When I meet people or get in a new relationship, I start putting all these repressive restrictions on myself. I can't have my feelings. Can't have my wants and needs. Can't have my history. Can't do the things I want, feel the feelings I'm feeling, or say what I need to say. I turn into this repressed, perfectionistic robot, instead of being who I am: Me. -- Anonymous
Sometimes, our instinctive reaction to being in a new situation is: Don't be yourself.
Who else can we be? Who else would you want to be? We don't need to be anyone else.
The greatest gift we can bring to any relationship wherever we go is being who we are.
We may think others won't like us. We may be afraid that if we just relax and be ourselves, the other person will go away or shame us. We may worry about what the other person will think.
But, when we relax and accept ourselves, people often feel much better being around us than when we are rigid and repressed. We're fun to be around.
If others don't appreciate us, do we really want to be around them? Do we need to let the opinions of others control our behavior and us?
Giving ourselves permission to be who we are can have a healing influence on our relationships. The tone relaxes. We relax. The other person relaxes. Then everybody feels a little less shame, because they have learned the truth. Who we are is all we can be, all were meant to be, and it's enough. It's fine.
Our opinion of ourselves is truly all that matters. And we can give ourselves all the approval we want and need.
Today, I will relax and be who I am in my relationships. I will do this not in a demeaning or inappropriate way, but in a way that shows I accept myself and value who I am. Help me, God, let go of my fears about being myself.
From The Language of Letting Go
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
THE more I see and talk with men and women in AA and study our mutual problems, the more I realize that there is one great factor we all have in common--in addition to that of alcoholism. We are all victims of the biggest and most devastating inferiority complexes possible for anyone to have and it takes a lot of time and a lot of AA living to lick. Thinking back to your early problems with liquor, you will realize how much you came to rely on that small drink that took away your feeling of inferiority and made you feel you were as good as the next guy. February 1950
Grapevine post....
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"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. "
In an alcohol counselling session about 12 or 13 years ago, I was told by the counsellor leading our group that I was an "emotional chamelion". He hit on something I was at least partially aware of, although I didn't know how obvious it was. I am still an avoider of conflict, and hate having loud disagreements with others, although I have been learning to express my OWN thoughts and feelings. I don't have to express my feelings/thoughts agressively (except when confronted with someone <like one of my business partners> who commonly resorts to bully tactics). But I have found that I can present my opinion or my feelings much more rationally if I do so by calmly asserting my right to have my own opinion/my own feelings.
BTW, Phil.....we won't be putting our tongues on any flagpoles around Rolla, ND for a while. Temp is around 0 degrees F right now and dropping to 14 below tonight and 20 below zero F (-25C) tomorrow night.
PS. I'm sure glad we have those poor Manitioux-bians and Sasquatchians in Canada buffering us from the Arctic Circle, or who knows how much colder those north winds would be?
-- Edited by Sick of being sick at 18:51, 2008-03-05
No tongues on anything here either!!!! Where the heck is spring!!!!!
Must be the trait of an alcoholic to be a chamelion.....Thinking back, I know Ive conformed to whatever I needed to be to get thru a situation! Or manipulated things to go my way. Working on my fourth step, still!, and laughing because I so disagreed with what others were saying about A's being controlling. Who me, who always goes with the flow and has a bright , happy disposition!
Cant wait to dig deeper and REALLY see who the fudge I really was!!!! NOT!!!!
Lani
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"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. "
lani, you've got to hear this Bob Earl tape (AA speaker). He was talking about how much more control he had then his codepenent spouse when he was "nose down passed out with her standing over him", "because I had her standing over me" lol. So control isn't always what it seems. Some people make themselves ill to get attention...and so on. Not naming names here lol
"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. "
"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. "
