A.C.O.A. or Destructive Alcoholic Behavior Without Drinking

Adult Children Of Alcoholics or A.C.O.A.s may not drink but suffer from the same self destructive behaviors of Alcoholics or other substance abusers.

A.C.O.A.s feel extra "crazy" because to them, there is no "reason" for them to keep on doing less than functional behavior.

It is a basic tenent of AA that the drinking is only a symptom of a larger Alcoholic behavior. See the definition of "Dry Drunk" (Not Drinking, But Not 'Of Sober Mind' Either)

September is National Recovery Month, in the Sept 25 2009 HuffingtonPost featured author Dr. Tian Dayton complied a list of behaviors often experienced by A.C.O.A. adults:

• Problems with Self- Regulation
• Hyper Vigilance/Anxiety
• Hyper-reactivity/Easily Triggered
• Emotional Constriction
• Loss of Trust and Faith
• Unresolved Grief 
• Traumatic Bonding
• Learned Helplessness
• Somatic Disturbances
• Tendency to Isolate
• Cycles of Reenactment
• High Risk Behaviors
• Survival Guilt
• Shame  (insert: guilt and shame are often used as synoynms: guilt is "I've made a mistake", shame is "I AM a mistake", shame is toxic, guilt carries the implication that it is repairable, shame... there is nothing to repair so why bother)
• Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses 
• Relationship Issues
• Depression with Feelings of Despair
• Distorted Reasoning
• Loss of Ability to Take in Caring and Support from Others
• Desire to Self Medicate

========== This article is for informational purposes only. Please contact a licensed professional in your area if you are in crisis or require mental health services
David Bruce
Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Secondary Gain, Or She's Not Doing What You Want Her To Do

Secondary Gain

You tell yourself you want X because of Y... well that's your story and you're stickin with it.

For some reason, Y just doesn't seem to happen?

That's cause part of you, wants something OTHER than what YOU want,,,,

Part of you, is looking at another part of you... in contempt

That is the very essence of codependency
and it's evidence of dis-harmony (lack of harmony, aka absence of serenity)


That part of you (the one with inner contempt for you, or for the "rest of you") has an agenda


an agenda that isn't YOURS... it has a secondary target in mind


here's the kicker.. if you're wounded, if you're not a healthy well rounded inter-dependent being


It's BIGGER THAN YOU ARE


guess what's gonna happen if you want something and IT wants something else?







==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Make Friends With Your Negatives

--------------------------------------

Living With Your Negatives

--------------------------------------

If you have been studying personal growth materials for any
length of time, you have probably heard it said over and over
again that the name of the game is positive thinking. In other
words,  you must work to reduce and ultimately eliminàte negative
thinking and emotions from your life.

Well, yes. It's a nice idea in theory, but the practical reality
is something different altogether.

Although it is definitely correct and useful to develop an
overall optimistic and positive mindset, it may NOT be helpful to
try to eliminàte ALL negative thinking and emotions from your
life.

Quite simply, to try to do so is rather like trying to bail out
the ocean from a leaky lifeboat, using just a coffee mug. The
more you do it, the more there is to do, and the more hopeless
the task seems to become. From a purely human aspect of striving,
it is an almost impossible task.

Indeed, the problem with getting too hung up with the negative
aspects of ourselves is that it can be a very dispiriting
experience if you are expecting to see positive improvement, but
it nèver really happens, or else you end up backsliding.

Hence, too much focus upon the negative side of your personality
can be rather like trying to dig the seeds up every day to see
how they're growing. Ultimately, they won't grow at all.

Why do people have negative emotions and attitudes? Well, put
simply, it's the human condition, certainly in the unenlightened
state. This is a BIG subject and one we cannot tackle here.
Childhood experiences, genetics, influence of peers, even past
lives (!) - they probably all play a part.

However, what is for sure is that you are very unlikely to
overcome the matter in the very near future. Certainly, there are
personal development gurus who claim that you can, and even give
the impression that they have done so themselves. However, you
don't know them personally, and you are not there in every moment
to see if they really have. Maybe their spouse might tell another
story altogether!


