Train yourself to accept self respect

As a codependent and/or an active addict (and even a "dry drunk" or inactive addict, one that stopped using but still does addictive behaviors)you probably have to:

Practice the art of self respect.

TRAIN yourself to allow you to (internally)have self respect.

I said on another of my recovery blogs that I'm doing a whole series of posts on the topic of self respect and/ or the lack of it. From the point of view of an addict and a codependent (which I believe all addicts are originally, you can't be one without also being the other)

In my post: "Respect doesn't come naturally for an addict"

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com/2008/08/respect-doesnt-come-naturally-for.html

I wrote that respect is something you have to work at, what I left out is this:

"You can't give to others something you don't have"

If you do not respect yourself, you cannot respect others.

Codependents are said to, "when having a near death experience, someone else's life flashes before them", the idea being that codependents are so 'other centric' that the paradigm they live in starts with the premise that "OTHERS" are important and by implication, 'They' are not important.

When you (internally) do not have self respect, and you seemingly give others a type of respect, what you're really doing is patronizing them. You aren't genuinely offering another respect... you're paying them homage, as if you were the serf and they were the lord (if you wanna use medieval ideas to represent what I'm saying)


What's a person to do if they have little background in self respect?

What can you do if you're family of origin didn't teach you self respect?

Build it artifically, make one up.. that's right 'fake it till you make it'

If you think logically about this, you'll see that ALL ideas held internally aren't really 'real'.

What's that mean?

All sensory input is 'configured' mentally, you don't really "SEE" an apple, you see from your brain's visual cortex a "representation" of an apple... you also 'smell' the apple, you 'feel' the apple... but the concept of an apple, the one in your mind's eye isn't the apple... it's a constructed digitalized apple.

You actually "conjured up" an apple to mimic the 'real' apple, the apple that's external to you.

Therefore, you can, simply 'conjure up' self respect, as if a doctor treats a broken leg with a cast, to 'assist' it in healing...

you can treat your broken self respect with a cast... just practice 'faking' self respect, so you can get yourself used to the idea.

A 'dry run' if you will


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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

Blame, it's what Victims Do

Blame, point your finger at the world and exclaim it's all Thier Fault.

That's what victims do... the opposite of take responsibility.

Broken, missing, dysfunctional boundaries are what makes a codepedent a codepedent.


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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

I do NOT have cancer!

My Dad died of prostate cancer in 2005

I had symptoms of cancer, and digestive problems.

I just went to the local Frederick Maryland traveling health care clinic:
Mission of Mercy and I do NOT HAVE Cancer!

I don't know how a person can live 50 years and all of a sudden I can't digest milk?

I thought I was a gonner, leakin from both ends, I really thought I wasn't going to
live to see my Grandaughter grow up...

I'm lactose intollerant?
really?

I've got a minor prostate infection?

I'll take that over cancer any time...

Every day since then has been a good day.

I'm gonna croak, but not this year!
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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

Respect or the lack of it

Respect, more importantly for a codependent, the lack of internal self respect.

This is the central issue for all addictive behaviors (and codependency is an addictive behavior).

Internal Self Respect is missing from an addict, it's insidious in that an addict is not really aware of what's missing.

How would you know if you were missing something if you never experienced it?

A codependent could accidentally do functional behavior and never know it?

You might have hit it by mistake and couldn't recognize it.

This lack of self respect is going to be the dominant theme of all my recovery blogs for the next few months.

How does a less than functional person work towards being functional?

baby steps- if all you do is one thing that works towards self respect every day... it compounds like bank interest, after 30 days you do not have 1 item 30 times... what you have is a critical mass reached wherein you couldn't go back to that old addictive behavior pattern if you wanted to.

Last year I posted this article to Repair Manual 4 Self Destructive Behavior:

http://repairmanual4selfdestructivebehavior.blogspot.com/2008/06/being-punitive-is-counter-productive.html

As addicts ( http://crackaddictionrecovery.blogspot.com ) we're already beating ourselves up... we're world class self depracators.

For example, when I was still using, I'd spent most of my cash... http://cocaineregrets.com, but I saved just enough to buy socks. the next week when I'd gotten paid, I repeated the above, but I bought myself underware...

each little symbolic stand you take toward treating yourself with respect will accumulate, there will be a critical mass reached...

more coming, I've got to answer this phone call


==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

Victims Characteristics-

The following info is from Dr, James J. Messina's http://www.coping.org/relations/martyr.htm site
Tools for Coping Series.

Victims often:


-Lack the knowledge that they are being taken advantage of by others.

-Are so used to a certain way of being treated that they don't recognize it as unhealthy for them.

-Lack healthy self-esteem or self-concepts.

-Have little belief in themselves.

-Come from high-stress families where their rights were never respected; therefore, they lack the competencies, skills, and abilities to stand up for their rights.

-Lack information about assertive behavior and have no experience in using assertive behavior.

-Lack of ``others'' in their lives who can point out alternative healthy solutions to their problems.

-Are timid, scared, and suspicious of help being offered to them.

