Janeytwo
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I wish I could've changed me. The young me who made so many grievous mistakes. I worry about her. She cost me a great deal - maybe too much. I wish I had a time machine.
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I think we do have a time machine.. we can have conversations with ourselves..
From Codependents Guide To The Twelve Steps.
Melody Beattie..
Page 222
The Child within (inner child). This popular recovery concept refers to the fact that regardless of our age, we each have a young child within us with all the feelings, fears, complexities, simplicities, and needs we had when we were that age. We may be forty years old, brave, successful, and competent, but inside is a frightened four-year-old who needs a hug, some comforting words, and a ballon. Many of us ignore this child within. That doesn’t work. This child will start acting out and defeating us until we listen. Gradually, we learn how to recognize, listen to, and nurture this part of ourselves..
I can remember coming to the conclusion that some of us are addicted to our pain.. a birthmom staying in the horrible ‘it was done to me’ thinking and just sitting on the resentments going around and around..
page 36
A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that persons behavior..
Such a strong difficult definition on this.. this "I am the tortured dance.".
You wrote..
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Some are proud of that legacy but some? Shoot they're the sterling whites running from their ancestry like horses from a barn fire. They seem ashamed of their parents' legacy (thought I don't know why) and so they buy $400,000 homes with ceramic foyers and marble-top metal hallway tables and tell themselves they're really from Grosse Pointe instead of Eastpointe(East Detroit) or whatever the frig lower-middle class City borders 8 Mile. They can't get past their lower class status and they're running themselves into the ground financially trying to cure their own shame.
When I say I am white trash, I say it without pride or without shame. It is what it is. No one's going to be inviting me to the Country Club anytime soon. So what? Sister Susie can't admit that and I think it's killing her soul.
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And we can turn away and walk.. as fast as we can from this kind of thinking.. we can change the way we think..
That first step in Alanon.. that what is in that handout you get when you go to a meeting..
When one member of the family is getting better the rest of the family follows..
We do the work on ourselves.. stop that obsessive thinking.. that takes us out every time..
Jackie