Even the major spiritual traditions emphasize how hard it really
is to overcome the negative aspects of ourselves. Christianity
goes as far as to talk about Original Sin, i.e. that we are
actually totally helpless to effect lasting change on account of
the fact that we inherited this "sinful" condition at birth. We
need the heavenly "Salvation" that comes from above, and which is
effectively a "new birth". However, even this only comes into
effect in full force when the old bòdy is shed off and the new
spiritual bòdy taken on. Buddhism talks about achieving
"Enlightenment", which is an analogous concept, but which
is tied in more to liberation from ignorance, delusion, and the
shackles of the Flesh.

Hence, if you think you are going to solve ALL your personality
issues overnight by listening to a twenty minute self-hypnosis
tape, or by doing some affirmations... Well, it's unlikely to
happen.

However, that does not mean to say that personal growth is a
waste of time. You ARE supposed to accentuate the positive. Just
don't focus on any perceived lack of progress with the negative,
or get frustrated with its continued presence. Use "moving
towards" motivation, i.e. moving TOWARDS what you want, rather
than "moving away from" motivation, i.e. trying to avoid and
deny what you do NOT want.

Whatever you focus your mind upon has a tendency to grow in
power. Hence, focusing on your negativities has a tendency to
make them stronger. Focus rather upon what you wish to incrèase
in your life, and let the negative side of your personality find
its own place. In other words, make friènds with it a bit, rather
than treat it as an enemy. Regard it rather as you would an
aching limb. You don't hate it just because it aches!

Statistics show that optimistic people actually have a lower risk
of heart disease than pessimistic people. Hence, even from a
purely pragmatic health perspective, it IS better to be positive
than negative in mental outlook! No doubt about it.

nèvertheless, total liberation from the negative side of our
personalities does not come without a total spiritual rebirth.
This is not a matter of a few months or years of toil. Maybe it
will take countless lifetimes for most people, as the Buddhists
believe to be the case.

You do well to remember the Eastern perspective of Yin and Yang
- the teaching that dark and light are inextricably interwoven
and inseparable in this cosmos. That applies within our minds
too. To try to separate one from the other, using standard
psychological tools, is a pretty hopeless task.

Only a new creation, entirely other than this world, can
ever reconciles this paradox and live in harmony with it. That is
the goal of the spiritual path. So, until then, be easy on
yourself. Celebrate every advance, but don't let any apparent
negative personality aspects get you down.


Copyright Asoka Selvarajah 2004. All Rights Reserved.
For more articles like this visit http://www.aksworld.com/


==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Food is a Good Girl’s Sex

Changing Our Relationship to Our Skin: Sexual Anorexia and Overeating

April 16th, 2009
Last week on Oprah’s show they explored how to talk to your children about sex and Dr. Laura Berman said something that provoked a huge response in the audience: that parents should give their daughters permission to masturbate. She went so far as to say that at 15 or 16, introduce a vibrator. She asserted that if we teach young girls to take their power back around sexuality, they won’t be dependent on boys for their pleasure and confuse the good feelings they get from being pleasured by a boy with love.

Although Oprah was completely on board with this, Gayle was against it. She asserted one of the most sexist things I’ve ever heard on this show: that it is ok for boys to masturbate because they are more sexually driven as teenagers. Well, I can tell you that as a child growing up in the 70’s where sexual mores had changed dramatically, I lived in a home where I was taught sex was for marriage.

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I drove all my chaotic, sexual feelings into food and between the ages of 13-15, gained 40 pounds. I remember having sexual arousal but not knowing what to do with it, my stress management technique was to eat cookies instead. How many girls who aren’t dating is this also true for? In the words of Dr. Toni Grant:

“Food is a good girl’s sex.”

But I digress. Getting back to Gayle and the Oprah show. Gayle has made no bones about mentioning her love for food.

Why is it ok to derive pleasure from food but not from our own bodies? If a teenage girl sat down at a great meal and ate from pleasure, Gayle (and many people in America who agree with her) would be fine with that but it is not ok to have that pleasure come from touching ourselves.

Dr. Berman did not go far enough. Although masturbation is part of the pleasure, what we aren’t taught is how to touch ourselves lovingly all over our bodies.

And here’s the irony: Food when eaten to excess produces childhood obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health issues. The last I heard, stroking your own body does not make you go blind! Nor does it produce weight gain.

In Ashley Montagu’s seminal work first published in 1971, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin, he shares with the reader the studies that were done that support how critical being touched is to healthy human functioning and as an extension, to the ability to bond with another.

