Pulling Teeth

I am grateful for opportunities to re-assess my expectations. It's like pulling teeth, saying this.

I'm in the midst of unpleasant situations at work that have me wondering about the crappiness of people's motivations. This is in a professional realm that purports to be about doing good, and still greed and egos are everywhere. I want to take everyone's inventory. And then I want to mail it to them with the best parts highlighted in yellow.

To deal with this without making myself feel like a tar-filled balloon, I have to return to two things I've drifted away from. Prayer and meditation. These are hard things; I think in Al-Anon I have a tendency to believe that thinking about prayer, or saying you are going to pray is as good as actually doing it. When I again reach the realization that this is not the case, I weigh myself down with guilt and "shoulds" which allows me to avoid prayer and meditation even more.

Somewhere along the way, I've started to think of contact with my higher power as an act of "plugging in." I can feel it when it's happening. Cultivating it without guilt may be the way to let go of some of my panicked feeling in the face of challenges. That and gratitude, which is a chore when I try to practice it without this feeling of being connected to a force of good.

See here we are:

I am grateful for the supportive people at work.

I am grateful for my boyfriend: my partner.

I am grateful for our cat and our dog and their attitudes.

I am grateful for reminders to return to the love of my higher power, though these reminders often feel destabilizing.

Strange

My therapist has tried to guide me away from using the word "strange" to describe complex emotions. I think this is important in taking an honest inventory of myself and my character defects.

I have idolized many people in authority, thinking that they had very few human flaws. Realizing that other people have the same human defects that I do is "strange."

This word hides a lot. In this case, it hides a feeling of disappointment, followed by the beginning of a deep sense of gratitude for our equality. I'm not sure what comes next.

When I try to hold on too hard to one feeling, I find my perception gets distorted. "Strange" is a word I use when I'm scared, but it's also a word I use when I feel like I'm letting go of something I could otherwise try to control.

I'm going to reflect on this more.

Attigratitude

I am grateful that I do not have to prove myself.

Hungry Babies

Great post by Mr. Sponsorpants.

The hardest thing to change

When I was a teenager and thought I knew stuff, I used to say "the hardest thing to change is an association." I'm not sure where I got this from. I probably overheard it and connected to it because of the feelings I could get from hearing a certain song or smelling a certain smell; those kind of muggy feelings that are comforting without being happy. The phrase might have meant something because I was so detached from my experiences as a kid that they all took the form of songs or sounds or smells rather than full memories or feelings.

Today, I'm compelled to think that the hardest thing to get over is self-righteousness. I can look to my growing up for the roots of some of this, too. Though I did my own version of rebelling, I never was allowed to get angry in my family, and had no means of separating my identity from the identities of my family members. Someone mentioned at a meeting recently that one of the products of codependency is confusion, and in the midst of that confusion, I did what made sense at the time. I watched a lot of sitcoms, read books, tried to connect with other confused people, smoked pot and kept my mouth shut. And I dreamed of what I wanted and didn't say a word about how angry I was, how right I was sure I was, and how wrong I was sure everything and everyone around me was. That added self-righteousness and, with it, self-injury, to the confusion.

My recovery is often not graceful. I find myself acting like a frustrated teenager, with heaps of self-righteousness falling out of me before I can catch them. Years ago this would have been average behavior, but it's not so excusable when it's coming from someone otherwise considered an adult. I'm not gentle with myself about this, yet; I think because that gentleness requires a vulnerability that self-righteousness doesn't allow.  I try to give things to my higher power and then I try to take them back. I try, and I succeed. I try, and I mess up. I feel better when I think in ones: first things first, one day at a time.

Needs

I've had several good conversations about needs recently; particularly the need to be loved. Early on, I came to conclusion that the best way of coping with not having my needs met was to stop having needs. Physical, emotional and sexual needs just became things I would not entertain. And I reached a tentative peace with this, like being set on ice and made to stop for the benefit of others. What I see now is that while I was trying to preserve everyone from dealing with my needs, I wasn't present to really interact with anyone. Whenever someone took one step towards me, I took one step back, in order to avoid what I once believed was the inevitable conclusion: disappointment. It's hard to shed this urge to withdraw; it's hard to believe that there is any other way to feel safe. The expectation that embracing yourself will bring immediate warmth and a sense of purpose is another expectation that won't be met. It's the process that makes it possible. The process is anxiety-producing, but knowing that I've felt a different kind of life is enough to keep me moving toward it.

Snooze Towers

Wow.