DATING IS HARD WORK!
I always have to be ‘on’

PREVIOUS: FoC – #5

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

2. RE-ENACTING (a-j)

3. SELF-SABOTAGING re-enactment
There are also POSITIVE things that interfere with our willingness to Commit :

a. Fear of self-care – To the WIC, C. to ourselves means having to give up the fantasy that someone will come along & rescue us.
12-Step Programs remind us that to truly progress, we need to put our Recovery first, before all else – particularly true for newcomers. Commitment to ourselves:
• requires the guts to go against all our early training, managing the resulting guilt & backlash

• means re-defining terms like ‘selfish, normal, fair, family, love’….
➼ If you’re in Integrity – true to Deepest Self – & are accused of Selfishness, it simply means you’re not doing what the other person wants. Don’t let someone guilt you into betraying your observations, values & beliefs. You can comply with their wishes if it suits you, but not from FoA

• means talking to the WIC every day, Meetings, 2-handed writing, books, therapy…. as much as possible. Once our Inner Child trusts that we’ll consistently show up for it, making a commitment to others won’t be so scary

b. F of being treated well & loved. To the WIC, C. to anything or anyone positive, means having to feel the contrast between the suffering our family (& others) put us thru – against – what we begin to see we could have / should have had. Painful & enraging.

• Many of us actually believe that wanting to be loved is a character defect!  But being loved is a fundamental & universal human need, which we had very little of when we needed it the most! So now we’re attracted to & stay with PPT that are either blatantly bad for us, not actually bad but unsuited to our True Self, or which only partly meet our needs.

• We don’t want to be disloyal to our parents, afraid to ‘hurt them, afraid to  grow up, afraid to be ‘vulnerable’.
Being treated with respect, consideration, patience, admiration, encouragement…. forces us to FEEL the abandonment we grew up with – how much we missed out on, & to think: “I could have had a V-8!” – I mean: “I didn’t cause the pain I grew up with. With healthier parents I would have been safe & loved!” 😢

c. F of our Power – To the WIC, C to our own strength means eclipsing family members & so in some way destroy them. 
🔥 Any sign of ‘stepping into our power’, being smart, knowing our rights & being able to shine was considered arrogant, presumptuous, even sinful.  Beside all the verbal & physical abuse for just being a normal kid, many of us got smacked down badly if we ever let some of our natural strength out.

😡 The other down side of showing competence & strength as a kid was that one of more of the damaged adults used it – like a nightmare octopus – to feed off of us!

So, between being abused and used – we had to hide most of who we truly were, & adapt to what would get us through. Being ‘strong’ as a kid actually meant:
– highlighting the adults’ weaknesses & limitations
– usurping the narcissists’ limelight
– a disruptive threat to the whole dysfunctional system
– a signal they might no longer be able to ‘mess’ with us
– an attempt to disengage the symbiosis, triggering THEIR FoA

That left us invisible to ourselves – not knowing what we’re inherently capable of, unable to commit or connect in a genuine way. And our co-dependence tells us that if we outshine others, we’ll be bad for making them feel bad about themselves. Then they won’t like us, plus we’re terrified of their envy-backlash.

🌀 And, now – If we do get an inkling of our healthy power, so foreign & undeserved, it can set off panic. To let others actually SEE us feels life-and-death dangerous.

NOTE – Unhealthy responses from others & our resulting terror ONLY happens when dealing with very wounded / abusive people!

NEXT: FoC – #3a