My take on this is that when we are not touched, food becomes the safe mother. The mother who gives us unconditional love.

When a teenage girl is given permission in her formative years to have intimacy with herself first, she does not reach out to find it indiscriminately with a boy, another adolescent most probably incapable of giving her what she truly needs. He can’t because he is being driven by the mother lode of testosterone into focusing his desire for sexual release. If girls had another avenue for nurturing themselves, they wouldn’t be as driven to make food their lover. It is time for us to move beyond this puritan schizophrenia we have that allows kids to see soft porn scenes in day- time soap operas while at the same time making a physical relationship with our own bodies forbidden.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon. Her website address is www.LifeQuake.net. She is also available for consultation at 310-712-2600.

http://www.lifequake.net/2009/04/16/changing-our-relationship-to-our-skin-sexual-anorexia-and-overeating/

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Ward of the state- incompent social workers

Who do you hang out with?

I used to hang out with the people I was dysfunctional with on a regular basis, that made it easy for me to write about my personal experiences and dealing with both my self destructive behavior and the dysfunctionals I spent my days and nights with. I've come to the conclusion that you can't be dysfunctional in a vacuum, you need someone to agree with you if you're to really do dysfunction and get it right.

While I did experience helping people less dysfunctional than me by showing by example that a foul up who was just like them could pull themselves up and out by their own bootstraps, I did eventually have to get away from the proximity to drugs.

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I'd gone from daily use (cocaine as a means to further sex addiction as a function of love addiction) to once a week to twice a month and could not get completely sober until I removed my self totally.

"Hockey Players don't hang around with Chess Players"

John Bradshaw

"If you don't want to slip, stay away from slippery places"

anonymous 12 step saying.

"People who don't go to meetings don't hear about what happens to people who don't go to meetings"

anonymous 12 step saying.

Having gotten away from the dysfunction has had pros and cons associated with it:

PRO - I'm now at 140 days consecutive sobriety

I'm not at all ashamed of the 4 months of once a week, and dwindling down to twice a month... but totally clean is great, I have to say.

CON- I'm finding it harder to write about dysfunction, in a manner that dysfunctional people can relate to. When I was one of them, it was easier. I'm still one of them but I'm a lot, LOT better off now as compared to then.

Which brings me to the crux of this post's main idea:

Rehab and 'programs' offered by Governmental agencies are MORE dysfunctional than the people they are ostensibly attempting to help. The schools are churning out idiots with social working degrees... and the social working jobs are hiring them.

The entire concept of 'social work' has become a cottage industry

I'm of the opinion, based on the people I've seen in this field and the people I've seen taking this in college... that social work is seen as a cushy job for slackers.

If you go to http://google.com and type in social working, before you even get the entire sentence completed you see millions of possible results... all biased towards helping YOU get into this billion dollar industry with the governments blessing, and a virtually unlimited number of possible 'patients' or 'clients'.

Results 1 - 10 of about 388,000,000 for social working

===

As a journalist, I'm bound to protect my sources.

I've heard from the people who's job it is to "process" teen delinquents, it's heart breaking the stories I've been told. The fools in charge of 'social work' don't give a damn about the kids, their families, the public... they only care about retiring from their cushy job.

The text books teach garbage, who writes that crap?

Would you want a drug counselor that never used?

think about that for a moment.

No where do they teach Family Systems Theory.

They still teach B.F. Skinner for Christ's sake.

Wikipedia has this to say about the definition of social work:

Social work is a discipline involving the application of social theory and research methods to study and improve the lives of people, groups, and societies. It incorporates and uses other social sciences as a means to improve the human condition and positively change society's response to chronic problems.

None, not one, not a single social worker I've ever seen or heard about did a damn thing to positively change anything other than their time clock.

http://digg.com/celebrity/Why_Rehab_Doesnt_Work

All of societies miscreants and all of the disaffected would be served well if the people charged with ameliorating their suffering read the following book.

Adult Child's Guide to What's Normal

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

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We not shoot, you not shoot

We not shoot, you not shoot

Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005


Hi all,

Yesterday the last British soldier who was present at the famous Christmas Truce in the First World War died.

You know, in the First World War there were trenches all across France, Belgium and Germany, in which millions of soldiers died just to gain a couple of miles of territory, only to loose them a month later. On of the most senseless destruction of human lives ever seen.