-Are skeptical about someone really wanting to help them.


Victims often hold to some of the following irrational beliefs in their lives:

-You must be nice to everyone, even if they are not nice to you.

-Life is supposed to be filled with unhappiness and uncertainty.

-The small guy never wins.

-This is the way things are supposed to be.

-There are winners and losers in all transactions between people.

-My role in life is to be a loser.

-Most people are basically selfish, mean, self-centered and disrespectful.

-You should never complain.

-Take it like a ``man'' (woman)!
Be silent with your feelings.


Victims often do not stand up for their rights because they suffer from the irrational fear of:

-disapproval

-rejection

-conflict

-taking a risk

-the unknown

-change

-confrontation

-being overwhelmed emotionally and physically

-loss of self-respect

-making a mistake.




The main presupposition of this site is that to get relief from pain associated with victim behavior requires, demands that you take a pro-active stance? You gotta want to fight this and be willing to DO something positive to change your situation. If you're in denial there isn't much you can do. Brutal honesty is hard to come by...
If you KNOW you're doing victim behavior, see what it has cost you then you CAN change it...But it's going to feel funny.

Cross your arms, now cross them the other way, feels funny doesn't it? New behavior CAN be 'installed'. You can condition your self to new behavior just as if you were conditioning your body with exercise.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030328102832/http://www.victimbehavior.com/
==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

Why so many can't deal with the 12 steps.

Why is it so many people are Agnostic or Atheist, or like George Carlin (who just died) are Antagonistic towards God?

What is it about conventional organized religion that pisses so many people off?

Religion, organized religion with it's centuries old dogma, or specifically the way current society interprets that dogma is...

Power Struggle at it's worst.
This is a travesty.

From an Ebook I wrote titled: "Self Worth, not Self Esteem"

Up until now you thought you were the voice in the back of your head...
What you are actually is a "Space For Events To Occur In"

Without Ego, without the brain's reticular activating system, you'd go nuts.

From the study of Neuro Linguistic Programming or N.L.P (the main ingredient to Tony Robbins work) we know that all the human brain can hold with any accuracy is 7 plus or minus bits of information at one time.

9 chunks of information.

Ok, so how many other bits of info is your subconscious handling at any moment in time?

Balance, temperature, gravity, blood pressure, pulse, what your ex wife did yesterday that continues to piss you off today, the fact that you miss your father who passed away 3 years ago, the memory of your granddaughter's smile a couple days ago... you get my drift.

The problem with Ego or ego's point of view is that it confuses you into thinking that it's the ONLY point of reference worth having... not only that, ego wants you to think that IT'S Point of View is the ONLY point of view.


The problem with that is Vantage Point
Reference Point

For spirituality to make any reasonable sense to you, you have to first have NO Reference point.

You view the world in measurements.
The interval of time and or space (space time really) between where you (think) you are now and elsewhere...

Like the erroneous concept of:
A is where you are &
B is the target state, where you'd like to be
(or end up)

This methodology engenders a punitive approach.

A punitive approach that is built in, it's built into the presupposition of each and every thought, attempt, event, anything you perceive...without you even thinking about it.

Paradigm.

The fish to the fish bowl.

the fish is vaguely aware that there's stuff outside the fishbowl... but since he cant do anything about it, what's the point?

Dogma, or post middle ages dogma, assumes:

We suck
We just aint no dang good without God
We'd better obey or else???

Where did they get the assumumption that we're automatically going to not obey?

Dale Carneigie wrote "How to Win Friends and Influence People"the main tenet was this:

Don't Criticize, Condem or Complain

Do this or you'll go to hell???

I prefer to look at spirituality this way:

Ride the horse in the direction he's going...

more later, it's time to make the doughnuts
gotta pay the bills



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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

Let the chips fall where they may- the 3rd step

If you believe in a higher power... even if you kinda sorta believe (agnostic)

Worry is counter productive

What you're doing when you Worry is telling the universe that you concede that you're a piece of dung... you've lost confidence not only in yourself, but you've conceded to God, the universe, source energy...

That there's no hope for you.

Who in the hell do you think you are?

...You think your the best worst that ever lived?

I could tell you all about how Worry diminishes your immune system, how it trashes your nervous system... but those are secondary to what's really going on.


You just slapped God in the face!

The third step- Turn it over

If you cannot do this, if you don't wanna do this, if you brush this one off...

think about it... it's a TRUST issue

Remember the early Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade Movie?
The one where Indy's father (played by Sean Connery) get shot.
And Indy has to trust the ancient hieroglyphics to save his father?

The third test.. I think it's the 3rd one, Indy comes to a mountain opening...
he's got to trust that if he steps out into the void... he'll get where he needs to go.

He steps

it looks like he'll fall to his death... but Indy has no choice if he's gonna save his Dad...

Indy steps out...

and there's a hidden walk way

this is exactly what the 3rd step is all about

either you trust God or you've given your Ego complete control

If you worry, don't pray
If you Pray, don't worry

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services