snugsnug
05-09-2008, 06:40 PM
Here is an essay, presentation I gave for my final grade in a class last semester. i hope you all will like it.
The lamp of the body is the eye
In deciding to take this course I weighed the pros and cons. I did not need this course to graduate, because I have already taken Behavior Modification. Although I did not do as well in that course as I feel I should have, none the less I had full filled my obligation. I also did not necessarily want to take a course that would use up some of my financial aide, because with out that I would not even be able to attend school. And I did not necessarily want to come to campus for one afternoon class, twice a week. What I did weight in my favor for taking this class is what I will be presenting today. This presentation is an integration of the whole semester as I saw it and as I took notes on it. I will include some of my journal, some of my assignments including comments professor Mac wrote on them and some of the statements from the text that have already influenced me emotionally and will influence the way in which I help the friends and family of chemically dependant people.
The lamp of the body is the eye. Finding happiness with-in myself has been a long emotionally challenged journey. I could not find happiness anywhere but here in me.
This course has opened the door to a brand new tool-shed with all kinds-of new tools for me to use as I need to use them. These tools have already helped and will continue to help me cultivate, build if you will and mold myself and those to whom I am honored and feel called to help along the way. Try being a guide on the side. We don’t assume responsibility for our highest responsibility-ourselves.
This course has also given me the opportunity to meet some of my fellow student/counselors on a deeper, much closer level than I could have imagined. It has been an honor and a privilege to attend classes with them. I am beginning to realize as did Melody Beattie in this edition of Co-Dependant No More, women do have souls and men do have feelings, even me. She started to motivate me to dive deeper into my own healing process, from the first paragraph I read all the way to the end. I have and will continue to dive deeper. Trust-get it by giving it! Expectations-needs and wants.
I came into this course with the expectations to learn how to identify and treat Co-Dependants. Not only am I well on my way to fulfilling these expectations, I am also understanding and identifying my own co-dependant characteristics as well. And yes I do tend to express some co-dependant characteristics. You can only be responsible for what you can be responsible for. Dependency vs. independency.
The sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day when I met him. Then everything went crazy. I did not take me seriously, I had no hope that things would get better, I had no purpose except to care for other people, and I was not doing a good job at that. These are only a few sentences’ in chapter one that I began to identify with. And it just kept on going on from there. “Success in business, but a failure in relationships with women”, remember Gerald and Patty who even felt guilty for going to see a counselor. She, like me, thought she should be able to solve her own problems. She finally became more tolerant of her-self and her daily routine. Don’t forget about Randall, he believed it was his duty to worry about other people and their problems.
Relationships are like a dance with visible energy racing back and forth between the partners. Some relationships are the slow, dark dance of death. Same-ol-same-ol. We steer-don’t row. Spouse is partner in addiction, partner is addicted to addict.
Chemical dependency means being dependant on alcohol and other drugs. Co-dependency means knowing all of your relationships will either go on and on the same way, painful, or end the same way, disastrously, or both. Some in desperation or enlightenment believe co-dependency is anything and everyone is co-dependant. Lessons don’t go away. They keep presenting them selves until we learn them.
The co-dependants have worried them-selves sick about other people, co-dependants have tried to help in ways that didn’t, co-dependants have said yes when they meant to say no. They have been afraid to trust their own feelings, believed lies then felt betrayed. Co-dependants have worn sackcloth because they did not believe they deserved silk. Having these problems does not mean co-dependants are bad, defective or inferior. Some learned these behaviors as children and others learned their behavior later on in life. Some even learned these behaviors as they interpreted their own religion. Assessment-Plan-Counsel. Our childhood influences our behavior. Shape shifting, clearing away chaos.
We are care-takers, we have low-self-worth; we repress our feelings and obsess over anything and everything. Some are controlling, some in denial. We can not communicate and we know no boundaries. We don’t trust we are angry and we have sex problems; we can be responsible and irresponsible. Who do you want to be? What do you need to be?
We must detach, not from the person whom we care about, but detach from the agony of involvement. We can not begin to work on our selves, we can not begin to live our own lives or feel our own feelings or solve our own problems until we have detached from the object of our obsession. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We each mind our own business. Detach, detach in love, or detach in anger, but strive for detachment. If you can not let go completely, try to hang on loosely, relax, sit back, and take a break. Surrender is a decision-acceptance is action and follow through. Crooked old developing thinking!
