Victim

"Our experience shows that we often lived as victims."

Many of us may have gotten very good at playing the victim. But we tell ourselves that we didn't create that role for ourselves. Wasn't it those other people and circumstances that made us a victim?

Holding on to regrets and resentments is like wrapping ourselves in a blanket of thorns. Each minute of each day we are aware of the fact that the thorns are causing us pain, and the only comfort some of us get is thinking that at least others see how hurt we are. But nobody wants to live with a victim, not even the victim.

How different our lives and our world would be if we could go back and undo the past. But life doesn't offer us that option. What we do get is a choice, to either accept our past and work through it, or to remain a victim, letting it continue to influence who we are and what we do.

When we recite the Serenity Prayer in meetings, we need to believe the words "Accept the things I cannot change." Our past happened. As uncomfortable as it was, it can become the catalyst that helps make us stronger.

On this day I will continue to shed the blanket of thorns I've worn as a victim and wrap myself in the soft blanket of recovery.

Fun

"We were not taught how to have fun."

Someone in a meeting once asked what adult children do for fun. In our families of origin, many of us were too hypervigilant to have fun or experience joy. When we look back, we often struggle to remember brief moments of fun. Some of us do catch glimpses of playing with dolls or trucks, blowing dandelions, or hollering "Let's play hide and seek - you're it!"

As we begin recovery, the idea of having fun may feel foreign, but we start to learn how important it is as a way to nurture our Inner Child and our adult self. As we get healthier, we see wondrous joy and freedom in having fun. We start doing things like drawing in a sketchbook, putting together a picture puzzle, coloring, working on a craft, going for a walk, riding a horse, fishing, hiking a mountain trail, skiing, swimming, calling a friend, going to the movies, painting a picture, singing, going to the library, learning to play a musical instrument, listening to music, hugging a friend, going to a museum, sitting by the river watching a sunset, laughing with friends, taking pictures, taking a class on meditation, playing a game… the list of fun activities can go on forever.

On this day I will experience life to its fullest by being in the present and doing something fun.

Guilty until proven otherwise

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/29/opinions/kyle-rittenhouse-bail-donations-race-leiba/index.html

Safety

"There is a way to discuss and heal from the events of the past without minimizing these events and without remaining stuck with such memories."

Arriving at the bridge between denial and acceptance was painful. What were we to do now that the brutality of the past was revealed? What were we to do with the internal mess that we had been left with from childhood? What were we to do with the tattered remains of a heart cast in stone, the plethora of emotions under lock and key, the inability to reach out?

We realize we are about to cross over a bridge. We come to know that there will be no going back. This is an irreversible process of progress from pain, sorrow and suffering to health, joy and peace. All we need to do is avail ourselves of others and begin our journey with the first step forward. It isn't easy, but it is a lot less painful that staying stuck in our own absolute uncertainty. Once on the other side, we see how deeply self-protective we had become. No longer is it necessary to hide from others by looking down at the ground. We move our gaze into the eyes of those who understand how we feel, and we find safety in their unconditional concern for our well being.

On this day I will keep my head high and know that with the help of others, I am safe from the memories of the past.

via Quora: How do you know when someone really loves you?

Answered by Mohamed Semeunacte
[With "When she's in love, a woman gets in bed. When he's in love, a man stays in bed" graphic]

[There’s a huge difference between:]
[Someone who is not really in love with you but say they are - And someone who actively fakes being in love with you]
Regarding Men

2 days ago, we were joking around with a friend of mine (a guy) and he said something that stuck with me:

I don’t really know what love is but with (GF’s name) I wanted to stay in bed after I finished. That was weird, I told myself that’s probably what love is.

See, men are not really good with emotions.

Of course, it is changing but not at the pace the media seems to describe it.

What that means is, when a man is in love, he actually displays the same basic behavior his Dad and grand-father displayed before him.

When a man is in love:

He tells everyone

Especially family and friends. If you never met his family and/or his friends, no matter what he says, it’s BS.
He wants to be “your fixer”

Call him and tell him that your car didn’t start this morning and watch his reaction. A man in love is a fixer “hold on Babe, I’m coming” or “Wait a minute, I’m at work, I’m calling Dave, he’ll come in a bit”.
He is willing to throw a punch for you
Your security and respect become his duty. Some guys are built for it and some aren't. But really, if someone threatens you in any shape or form, he will react the same way.

Regarding Women

Women are built for this sh**… literally. Her brain is wired for emotions.

If a woman feels warm, wanted and adored and is in the attachment phase, she concludes that she’s probably in love.
When a woman is in love:

She talks ... a lot

A woman’s focus is usually on communication, harmony and sharing. If she’s consistently exhibiting a behavior that is not aligned with those values ... there’s something she’s not telling you.

She involves herself in your world

Since one of her big value is sharing, she will want to get to know you more and more. She will want to know your family and friends. She may not like them much, but she wants to know them. She does that because she has a hunch and wants to verify it. The more she’s involved in your world, the more she gets to know you and [find out] if you can fulfill her various needs.

She actively looks for new ways to become the center of your world

This is the main reason women are the organizers of all the trips: the “love escapes”, the “family trips” etc… A woman intuitively knows that a man can forget his commitment to her. Therefore she takes the time to organize their life.

One last word about “faking it”.

I don’t know one person who’s ready to go through all of the above just to get you to ... I don’t know what. Therefore, I wouldn’t spend too much time on this kind of idea.

Differentiating Psychopath from Schizoid

One of the easiest ways to differentiate a person who is a Psychopath from a person with Schizoid Personality Disorder is by how they are with regard to experiencing emotions. Their reactions may appear superficially similar, but they are actually almost polar opposites.

Psychopaths and Fear

I agree with Athena Walker’s position that psychopaths are born not made. Research shows that their amygdalae (we actually have two, one in each of our temporal lobes in our brain) are on average 18% smaller than normal.

The amygdala is part of our emotional processing system. It is involved in our response to fear and our ability to remember events that produced that fear. Our amygdalae normally automatically trigger our fight or flight response and are involved in our experience of anxiety.

This means that psychopaths have less capacity to experience fear, react less to stimuli that most people consider frightening, and are less likely to remember to avoid situations that are potentially dangerous.

Schizoid Personality Disorder and Fear

People with Schizoid Personality appear to have been born with normal nervous systems including normal size amygdalae. But they had traumatic childhood experiences that started before the age of four and continued. Many of my Schizoid clients suffer from complex PTSD.

Unlike the Psychpaths I know who tend to be restless, fearless, insensitive, and amoral, most of my Schizoid clients are quite sensitive, moral, and more afraid of other people than normal. They have a full set of emotions which they generally try to keep hidden. Many of my Schizoid clients write poetry that expresses their deepest feelings.

My Schizoid clients report having been emotionally and physically abused, neglected, intruded upon, and treated like a thing, not a person with feelings and rights. As babies and young children, they experienced a severe lack of attunement by their parents.

What looks like a lack of emotions is actually dissociation or hidden emotions.

Because they could not physically leave their childhood situation, they learned to dissociate from their bodies and the situation by “going away” in their heads. They also learned that expressing their emotions or asking for what they wanted was pointless. They were ignored, mocked, or abused even more.

All of the above taught them that they could only depend on themselves. Instead of turning outward for validation, they turned inward and created a rich fantasy life in which they could have safe and controllable imaginary interactions with other people.

Punchline: Psychopaths experience diminished fear responses and less stress than normal. They appear comfortable in situations where other people would feel afraid. People with Schizoid Personality Disorder are the opposite. They experience more fear than normal. They hide their feelings because they have learned to feel unsafe around most people — not because they feel less.

- Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP - on Quora

Moderation

"Today, when I am acting compulsively, I take a breather from that activity to moderate my behavior. Sometimes I have to say aloud, ‘I'm turning this over to God.'"

We have homes with automatic temperature controls. The heat doesn't engage until the thermostat senses there's not enough warm air, and the air conditioning does the reverse.

This process of modulation (regulating according to measure or proportion) was not present in our families of origin. Nearly every life situation either received a maximal response or was virtually ignored (denial). A parent could rage over a traffic jam, but never discuss a tragic family death.

This lack of modulation or moderation in response to life's events sent most of us into our adult lives without effective role models or acceptable ways to handle our emotions. We had two settings, MAX ON and MAX OFF, and we didn't understand why. We blew up with anger and had no clue why we were unable to grieve serious life events. We now know we were programmed to be that way.

