My 12 Steps of Emotional Health

Jesus-is-Fraud's picture
Submitted by Jesus-is-Fraud on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 16:53

I made a real friend online and I NEEDED to "indoctrinate" her into a PROGRAM of RECOVERY.

I said RECOVERY - not cult based bullshit.

So I created it.

The Twelve Steps for Emotional Health

1. We admitted that we felt we were powerless over our customary thinking and long standing habits - that we needed to change our lifestyle.

2. Came to believe that people and resources outside of ourselves could help us to help ourselves gain a clear perspective on our own lives and take new directions.

3. Made a decision to take control of our own lives and to ask for the help, direction and care from other people.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our own emotional health.

5. Admitted to to ourselves, and to another human being, what the issues are and what they are based upon.

6. We became entirely ready to do what it took to recover from the damage and to take new directions in our own lives.

7. We joyfully took responsibility for our own lives, asking for help and healing in the process.

8. We made a list of all persons who had abused and neglected us and we established the link between what had been done to us and what we had done to ourselves and what we had done to others.

9. We became willing to take responsibility for our own long standing habits and to stop from perpetrating the abuse and neglect onto ourselves and others.

10. We confronted the perpetrators of the abuse and neglect and transferred the responsibility for their own behaviour back to them

11. We sought through therapy, self help groups, study and meditation to improve our own awareness and conscious, looking for our own opportunities to improve ourselves.

12. Having gained healing and health, we sought to continually improve ourselves and to share the opportunities for health and healing with others.

This IS pretty damned good.

John Bradshaw - Healing The Shame That Binds You (Part 1) of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q2tZa1gp8Q

This is very good, but there are also some individuals who may indeed have no family of origin issues - and who do light up like christmas trees on drugs and sex and all....

It may indeed be a purely biological issue.

There may be some of use who have no toxic family and toxic shame - but for almost all of us, My program of recovery is WORKABLE and a whole heap of resources like John Bradshaw, and other therapists like Dr Susan Forward (Toxic Parents) etc. is very good.

He gets into the CORE issues.

Comments

msafrany

Fri, 05/18/2012 - 17:08

Don't drink and do as you please?

massive's picture

massive

Fri, 05/18/2012 - 23:47

I heard that he was once in AA and now hates it. Is this true?

Massive

teatotaler

Sun, 05/20/2012 - 02:49

It's my understanding that he used to do the A.A. thing. I checked his website...perused the products he's got for sale. I noticed one lecture series he's selling about the "inner child" stuff says something to the effects that ..."....acceptance that your Higher Power loves you unconditionally." Wow. That doorknob must really be quite something! LOL. I remember - over 20 years ago - he was of superstar status in the "recovery industry." He preached the "inner child" doctrine, the "co-dependency" doctrine, etc., etc. I bought one of his inner child or healing some-such when I was in college (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), and I don't think I benefitted from it. Didn't "find" my "inner child," or whatever. Basically, I think his books were a sales pitch for some type of treatment center he ran at the time. Anyhoo, sorry for the ramble. But, I still have to laugh at the thought that ..."your higher power loves you unconditionally." What an assertion! Well, hell, if someone doesn't have a holy doorknob....WTF is an atheist supposed to have for a "higher power"? I guess I'd have to make up an imaginary friend ...yeah...I'll talk to my imaginary friend and believe it loves me unconditionally. Sure, I'll be filled with "acceptance" real goddamned soon. :-)

"There's a new sheriff in town."

genejoe's picture

genejoe

Sun, 05/20/2012 - 09:18

Excellent, J is F.

I wonder if we can put any set of "12 steps" into 1step:

1. I am responsible for my own life.

Here's another link on shame: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

Some comments on Bradshaw (John, not that great Pittsburgh quarterback who won 4 Super Bowls):

As scientific faith began to grow in the good ol' us of a, folks were looking to quantify human experiences. Ross came up with her stages of dying in the early 1960's, for example.

In the 1960's and 1970's many psychologists and others began to notice that adults who grew up in a dysfunctional family tended to have dysfunctional characteristics in common as adults. The dysfunctional family could be caused by anything such as the death of a parent, divorce, religion, abuse, neglect, drugs, alcohol, etc.

With the popularity of AA at it's all time high, John Bradshaw, and a few others, found that they could package this 'research' under the heading Adult Children of Alcoholics, and make a lot of money telling people how their lives are screwed up, why their lives are screwed up, and how to fix their screwed up lives.

Many people love John Bradshaw. I have asked many of these people why they love John Bradshaw and how, specifically, did he help them improve the quality of their lives. I haven't gotten a lot of specific answers, other than the basic response that they felt better about being screwed up, i.e., they found out they was not alone.

I think Bradshaw did help folks know that their childhoods were dysfunctional and this does not make them wrong or bad, just screwed up. And, I think it gave people something to do in regards to trying to improve the quality of their lives. Mostly ,it made John Bradshaw a lot of money.

genejoe

The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer