ALL THAT ATTENTION makes my head hurt!

PREVIOUS: FoC #6a

SITE: “How to Cure Commitment Phobia” – NLP ‘secrets’

3. SELF-SABOTAGING re-enactment (cont)
Some POSITIVE things that interfere with our willingness to Commit :
a. Fear of self-care / b. F of being treated well & loved / c. F of our Power

d. F of Visibility. To the WIC, C. to anything means everyone can see us, in all our imperfections & ‘badness’.
If we combine Fears OF : Abandonment + Compromise + Losing Control + Making mistakes + Responsibility, we end up with a deep terror of being fully visible.
It would mean exposing ourself to the whole world as undeserving frauds, as “Who do you think you are?” echoes in our head. The assumption is that everyone else is also like our family, who will punish us for daring to have an identity different from theirs.

e. F of Receiving – To the WIC, C. to others means making oneself vulnerable.
• Receiving exposes us to good things we never had before, which opens the floodgates of need & longing, which will drown us!
We’re hungry for recognition & nourishment, but are forbidden. Our injunction against Receiving is bone deep, especially for the Hero & Lost Child.
TOXIC Rules include:
“Do everything yourself / I’m not important or valuable / I have no rights / No one actually sees me….”.
To ACoAs, Receiving IS: > breaking family rules, > being weak & needy, > selfish & greedy, especially when others are suffering, > getting something I don’t deserve, > arrogant, presumptuous….

2 broad categories
🔸 Receiving something because we actually asked. Being direct about what we need is not only forbidden by the PigP, but the WIC also believes that: 👎🏽 If we have to ask, then getting it doesn’t count!

But asking is appropriate. Even infants who can’t talk let feelings be known, while being totally dependent on adults to know & respond to their needs.
Instead, most of us had narcissistic, unavailable & weak parents who were not attuned.  So we’re still stuck back there, in the emotional infant-toddler stage, waiting, waiting…..
This passivity is not appropriate for adults. It is our responsibility to know what we need & then ask for whatever we can’t supply for ourself.

🔸 Receiving something without asking, from someone generously offering time, attention, gifts….. because they want to! Naturally, with our background of abuse & deprivation, the WIC doesn’t believe anyone would give us something ‘just because’. Since we feel unworthy, everyone must have an ulterior motive, & it’s up to us to figure out what they want.

f. F of Success – To the WIC, C. to achieving our deepest goals means the sure loss of a connection to our family. (See Point c. in #3a). This refers to fulfilling our heart’s desire – what we were born to do. But even if we’ve managed to follow the Right Path, we’re more likely to keep from being as successful as we’re capable of – so we “Don’t get too big for your britches”! Full success would mean disobeying a basic Toxic Rule that “You always have to struggle, but never get there” !

g. F of Peacefulness. To the WIC, C. to anything good means being bored to tears. ACoAs are adrenaline junkies, ‘addicted to negative excitement’ (Ennea-type 7), always creating or inviting situations that make life more complicated & stressful.
This can include those of us who are isolated & withdrawn, whose form of excitement is mainly internal – the mental ‘spinning’ of obsessive self-hate & worry. Both types create unnecessary drama, re-enacting how our parents functioned + the chaos they created.

• To be calm, quiet, peaceful makes no sense to ACoAs & make us anxious! 🧐  Without constant ‘agida‘ we feel empty, which we call boredom, but is actually the result of being emotionally numb.

Getting used to inner Serenity takes time, with persistent love & patience. Whether the unconscious compulsion to be a ’drama queen /king’ is blatant or camouflaged, it’s up to us to replace it with a saner way of life.

h. F of Higher Power (God, Spirit, the “Universe”….). To the WIC C. to any form of ‘power grater than ourselves’ is guaranteed obliteration (death of Self). ACoAs are ‘afraid of authority figures” (Laundry List). John Bradshaw pointed out that children transfer their experiences with parents (the original ‘gods’) to their concept of the true Higher Power. If they were dangerous – then obviously so must God be. Not!

NEXT: Recovering from FoC #1