We react with fear and anxiety. We don’t have to forfeit our power to think and feel, for anyone or anything. We do not have to take things so seriously. We don’t have to take rejection as a reflection of our self-worth. We don’t have to take little things so personally either. We must learn to recognize when we are reacting. We must make ourselves comfortable, we must examine what happened, deal with it. We must figure out what we must do to take care of ourselves.
Slow down, don’t feel so frightened, and don’t panic. Keep things in perspective. Make life easier for you. Set yourself free. It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, and doesn’t matter. We can not change people and that’s the truth.
Detach, surrender. We are so careful to see that others don’t get hurt, no one, that is, but ourselves. Remove the victim. Many of us expect and need other people so much that we settle for too little, and then we become trapped and stuck.
Finish up business of the past. Nurture and cherish, stop looking for happiness in other people, depend on ourselves, be here for me, depend on God, He cares. Live our own lives. All wise men and kings have always had a counselor, consigliare. Great goals!
I do not deserve and will not tolerate abuse or constant mistreatment. I do not have the right to impose on others right to take care of themselves.
Have a love affair with yourself. We are good. We are good enough. We are appropriate to life. Relax. Encouraged, blessed, accomplished, satisfied, fragmented pieces, comfortable, peaceful, abandoned.
Honor thy self by being self-accepted, honor thyself by living authentically, honor thyself by practicing selfishness in the highest, noblest, and least understood sense of the word. The love we give and the love we receive will be enhanced by the love we give ourselves. Some of us may have had dreams and hopes crushed, and nothing dies slower or more painfully than a dream. We must feel our own feelings; our feelings are reactions to life’s circumstances. We need to invite emotions into our lives, and then make a commitment to take gentle loving care of them, we need to trust our feelings and trust ourselves. We are wiser than we think.
As long as you are capable of anger, there are still lessons to learn. Three days from melt down to calm. Anger is a waste of time and energy, it’s not ok to feel anger, and we will lose control and go crazy if we get angry. I don’t think so. We need to feel the emotion, examine the thinking, and make a responsible decision. We need talk to people, and burn off the anger energy.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of sound mind. Remember decisions don’t have to be made perfectly. Yes you can think. Quit abusing our minds, feed our minds, and feed our minds healthy thoughts. Stretch our minds use our minds; make decisions, and ask God to help us think. Address-treat-work on it.
Excited misery, we may start making trouble or making troubles greater than they are to create stimulation for our-selves. Being in crisis becomes comfortable, being in crisis becomes better than numb, and it saves us from the ho-hum everyday, normal existence. We are just used to so much excitement, peace and serenity seems strange and awkward, even bland. We must find creative ways to fill our needs, to fill the void, to keep us interested and alive, to fill the void of the drama. We have become used to so much turmoil. Get a job you enjoy, one that you like, one that will fill your expectation, just keep the excited misery out.
Expectations can confuse us; however it is okay to have them.
Intimacy, in to me you see. Risky business for me. Most people want and need love, and in spite of it all we do not love, it feels safer not to love. It is okay to give and receive love, we can trust ourselves. We can open up; we can take our running shoes off.
We need to learn to play and enjoy ourselves. It helps us to stay healthy. We can start doing things for ourselves just because we want to. We can let ourselves enjoy life.
We need to set limits on what we shall do to and for people. We need to set limits on what we will allow people to do to and for us. We can trust ourselves to make good decisions about whom to trust. We can learn to see people clearly.
Many people have problems with sex. This can happen both before and after recovery. Sexual problems can sneak up on people. Sex is a powerful force, a great source for intimacy and for pleasure. If we can not solve our problems we need to seek professional help. Making positive change can upset the dynamics.
I don’t think love has to hurt as much as it did in the past. I believe God allows certain people to come into our lives.
Set goals. Believe that life is worth living and your beliefs will create the fact. Be not afraid to live. Communicate. When you are doing what is right for you, it’s okay to say it once, simply, and then refuse to discuss anything further. Work a twelve step program. Go to some meetings, even when you don’t have to. Take an inventory, tell somebody, set yourself free. We must learn to like and love again.
