Learn to Change Negative Thinking » The Twelve Steps

Recovery Means Healing All Your Inner Critics

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:48:39 +0000

End of the Paved Road by shellorz

After 32 years of recovery, I hit my emotional bottom June 11, 2009. After 15 years of marriage, without a warning, my husband left me for another woman. AND they live down the street from me. But God and AA have healed me once again. I understand why I was in a marriage with an active alcoholic and I have taken a great 5th step about my side of the street.

I’ve included some great material from other recovery friends’ sites. Please visit them.

“A Bridge Back to Life” from Letting Go : Recovery in the Sunlight (one of my favorite blogs and a daily must read) includes this poem:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

In one of my favorite blogs, Lessons From a Recovering Doormat, Michelle Germain offers these three steps to changing your inner critics:

(1) The first step is to just notice that you are engaging in self-critical or fear based self-talk. Most people spend 80% of their time in their minds, either thinking, thinking thinking, or talking talking talking, but not listening. The first step requires that you pause during your day and be silent, stop and listen to what you are telling yourself. Write down five negative thoughts that you are hearing yourself say.

(2) The second step is to be compassionate with yourself, knowing that what you are hearing is the voice of your wounded inner child. Much of the time we spend putting ourselves under a microscope judging and being critical with decision, behavior, etc. Compassion is a critical step to develop and it will be easy now that you know this self-talk started with the innocent mind of the child.

(3) The third step is where you begin to update your inner child by reprogramming and putting in positive thoughts. This is like putting your inner child on your lap and saying that what she/he thinks is not really the truth of who you are, it is bringing self-love and understanding and the positive viewpoint which is updating the old into the new thinking.

Twelve Step Links for October 16, 2009

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:46:27 +0000

Itchen Bridge by Rhys Jones

AA Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step AA Alcoholics Anonymous Step 12 AA Rehab, AA, addiction treatment, addiction recovery, AA

12Step.org for Sobriety, Strength and Serenity

Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings as a Method of Recovery

Anonymous One Sober Living Homes, Treatment Centers, Central Offices, Sober Clubs

AA Jewelry. Recovery Jewelry. AA Sobriety Recovery Jewelry. 12 Step Sobriety Jewelry Gifts. 12 Steps. Affirmations

Daily Recovery Readings

Daily Meditations

Hazelden — Thought for the Day

My August 2009 6th and 7th Steps Inventory

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:38:33 +0000

Hilo Bay Serenity by eye-of-einstein

In yesterday’s post about taking my inventory during my divorce, I mentioned that I have used procrastination to rob me of any clear victory from writing my blogs. Because I am retired with no pension, I have a need to make some income from my blogs. As I have reported before, although the count of blogs is at 80,000,000, only 200,000 to 500,000 bloggers make an income from their writing. That translates to about 2-6%—not a big crowd. Most bloggers make his/her income from ads whose income is dictated by the number of readers each blog has through various RSS readers (that orange button seen on most blogs).

I want to make my income from email counseling. I hope to be able to increase my readership from 30-60 daily to a much larger group. I plan to start a Twitter campaign in the next few weeks. Twitter is an amazing tool but the Twitter population is being inundated by spam Twitter users. As of today, it is estimated that 20%+ of users are created by spam software. I don’t use any accelerated software to increase my following because I can personally add or delete each new user based on what I find on his.her Twitter homepage. It is time-consuming. I also filter my followers through a program that deletes all people I follow who don’t follow me back. I am working on a plan to add free information about self-help or personal development in my Twits.

I read an article about procrastination written by Dr. Timothy Pychyl, Associate professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. He specializes in the study of procrastination. In the article he writes that the emotion most strongly associated with procrastination is guilt. Wow! I know that is what I have been doing when procrastination is seen as punishment. How could I allow this terrible person—me—to succeed? Surely, she deserves to live in the basement of rejection and torment. Believe me, I am been a master at denying myself much pleasure. No one else can punish us as severely as we punish ourselves.

So my 6th and 7th step work is beginning to be very successful. One of the procrastination tricks that I’ve found is my love of organizing. Although being logical gives me much clear direction in life, I’ve found that I duplicate many times over the same information in an effort to “organize” it. What it really does really is give me endless hours of activity with little progress. Procrastination is about spinning your own wheels.

Now that I know how I misuse my gift of organizing, it will be hard to continue that. Thank goodness—I can move on to helping others—my favorite activity in all the world.

Taking My Inventory During the Divorce

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:36:20 +0000

Misty Days by Lensburgchandru

Periodically, I have felt the need to retake the 12 steps of recovery. Because I seem to be stuck in one place and have been using procrastination for a long time now, I started asking for God’s help in identifying what character defects I needed to be willing to surrender.

The emotion I now know that has dominated my choices for over 15 years is guilt. Because I had a need to punish myself, I have kept my expectations very low of how much love I deserved to receive.

I have been in a large extended family so have been able to have my affection needs met by the wonderful children as well as my daughters-in-law. Since this is not the family I was born into, I have chosen to have little to no contact with anyone in the family during the duration of getting a divorce. I made this decision for two reasons: (1) I have too much respect for most of the family members to in any way make them uncomfortable with anything my husband and I decide in the divorce, and (2) it shuts off all communication except direct communication. I know this has been the best decision for me.

In order to have my emotional needs met, I have stepped up my AA meetings, groups and activities. I am presently looking for a good Al Anon meeting because my husband of the past 15 years is an active drinker. He probably drinks 5 out of 7 days. So communication with him has been filtered through a brain that thinks it is in control of the world. We call them “King Baby” in AA because their self-centered, arrogant and cowardly deeds impact and damage most relationships he/she has. Not exactly what I would call “direct communication”. We each have lawyers now so my messages can be filtered to him from someone else.

Step 6 of AA states that we become entirely ready to have our character defects removed. We can’t remove them—only God can. But He needs our willingness to complete the process because He gave us self-will. I am now completely ready to have all my imaged and projected guilt removed. I only want to feel guilt if I do something wrong in the present. The guilt helps me to remember to treat others as I want to be treated.

Two months ago when he left, he took my Rolodex so I have been scrabbling to try to get everything done that was in the Rolodex. He also took all my small frame picture collection. I have been creating that collection for over 30 years. Included in the pictures he took ware pictures of my grandmother as a young girl, pictures of me 20-25 years ago, pictures of my parents, my daughter’s wedding picture. I have carefully documented the growth of his family and have created many beautiful montages of everyone in the family. I had planned to give him many of them but he stole from me the opportunity to give him any. He just took them all. I have pictures of all he took so hope to be able to retrieve them in the settlement. These are choices made by someone arrogant enough to believe there will be no one stopping him.