The trenches were often just hundreds of meters away from each other and from there the two sides attacked each other with just invented poison gas, machine guns, and other. In between was no man's land, a destroyed desert.

On Christmas morning 1914, on the German side the soldiers started singing
'Silent Night, Holy Night'.
Then a German soldier climbed out his trench, walked into no man's land, and said to the British:

"Merry Christmas. We not
shoot, you not shoot."

This started a spontaneous truce, which spread across the more than 700 kilometers of trenches. Soldiers climbed out of the trenches, shook hands with their official enemies, sang together and played soccer. German officers invited British officers into their tents for a glass of wine. A hairdresser would cut the hair of soldiers of both sides, in the middle of no man's land. On some places, the truce lasted several
weeks.


What this has to do with recovery? I don't know. I had to cry when I read this in today's newspaper. It shows me that although there is much evil in the world, most ordinary people only want to do the good thing.

A simple song about Christ can touch people's hearts and cause them to do incredible
wonderful things. This story about the Christmas Truce is world famous and has touched many more people than the unknown German soldier could ever imagined.

Anyway, after reading this I decided that I will stay sober for another 24 hours. It's day 12 today and this evening there is a meeting.

All the best to all of you,

Reprinted with permission from a Sex Addiction Recovery List I've belonged to for more than 4 years.

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Cleaning up your wreckage

That's an A.A. term, well a 12 step term really.

What it means is while we were:

Druggin

Raging

Codependent-ing

Manipulating

Being a Control Freak

Over Eating

Drinking

Insert Drug of Choice Here

... while we were addicted... someone had to wipe our ass.

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Do you know how "they" came up with the term: "Co Dependent"?

That term originally came from the term: "Co Alcoholic"

It came from the 1940's, researchers in behavior and psychology found that alcoholics seem to always have a Co Alcoholic. Apparently you can't be an addict in a vacuum!

For Example:

If you're half of a parenting team (father and mother) and one of you is frequently drunk and incapacitated... it stands to reason that the other half of the team is doing the others share of work.

If I'm high... my spouse is gonna have to 'take up the slack'.

...or Some body's gonna have to!

Those same researchers were amazed to discover (and this is clinical, it's in the decades of case histories... don't take my word for it, I'm not just making this stuff up)

... were amazed to find that the (usually women) co alcoholics kept on falling for another alcoholic!

Wife Beaters followed the same path... women who got beat up by their spouses, when (or IF) they left the abusive man...

they went out and found themselves the same kind of guy!

You see, codependency is: "A disease of irresponsibility"
And it's a learned irresponsibility at that.


Ok, enough of the set up...

Cleaning Up Your Wreckage means:

You let your loved ones down

.

They were 'Wronged By You"

While you were (insert drug of choice here)high, compulsively masturbating, over eating, drunk... while you were "NOT PRESENT" ... somebody had to wipe your ass.

That was unfair to who ever was covering for you while you were fucking up.

EVEN IF THAT PERSON SET THEMSELVES UP FOR IT.... it's still unfair.
It doesn't matter if the person who covered for you was, themselves, unhealthy.

That's IRRELEVANT.

You screwed up, you dropped the ball, you let someone else carry YOUR WEIGHT.

and that person or persons, whoever they are (mother father, family friend, old girlfriend) got wronged.

You left Wreckage

At some point you're going to have to 'Clean up the Wreckage you left behind'

You're not going to be able to 'come to terms' with your past
(I really do hate that phrase, but I know I'm writing this to people outside of 12 step group terminology)

I'm cleaning up some of my wreckage.

I was.. for the first 3 years of my children's lives, a loving, capable father.
For the next 16 years I 'blew my fuses', my kids did not have a functional father.

OK, I can't undo the past... it was what it was.

John Bradshaw said in an audio tape series I had, said:

"The best thing we can do for our kids is to let em see us heal"

When I heard that 10 years ago, I 'wished' I could pull that off.
I wanted to pull that off... the fact of even considering "let my kids see me heal" even being on the table led me to this:

I could see how far I'd have to go to pull that off.

If I'd not 'wanted to do that' (3 of the 12 steps don't say "DO THIS", they say "become READY to do this")... I'd not have been aware of the distance between where I was and where I needed to be if I was gonna pull that off.

so... I created an N.L.P. reframe for me to 'collapse anchor' when ever my 'irrational jealousy' kept me from being a functional father.