The lamp of the body is the eye
In deciding to take this course I weighed the pros and cons. I did not need this course to graduate, because I have already taken Behavior Modification. Although I did not do as well in that course as I feel I should have, none the less I had full filled my obligation. I also did not necessarily want to take a course that would use up some of my financial aide, because with out that I would not even be able to attend school. And I did not necessarily want to come to campus for one afternoon class, twice a week. What I did weight in my favor for taking this class is what I will be presenting today. This presentation is an integration of the whole semester as I saw it and as I took notes on it. I will include some of my journal, some of my assignments including comments professor Mac wrote on them and some of the statements from the text that have already influenced me emotionally and will influence the way in which I help the friends and family of chemically dependant people.
The lamp of the body is the eye. Finding happiness with-in myself has been a long emotionally challenged journey. I could not find happiness anywhere but here in me.
This course has opened the door to a brand new tool-shed with all kinds-of new tools for me to use as I need to use them. These tools have already helped and will continue to help me cultivate, build if you will and mold myself and those to whom I am honored and feel called to help along the way. Try being a guide on the side. We don’t assume responsibility for our highest responsibility-ourselves.
This course has also given me the opportunity to meet some of my fellow student/counselors on a deeper, much closer level than I could have imagined. It has been an honor and a privilege to attend classes with them. I am beginning to realize as did Melody Beattie in this edition of Co-Dependant No More, women do have souls and men do have feelings, even me. She started to motivate me to dive deeper into my own healing process, from the first paragraph I read all the way to the end. I have and will continue to dive deeper. Trust-get it by giving it! Expectations-needs and wants.
I came into this course with the expectations to learn how to identify and treat Co-Dependants. Not only am I well on my way to fulfilling these expectations, I am also understanding and identifying my own co-dependant characteristics as well. And yes I do tend to express some co-dependant characteristics. You can only be responsible for what you can be responsible for. Dependency vs. independency.
The sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day when I met him. Then everything went crazy. I did not take me seriously, I had no hope that things would get better, I had no purpose except to care for other people, and I was not doing a good job at that. These are only a few sentences’ in chapter one that I began to identify with. And it just kept on going on from there. “Success in business, but a failure in relationships with women”, remember Gerald and Patty who even felt guilty for going to see a counselor. She, like me, thought she should be able to solve her own problems. She finally became more tolerant of her-self and her daily routine. Don’t forget about Randall, he believed it was his duty to worry about other people and their problems.
Relationships are like a dance with visible energy racing back and forth between the partners. Some relationships are the slow, dark dance of death. Same-ol-same-ol. We steer-don’t row. Spouse is partner in addiction, partner is addicted to addict.
Chemical dependency means being dependant on alcohol and other drugs. Co-dependency means knowing all of your relationships will either go on and on the same way, painful, or end the same way, disastrously, or both. Some in desperation or enlightenment believe co-dependency is anything and everyone is co-dependant. Lessons don’t go away. They keep presenting them selves until we learn them.
The co-dependants have worried them-selves sick about other people, co-dependants have tried to help in ways that didn’t, co-dependants have said yes when they meant to say no. They have been afraid to trust their own feelings, believed lies then felt betrayed. Co-dependants have worn sackcloth because they did not believe they deserved silk. Having these problems does not mean co-dependants are bad, defective or inferior. Some learned these behaviors as children and others learned their behavior later on in life. Some even learned these behaviors as they interpreted their own religion. Assessment-Plan-Counsel. Our childhood influences our behavior. Shape shifting, clearing away chaos.
We are care-takers, we have low-self-worth; we repress our feelings and obsess over anything and everything. Some are controlling, some in denial. We can not communicate and we know no boundaries. We don’t trust we are angry and we have sex problems; we can be responsible and irresponsible. Who do you want to be? What do you need to be?
We must detach, not from the person whom we care about, but detach from the agony of involvement. We can not begin to work on our selves, we can not begin to live our own lives or feel our own feelings or solve our own problems until we have detached from the object of our obsession. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We each mind our own business. Detach, detach in love, or detach in anger, but strive for detachment. If you can not let go completely, try to hang on loosely, relax, sit back, and take a break. Surrender is a decision-acceptance is action and follow through. Crooked old developing thinking!