In ACA, with the Steps and the help of a fellow traveler, we see that we're not alone. We gain serenity and can thoughtfully assess a life event, and then decide on a reasonable course of action, if action is required. We learn to do our part and then "Let Go and Let God." As we go through this process, we gain serenity.

On this day I can choose a modulated response to a situation. I choose NOT to use the reactionary or denial behaviors I learned as a child.

Inner Critic

"We stop in mid-sentence if we are putting ourselves down or criticizing our thoughts or behaviors. We identify the source of the negativity which is the inner critic inside all adult children."

Who tells us each day whether we live up to a standard?

Who lies awake each night running over the "could haves" or "should haves" for the day or for days gone by?

We weren't born with shame; it was instilled in us. We had no experience to measure or reject that shame when we were children, so we had to accept it. But who is keeping that shame alive in us today?

It's our inner critic that reflects the negative voices from our past. But we now have the choice to change that voice - to live life on our own terms and bury the "could haves" and "should haves." We are no longer required to listen to the messages that keep shame alive in our everyday thoughts.

Who puts a value on us if we do not value ourselves?

In ACA, we are accepted for who we are. We join together, not to bemoan our imperfections, but to find "the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me." Our strength in numbers gives us that courage and assures us that we are now, and always have been, valued human beings.

On this day I look at myself through the eyes of my fellow ACAs and my Higher Power. Instead of listening to my inner critic, I believe what they say - that I am valued.

Enjoy Life

"We learn how to play and enjoy life."

Many of us who grew up in [alcoholic or] dysfunctional homes had little time or opportunity for play. Faced with adult chaos, much of our early life was spent in survival mode.

We learn that living life in our rearview mirror is not really living. Letting go of the past allows us to experience the present without the blinders that keep us from joy.

But where is the joy? It's not something that we can just sit around and wait for. Joy is to be sought. It's everywhere, but it must be found; it will not find us. We must open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to search it out.

Joy is giving to others with no expectation of return. It's hugging someone who needs it or stopping at a shelter to walk a homeless dog. When we bring joy to others we bring it into our own lives.

On this day I will find the joy that is all around me that's just waiting for me to experience it.

[Editing is mine.]

Humility (September 26)

"With humility, we become more thoughtful in our decisions, and we are slower to anger. We begin to become actors rather than reactors to life's situations."

As children, we may have been humiliated and told we didn't measure up. As we grew, we decided we needed to prove our worth. When we accomplished things, we expected validation. Most decisions we made were geared to gaining this outward affirmation. If anyone disagreed with us, it felt like an attack. We lashed out and tried to punish them. We may have even further reacted by increasing our efforts to prove our worth.

We learn about humility, and that it has nothing to do with humiliation, a core wound. [Achieving] humility is the way to inner peace and finding our True Self. If we do something for others, the world doesn't have to know. We don't need accolades. And where it was second nature for us to react first and lash out, we now take a step back and examine reality.

This change is not easy. Our insecurities and triggers are often just below the surface, and we can fall into old patterns. But when we use our new tools, we have more self-awareness. We learn to look in the mirror and feel at peace with what we see.

On this day I will remember that humility keeps me grounded and on equal footing with those around me. I don't have to be ‘greater than' to have value.

The War in the Air, by Howard Nemerov

For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there
In the clean war, the war in the air.

Seldom the ghosts come back bearing their tales
Of hitting the earth, the incompressible sea,
But stayed up there in the relative wind,
Shades fading in the mind,

Who had no graves but only epitaphs
Where never so many spoke for never so few:
Per ardua, said the partisans of Mars,
Per aspera, to the stars.

That was the good war, the war we won
As if there was no death, for goodness's sake.
With the help of the losers we left out there
In the air, in the empty air.

After Paradise, by Czeslaw Milosz

Don’t run any more. Quiet. How softly it rains
On the roofs of the city. How perfect
All things are. Now, for the two of you
Waking up in a royal bed by a garret window.
For a man and a woman. For one plant divided
Into masculine and feminine which longed for each other.
Yes, this is my gift to you. Above ashes
On a bitter, bitter earth. Above the subterranean
Echo of clamorings and vows. So that now at dawn
You must be attentive: the tilt of a head,
A hand with a comb, two faces in a mirror
Are only forever once, even if unremembered,
So that you watch what it is, though it fades away,
And are grateful every moment for your being.
Let that little park with greenish marble busts
In the pearl-gray light, under a summer drizzle,
Remain as it was when you opened the gate.
And the street of tall peeling porticos
Which this love of yours suddenly transformed.

Translated by the author and Robert Hass.

Promise Nine

"Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set."

As children, our integrity was badly mangled. Physical, psychological, social, and spiritual boundaries were rarely, if ever, respected in our homes. As a result of this conditioning, we didn't learn to honor our own boundaries or those of others. If we grew up in a house where our toes were continually stepped on and no one took responsibility, we may have become toe-steppers and believed it was normal.

We learn about respecting boundaries at our first meeting when we observe the no cross talk rule. This healthy boundary allows each of us to express our reality without comment, judgment or placating behavior. As we continue to attend meetings and share our experiences, we may discover other levels of toe-stepping that we are still acting out.

We discover how our childhood boundaries were violated. From there, we progress to acknowledging how those violations affect us today. Through reparenting ourselves, we reestablish healthy internal and external boundaries. We begin to restore our integrity by making others - even those in authority - aware of the healthy limits we are setting in our lives.

On this day I will honor healthy boundaries. I will use them as stepping stones to acknowledging my buried childhood memories and feelings. I am learning to set boundaries with integrity.

Mistakes

"Each time we judged ourselves without mercy for common mistakes, there was loss."

Many of us raised in dysfunctional families got the message that there was no room for error. We may have been raised by controlling parents who expected perfection. We were scolded or even abused for making mistakes. We weren't allowed to be kids and learn from our mistakes or taught that making mistakes was part of being human.

We internalized this judgment. Even after we left our childhood homes, we treated ourselves harshly when we made mistakes. Recurring thoughts may have kept an underlying anxiety alive within us, such as "I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble. I'm afraid I'm going to get caught." Some of us were so ashamed of mistakes that we lied or cheated to cover them up. We might even have tried to numb ourselves from the anxiety of it all by engaging in addictive or compulsive behavior.

We discover that we can reveal our imperfections in a supportive fellowship. We can openly share stories of what we used to hide, and receive loving acceptance. We know we're not alone when we hear someone else share. We feel exhilarated and free when we work the Steps.

On this day I will identify a mistake I made and judged myself harshly for. I will tell this to at least one person whom I trust and feel unconditional acceptance from.

No fire insurance

I have no insurance to cover [CZU August lightning complex] fire happenings, since I did not initiate a new renter's insurance policy before this. I had a quote in hand for renter's insurance startimg September 1, but I hadn't yet gone ahead with signing on, with the ongoing busyness of my then-current move (during covid-19 times). Next time maybe I won't do such a thing, again.

Reparenting

"The need to reparent ourselves comes from our efforts to feel safe as children." Because of our dysfunctional childhoods, we usually see things differently than others. We don't feel all warm and fuzzy when we see a TV commercial where the salesperson loudly exclaims, "Come on in. We'll treat you like family!" In our minds, that doesn't sound like such a good thing, because our families weren't safe. And when we feel compelled to buy a greeting card for a parent, we are grateful we can find something in the humor section rather than choose one that gushes with gratitude. But underneath the humor, there is a deep sadness. We learn to recognize the reality of our feelings. We make a choice that instead of remaining under the layers of dysfunction, we will take positive steps to reparent ourselves. These steps and the path we're on may not always be crystal clear, but we keep coming back until we find where we need to go. Along the way, we grieve the loss of what might have been. And we work towards someday getting to a place of forgiveness, which will help us far more than anything else. On this day I honor my feelings and the reality of what was in order to choose a new way of living and reparenting myself.

True Self

"While the Inner Child or True Self can be the spark of our creativity, we must also remember the child is a deeply hurt part of ourselves." Many of us have pursued an understanding of our True Self, awakening our Inner Child and expressing our creativity in hopes of relieving ourselves from suffering. Yet we face an obstacle - a persistent and harsh selfjudgment that we can't seem to stop. This underlying thinking compels us to continue dysfunctional and addictive behaviors. We wonder why we can't get out from under this "curse-like" self-sabotage and realize the promise of our True Self. We learn to get in touch with and feel the pain and grief of the deeply hurt parts of ourselves in order for the True Self to blossom. We've avoided this for years, usually unconsciously, and we've suffered from the consequences of this avoidance. We come to see that we won't enjoy the fulfillment of living as our True Selves until we face and get free from the roots of the wounded parts from childhood. With our Higher Power's help, and support from our fellow travelers, we practice a gentle and gradual process of peeling the layers of the onion to find the core of our pain and, paradoxically, to find the joy of our True Self. It's an organic process unique to each of us, yet we're supported in a unified approach that integrates the Steps, our Higher Power, and our Inner Child. On this day I have the courage to face what's necessary so I can realize the promise of my True Self.