All my kids wanted was a father, they did not require that I be a perfect father, they did not require that I even be a functional father... what they DID want and need was for me to be there when they needed me to be there. ie, do the best I could under whatever circumstances presented themselves.

Fast Forward to a few years ago:

My kids were in college (not that I helped.. they actually qualified for student loans because I was non functional... often homeless, couldn't keep a job, spent the money badly when I did have a job), My kids needed ME to help them with their homework.

By the grace of god, my kids needed help with their computer skills, one of my daughters even took web design classes... Not only did I get to help her with her HTML skills, I was the ONLY person in her life that even knew HTML skills.

Fast Forward to today: Not only am I in daily contact with my two youngest children, (I'm consider my self lucky that they even talk to me)I'm a GrandFather...

I'm doing the Granddady Day Care and I love it.

I'm even finally earning enough from my web writing to be able to be there for my grandchildren...

It IS possible to 'let your kids see you heal'

even if you were fucking up as much as I was.








==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Ten differences between being a martyr or a victim?

from http:///www.coping.org/relations/martyr.htm

1. Martyrs are people who recognize they are being taken advantage of and choose to remain in the situation. Victims are people who are taken advantage of but are unaware of being treated as such. Once victims recognize that they are being treated unfairly, they have the choice of remaining in the situation or not. If they stay, they risk becoming martyrs.

2. Martyrs are those who recognize that their rights are ignored and abused but choose to remain in the situation and continue to be treated this way. Victims are individuals whose rights are ignored and abused but were unaware that they would be treated in this manner before they entered the situation.

3. Martyrs are people who let others know how unfairly they are being treated but choose to remain in this unfair position. Victims are people who let others know they have been treated unfairly. They have the chance to leave or change the situation in which they have been victimized. Victims often suffer silently for long periods of time before they are able to verbalize the unfairness of their life situations.

4. Martyrs often knowingly continue to enable or set up situations in which their rights are violated or ignored. This ``setting up'' is like a prediction or prophecy of failure into which, consciously or unconsciously, the martyrs play, fulfilling the prophecy. Victims often unknowingly set themselves up for continued abuse and violation of their rights. They are often confused and bewildered as to why this occurs. They lack insight into the actions that bring on this abuse.

5. Martyrs often seek sympathy for their plight. They seek support, advice, and help from others. Yet they seem stuck in their current course of action and seem to be unable to resolve it. Victims frequently never seek help. They are often frustrated and lost as to what needs to be done to get them out of their current situation. Once victims have been offered help and make a conscious choice to remain stuck in their situation, they become martyrs.

6. Martyrs frequently let the people whom they feel are taking advantage of them know how badly they are being treated. Martyrs often resort to badgering, nagging, scolding, threatening, belittling, antagonizing, and verbally putting down those whom they perceive to be taking advantage of them. Victims rarely let the people who are taking advantage of them know how they feel about this treatment.

7. Martyrs often believe it is their obligation to remain in their position in life. They would feel guilty if they let go of the current situation. They fear taking the risk to change the situation. They are apparently comfortable, habituated, or submissive to the situation and believe a change would be worse for them and for the others in their lives. Victims often want a change and are desperate for a solution to their situation. As soon as a victim gives in to a situation, choosing not to resolve or correct it, they become martyrs. The saying, ``If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem,'' applies to the martyr's state in life.

8. Martyrs have a story line which is stereotypic and habitual. They rarely change their tales of woe. One can meet them several years later and find them still suffering from the fate they were experiencing when you last talked to them. Victims experience their plight temporarily, get help, and are more apt to get out of the situation. If after getting help and changing, victims experience the same problems later, they could be martyrs at that time.

9. Martyrs often mask their behavior with an aura of willingness and desire for behavioral change in their lives. Usually they are only fooling themselves, since the others in their lives can see by their behavior and attitude that there is no possibility of change. Victims usually are open and honest about their discomfort and willingly seek behavioral change. Their sincerity is easily perceived by others due to the actions and behavioral changes that take place.

