I have been going along convincing myself I am fine and I was doing great while over focusing on other people's problems. That is always a good distraction from looking at myself (sarcasm - it's a bad habit). It blew up yesterday and I lost it on my boss at work. I might be unemployed shortly and that is a direct consequence of not working the program to the best of my ability and becoming complacent. I didn't drink over it, nor am I going to (for today), but now I have to man up and make a lot of amends. I hate when I get all off center and give away my serenity. Yes, some of the anger at work was justified, but the end result was I acted ugly and it was not just at work, it was everywhere. Every time I think I am done growing, I wind up getting some lesson that proves God has more in store for me to learn. Truthfully, I am highly burned out from my Job. I would much rather help adult substance abusers and such as opposed to juvenile delinquents. That is part of the reason I 'over therapize" on this site. I wish I had a job as a therapist in a treatment facility or such rather than working with juveniles that don't think they have any drug or alcohol problems and don't want to change at all. Either way, I'm about to face some difficult consequences for my actions, though I hope in the end, I will be better off. I hate acting the way I did yesterday at work. When I act ugly it solves nothing and it's like taking a crap on the spiritual axiom. Anyhow feeling pretty down on myself at the moment. I needed to be humbled anyhow.
Thanks all of you for being patient with me.
Mark
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Your Human. Hey just a thought......those juveniles just dont know they want to change. Hmmm what a challenge. I know the frustration tho, I to worked with teens. Takes a special person to be sure. Bet your day won't end up as bad as you have already made it up in your head to be. Deep breath and good luck. Have a great day Mark.
Mark, I don't see you as "overtherapizing" here at all. Your insight is always so helpful to me and others. But if you are not being helped in kind, or not opening the door to be helped, then you are not accepting that you need to get something out of this too. We are here for YOU as well, my friend!!
God's will be done on your job. I can see how your job would be extremely frustrating. Your boss is probably aware of this and may not react as you think she/he will?? Just a thought. We aren't mind-readers you know.
Don't you dare start finding other things about yourself to nit-pick at either. Feel the regret, make the amends, forgive yourself and be done with it.
Love you and take it One Day at a Time.
((((hugs))))
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~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
To get completely away from our aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time.
Step Seven
"Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings."
"HUMBLY asked Him to remove our shortcomings." Since this Step so specifically concerns itself with humility, we should pause here to consider what humility is and what the practice of it can mean to us.
Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency.
Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad time of it in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood; the word itself is often intensely disliked. Many people haven't even a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life. Much of the everyday talk we hear, and a great deal of what we read, highlights man's pride in his own achievements.
With great intelligence, men of science have been forcing nature to disclose her secrets. The immense resources now being harnessed promise such a quantity of material blessings that many have come to believe that a man-made millennium lies just ahead. Poverty will disappear, and there will be such abundance that everybody can have all the security and personal satisfactions he desires. The theory seems to be that once everybody's primary instincts are satisfied, there won't be much left to quarrel about. The world will then turn happy and be free to concentrate on culture and character. Solely by their own intelligence and labor, men will have shaped their own destiny.
Certainly no alcoholic, and surely no member of A.A., wants to deprecate material achievement. Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics. For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted.
In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living. Quite characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends with the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.
True, most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied. With a proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting what we really wanted. But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not. We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.
This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced another bad result. For just as long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible. This was true even when we believed that God existed. We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.
For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility. It was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something more than a condition of groveling despair. Every newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous is told, and soon realizes for himself, that his humble admission of powerlessness over alcohol is his first step toward liberation from its paralyzing grip.
So it is that we first see humility as a necessity. But this is the barest beginning. To get completely away from our aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time. A whole lifetime geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once. Rebellion dogs our every step at first.