Shame and Blame

"You will find freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past." The cycle of shame and blame was well established in our families of origin. We heard abusive words and/or were physically punished. We emerged from all of this with an established sense of shame that included thinking of ourselves as Defective: something is wrong with me Helpless: nothing can be done about this Alone: nobody else has this problem As adults, some of us found that if we shifted blame to others, we could hide our own sense of shame. Some of us may have lashed out with extreme anger, not knowing where it came from, or used perfectionism, pride, people-pleasing, and approval-seeking to cover up our sense of shame. Some of us fell victim to addictions. We come to appreciate that there is nothing wrong with us that meetings, a sponsor and consistently working the Steps cannot overcome. Shame and blame give way to an understanding that we make mistakes, but we are not mistakes! We claim the identity that we are inherently good, even with all our perceived misgivings, warts and dents. On this day I will use my courage and honesty to break the generational bonds of shame and blame.

Unconditional Love

"The child feels he must perform or do well to earn a parent's love." For many of us, we had to perform appropriately to get any feeling of love or acceptance as children. But conditional love was the only love, if any, that we received. Many times the conditions were as dysfunctional as the love, and often they changed from day to day. We heard people talk of unconditional love, but many of us didn't think that it really existed. When we listen to the voices in our heads that tell us we're not good enough, we understand this is our inner critic. It's no longer our parent's voice, but our own, repeating the negative words spoken to us as children. But how did this happen? We weren't going to be like our parents. But here we are telling ourselves the very words that cut us like a knife when we were vulnerable children. Once we see the harm we are doing to ourselves and know why it's happening, the ACA program helps us replace negative words with positive affirmations. We can give ourselves the unconditional love that was denied us as children. We don't have to please anyone to get it. The cycle of pain is ending. We are now free to face life with a positive frame of mind, getting ready to give the blessing of unconditional love to others. On this day I give myself unconditional love and acceptance. In doing so, I will then truly be able to accept and love others.

Tolerating Pain

"The level of pain that adult children can tolerate without admitting they have hit a bottom is astonishing." We learned to live with pain as children and continued to do so as adults. When faced with the pain of toxic relationships, we slip into survival mode to avoid the uncertainty of change. We know that our lives are in chaos, that we accept the unacceptable from the people around us, and that we have no reason to expect tomorrow to be better. Yet we trudge through each day, often with a pain so deep it feels out of reach. Everyone has felt the apprehension that comes with change. Often, fear of change is so strong that we can still convince ourselves that things aren't that bad. We are all creatures of habit, even when those habits are harmful to us. The question is, do we want to live a life that "isn't that bad," or do we have the faith in our Higher Power, in our program, and in ourselves to overcome the fear of change? We do not have to do this alone. Our fellow travelers are more than willing to take the journey with us. On this day I will reach out my hand to end the cycle of pain and know there will be someone there to hold onto.

Step Eight

"Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all."

Making an amends list is part of wiping the slate clean for ourselves and walking into a new way of life. Many of us had been part of physically and emotionally unsafe relationships as adults, and we knew we eventually had to own our part in those relationships.

As we made our amends list, we were told to put ourselves first. In doing so, we thought about all the things we had lost, most importantly our childhoods, and what that meant for us. Even though we missed the stages of child development we were entitled to, we realized we could nurture ourselves and help make up for that loss.

In making amends to ourselves, we acknowledge any self-harm we have done, including not forgiving ourselves for simply being human. Then we move on to amends to others, knowing we aren't being asked to make amends to unsafe people.

Taking Step Eight helps us grow spiritually and emotionally. Whatever amends we eventually make, it's a healing process. As part of this process, we continue to work on the character defects that have placed us in the position of making amends in the first place. We go forward in confidence and love to whatever comes next.

On this day I will stay current with the amends I owe myself, and then work with those I may owe others.

Dissociation

"Another form of not being in the body involves dissociation or ‘leaving the body.'"

As kids, we may have gotten into big trouble when we showed how we felt. So many of us taught our little faces and voices and bodies NOT to show emotion. We may have eventually learned to disconnect from our feelings even before they surfaced. We knew we had to live physically in our bodies, but we could refuse to listen to what our bodies were trying to tell us. Some of us became so dissociated that we even looked at others to know when to smile or frown. We had lost our identities in the process.

We heard dissociation described as a disconnection from our feelings, thoughts, body needs and other parts of ourselves. We also learned that childhood trauma was the cause.

At meetings, when we heard others say they felt numb, empty or dead inside, we may have identified because of our own trauma and disconnect. We heard that change is possible, but it requires work.

When we make the commitment to ourselves, our feelings start to show up; they may be strong and come in large quantities. It's scary, but we have the support of others. Working the program, and learning to trust in a Higher Power, helps us restore our True Selves. We accept our feelings and become who we were meant to be.

On this day I will pause, find a quiet place to sit, and breathe whenever I feel disconnected from myself. I will maintain conscious contact with my Higher Power ... and with myself.

Gratitude

"The gratitude we feel is limitless."

Often we may have said or thought to ourselves at a meeting, "I had so much going on that I almost didn't come, but I am so grateful I did because I heard just what I needed." As our recovery progresses, we are thankful for what may seem to some of us like divine timing. We feel grateful for the right meeting topic at the best possible moment. Often a fellow traveler with just the right message will show up when we are ready, or perhaps the message has been there all along and we're finally ready to hear it. Sometimes we may see a person only once, but what they say or demonstrate is exactly what hits home for us at that moment.

All around us we begin to notice our needs are being met when we're ready to recognize what is being placed before us. We may even be lucky enough to receive something we just want. Whatever we receive, it will be a gift.

If something is presented that we don't want or need, we have the choice to let it go and turn it over. Sometimes we are just meant to have the information so we can pass it on to someone else who needs that very gift.

On this day I am aware of the wonderful gifts that appear when I need them. I am grateful for the opportunities they present for personal growth.

Isolation

"Our experience shows that you cannot recover in isolation."

Many of our childhood memories center around the isolation we felt in our homes while growing up. We may have had few or no childhood friends. To have friends could have placed us in a position where they would want to come to our house - and we couldn't risk that.

The lack of close friendships deepened the sadness and loneliness we already faced on a regular basis. That loneliness also affected us as adults where many of us felt a social awkwardness that fueled both addiction and isolation.

We experienced the feeling of being alone, even in a crowd; and we felt lonely, even when we were in a relationship. Fear of failure, lack of trust, and fear of abandonment compounded things by leading many of us to choose others who also lacked the skills to have a healthy relationship.

Attending ACA meetings is the first step in breaking the pattern of loneliness and isolation. As we keep coming back, we are amazed to hear our own stories coming out of the mouths of others in the room. We realize we don't have to be alone in our despair; we have found people who will love and accept us, even before we can love and accept ourselves. In ACA we are home, maybe for the first time in our lives.

On this day I will allow my fellow travelers to touch my life and know they will support me through my journey.

Happy birthday

to you

PTSD

"PTSD symptoms can include hypervigilance or the constant monitoring of one's surroundings for potential threat of harm."

Many of us have few concrete memories of childhood. We know we lived through amazing trauma, but if we're asked what happened to us, we often have few examples to relate. We may have defining moments that we remember, but we also have years of "blanks." Some memories we do have were related by our siblings.

We repressed our memories as a protection mechanism. We try to locate them, because they're the key to much of our dysfunctional behavior. Some behavior, such as hypervigilance, seems inexplicable in its intensity. We can even be sitting with our recovery friends, perhaps in a meeting, and we can't seem to let go of monitoring everything that's going on. What we might have previously labeled as a highly overdeveloped sense of responsibility is more likely PTSD.

As we work our program and become willing to uncover our trauma, we begin to free ourselves from the heightened state of awareness that wears us out and causes problems in our relationships. We unbury memories that have gotten us to this state, often with the help of therapy, and by sharing our story and listening to others in meetings.

On this day I will not be afraid to uncover the memories that seem to bind me to my dysfunctional behaviors.

Codependence (mea culpa)

"We focus on others to avoid looking at our own behavior and fear."

