it ought to be.

Nowadays I do my best over and over again to simply just stand in the place where I am (slight nod to R.E.M., though I don't know what the lyrics of that song are).
And I practice remembering that everything just is.
Not easy, but when I'm successful at those two practices, I find myself much more at peace.

Zencat

Nothing like the ever-present 'now' to help shatter the illusion of being separate from all things. There is "what to do" and there is "not to do". The present moment does not judge.

VikingGF

I ride the wave as it ebbs and flows- sometimes I'm on top, sometimes not, but my view is that as long as I'm sober (always the priority) and doing the next right thing, I have no need to examine my place in the pecking order. I've been around long enough to know it can all change in an instant, so it's important to be flexible and able to respond in a thoughtful, measured manner no matter what the situation may be.

ToughChoices

It IS a wave that ebbs and flows. No one is consistently victorious, but I encounter people from time to time who tend to wear the “victim” label with some consistency.

I do think recovery grants us the grace and distance to see circumstances and labels as temporary. To me, victory is the acceptance of this flow, and the refusal to hurt or be hurt because of it.

Life on life’s terms.

VikingGF

I think I was one of those "victim" minded people- because I wasn't very good at accepting my responsibility in things that were happening. Just another unsavory characteristic of the addict personality. I don't feel that way any longer.

Hawkeye13

I recall reading Caroline Myss’ book Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can many years ago and her concept of “Woundology” really struck a chord of truth with me— it is the idea that we carry the bad things we have had happen to us in the past sometimes for a lifetime and “wear” them as parts of our current identity and let them continue to define our present.

Her premise is doing this can actually create an energetic field that contributes to poor health / disease in the present, and our strong identification with being a victim keeps us stuck and not growing in a healthy way. It doesn’t mean we suppress or forget the issues, but that we acknowledge and let them pass through, no longer giving them power to define us now.

It makes room for who we are becoming, not who we once were. . .