“Your momma’s too thin; your daddy’s too fat…”

 

… Get over it”!  (really guys? That simple?)

 

Remember the Eagles song, by the same name?  It was about getting over whatever it was that one had to complain about.  Part of the lyrics were…

“Complain about the present and blame it on the past, I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.  Get over it”!

Not a ringing endorsement for self assessment and dealing with what lies beneath, now is it?   Nor was my upbringing in a tough, blue-collar neighbourhood.  Nor was coming from an ethnically-proud family whose heritage has a word that best translates, “shear, unrelenting fortitude”.  I have a family member who prides himself so much on this fortitude, he refuses dental freezing.  Nor were a hundred other small or large influences.

So with these biases, how could it come easily for me to as, “whats up with this Inner Child thing”?  It didn’t.  Until after years of recovery, sobriety, and personal growth, I did not have a good explanation why some parts of my internal dialogue have not yet quieted completely.  I still have a faint voice telling me negative things and constantly suggesting I think and analyze everything to an extreme.

Granted, it has quieted significantly and I have learned to dismiss its most preposterous directing.

This set of perspectives and explanations has really helped me find reprieve from the unrelenting internal dialogue that quietly seems to want to direct traffic in my life.

If you are tired of the constant internal dialogue, and are looking for some reprieve, you may find this as helpful as I do…

http://www.acoarecovery.com/

http://acoarecovery.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/the-introject-bad-parent-voice/

Ciao.

Chaz

We become what we practice

One of the strengths of AA and 12-step recovery is the opportunity to practice over and over the principles of this approach to recovery.  Abundant meetings in most areas make is possible to receive a continual steam of support and input for prolonged periods.

Was this not how we became sick and alcoholic in the first place?  We learned something by observation or experience, we did it once, then repeated over and over for a prolonged period?  Until our patterns of thought and behaviour became so entrenched, they were our defaults?  They were part of who we were.

So why would it not take the same to change?  We practiced thoughts and behaviours of self-pity, escapism, resentment, anger, envy, and potentially a hundred other dysfunctions until they wove together to make up the fabric of who we had become.

I did 90 meetings in 90 days at the same daily meeting.  A lot of people have asked, “Didn’t it get boring and repetitious”?  It would have if I let my old thinking tell me it was.  But gladly, I had some support from those who had travelled the path before me who compelled me to try to learn something new each day.  Even if the same people spoke again and again.

To my utter amazement, they were right.  New gems of truth and enlightenment began to emerge out of the same people at the same meeting day after day.  Why?  Perhaps it was because I was changing.  The repetition I heard was slowly breaking down the walls of my old thinking.  And my follow-through on a daily basis began to establish new patterns that further opened my mind.

Learning through practice and repetition is one thing that has kept me in the rooms of AA for a number of years, even though I can’t get any more sober than I was the day I first sobered up.  It took a long time to weave the old fabric, it is taking a long time to weave the new one.  Practice, practice, practice leads to progress, progress, progress.