Why do some of us want to take care of everyone else so badly? Why do we get so incensed when we see others treated poorly, feeling anger and rage towards the perpetrator?

Yes, we feel deeply that no one should take advantage of other people. But the baggage we are carrying from our childhoods often causes us to go beyond trying to help someone. We can blow things entirely out of proportion with our unresolved sadness and rage.

We learn that we cannot be effective in helping others until we deal with our own issues. We do this by getting honest about the true nature of our behaviors. When we fight someone else's fight, aren't we really fighting for that wounded part of us that remains unhealed? When we feel their pain and hang onto it, aren't we really feeling our own childhood trauma?

Often the best way to help others is to let them learn how to stand up for themselves. And the best way to help ourselves is to be aware of what we're doing and why we're doing it. When we focus too much on someone else's fight, we realize that it's because we have unresolved issues.

On this day I will be clear about my motives before I look outside of myself to take action.

Feelings

"People want recovery, but they prefer it be pain free. That is understandable, but unfortunately, identifying and feeling our feelings is a part of healing."

"Feelings? What are those?!" As children from dysfunctional homes, if we cried, many of us were told, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!" If we openly showed our feelings, we risked being told we were stupid or that we'd never amount to anything. When our parents failed to show up at our special school events, we learned not to show hurt or disappointment. The more vulnerable we were, the more we were shamed. When we were verbally or physically abused, we pretended it didn't happen. Our broken hearts shut down.

We may have no idea how we're feeling. We've been shut down for so long that numb feels normal. Our tears are frozen. Opening up to our feelings seems threatening and scary.

We learn to heal by developing trust in our fellow travelers. This feeling of trust can lead to the opening of the flood gates, an expression of emotion that eventually feels normal. As we release our old pain, we make room for discovering how to play and have fun again. We open our hearts and feel joy in our lives.

On this day I welcome all of my feelings, especially those that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I have the tools to work through them in order to mend my broken heart from childhood.

Indecision

"Children of alcoholics are paralyzed by indecision when trying to separate emotionally from their homes."

When we started telling our story, we may have felt like we were betraying everything we had ever known, and we were - but that was okay. Part of recovery is releasing ourselves from the emotional chaos of our family of origin by rebelling, getting mad, and walking out, saying, "I'm not gonna take this anymore."

We are reparenting ourselves when we detach from our abusers and take responsibility for our own actions. We learn to share what really happened to us with fellow travelers and in meetings. We continue to heal when more memories surface and we work through them. We take care of ourselves by journaling, exercising, and learning to eat healthier.

We may still be paralyzed with indecision at times, but we allow our healed parts to nurture the parts that are still sick and wounded - they show up for each other. We rely on those with more recovery to mentor us by observing how they manage times of stress and peace. We walk towards freedom.

On this day I will make forward movement, even when I am afraid of the consequences. I now have a healthy support system that I know will be there for me, including my inner loving parent.

Grief and Childhood

"Genuine grieving for our childhood ends our morbid fascination with the past and lets us return to the present, free to live as adults. Confronting years of pain and loss at first seems overwhelming."

We may have been going to meetings for many years, lamenting the slings and arrows of our recovery life. Perhaps we thought we were "Living life on life's terms," - doing the best we could.

But often progress seemed to come in dribs and drabs. This left us with a sense of frustration at the little spiritual progress we had made, despite our best efforts.

But what may have been missing was the willingness to genuinely grieve for our lost childhoods. Grief work is not about just learning to tell our story, but about starting to discover and express the underlying trauma and emotions. Doing this level of work is the true path to freeing ourselves.

When we are no longer held in place by the disembodied stories and the undercurrent of repressed feelings, we can begin to take positive action, change our life's terms, find joy in the present, and feel alive for possibly the first time.

On this day I will tell the real story of my childhood trauma. In doing so, I will free my True Self and enjoy this day my Higher Power has given me.

Authority Figures

"Abuse from authority figures in childhood has left us on guard as adults about authority figures. We tend to place people in the category of authority figure when they may not be such a person."

Fear of authority figures in our adult life can add unnecessary stress when old fears get triggered. As children, many of us were always on guard to not displease our parent or to find a hiding place when danger was present. One or both parents may have been experts at creating real or imagined fear in us.

Routinely, we now encounter others who have authority over us, either because of our jobs or theirs. Some of us also allow people to assume an authority role because we are afraid of conflict. It can even feel daunting when a parking attendant tells us we can't park "there," or a sales clerk tries to talk us into a different purchase. Our goal in recovery is to recognize these situations for what they are, and learn to act as adults.

To gain control over our lives, when we interact with someone in authority, we now do a quick internal check. Are we feeling fearful, angry, resentful, or timid? Are we putting our abuser's face on this person? If so, we stop and examine the situation from a new perspective. The interaction may not be pleasant, but it is not our childhood coming back to life.

On this day I will recognize when I am responding to authority figures with childhood reactions. I will now approach things from a new perspective as a recovering adult.

Balance

"We balance our experiences as children with the knowledge that we have a chance to break the cycle of family dysfunction."

Many of our family members seemed to live from one reactive moment to the next. There was little, if any, thought given to planning ahead for possibilities and/or how best to approach situations. Some of us tried to change this pattern as adults, perhaps as we raised our own families. Maybe we became rigid when planning, to overcompensate for the chaos we had experienced, or we may have found ourselves frequently feeling overwhelmed. We did not seem to have the capacity to look at the big picture and act accordingly, and we consistently berated ourselves for this shortcoming.

When we find a new way to live in recovery, we work to erase old tapes and old ways of doing things. But ingrained habits do not disappear overnight. When we feel ourselves at either end of the reaction spectrum - too rigid or feeling overwhelmed - we open our new tool bag and find a way to center ourselves, whether it's through a phone call or using another tool of recovery. By doing so, we reinforce our resolve to live intentional lives. We find purpose and hope because of the balance we are able to integrate. This leads to the peace and serenity we have always deserved.

On this day I will pause and think about how I want to live my day. I affirm that I deserve to live the balanced life that I choose, not a life that simply happens to me.

Stored Trauma

"Clinical research strongly suggests that childhood trauma or neglect are stored in the tissue of the children. The emotional or physical trauma does not go away without an effort to address the original cause."

"It's in your bones" they might have said. "There's something the matter with the whole family." These statements only beg the question that often gets overlooked, "Why?"

Though the trauma of our forefathers and foremothers is stored in us, then so too must be the restorative part of the body. In fact, when we work the Steps, reparent ourselves, attend meetings, and join with a fellow traveler, we are using some of the most powerful tools known to restore our bodies back to a balanced, natural condition. This is not easy and often takes considerable effort and persistence, and may even include an occasional or even a frequent relapse.

However, there is no easier, softer way. The process of recovery involves real work and determination that pays dividends beyond our expectations. If we are willing to stay on this recovery journey, if we trust the Steps and Promises, our bodies can release the stored trauma, which brings us true relief. The miracle of recovery is the destination and we can get there.

On this day I will pay close attention to my body and the clues it gives me about my stored trauma. I reaffirm for myself that by using the Steps and reparenting myself, the trauma energy can be released so that I may experience a wholeness I could not have possibly imagined.

Promise Seven

"We will learn how to play and have fun in our lives."

Just as we learned to fear our alcoholic and dysfunctional families, we can now learn to play and enjoy ourselves. (This does not mean playing solitary games on our computers, tablets, or game consoles.)

A way that many of us learn to become more lighthearted is by finding real enjoyment in the company of others. While we maintain a certain structure in our meetings, we can also experience fellowship before or after the meetings and share good times. This may feel weird to some of us at first because we are learning to relate to people differently than we're used to, but as with the rest of the ACA program, daily practice helps us become more comfortable with the idea.

Laughter starts to flow more naturally as we begin to let our guard down. We become less concerned with saying the right thing and more concerned with just being in the moment. Where we once filled every waking moment with activity as a way to keep ourselves occupied, we can learn to become more of a human being than a human doing. We can now have fun because we are finally free from the fear of showing our True Self. Did you hear the one about two adult children who walk into a meeting…?

On this day I will practice playing and will enjoy having fun with others in a wholesome and positive way.

Codependence

"We focus on ourselves for the surest results. We gradually free ourselves from codependent or addictive relationships."

Before we entered recovery, it seemed like our relationships were codependent or addictive. It's what we were used to; it's what we grew up with. If anyone wanted something different from us, we were uncomfortable, because we didn't really understand what that "something" was. We could keep up the act for a short time, but the walls eventually went up. We had no role models for healthy give and take.