10. Martyrs are ``professional'' help seekers. They make the rounds of paid and volunteer helpers, advice givers, counselors, consultants, anyone willing to listen to their tale of woe. Unfortunately, they usually ignore the assistance, advice, or direction they are given. This frequently results in their ``helpers'' giving up on them in frustration and discouragement. Victims, on the other hand, seek help in a ``crisis'' only after the pressure of their problems becomes too great for them to bear. They are highly motivated for a ``change'' and are rewarding people to work with as they and their helpers witness the benefits of the help, advice, and direction given.

=========
Ok, so why did I post this?

Because if you're doing self destructive behavior, you are a codependent.

If you're a codependent you're doing Victim Behavior



==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Build me up, ButterCup dont break my heart

Do you think that current society's built in mindset, the set of norms that are woven into the fabric of our perception, totally supports being codependent?

How about love addiction... that's a codependent trait if ever there was one.

And popular culture most definitely reinforces it.

Want to know how and where?

MoTown

Country Music

That's right, popular music teaches us (at a very young age I might add)
that it's Normal to be love addicted.

Now a healthy person (person with functional boundaries would simply leave a relationship that obviously caused them more pain than it was worth!


Not a love addict.

"I'll be over at ten you told me time and again... but your late... you let me down again"

"I took a Louisville Slugger to his tail lights..."

Need I say more?

The only way to un do this is to 'install' new behaviors to over write the programming.

Fold your arms (fold your arms the way you always do, do it without thinking about it)

Now:

Fold them 'the other way' (if your right hand was pointing up on your left forearm, swap em, put your LEFT hand up on your right forearm)

Feels Funny doesn't it?

This crap is NOT set in stone... just reinstall the software, reinstall 'windows' over top of it self... wipe out or cover up the old family of origin script and replace it with a new one.

ONE YOU choose, not one that you mindlessly allowed to be installed while listing to MoTown.

(Damn, I really do like that song, the melody at least... I LOVE MoTown)
==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries 4 Codependents

Fasting for your Mind

Everyone has heard of fasting.
The practice of taking a hiatus from food.
Doing so has lots of beneficial effects on our bodies.


Mostly ridding our body of toxins.

What about ridding our minds of toxins?

Sound like a good idea?

Here, do this:


Don't think a negative thought for seven straight days.

Can't do it?
Of course you can't...
What this means is if a negative thought comes into your mind, let it go.

Don't let a single negative thought stay in your mind for
more than a moment or two.

Often when I hear people speak about meditating, they complain
that they can not concentrate.

OK fair enough, do the following, this is like a visualization:

Picture a train, lets say it has almost a hundred cars...
You are on one side of the train tracks.
What you're focusing on, what you're meditating on is on the
other side of the tracks...

A distracting thought pops into your mind,
instead of bitching and moaning that you've lost your place...

See the distraction as a passing railroad car.

Remember when you get stuck at a RR crossing,
waiting for the long train to finish up?

You can still see the street, the cars on the other side of the train.

Get the picture?

So do it, do it right now!
Seven days with no negative thoughts

OK,OK here is an additional tactic:

Picture your postal mail box.
Negative thought comes in.


don't open it!

If you want, you can even write on it: "return to sender"

Put that damn thing back in the mail box and flip up the flag so the mail man/ mail person can send it back where it came from...

It doesn't live here:)


==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Respect doesn't come naturally for an addict

Respect doesn't come naturally for an addict.

Self respect.

Addicts do not have it.

What makes it worse is that they're not really aware of the lack of self respect.

Treating yourself with respect takes practice... it's unnatural for an addict.

Fold your arms

Now fold them the 'other way'

Feels Funny doesn't it.

You're going to have to practice this, baby steps...

When you spend all your money again...

you didn't even leave money for cigarettes.... and you're beating yourself up, feel like shit... kickin yourself...

do something, even if it's a small thing, something symbolic to treat yourself with respect.

This is like putting money in the bank, it accrues interest, it compounds...

a token action (I bought myself socks one week, and underware the next, in the recent past when I was still using) each day is not 30 days of little things...

it's 30 days of building momentum, compound interest, the sum of the parts equals much more than the individual parts.

more coming
I promise



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This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Being Punitive is counter productive

It's counter productive to bitch at, to harangue. to be 'punitive' to an addict you love or care about or are friends with...