When we have finally admitted without reservation that we are powerless over alcohol, we are apt to breathe a great sigh of relief, saying, "Well thank God that's over! I'll never have to go through that again!" Then we learn, often to our consternation, that this is only the first milestone on the new road we are walking. Still goaded by sheer necessity, we reluctantly come to grips with those serious character flaws that made problem drinkers of us in the first place, flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a retreat into alcoholism once again. We still want to be rid of some of these defects, but in some instances this will appear to be an impossible job from which we recoil. And we cling with a passionate persistence to others which are just as disturbing to our equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much. How can we possibly summon the resolution and the willingness to get rid of such overwhelming compulsions and desires?
But again we are driven on by the inescapable conclusion which we draw from A.A. experience, that we surely must try with a will, or else fall by the wayside. At this stage of our progress we are under heavy pressure and coercion to do the right thing. We are obliged to choose between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing to do so. These initial steps along the road are taken grudgingly, yet we do take them. We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.
But when we have taken a square look at some of these defects, have discussed them with another, and have become willing to have them removed, our thinking about humility commences to have wider meaning. By this time in all probability we have gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind. To those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression, or anxiety -in other words, to all of us- this newfound peace is a priceless gift. Something new indeed has been added. Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.
This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing. Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering. Escape via the bottle was always our solution. Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.
Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets. We heard story after story of how humility had brought strength out of weakness. In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.
During this process of learning more about humility, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude toward God. And this was true whether we had been believers or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help. But now the words "Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works" began to carry bright promise and meaning.
We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."
As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it might be well if we A.A.'s inquire once more just what our deeper objectives are. Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows. We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward these objectives. We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon our selves, upon others, and upon God.
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear--primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands. The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone.
The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God. The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
-- Edited by LinBaba on Thursday 20th of January 2011 01:26:09 PM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Hey Rob, we in the Fellowship are here with you on this. Not to mention, you sound human, like me. Progress, not perfection. And sounds very much like you could use a change of scene, workwise.
Funny, your talk of the juveniles who don't want to change and don't think that they have a problem reminded me of just how juvenile I was in my drinking. I was just like them -- not to mention, I WILL be like them again if I don't keep working AA.
BTW, you know what the key line in your share was for me?:
"I didn't drink over it, nor am I going to (for today)"
Full flight: Um...this comes from a person that posts about their penis. Okay. Think I'll take what I want and leave the rest. In your case, I will leave all of it.
I never said I was God. Plus I never said anything to you to merit that tone. You are going to fail in the program if you can't learn from others. Also don't be jealous because you don't have an education and cannot write in complete sentences. I am not even sure you are not responding to LinBaba...I guess maybe you are cuz he was most critical of your penis post. Whatever. Lin's posts have a lot of words because they come directly from the literature. Duh. If you say they have no substance or depth than you are rejecting our own literature...sheesh, talk about a thick skull.
Thanks.
For the rest of you, thanks for the support and I learn from you daily.
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
I know where your at Mark. I recently had a very similar experience at work myself. Not only did i make a complete ass of myself to my immediate supervisor, I offended the 2 top bosses and did so in front of a room full of clients. Looking back on that now still hurts, but it was a turning point for me in my recovery. I'm lucky that all my bosses and co-workers are in recovery as well, or I may have very likely been escorted off the mountain. I decided to take the opportunity to learn from it, and discovered some ugly things I hadn't been wanting to face. I had let my mess go and quit working the program as hard as I had been in the past. The character defects that I was ignoring woke up and bit me in the ass HARD. I was told by a close friend with 30 years in the program that I'll never be as healthy as I think I am. Boy was he right. I learned that when things are easiest for me, I need to work extra hard to keep following the program and working the steps to the BEST of my ability. I believe today that when life becomes "that easy" there's trouble on the horizon. Time for Brian to buckle down and get back to work.
Your in my prayers...
Brian
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Nothing ever truly dies. The universe wastes nothing. Everything is simply, transformed. :confuse:
LOOKS REAL PRETTY AND NEAT BUT DOES IT HAVE DEPTH AND WEIGHT?