As we learn to focus on ourselves, at first it seems awkward. Most of us are not used to taking care of ourselves emotionally. Gradually we begin to see that we can walk away from those who still abuse us and we feel a sense of freedom that's new because we don't feel guilty.

We gather strength from those who have come before us. We hear how they have faced difficult changes with faith and trust in their Higher Power and those they share their journey with. We see the promises of this program being fulfilled in others, and we now have the courage to ask for the guidance that's available.

On this day I release my codependent and addictive relationships in favor of those based on mutual respect. I will learn a new "dance" that fills me with life.

People-Pleasing

"By transforming our people-pleasing manner, we do not stop caring about others. However, we stop going over the line to ensure that we are never abandoned."

As children, we looked to others such as our parents or teachers for approval. Doing so often kept us safe. Over time, this practice taught us to abandon our own sense of worth in favor of someone else's external measure of our value. Without others' approval, we felt like failures.

We learn to listen to our own inner loving parent's voice, no longer needing to rely on others to give us a sense of ourselves. We learn to be true to ourselves, acting in ways that are aligned with the core values, beliefs and feelings that are becoming part of us. We seek no one's approval but our own.

We sometimes find that our new actions may cause conflict with others. But with confidence in our new inner compass and no longer fearing abandonment, we hold fast to our beliefs, speak our truths, and strengthen our sense of self. We no longer need external forces to justify our existence.

On this day I will listen to my inner loving parent and know that is all the approval I need for my thoughts and actions.

Inner Loving Parent

"Learn to validate yourself by becoming your own loving parent."

In ACA, we pay attention to how we talk to ourselves in our heads. Mindfulness helps us stop those thoughts that say, "What's wrong with me?" and replace them with, "I have a lot of things going for me. I am amazing!" As we work our program and make progress, we become our own loving parent and learn to take care of ourselves by affirming our growth.

It seems second nature for us to be critical of ourselves - even about our recovery work. We can tell ourselves that we aren't doing it right, or it's taking us too long. But when we see children learning to read, is it okay to criticize them along the way? Or do they need to hear encouragement and support, and have someone say positive things like, "Outstanding! You're doing great. Keep it up." Most of us didn't hear these words in our dysfunctional families, but we can learn to say them to ourselves now.

Our inner loving parent can tell us some of the most wonderful words a parent can say to a child, words a child remembers for a lifetime, words that help a child know they are okay the way they are. "I love you and I am proud of you." This is what we've been waiting to hear.

On this day I will capture positive moments, feel proud of myself for the work I am doing, and tell myself I am loved for who I am.

Long Term Trauma

"Through the first 18 years of our lives, our families had 6,570 days to shame, belittle, ignore, criticize, or manipulate us during the formative years of our being."

How could we have turned out any other way? We grew up in dysfunction, and it's not our fault we were affected by it. We were just children. All we knew of the world was what we were shown by our parents - the people we were hardwired to trust and emulate. It's not our fault we didn't find a way to stop the abuse. We learned the language of abuse, just as we learned to speak our native tongue - it was automatic.

We're not whining, over-thinking it, or making mountains out of molehills. Our Laundry List Traits are a legitimate reaction to long-term trauma.

The good news is that something magical happens when we accept we are powerless over our childhood trauma and its effect on us. It doesn't mean we give up and let it have power over us. The opposite happens. It loses power over us. We begin to have a choice about how we respond when the dysfunction manifests itself in our adult lives. It's like admitting there's a leak in the roof, and now we can put a bucket on the floor, change out of our wet clothes, and fix the roof. And we can do it without guilt because the leak was already there before we came along.

On this day I embrace the freedom that comes from accepting there is nothing I could have done to prevent the dysfunction I grew up in and the effect it has had on me.

Step Seven

"Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings."

As we begin to find peace, we listen for when the wheels get squeaky and learn to seek appropriate help, knowing that we don't have to do this alone. We see our Higher Power everywhere we go, especially in the people around us.

We are no longer fearful. Our shortcomings are being removed and they no longer define us. We are not a collection of wrongs. We realize that recovery is a process - that there is no race to the finish line.

But we don't take the slow route either. We have sobered up to the grim reality of the effects of dysfunction in our families and have decided we are out of their game. It no longer pays any dividends. We have been on that other side for so long and we simply don't want to be there anymore. The way we related to the world no longer works.

We see the results of our efforts in recovery, and we like ourselves better as we allow the process to work within us. We begin to attract healthier people, leaving behind the dysfunctional relationships that show no promise. There is nothing better than this new feeling as we move into the future. We are walking out of the fog of dysfunction towards who we truly are.

On this day I will continue on this journey to work with my Higher Power to remove my shortcomings. I choose to be healthy.

How Kindness Became Our Forbidden Pleasure

by Maria Popova

“We are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.”

“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now,” Jack Kerouac wrote in a beautiful 1957 letter. “Kindness, kindness, kindness,” Susan Sontag resolved in her diary on New Year’s Day in 1972. And yet, although kindness is the foundation of all spiritual traditions and was even a central credo for the father of modern economics, at some point in recent history, kindness became little more than an abstract aspiration, its concrete practical applications a hazardous and vulnerable-making behavior to be avoided — we need only look to the internet’s “outrage culture” for evidence, or to the rise of cynicism as our flawed self-defense mechanism against the perceived perils of kindness. We’ve come to see the emotional porousness that kindness requires as a dangerous crack in the armor of the independent self, an exploitable outward vulnerability — too high a cost to pay for the warm inward balm of the benevolence for which we long in the deepest parts of ourselves.

Kindness has become “our forbidden pleasure.”

So argue psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor in the plainly titled, tiny, enormously rewarding book On Kindness (public library).

Taylor and Phillips write:

"The kind life — the life lived in instinctive sympathetic identification with the vulnerabilities and attractions of others — is the life we are more inclined to live, and indeed is the one we are often living without letting ourselves know that this is what we are doing. People are leading secretly kind lives all the time but without a language in which to express this, or cultural support for it. Living according to our sympathies, we imagine, will weaken or overwhelm us; kindness is the saboteur of the successful life. We need to know how we have come to believe that the best lives we can lead seem to involve sacrificing the best things about ourselves; and how we have come to believe that there are pleasures greater than kindness ..."

"In one sense kindness is always hazardous because it is based on a susceptibility to others, a capacity to identify with their pleasures and sufferings. Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable. But if the pleasures of kindness — like all the greatest human pleasures — are inherently perilous, they are nonetheless some of the most satisfying we possess."

[...]

"In giving up on kindness — and especially our own acts of kindness — we deprive ourselves of a pleasure that is fundamental to our sense of well-being."

The most paradoxical part of the story is that for most of our civilizational history, we’ve seen ourselves as fundamentally kind and held kindness as a high ideal of personhood. Only in recent times — in large part thanks to Emerson — did the ideal of independence and self-reliance become the benchmark of spiritual success. The need for belonging has become an intolerable manifestation of vulnerability — we’ve stopped believing in our own kindness and the merits of mutual belonging, producing what poet and philosopher David Whyte has elegantly termed “our sense of slight woundedness.” On a mission to examine “when and why this confidence evaporated and the consequences of this transformation,” Taylor and Phillips write:

"Kindness’s original meaning of kinship or sameness has stretched over time to encompass sentiments that today go by a wide variety of names — sympathy, generosity, altruism, benevolence, humanity, compassion, pity, empathy… The precise meanings of these words vary, but fundamentally they all denote what the Victorians called “open-heartedness,” the sympathetic expansiveness linking self to other."

Perhaps because open-heartedness is impossible without vulnerability — an open heart is an aperture through which the world can enter us, but also one through which exploitive and cruel forces can penetrate the softest core of who we are without obstruction — the original meaning of and longing for kindness has been calcified by our impulse for armoring and self-protection. Taylor and Phillips write:

"Today it is only between parents and children that kindness is expected, sanctioned, and indeed obligatory… Kindness — that is, the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself — has become a sign of weakness (except of course among saintly people, in whom it is a sign of their exceptionality)… All compassion is self-pity, D. H. Lawrence remarked, and this usefully formulates the widespread modern suspicion of kindness: that it is either a higher form of selfishness (the kind that is morally triumphant and secretly exploitative) or the lowest form of weakness (kindness is the way the weak control the strong, the kind are only kind because they haven’t got the guts to be anything else). If we think of humans as essentially competitive, and therefore triumphalist by inclination, as we are encouraged to do, then kindness looks distinctly old-fashioned, indeed nostalgic, a vestige from a time when we could recognize ourselves in each other and feel sympathetic because of our kind-ness… And what, after all, can kindness help us win, except moral approval; or possibly not even that, in a society where “respect” for personal status has become a leading value."