We react with fear and anxiety. We don’t have to forfeit our power to think and feel, for anyone or anything. We do not have to take things so seriously. We don’t have to take rejection as a reflection of our self-worth. We don’t have to take little things so personally either. We must learn to recognize when we are reacting. We must make ourselves comfortable, we must examine what happened, deal with it. We must figure out what we must do to take care of ourselves.
Slow down, don’t feel so frightened, and don’t panic. Keep things in perspective. Make life easier for you. Set yourself free. It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, and doesn’t matter. We can not change people and that’s the truth.
Detach, surrender. We are so careful to see that others don’t get hurt, no one, that is, but ourselves. Remove the victim. Many of us expect and need other people so much that we settle for too little, and then we become trapped and stuck.
Finish up business of the past. Nurture and cherish, stop looking for happiness in other people, depend on ourselves, be here for me, depend on God, He cares. Live our own lives. All wise men and kings have always had a counselor, consigliare. Great goals!
I do not deserve and will not tolerate abuse or constant mistreatment. I do not have the right to impose on others right to take care of themselves.
Have a love affair with yourself. We are good. We are good enough. We are appropriate to life. Relax. Encouraged, blessed, accomplished, satisfied, fragmented pieces, comfortable, peaceful, abandoned.
Honor thy self by being self-accepted, honor thyself by living authentically, honor thyself by practicing selfishness in the highest, noblest, and least understood sense of the word. The love we give and the love we receive will be enhanced by the love we give ourselves. Some of us may have had dreams and hopes crushed, and nothing dies slower or more painfully than a dream. We must feel our own feelings; our feelings are reactions to life’s circumstances. We need to invite emotions into our lives, and then make a commitment to take gentle loving care of them, we need to trust our feelings and trust ourselves. We are wiser than we think.
As long as you are capable of anger, there are still lessons to learn. Three days from melt down to calm. Anger is a waste of time and energy, it’s not ok to feel anger, and we will lose control and go crazy if we get angry. I don’t think so. We need to feel the emotion, examine the thinking, and make a responsible decision. We need talk to people, and burn off the anger energy.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of sound mind. Remember decisions don’t have to be made perfectly. Yes you can think. Quit abusing our minds, feed our minds, and feed our minds healthy thoughts. Stretch our minds use our minds; make decisions, and ask God to help us think. Address-treat-work on it.
Excited misery, we may start making trouble or making troubles greater than they are to create stimulation for our-selves. Being in crisis becomes comfortable, being in crisis becomes better than numb, and it saves us from the ho-hum everyday, normal existence. We are just used to so much excitement, peace and serenity seems strange and awkward, even bland. We must find creative ways to fill our needs, to fill the void, to keep us interested and alive, to fill the void of the drama. We have become used to so much turmoil. Get a job you enjoy, one that you like, one that will fill your expectation, just keep the excited misery out.
Expectations can confuse us; however it is okay to have them.
Intimacy, in to me you see. Risky business for me. Most people want and need love, and in spite of it all we do not love, it feels safer not to love. It is okay to give and receive love, we can trust ourselves. We can open up; we can take our running shoes off.
We need to learn to play and enjoy ourselves. It helps us to stay healthy. We can start doing things for ourselves just because we want to. We can let ourselves enjoy life.
We need to set limits on what we shall do to and for people. We need to set limits on what we will allow people to do to and for us. We can trust ourselves to make good decisions about whom to trust. We can learn to see people clearly.
Many people have problems with sex. This can happen both before and after recovery. Sexual problems can sneak up on people. Sex is a powerful force, a great source for intimacy and for pleasure. If we can not solve our problems we need to seek professional help. Making positive change can upset the dynamics.
I don’t think love has to hurt as much as it did in the past. I believe God allows certain people to come into our lives.
Set goals. Believe that life is worth living and your beliefs will create the fact. Be not afraid to live. Communicate. When you are doing what is right for you, it’s okay to say it once, simply, and then refuse to discuss anything further. Work a twelve step program. Go to some meetings, even when you don’t have to. Take an inventory, tell somebody, set yourself free. We must learn to like and love again.