how do i take care of self

[walk]

i am 42 and 5 yrs sober and i can't seem to learn how to get past the survival mode re: employment, housing, ect. on and off meds. a total mess I BELIEVE " I " KEEP SABOTAGING MYSELF and can't seem to break the patern in and out of therapy , mtgs. every day . the last dr. gave me meds that made me feel worse... sometimes i just stay up all night to ruin the next day , like tonight it's 4:35 am and i'm wide awake i go to bed at sunrise... ok i think you get the pic. if you got any ideas PLEASE HELP ty sssooo much

[snugsnug]

Good morning walk,

Congrats on the five years, wow what a feat.

My life still is unmanageable, I have not had a full-time job in over seventeen months. We have just recently moved into adequately housing. I have four children at home, we were living in a roach in infested, water leaking, hot box for over a year. Weekly I was getting the bulk of my groceries from the local food banks. Driving my vehicle with no insurance, expired tags, revoked license. Coming home to find my power off and no running water. And this was all while I was clean! I finally let go of some of my pride and asked for help. I had convinced myself that the only time I needed help was in recovery, not in my daily life.

Today we receive the food benefits from our state, we receive medical insurance, we are living in a four bedroom house subsidized by the city government. And my church family helped me get my tags, insurance and license legal. All I had to do was ask.

I had to do the work, but in the end, He provided it all.
Keep coming walk, it does get better.

[Doraine]

Walk I kept sabotaging myself by getting into the wrong relationship time after time. I hit bottom with self-sabotage after I became homeless when my last relationship ended. I got into subsidized housing after spending the summer in a crisis unit of a psych hospital. I got social security and learned how to live on my income. I haven't gotten into a destructive relationship since then. I'm still in counseling twice a week for bipolar disorder. We have to change what we bring into sobriety and some of us don't learn until we hit bottom with a behavior.

[clean42day]

We have to change what we bring into sobriety and some of us don't learn until we hit bottom with a behavior.

Hi walk I also want to congratulate you on 5 years! wow!

I had so many dysfunctional behaviors, and chronic patterns of self-destruction and self-sabatage going on that removing the drug addiction was only the top layer of a very deep iceburg. It has taken me, 3 rehabs, 4 recoveries, numerours different therapies specific to different issues and 25 years to get to the point to be able to claim some kind of freedom for myself. It takes a long time to get to core issues and also, in my opinion, takes a good therapists guidance too.

my process has been one of working backwards from the age I am now.....through to the very first messages I recieved as a child. Some of those messages were sooo damaging and toxic and so deeply imbedded in my subconscious....that I was not even aware I was operating on them.

my therapist explained it like this:
When someone programs your hard-drive, and wires you up for failure or self-sabatage with lies or untruths about self and the world around you. you cannot change the program until you follow the wires back to where they were plugged in to a faulty box.

I don't know if this makes sense or not. but it is what changed my life. When I got right down to the core of who I thought I was.....it was all toxic messages that were given to me as a child, experiences of me not being able to keep myself safe, lack of a sense of security, safety, and trust in my parents, and a damaged perception of self.

Basically my core beliefe that I was operating on was: my life is a mistake, I should have never been born, and the world is not a safe place to be.

Given that - "that" was my deepest truth.....that is exactly what I manifested in my life. I unconsciously set up situations in my life that would prove and validate that belife over and over and over again to validate my unworthyness. Toxic shame/guilt was my natural state - any kind of worthiness felt unnatural and false. (very backwards)

It took alot of work to change that beliefe system, but once I did....then my job became to "reparent" myself with healthy messages and change the harddrive in the way that my parents did not. and I rely heavily on my own "spiritual parent" (god) for the role model that I use today.

Today I believe that I am a beautiful child of God, born worthy whole, and complete, and capable of receiving all the good that life has to offer.

my favorite affirmation is:

all the good that I am seeking to be......is now seeking me.

once I changed my beliefs about myself and the world.....I began to attract healthier people, situations, and things to me....to validate the new belief system.

one of the harest things during this process.....was trust in self, in god, and in the world again.

When good things would happen......I had to learn to leave myself alone, not question it, recieve with grace, and allow myself to learn how to trust my own self love.

I don't know if this has helped you......but it is my ESH with my own process.

I have complete faith and trust that if you are you are willing you are also capable of finding your own path to healing too.

There is a saying in the program: you are looking at the problem - well I had to put that on my mirror - and in bright red lipstick just underneath it -
I backed it up with: YOU ARE ALSO THE SOLUTION.

light, love and prayers for your success.

Gail

[walk]

thanks so much for the reply's i feel i am not alone and thanks for the honesty. it feels good to know i have you with me on this journey. we can all do it if we hold eachother up. god bless you , michele