And yet despite our resistance to kindness, some deeper, dormant part of us still registers it, still cringes upon encountering its absence. This paradoxical relationship with kindness, perhaps more so than anything else, explains the “outrage culture” of the internet:

"We usually know what the kind thing to do is — and kindness when it is done to us, and register its absence when it is not… We are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us. There is nothing we feel more consistently deprived of than kindness; the unkindness of others has become our contemporary complaint. Kindness consistently preoccupies us, and yet most of us are unable to live a life guided by it."

Embedded in our ambivalence about kindness is a special sort of psychological self-sabotage — by denying our own kind impulses, we also deny ourselves the powerful pleasure our acts of kindness produce. Taylor and Phillips consider how, given our natural inclination for kindness, we end up cheating ourselves of this deep spiritual reward:

"The forms kindness can take … are partly learned from the societies in which we grow up, and so can be unlearned or badly taught or resisted… Children begin their lives “naturally” kind, and that something happens to this kindness as they grow up in contemporary society."

Picking up where Rousseau left off a quarter millennium ago, Phillips and Taylor consider what it takes to nourish our natural benevolence, asserting that it must begin with embracing the very vulnerability from which kindness springs:

"Everybody is vulnerable at every stage of their lives; everybody is subject to illness, accident, personal tragedy, political and economic reality. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t also resilient and resourceful. Bearing other people’s vulnerability — which means sharing in it imaginatively and practically without needing to get rid of it, to yank people out of it — entails being able to bear one’s own. Indeed it would be realistic to say that what we have in common is our vulnerability; it is the medium of contact between us, what we most fundamentally recognize in each other."

At some point in our lives, however, vulnerability becomes a threat and a trauma. Phillips and Taylor trace the developmental origin of that shift:

"The child’s first, formative trauma is his growing acknowledgment of his need for others (in actuality the mother is as vulnerable to her need for her baby as the baby is to his need for her; parents need their children not to worry them too much). The needy child experiences a trauma of concern (“How can I take care of my mother to ensure that she takes care of me?”), which calls up his natural kindness; but this concern — and the later forms of kindness that emerge from it — is too easily turned away from. This turning away we call self-sufficiency, and when we want to pathologize it we call it narcissism. The pleasure of kindness is that it connects us with others; but the terror of kindness is that it makes us too immediately aware of our own and other people’s vulnerabilities (vulnerabilities that we are prone to call failings when we are at our most frightened). Vulnerability — particularly the vulnerability we call desire — is our shared biological inheritance. Kindness, in other words, opens us up to the world (and worlds) of other people in ways that we both long for and dread."

In a sentiment that echoes Phillips’s illuminating earlier work on why developing a capacity for risk-tolerance is essential to our self-reliance, Taylor and Phillips elegantly capture the dark counterpoint to our tendency to desire safety at whatever the cost:

"If there is no invulnerability anywhere, suddenly there is too much vulnerability everywhere."

[...]

"It is not that real kindness requires people to be selfless, it is rather that real kindness changes people in the doing of it, often in unpredictable ways. Real kindness is an exchange with essentially unpredictable consequences. It is a risk precisely because it mingles our needs and desires with the needs and desires of others, in a way that so-called self-interest never can… Kindness is a way of knowing people beyond our understanding of them."

But rather than a lament, undergirding these observations is a powerful message of hope: For all of its pervasive undertones of and platforms for outrage, contemporary culture — and the digital universe that is part of it — offers fertile new soil in which to grow the natural inclinations that give rise to the pleasure of communion and kindness. Taylor and Phillips capture this beautifully:

"By involving us with strangers (even with “foreigners” thousands of miles away), as well as with intimates, [kindness] is potentially far more promiscuous than sexuality. But … the child needs the adult — and his wider society — to help him keep faith with his kindness, that is, to help him discover and enjoy the pleasures of caring for others… People have long known this, and long forgotten it. The history of kindness … tells the story of this knowing, and forgetting, and reknowing, as central to Western ideas about the good life."

In the remainder of the altogether wonderful and acutely necessary On Kindness, Phillips and Taylor explore how we can build a society that nurtures rather than corrupting our natural kindness by learning, from childhood on, to feel comfortable with the uncomfortable risks of making ourselves vulnerable enough to be kind.

On being

KINDNESS - by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Caretaking

"We do not have to participate in their dysfunction. We are free to live our own lives."

As children, we may have had to literally be our "brother's keeper" because in the dysfunction we were given responsibilities far beyond our years. We didn't learn to take care of ourselves in the process, because we were so focused on others.

As adults, many of us continued this pattern: ignoring our own needs and being drawn to people we could take care of. We told ourselves we were okay because we were caring, compassionate people. And in return, we often received praise and adulation. People said things like, "Isn't she wonderful?" "What would we do without him?" This fed the hole in our soul for a while.

But then the praise stopped coming unless we asked for it. The satisfaction we thought we were experiencing diminished. We may even have started to blame others for being ungrateful.

We began a program of rigorous honesty and learned to recognize what we were doing. Yes, people took advantage of us, but we taught them to treat us that way. And now, we have begun to undo that. We are letting others take responsibility for themselves.

On this day I will continue taking care of and valuing myself because I am worth it! I will give others the gift of taking care of themselves.

Self-Doubt

"We were taught to doubt ourselves, so it became natural to believe that we are wrong, defective, or uninformed."

Many of us learned early to doubt what we knew we saw, because we were shamed into believing we were incapable of knowing. At first we knew the difference, but eventually we believed that our hunger pangs and other feelings were our imagination.

When we enter recovery, we are ready to release this way of thinking. We begin to see that we no longer need to live in the survival mode of our childhood. We are ready to wipe the slate clean and write a new future.

We meet people who will support us as we take a second look at our past. We gradually challenge the stories, roles, beliefs - and the negative, distorted thinking that has colored so much of our lives. We begin to accept the reality of our childhoods, and that we did not cause the problems.

We now get to write our own future. We no longer have to be defined by our original family roles or by the toxic thoughts, words and actions of those around us. We get to choose what we want from life, how we see ourselves, and decide which filters we will use to perceive the world. On this day I have the courage to face my past and the faith to write my future. I no longer doubt what I know to be true.

Conflicting Feelings – Holidays

"We knew that birthdays and holidays would be trivialized or forgotten."

The conflicting emotional shift of any holiday can trigger a tsunami of pent-up feelings that cannot be reined in by any sentimental holiday movie, song, or festive decorations.

Sorting out our conflicted feelings and perceptions is not easy. If it were, we wouldn't find ourselves attending meetings, going to therapy, and doing Step work. But we know these tools help us unravel the interwoven strands of our childhood experiences so we can understand how they affect us today.

Through recovery, holidays can provide an opportunity to reevaluate our experiences and how they influence us today. We find that the disappointment we felt because of attitudes back then may have led us to trivialize present holidays to avoid our own pain and loss.

By doing our good work, we are able to examine not only our dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors, but also those of our families. From an emotionally sober place, we may uncover the roots of the coping mechanisms we created to make sense of the nonsensical. We can now put them into their proper perspective as relics from the past to be viewed in a glass case as a distant vestige of how things were, not of how they have to be today.

On this day I will examine the conflicting feelings I acquired during my most vulnerable years, recognizing how things were and knowing there is now another way to live.

Emotional Eating

"An ACA relapse can bring a return of self-harming behavior. The behavior can include emotional eating, drug use, compulsive sexual relationships, or other harmful behaviors."

As children, we were not allowed to feel our feelings. It wasn't safe to say we felt sad, scared, or angry. Ignoring our feelings really hurt us inside. To relieve our pain, many of us turned to an addictive behavior, which for some of us was finding comfort in food. But this emotional eating caused us to gain weight and feel ashamed of our ballooning bodies. Family members and others then made fun of us. It was an unfair cycle: food comforted us, but that comfort caused even more problems than we originally had. We tried everything we could think of, but nothing worked permanently to stop this cycle. We were crippled with self-hate.

The beauty of the ACA program lies in its virtually guaranteed healing of our childhood damage. We find our comfort in the practice of the 12 Steps, work that restores our stolen identities. As we recover, decades of stuffed feelings and buried memories emerge. Our Higher Power helps us handle these emotions and accept ourselves. Our loving parent guides our Inner Child through each emotion with the gentleness we crave and the dignity we deserve.

