A Place to Start Healing

It's a destructive control behavior. It's not necessary to respond to anyone doing the "victim thing." It's an abusive attack on their part and need not be responded to. I can save my anxiety and complaints about someone doing the "victim" for someone who will nurture the feelings I have. "Victims do not nurture feelings if they are destructively controlling so I can save my breath; it's a waste of time and spirit. Their's and mine.

My inner authority also reminds me that when I find myself complaining repeatedly about the same thing, or the same person, it's time for me to ask myself, "Am I trying to tell myself something important to listen to?" When I complain, I'm telling myself important information that needs to be heard by "me." And as long as I continue to ignore my self, I'll continue to try and complain to my self until I acknowledge my self. Maybe I'm telling myself I don't like to be around this thing or that person. And if that's the case, I've got information to use in deciding how I want to live my life.

My inner authority allows me to choose between something or someone I like, and something or someone I don't like. When I don't feel good about myself around some person or some thing, I can choose to not to be in the company of that thing or that person. Being in the company of some person or some thing I don't like creates chaos for myself. I can choose to be in or out of chaos.

Keep in mind that people do the best they can at the moment

Hounding someone, to be something that they are not, is abusive. When someone is being something other than I want them to be, I try to remember that they are doing the best that they can at the moment.

I really hate to wait in line. When I wait in line, should I demand that the line move faster than it does? I really hate to be close to people who have a cold, should I demand that that person refuse to have a cold? Spending my energy trying to make things different than they are is another way I keep myself in chaos.

to accept the things I'm not supposed to change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference."

I try to remember this version of the serenity prayer when something is not going the way I would like it to. I also try to remember that I am doing the best that I can at any moment.

A friend at work asked me, "How goes the battle?"

I said, "I don't know. . .they keep moving the fricken front line on me."

"Where is the war?" I think the battle is over. I don't need to war on anything that isn't going the way I think it should go. I'm not a warrior for hire or a mercenary. My life is not the battle of the ages. The only battles I fight are usually with myself. The rest are created out of addiction and compulsion.

When the object is an object (not a person)

There are objects in my life that I use to keep me in chaos. By endowing these objects with human attributes, I find that I create an additional amount of chaos by deciding that: the object is "Out to get me."

My car is one object that I might choose to endow with human attributes. When I decide to endow my car with human attributes, I can then go to war with my car or I compete with my car to see who is going to win.

My computer is another object that I endow with human attributes. When I do this, and then the computer isn't operating like I want it to, I say, "It doesn't like me. It hates my guts. I must have done something to piss it off."

The fact is, cars are machines that people use to get from place to place. Machines break down. Machines wear out. Machines come with poor instructions. Machines can't reason or communicate a complex idea. Machines are not a group of assassins or aliens set on the planet in order to create chaos and public riot. A machine is a convenience that we were told to expect it to be convenient. The man on television, and in the newspaper, and in the store, told me to expect the machine to be convenient. He said, "You'll like this little beauty."

I don't need to expect a machine to be convenient. I don't need to endow a machine with human attributes (such as the innate ability to change). I don't need to fight the machine and win. It's a battle with something that is unable to understand whether it's winning or losing. I don't need to create chaos over a thing, an object, a non-convenient convenience.

Behave in a way that says to the outside world and to myself that I have value

Explaining myself excessively, playing the victim, being perfect, refusing to ask for help, controlling, being exactly on time or substantially early, lying to say: "I like something when I don't," fishing for approval, kicking myself for mistakes (mine or someone else's), terrorizing myself with the past (or the future), scaring myself to avoid mistakes, scaring myself to scare myself, avoiding boundary setting (when people hurt me), avoiding conflict, having sex when I don't want to, going somewhere where I don't want to be, liking someone I don't like, agreeing to something I don't agree with, all say to the same thing. It says to myself and to the world, "That I'm damaged goods, and not valued." Today I can choose to conduct my life in a way that says to myself, "I have value."