FullFlight no one here is your enemy, we are all here for the same thing, a peaceful sobriety, No one here thinks they are God, it's just sometimes discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to posting about our penises, as will become apparent momentarily
As far as what I wrote, it only has depth and weight if you happen to be interested in working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and like the writings of one Bill Wilson, who wrote both of our books, Alcoholics Anonymous and 12 steps and 12 Traditions, this is what he wrote about step 7, I happen to think steps 6 and 7 are incredibly important, they are what seperates the men from the boys, no offense to anyone on this thread lol
pinkchip wrote:this comes from a person that posts about their penis. Now Mark don't be so quick to judge, as a matter of fact my favorite Poster here is named Mr Respectable Penis
What Roberts tells us is that the protagonist, "a brave, hard man without a plan", steps off an aeroplane in Bombay, and is quickly and lastingly befriended by a street guide called Prabaker, who introduces him to seedy Bombay life, and insists he change his assumed name, Lindsay, to Lin, or Linbaba, Baba being an honorific meaning large or respectable
Prabaker tells him: " 'Very good! I am too happy that you like it, this name Lin, has it also a very fine and so lucky meaning.' 'Yeah? What does Lin mean in Hindi?' 'Its meaning Penis!' he explained, with a delight that he expected me to share. 'Come off it, man,' I protested. 'How can I go around calling myself Mr Penis? Are you kidding me? I can see it now: Oh, hello, pleased to meet you, my name is Penis. No way.' 'No! No! Lin, really I'm telling you, this is a fine name, a very power name, a very lucky, a too lucky name! The people will love this name, when they hear it.' "
It's from the book Shantaram, one of the best books I have ever read
-- Edited by LinBaba on Thursday 20th of January 2011 07:56:35 PM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
No ! i was not talking to u PINK!!! itz cool tho yu dont have to like me but u will respect me and what i have to say hey either listen or disreguard it all thats your decision no hard feelings :( hopefully ! 4th grade i learned on these streetz education book smarts not so much that was my decision not ones fault but my own thx for pointing that out, im going to go and cry now im offended but still luv!
-- Edited by Full Flight on Thursday 20th of January 2011 10:31:50 PM
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Trust god work the 12 steps keep god close Love the ones u got and pray for all those who need prayers, peace. God Bless !
Hey Mark...the clients I use to work with were adolescents and their families in and out patient. One of the things that saved my efforts was the memories of what it was like for me when I was their age. Only difference was time twix then and now cause the thoughts, feelings and behaviors I still remembered well and when I was using that filter the kids use to think I was reading their minds. I tried to tell them that no one could do that and then lapsed into "Oh well...if they wanna be right, let them be right. So we got alot of work done." You got assets and tools...inventory them and set them near where you can get to them quick cause the adolescents don't stay still and you gotta net them fast. You're not baby sitting cause rarely will they tell you what it is that they learned from you during a period of time. If you can see, hear or feel one little movement toward positive change their getting it. I do respect what you say about the inattention to program and for me that allowed me to display larger hammers. Those make sparks and things get quiet and then the water gets calm and the boat sails even keel for a while...till next storm. Some clients do well and continue doing well and others hmmmmm not all of us make it.
Get to the 10th with your boss and the others before they get to you and then continue to turn it over while checking for other available positions. Courage to Change the things I can.
Best of luck to you and in support.
-- Edited by Jerry F on Friday 21st of January 2011 12:01:52 AM
Ok Full Flight. Point taken. I needed a shot of humility anyhow and I certainly have gotten it in the last 2 days. I knew I wasn't God, but I was striving for major deity status at least...lol.
Anybody know of any job openings for an opinionated ex therapist?
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Besides, the worst argument I ever got into on this board is with a person whom I now respect more than almost anyone on the board. Strange how that works in AA.
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Believe it or not you have helped me to realize some very serious areas in my own life that I am screwing up in big time!!
Taking a look at me .. where I am to blame.
Yeah, step 7. But first I need step 6 so that I can become entirely ready ( willing ) to have these faults of mine removed.
And the kicker is that the step tells me who will be doing the removing .. and that is the one and only loving, all powerful God.
Anyhow, thanks again. Hang in there, dont drink, pray, get to a meeting, talk to your sponsor and figure out really which step it is you're suppose to be working , and I will do the same