On this day, when powerful emotions surface, I will remember that I have the right tools ready and waiting. I can use the Steps, the meetings, and the telephone to help me find true comfort.

Boundaries

"The level of choice we develop is proportional to the integrity of our boundaries. The more we let go, the stronger our boundaries become. This is a paradox: Letting go creates stronger boundaries."

Most of us grew up in families without boundaries. It seemed like everyone was in each other's business, passing judgment and telling each other what to think and feel. Even if we had understood the concept of boundaries, we wouldn't have been able to set them for ourselves in the midst of the dysfunction. Yet on some level we often instinctively knew that our boundaries were being violated, whether it was emotional or physical boundaries.

As adults, we were often the boundary violators because of the Enmeshment we learned from our families. We simply didn't understand how boundaries worked, and we didn't know how to honor them.

We learned that a lack of boundaries is usually about control and manipulation. It's never as simple as it seems, and it takes work to uncover the root of what's really happening. But as soon as we begin to deal with the underlying issues and release the hold they have over us, our boundaries are strengthened; we let go and offer other people the opportunity to find their own way without our help. We learn to separate what's really important and what's not, in order to survive as healthy adults.

On this day I will remember that when I choose to let go and not to involve myself where I don't belong, I am creating stronger boundaries for myself.

Defects of Character

"You are not a defective character. You have defects of character."

Many of us have difficulty hearing the word "defect" and applying it to ourselves because of the way we were raised. First, if we ever said we had a problem, that was usually how we got in trouble. We were criticized for who we were, so the last thing we wanted to do was to point out that there was something wrong. Second, most of our "faults" or "defects" became a part of us as adults because a parent demanded we act a certain way. We were not to blame for acquiring these habits, but they really get in our way today.

It is important that we acknowledge what is happening in our present lives - the habits we have that perpetuate the family dysfunction. We get honest about their impact to ourselves and others in order to recover from them.

We realize that a defect is something that stops our positive momentum - we all have them. But that doesn't mean we are defective. Our habits will change as we recover. But first we must see them, admit them, and work them out using the Steps and all the tools now available to us.

On this day I will gratefully and joyously remember that my defects are losing their hold on me as my recovery grows.

Tolerating the Unacceptable

"We will see how our low self-esteem has us judging ourselves mercilessly, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and tolerating inappropriate behavior."

Many of us were taught that it was virtuous to "put up with" whatever was doled out, shut up about whatever was going on, and deny our feelings in the process. This led us to doubt our own perceptions, which led us to doubt our own self-worth. Because we actually survived, some of us interpreted our ability to deal with unacceptable situations as resilience.

Unfortunately, we didn't learn that it was acceptable to set boundaries and limits, and that it was okay to say "no" to unacceptable behavior. This is what we learn. We don't have to be stoic, or pretend that things don't bother us when they do. We don't have to apologize for stuff that's not ours or feel ashamed when we feel triggered. We have the right to our reality, our experiences, and our feelings.

With the help of our recovery support system, we are now learning to trust, to feel, and to talk; this is a wonderful way to live. We can surround ourselves with people who listen to us and acknowledge our feelings. We can be more human, vulnerable, and safe.

On this day I remind myself that being resilient (tolerating abuse) is not the way I want to live my life. I can relax and trust safe people.

Non-Dominant Hand

"After introducing ourselves to the child within, we can ask other questions. We write out the question with our dominant hand and write the reply with the other hand."

We used to be afraid of our feelings. We thought we knew how we felt. We knew all about how others felt at all times, but we never developed the discipline of listening to ourselves because we were punished in our families for doing so. Some of us recreated that same punishing silence within ourselves in our work and romantic relationships.

When the hurt becomes too great, we are willing to go to any lengths to recover. We do things that are scary because we are building trust with our sponsor, fellow travelers, and our Higher Power. We seek the answers to our past, however we can find them. Non-dominant handwriting is an important tool in getting to early memories. We try answering questions by writing in crayon with our non-dominant hand. It has worked for others before us.

Most importantly, we are building trust with those voices inside us that have needed to speak for longer than long. They want to contact us and discharge the poison they have been holding back to save us from pain. We start to feel safer as we begin to heal and become ready to hear "our history."

On this day I will trust the messages I get doing non-dominant handwriting, because what is said is true for that part of me. I will listen without trying to push the feelings back down. I will give the words inside me a space to breathe.

Healing

"There is no Healing Without Feeling"

For so many of us, we learned to feel helpless and even hopeless, like giving up was the only intelligent way to endure our childhoods. This hopelessness is part of what feeds the depression we experience as adults. It may seem paradoxical, but we learn that we need to experience our grief in order to alleviate our depression. It may only be through first-hand experience that we can understand how this works.

There is a difference between the stagnant quality of hopelessness and the flowing quality of grief work. The former seems like a permanent state. It drags us down and makes us feel like there's no way out. The latter seems more like a temporary phase on the way to acceptance, integration, and peace. One never seems to say goodbye, while the other is about the courage to say goodbye to the losses we've sustained and all the things we cannot change.

The thought of doing grief work, of feeling the pain of our past, may seem daunting, but we come to know that this is the balm that heals our ruptured souls.

On this day I have the courage to grieve my past in order to say hello to the present and the future.

Humility

"Humility ... is a sibling of anonymity, a foundational principle of the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions. Through anonymity, we practice service with love."

In our families, humility and humiliation often got confused and led us to either become very passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive. In working the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, we are given a different definition of humility. In ACA, humility is about being the one we were supposed to be, before our families infected us with their dysfunction, and before we recycled that dysfunction in our own lives. It is about being our True Selves.

Anonymity is naturally confused with our alcoholic/ dysfunctional family's desire to keep secrets. The difference is that in ACA, we don't share what others say or tell who was at our meetings as a way of giving security to each other. Knowing this allows us to feel safe to share our own story. When we are tempted to judge, ridicule, or speak of someone else, we are reminded that through the practice of protecting the anonymity and confidences of our fellow ACAs, we now have a higher purpose, a healthy limit that gives life rather than diminishes it.

The possibility of performing service in ACA flows powerfully from our understanding of these principles in our lives. The newcomer feels it, the old-timer appreciates it, and our Higher Power loves it.

Shame

"Shame blinds us to the fact that love is inside each of us waiting to be discovered."

We are often broken when we come to ACA. Through denial, we don't even know what we don't know. It takes time to realize how badly bruised (emotionally and sometimes physically) we were as kids. Shame ruined our sense of self. We had a self when we were born, but it was chipped away day after day until we seemed to be in shreds. There was little left but the reflection of our parents' hateful and frightening words and actions.

Some of us may have felt confused when we started recovery as we were told to reach inside for our self worth. We didn't know that we had any and we doubted ourselves at every turn. Even though we felt hopeless, we hung onto the words we heard in the meetings. We saw others recovering and it felt hopeful. It helped to read the literature on a daily basis, and eventually we felt a shift happening.

We continued our Step work, going to meetings, relying on a Higher Power and reaching our Inner Child. We began to truly see our value. No longer defined by the shaming voices of the past, we had a new image of ourselves - a true image of the valuable person we always were.

On this day I look at myself through the eyes of recovery, not through the eyes of my caretakers from childhood. I see the love inside me that continues to grow.

Feeling Understood

"My sister and I don't communicate any longer since she doesn't understand who I am."

We used to make excuses for people when we said things like, "Oh, they don't know any better." There may be a lot of truth in that statement, but it feels like we were saying, "They just didn't see me when they ran me over, so it's okay." Just because someone is a family member doesn't mean we should accept the unacceptable, including subtle things like them not really hearing us, or less subtle things like having them label us as over-reactive.

We can now tell whether we're being heard or not. We realize that others don't have to agree with us, but they may not disrespect us. We recognize our needs and start to speak up for ourselves. We are learning to live a healthy emotional life, no longer wishing to be around denial and shame. We let go of those who can't journey onwards with us because we cannot carry them while we are climbing to the heights we need to keep our heads above water. We may reconnect with them later, but that will be our choice.

Before recovery, we may have spent all our energy on our families because we thought that was what we were supposed to do. Now we give our "gifts" to those who can appreciate and actually understand them.

On this day I choose to spend my time and energy on those who wish to make this journey with me. I deserve to be heard and loved for who I am.

