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Rather happiness, peace or serenity is our natural state. Beneath all of what we add to our feelings and experience, beneath our self-contraction, lies serenity Itself." (pg. 141)."
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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Gravitz and Bowden (1985) describe recovery in their ACoA patients as occurring in six stages: (1) Survival; (2) Emergent Awareness; (3) Core Issues; (4) Transformations; (5) Integration; and (6) Genesis (or spirituality). These stages parallel the four stages of life growth and transformation described by Ferguson (1980) and the three stages of the classical mythological hero or heroine's journey as described by Campbell (1946) and by myse..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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3043e2f
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Awakening is the first glimpse that "things" or "reality" are not what we thought. Awakening is an ongoing process throughout recovery. To begin, we generally require an entry point or trigger--anything that shakes up our old understanding or belief system of reality, of the way that we thought things were (Ferguson 1980; Whitfield 1985; 2003). Because our True Self is so hidden, and because our false self is so prominent, awakening may not..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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The following are guidelines to finding a sponsor, therapist or counselor who will usually tend to be helpful rather than harmful. The person will tend to have or be: 1) Demonstrable training and experience. For example, a clinician or therapist has training and experience in helping people to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually, as well as being effective in helping with specific problems or conditions, such as being an ACoA or an "..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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92e81e5
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These core issues are: control, trust, feelings, being over responsible, neglecting our own needs, all-or-none thinking and behaving, high tolerance for inappropriate behavior and low self-esteem. To these I have added being real, grieving our ungrieved losses, fear of abandonment, difficulty resolving conflict, and difficulty giving and receiving love.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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When we think or act this way, we do so at either one extreme or the other. For example, either we love someone completely or we hate them. There is no middle ground. We see the people around us as either good or bad, and not the composite they really are. We judge ourselves equally as harshly. The more we use all-or-none thinking, the more it opens us up to behaving in an all-or-none fashion. Both of these actions tend to get us into troub..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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They are often in a shame-based system, which attempts to cover over and even destroy the True Self.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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One alternative that nearly always relieves our suffering is surrender: we surrender our false self, and our attachment to the notion that we can control anything. We suffer when we resist what is. We slowly find that one of the most powerful and healing acts is giving up our need to always be in control. This freedom is that of our True Self. In this context, the word "surrender" does not mean to "give up" or to "lie down" in the military ..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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7c32e0d
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It is hard to learn that life cannot be controlled. Life's powerful and mysterious process goes on, no matter what we do. Life cannot be controlled because it is far too rich, spontaneous and rambunctious to be fully understood, much less controlled by our thinking, controlling ego/false self (Cermak 1985).
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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96788d9
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The way out is to surrender, and then to become, gradually, a co-creator of life. This is where the spiritual aspect of recovery comes into play as a powerful aid. Attendance at and working 12 Step recovery programs such as Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, ACA/ACoA, CoDA, and Overeaters Anonymous and others are helpful. Other spiritual paths may also be helpful.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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45258ae
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That often seemed the only way to avoid many of our painful feelings, such as anger, fear and hurt. It also gave us the illusion of being in control. But what seemed to work then doesn't always work well now. A 40-year-old patient of mine told me that he always said "yes" to requests at work, and doing that was causing him a lot of suffering. By working on himself for two years in group therapy and by taking a course on assertiveness, he ha..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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8c702ad
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Disowning and neglecting our own needs is intimately related to being overly-responsible. Both are part of our false self's actions. It may be useful at this point to review Chapter 4. Some may find it helpful to make a copy of Table 2 which lists some of our human needs and to put this list where we can see it easily and often--perhaps also to carry it with us. By observing and by working on our recovery we can begin to identify people and..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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Gradually, as more and more of our needs are met, we discover a crucial truth: that we are the most influential, effective and powerful person who can help us get what we need. The more we realize this, the more we can seek out, ask for and actually realize our needs.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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6570b75
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Children from troubled or dysfunctional families grow up not knowing what is "normal," healthy or appropriate. Having no other reference point on which to test reality, they think their family and their life, with its inconsistency, its trauma and its pain, is "the way it is." In fact, when we assume the role of our false self, which troubled families, friendships and work environments tend to promote, we become fixed in this role--we don't..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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Tim is learning about his high tolerance of others' inappropriate behavior and is beginning to get free of this often subtle form of mistreatment.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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Growing up in a troubled or dysfunctional family, we learn to avoid conflict whenever possible. When conflict occurs, we learn mostly to withdraw from it in some way. Occasionally, we become aggressive, and try to overpower those with whom we are in conflict. When these techniques fail, we may become devious, and attempt to manipulate. In a dysfunctional environment, these methods may help assure our survival. But they do not tend to work i..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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acd4e34
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Because they have not healed their Child Within, they are generally unable to be a part of the safe and supportive healing of another. However, we can learn to set limits with these people, so that they do not continue to mistreat us. We set limits both with firmness and with love. We do so not with aggressiveness, but with assertiveness.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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e0f1e1d
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Many children growing up in troubled or dysfunctional families learn how to be either aggressive or manipulative or to sit back or withdraw. They don't get what they want or need. They almost never see assertiveness being modeled, are rarely taught to be assertive and thus grow up to be adults who operate by being either aggressive, and/or manipulative or passive, "people pleasers," or a combination of these."
