TAKING RESPONSIBILITY –  WITHOUT SELF-HATE greatly empowers me!

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Fear of Responsibility (FoR) #3a

🧍🏽‍♀️🧍🏽 AS ADULTS – GROWTH (cont)
🔆 Steps 4, 5, 9  (in #3a)

🔆 Step 10 – in AA, Al-Anon…. “Continued to take personal inventory, & when we were wrong, promptly admitted it

☑️ Comment on Step 10 (re. mindfulness)
This is often misused by ACoAs in the service of perpetuating our self-hate – seeing everything we do as wrong (sorry, sorry, sorry!), which is NOT what it says. Rather: “… and, when we were wrong…” which is not all of the time. (Posts on Step 10)

Because we don’t believe we have any positive, valuable characteristics, we’re constantly barraged by Bad Parent attacks. This is extremely stressful, & for some of us the pressure if so great that we end up spewing it out everywhere we go – constantly telling ALL our flaws, failures, trauma & problems – in great detail. We think it’s being honest & responsible. NOT.

This compulsion is actually:
• SELF-HATE, which says: I’m so bad, worthless, unlovable & a f–k up, that I can never do anything right, AND I have to let everyone know that I know, so they don’t think I have an arrogant bone in my body

• LACK of BOUNDARIES – no sense of what’s appropriate about who, what, where & how to over-disclose our wounds. One woman at a Recovery Conference when meeting a friend of a friend – said all in one breath: ”Hi, I’m Mary, I was raped!”

• FEAR OF ABANDONMENT – ACoAs’ default position is that: “I will get abandoned by everyone, sooner or later anyway – so why not get it over with before I get too attached.
I’ll tell them what a mess I am so they won’t be shocked & disgusted later when they get to know me. That’s when they’ll dump me  – when I’m already involved – which will be unbearable”

✦ DOUBLE BIND (D-B) #1
• Our family made it clear they were not going to provide much of the PMES things every child needs. From that we concluded we didn’t deserve to have them anyway, we accepted this lack at a very deep level.
AND yet —
• Our needs never seem to go away, no matter how hard we try to ignore them, still longing to be taken care of anyway. Since we were on our own as kids, trying to get by as best as we could without knowledge or nurturing, & we still are. So we sneakily try to extract a little of those pesky need from the world – but usually in self-destructive ways.

✦ D-B #2
Long ago we gave up hope of ever succeeding at what we were ‘born to be/do”, so now we never go for the brass ring. ACoAs are ‘famous’ for being great at what we like to do the least, since it’s not a threat to our core Self. We think that if we fail at something we don’t care about it won’t matter as much!
⚠️ And if we dare reach for the sky & actually achieve some success >> at best we assume we’re frauds, & << at worst we find ways to sabotage it

AND at the same time —
— we keep trying to do & be what they said they wanted of us, or what we thought they meant – so we can finally get it right – to get their acceptance & approval!
We keep hoping someday all our effort will pay off, assuming it’s totally up to us to fix, so we bend ourselves into a pretzel – anything to deny our family’s disregard & abuse

✦ D-B #3a
Our family bullied us into emotionally & physically ‘taking care’ of them, insisting when we were children that we act as fully competent adults – for them (as arbitrator, lawyer, doctor/ nurse/ psychologist, housekeeper, babysitter…..)
AND yet —
— any attempt we made to use those same skills for ourselves were continually belittled, discouraged, made fun of, punished, under-cut…..

#3b – As a result of 3a:
We have to – at least – try to get other people to take care of us, because we truly believe we don’t know how 
AND yet —
— we do take care of others, actually exhibiting amazing skills & talent we never use for ourselves, still thinking we’re incompetent!

✦ D-B #4
We are angry at having to be responsible for others, still protecting the abusers in our life
AND yet —
— if we don’t keep up our co-dependent dance with everyone (be over-responsible), we’re convinced we’ll never be able to get our needs met (as reward)  (MORE…. re. DBs)

NEXT: Healthy Responsibility