Brain Pickings, on Erich Fromm "Art of Living"

[From BrainPickings.org, by Maria Popova]

A pioneer of what he called “radical-humanistic psychoanalysis,” the great German social psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900–March 18, 1980) was one of the most luminous minds of the twentieth century and a fountain of salve for the most abiding struggles of being human.

In the mid-1970s, twenty years after his influential treatise on the art of loving and four decades after legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead turned to him for difficult advice, Fromm became interested in the most basic, most challenging art of human life — the art of being. At the height of a new era that had begun prioritizing products over people and consumption over creativity, Fromm penned a short, potent book titled To Have or To Be? — an inquiry into how the great promise of progress, seeded by the Industrial Revolution, failed us in our most elemental search for meaning and well-being. But the question proved far too complex to tackle in a single volume, so Fromm left out a significant portion of his manuscript.

Those pages, in many ways even richer and more insightful than the original book, were later published as The Art of Being (public library) — a sort of field guide, all the timelier today, to how we can shift from the having mode of existence, which is systematically syphoning our happiness, to a being mode.

Art by Jean-Pierre Weill from The Well of Being

Fromm frames the inquiry:

Full humanization… requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation, from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism.

But any effort to outline the steps of this breakthrough, Fromm cautions, must begin with the foundational question of what the goal of living is — that is, what we consider the meaning of life to be, beyond its biological purpose. He writes:

It seems that nature — or if you will, the process of evolution — has endowed every living being with the wish to live, and whatever he believes to be his reasons are only secondary thoughts by which he rationalizes this biologically given impulse.

[…]

That we want to live, that we like to live, are facts that require no explanation. But if we ask how we want to live — what we seek from life, what makes life meaningful for us — then indeed we deal with questions (and they are more or less identical) to which people will give many different answers. Some will say they want love, others will choose power, others security, others sensuous pleasure and comfort, others fame; but most would probably agree in the statement that what they want is happiness. This is also what most philosophers and theologians have declared to be the aim of human striving. However, if happiness covers such different, and mostly mutually exclusive, contents as the ones just mentioned, it becomes an abstraction and thus rather useless. What matters is to examine what the term “happiness” means…

Art from Kenny’s Window, Maurice Sendak’s forgotten philosophical children’s book

Most definitions of happiness, Fromm observes, converge at some version of having our needs met and our wishes fulfilled — but this raises the question of what it is we actually want. (As Milan Kundera memorably wrote, “we can never know what to want.”) It’s essentially a question about human nature — or, rather, about the interplay of nature and nurture mediated by norms. Adding to the vocabulary of gardening as a metaphor for understanding happiness and making sense of mastery, Fromm illustrates his point:

This is indeed well understood by any gardener. The aim of the life of a rosebush is to be all that is inherent as potentiality in the rosebush: that its leaves are well developed and that its flower is the most perfect rose that can grow out of this seed. The gardener knows, then, in order to reach this aim he must follow certain norms that have been empirically found. The rosebush needs a specific kind of soil, of moisture, of temperature, of sun and shade. It is up to the gardener to provide these things if he wants to have beautiful roses. But even without his help the rosebush tries to provide itself with the optimum of needs. It can do nothing about moisture and soil, but it can do something about sun and temperature by growing “crooked,” in the direction of the sun, provided there is such an opportunity. Why would not the same hold true for the human species?

Even if we had no theoretical knowledge about the reasons for the norms that are conducive to man’s optimal growth and functioning, experience tells us just as much as it tells the gardener. Therein lies the reason that all great teachers of man have arrived at essentially the same norms for living, the essence of these norms being that the overcoming of greed, illusions, and hate, and the attainment of love and compassion, are the conditions for attaining optimal being. Drawing conclusions from empirical evidence, even if we cannot explain the evidence theoretically, is a perfectly sound and by no means “unscientific” method, although the scientists’ ideal will remain, to discover the laws behind the empirical evidence.

He distills the basic principle of life’s ultimate aim:

The goal of living [is] to grow optimally according to the conditions of human existence and thus to become fully what one potentially is; to let reason or experience guide us to the understanding of what norms are conducive to well-being, given the nature of man that reason enables us to understand.

Illustration by Emily Hughes from The Little Gardener

But one of the essential ingredients of well-being, Fromm notes, has been gruesomely warped by capitalist industrial society — the idea of freedom and its attainment by the individual:

Liberation has been exclusively applied to liberation from outside forces; by the middle class from feudalism, by the working class from capitalism, by the peoples in Africa and Asia from imperialism.

Such external liberation, Fromm argues, is essentially political liberation — an inherently limiting pseudo-liberation, which can obscure the emergence of various forms of imprisonment and entrapment within the political system. He writes:

This is the case in Western democracy, where political liberation hides the fact of dependency in many disguises… Man can be a slave even without being put in chains… The outer chains have simply been put inside of man. The desires and thoughts that the suggestion apparatus of society fills him with, chain him more thoroughly than outer chains. This is so because man can at least be aware of outer chains but be unaware of inner chains, carrying them with the illusion that he is free. He can try to overthrow the outer chains, but how can he rid himself of chains of whose existence he is unaware?

Any attempt to overcome the possibly fatal crisis of the industrialized part of the world, and perhaps of the human race, must begin with the understanding of the nature of both outer and inner chains; it must be based on the liberation of man in the classic, humanist sense as well as in the modern, political and social sense… The only realistic aim is total liberation, a goal that may well be called radical (or revolutionary) humanism.

The two most pernicious chains keeping us from liberation, Fromm observes, are our culture’s property-driven materialism and our individual intrinsic tendencies toward narcissism. He writes:

If “well-being” — [defined as] functioning well as a person, not as an instrument — is the supreme goal of one’s efforts, two specific ways stand out that lead to the attainment of this goal: Breaking through one’s narcissism and breaking through the property structure of one’s existence.

Illustration by Maurice Sendak for Bearskin from a special edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales

He offers the crispest definition of narcissism I’ve encountered (something that took Kafka a 47-page letter to articulate):

Narcissism is an orientation in which all one’s interest and passion are directed to one’s own person: one’s body, mind, feelings, interests… For the narcissistic person, only he and what concerns him are fully real; what is outside, what concerns others, is real only in a superficial sense of perception; that is to say, it is real for one’s senses and for one’s intellect. But it is not real in a deeper sense, for our feeling or understanding. He is, in fact, aware only of what is outside, inasmuch as it affects him. Hence, he has no love, no compassion, no rational, objective judgment. The narcissistic person has built an invisible wall around himself. He is everything, the world is nothing. Or rather: He is the world.

But because narcissism can come in many guises, Fromm cautions, it can be particularly challenging to detect in oneself in order to then eradicate — and yet without doing so, “the further way to self-completion is blocked.”

A parallel peril to well-being comes from the egotism and selfishness seeded by our ownership-driven society, a culture that prioritizes having over being by making property its primary mode of existence. Fromm writes:

A person living in this mode is not necessarily very narcissistic. He may have broken through the shell of his narcissism, have an adequate appreciation of reality outside himself, not necessarily be “in love with himself”; he knows who he is and who the others are, and can well distinguish between subjective experience and reality. Nevertheless, he wants everything for himself; has no pleasure in giving, in sharing, in solidarity, in cooperation, in love. He is a closed fortress, suspicious of others, eager to take and most reluctant to give.

Growth, he argues, requires a dual breakthrough — of narcissism and of property-driven existence. Although the first steps toward this breaking from bondage are bound to be anxiety-producing, this initial discomfort is but a paltry price for the larger rewards of well-being awaiting us on the other side of the trying transformation:

If a person has the will and the determination to loosen the bars of his prison of narcissism and selfishness, when he has the courage to tolerate the intermittent anxiety, he experiences the first glimpses of joy and strength that he sometimes attains. And only then a decisive new factor enters into the dynamics of the process. This new experience becomes the decisive motivation for going ahead and following the path he has charted… [An] experience of well-being — fleeting and small as it may be — … becomes the most powerful motivation for further progress…

Awareness, will, practice, tolerance of fear and of new experience, they are all necessary if transformation of the individual is to succeed. At a certain point the energy and direction of inner forces have changed to the point where an individual’s sense of identity has changed, too. In the property mode of existence the motto is: “I am what I have.” After the breakthrough it is “I am what I do” (in the sense of unalienated activity); or simply, “I am what I am.”

In the remainder of The Art of Being, Fromm explores the subtleties and practicalities of enacting this transformation. Complement it with legendary social scientist John W. Gardner, a contemporary of Fromm’s, on the art of self-renewal, then revisit Fromm’s abiding wisdom on what is keeping us from mastering the art of love.