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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b18a14c
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Submitting to others, rather than affirming our own reality, is the heart of active co-dependence--we give up our own inner world in order to be accepted by others.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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One alternative that nearly always relieves our suffering is surrender: we surrender our false self, and our attachment to the notion that we can control anything.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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They even believe they can somehow control life itself. It is hard to learn that life cannot be controlled. Life's powerful and mysterious process goes on, no matter what we do. Life cannot be controlled because it is far too rich, spontaneous and rambunctious to be fully understood, much less controlled by our thinking, controlling ego/false self (Cermak 1985).
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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08bf411
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We have two basic kinds of feelings or emotions--joyful and painful. Joyful feelings make us feel a sense of strength, well being and completion. Painful feelings interfere with our sense of well being, use up our energy and can leave us feeling drained, empty and alone. Yet even though they may be painful, they are often telling us something, a message to ourself that something important may be happening, something that may need our attent..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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Our Real Self feels both joy and pain. And it expresses and shares them with appropriate others. However, our false self tends to push us to feel mostly painful feelings and to withhold and not share them. For simplicity, we can describe these joyful and painful feelings across a spectrum, starting with the most joyous, going through the most painful, and ending with confusion and numbness, as follows: Viewing our feelings in this way, we s..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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1) Closed About Our Feelings When we cannot feel a feeling, we are closed in our ability to accurately name and use it (Table 8). At that stage not only do we not know the feeling, but also we are unable to understand and communicate the condition of our True Self. While we may be talking superficially or even reporting facts, our interpersonal interaction and our ability to experience life and to grow is very low. We can call this stage of..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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In our recovery we learn that love is not simply a feeling. Rather it is an energy that is manifested by a commitment and a will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's total growth, which includes physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions (Peck 1978).
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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2) Beginning to Explore At Level Two we can begin to explore our feelings. Here we may be guarded in sharing our newly found feelings, and they may come out in conversation disguised as ideas and opinions rather than actual feelings. At this level interactions with others and our ability to experience life and grow remains low, but it is greater than where we were in Level One. While most people have feelings and would often like to express..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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we are not our feelings.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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When we allow ourselves to feel these painful feelings, give them an accurate name, and when we share the grief with safe and supportive others over time, we are able to complete our grief work and thus be free of it.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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the self (or "object self") and the observing self."
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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The self is concerned with thinking, feeling, acting, desiring and other survival-oriented activities. (This older and less useful concept of the self includes parts of both the false self and the True Self.) However, the observer self, a part of who we really are, is that part of us that is watching both our false self and our True Self. We might say that it even watches us when we watch. It is our Consciousness, it is the core experience ..
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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ac5063a
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Separation, suffering and evil are the absence of realizing Love, and are therefore ultimately illusions. They are also manifestations of our searching for Love, Wholeness, and Home. The evil or darkness is thus ultimately in the service of the Light.
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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a3beddf
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High Tolerance for Inappropriate Behavior," children and adults often do not realize that they have been mistreated. Having no other reference point from which to test reality, they think that how they were treated--and often how they still are being treated--is somehow appropriate or okay. Or if not appropriate, that they somehow deserve to be so mistreated."
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Charles L. Whitfield |
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2a3c908
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We actually have four additional choices, which we may learn as we grow older: (1) to hold it in until it gets unbearable; (2) unable to let it out, we get physically or emotionally sick, and/or we may "blow up;" (3) to blot the pain out with alcohol, other drugs or other addictions; or (4) to express the pain and work through it with safe and supportive people."
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Charles L. Whitfield |