An addict is already a world class, olympic level self depracator
consciously on a scale of 1 to 10 addicts are aware of this 'beat themselves up' at maybe a 3, unconsciously, however (they're not aware of this) on a scale of 1-10 addicts are actually beating themselves up at a 9.5

Addicts self depracate (beat themselves up) good enough already...we think nothing of this... we've become so accustomed to thinking of ourselves in such a shitty light that we don't even notice it.

Alanon does not go any where near close enough to teach codependents of addicts:

Food addicts
Sugar addicts
drug addicts
alcoholics
Rage-a-holics

All of them (internally) are kick them selves... to bitch at them or accuse addicts of 'not having will power' is counter productive

If you can't back away from being punitive with an addict you care about, YOU have control issues of your own to deal with...

Dont be the pot calling the kettle black!

"Let he that be without sin cast the first stone"

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Erectile Dysfunction and Crack smoking

Most of the 50 something male crack smokers I've smoked with all have the same thing going on with them internally:

They have ED
shit happens when you:
-get older
-haven't taken good care of your self physically
-smoke too much (cigarettes I mean)
-drink too much coffee (diruetic, hurts your kiddneys)
-don't get enough sleep
-let yourself get stressed out over stuff you can't control
-have bad boundaries (which means you let yourself get all worked up over stuff that isn't your problem, and have imaginary problems ie 'thems fightin words'

result?

Either no hydraulics OR limited hydraulics

There are two kinds of ED:

Zero hydraulics

There are 3 chambers inside your tool that are supposed to fill with blood when you get aroused.

and the most prevalant kind:

Limited hydraulics
the check valve at the base of your tool doesn't hold.
(What is a check valve? it's a plumbing term for a one way valve, one that lets fluid flow in one direction but not reverse, when a fluid is under pressure it flows in one direction, release the pressure and it flows back the other way according to gravity)

what does that mean?

blood flows in, but runs back out, there is a check valve of sorts, a one way valve, it's supposed to lock, meaning the blood flows in, you begin to get hard, but when you try to put it in (or put the condom on) it gets soft.


you get just hard enough to piss yourself off... and you've gotten your partner hot and you can't deliver the goods


when a man smokes crack, as soon as he exales the first blast, all you can think of is sex...

and women that smoke crack.. well lets just say they're easy

more coming, I've got to get ready to go to work.... I keep losing my jobs

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Journaling

Stress Management Series - Part 2 -Build Healthy Coping Methods
It can be helpful to identify and examine your coping strategies for managing stress. One way to do this is by journaling.

Journaling doesn't have to be a complicated or time-consuming activity. Over time, you will probably even come to enjoy it. In the beginning it can be helpful to keep it simple, and just record:


What happened (argument with spouse, stressful incident at work, receiving bad news, etc.)
How you felt when it happened (anxious, angry, sad, panicky, etc.)
How you reacted (what did you say or do?)
How you could have reacted better (talked it over, removed yourself from the situation to calm down, talked to a friend about it, etc.)

As you begin to see a pattern in the types of incidents that cause you a lot of stress and how you deal with them, you will be able to formulate a plan for dealing with these situations more effectively and in a healthier manner.

This can be a very effective way of developing better coping strategies and learning to manage stress.

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

How Being Quiet Pays Off In Business

By E. Brown

USA Today recently published an interview with controversial Q1 Group CEO, Vijay Eswaran, extolling the virtues of silence. Vijay spends an hour at the beginning of most every day in silent contemplation. He attributes this to being a big part of his successes. Vijay’s new book, In The Sphere of Silence, outlines a regimen of silence:

• Best time is early in the morning or when convenient. Consistency is the key.
• Maintain silence for one hour. If you’re distracted, start at the beginning.
• Evaluate yesterday. Note your progress and identify reasons for failures.
• Set goals for today, tomorrow, and next week.
• Plan long-term goals and prioritize. Do this daily.
• Review your notes from the previous day.
• Seek knowledge by reading non-fiction or listening to something educational for ten minutes, then make note of what you learned.
• Commune with the Lord for the last ten minutes – asking questions that need answers. Write it all down.

At first, the interviewer seemed to think Vijay’s exercise was “new-age goobledy-gook” and later in the article proposed the practice of silence as a recent “secret” discovery. The fact is for thousands of years, men and women have made a habit of spending time in quiet reflection gaining introspection and wisdom.

Like King Solomon of old once said, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”


my comment left on this post:
==========
Good Post, I agree too.
I recently watched a Glen Beck show where Glen interviewed Depak Chopra.
Glen asked Depak what meditation is to him, Depak replied:
"... we have thought, then we have another thought, meditation is like the space between the thoughts"

That's paraphrased as close as my memory permits but the explanation gave me more reason to meditate.
I once tried explaining it as "doing nothing... constructively"

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Spin Doctoring

I used to drive a roll off truck. It's a trash truck
like a dump truck but you leave the dumpster at the
job.

Sometimes an excavating contractor will push the
container around the job site with a bulldozer.

If the dumpster's door is open when they do that
the can can get bent... a lot.
forexample with the door closed the can is rigid,
with the door open it's a 3 sided box.

When I went to retrieve the can, I asked the
contractor
to see if they can bend the wall of the container
back to 'square' it up.

If you bend steel back to it's original postion it'll
just snap back to the bent state.
You have to bend the steel way, WAY past where you
want it to end up.

If you want to modify a behavior or a habit...
you might have to "Over Shoot" the target.

As a coda... how the hell do we know what
functional behavior is?
(Adult childs guide to what's normal is a great
book)
we might accidentally do functional stuff and not
recognize it.
i.e. 'stumble onto a functional choice and not
even recognize it.

Fold your arms

Now fold them the 'other way'

feels funny doesn't it.

We're gonna have to practice functional behavior,
it's gonna feel funny
it's ok to 'over do it'

when you first got your learners permit, you
weren't very good at driving... might even have
jumped a curb or two.

it's ok

it's ok to mess up

I'll stop now
(note to self... I use too many masculine metaphors,
football metaphors, auto mechanic metaphors... gotta
work on that)
David Bruce Jr.
Frederick MD
http://approachavoidance.blogspot.com

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Healthy Boundaries & Victim Behavior

Attitude of Gratitude

Attitude of Gratitude: "You are enough, just as you are. This moment is enough, just as it is. ~Ralph Marston"

Self-Help Blogs on Squidoo

Self-Help Blogs on Squidoo

Do you know any of these failures?

an article on this self help blog I found...

Subjectivity- the subject object relation

God's Eye View

I had an idea of what I wanted to write about in this post but
upon reading up on what wiki had to say I found this phrase:


hmm, God's eye view

I took E.S.T. in August 1979, There I was exposed to the idea that God is nowhere...
we are 'here' by virtue of us not being anywhere else,
God is no where because he's Everywhere.

This is a lot more than just semantics.

I'm a codependent.

I'm an incest survivor.

I'm an addict.

I came to that conclusion from reading and listening to
John Bradshaw's work. Bradshaw bases much of his work on
Family Systems Theory.

One of the tenants of Bradshaw's work is that as codependents, we're
"Other-centered" we identify ourselves from others, not from ourselves.

For Example:
Let's say Dad is a rager, given to violence...
Dad comes home and we're playing with our toys...toys all over the place.
Our response to Dad entering the room is "Huhhh!!"
Is Dad gonna hit us?
What kinda mood is he in?
I should have picked my toys up, I'm going to get beat...
"Whew!" Dad doesn't notice us, we're notgoing to get beat

This leads us to be "Hyper-vigilant", we become expert in reading others (we'll get our butt beat if we're not careful and develop this skill to a very high degree!!)
and our inner selves are neglected, our inner self is not even on our radar screen.

Bradshaw speaks of co dependent's as human doings not human beings

how do we 'Be'?

The concept of being is foreign to not only codependents but society in general

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce

Lost most of my website domain names

Checking over the templates of my blogs I see that they're peppered with
links to website domain names I let go.

http://software4yourmind.com
will have to either buy the name back from who ever bought it when I let
it expire (didn't have any money on my credit card when it was time to
renew)
OR.... conjure up a new (similar) name


gonna have to redo that one too... I subcontracted the business out

My best web effort to date, the website that put me on the world map
with 80,000 visitors a year has been gone for a few years now,
http://victimbehavior.com

gonna redo that one in a new incarnation: http://endingvictimbehavior.com

it sure feels good to not be smoking my paychecks up on crack:)

more posts on all of my blogs coming soon

==========
This article is for informational purposes only.
Please contact a licensed professional in your area
if you are in crisis or require mental health services

David Bruce