Abuse Facts

In order to start finding some balance in recovery, it is important to learn how to take power away from the fear. In order to do that, it is very important to look at all the different levels involved in our reaction so that we can start to clear up our relationship with own fear.

Anytime we have a strong reaction to someone or something, it means there is old stuff involved - old wounds, unresolved grief. One of the first steps to taking the power away from the fear is to detach from the feeling a little and take an honest look at reality. It may feel terrifying, may feel life threatening - but is that the truth?

There is a tool that comes out of Transactional Analysis that can be very helpful in taking some power away from fear. It is called a fear slide. The way it works is that you write down what your fear is - say, I am afraid I will be alone on Valentine's Day, or I am afraid he won't be my friend any more, or I am afraid I won't get the job, etc. Then on the next line you write the answer to this question: "If that happens, then what?" Then I will feel hurt, or whatever. On the next line you write the answer to that same question, "then what?" And you keep doing this down the page. Eventually, you will come to: "I will die." or "I will cease to exist."

I am afraid _______
If that happens, then what?
If that happens, then what?
If that happens, then what?
If that happens, then what?

Then you go back to the original fear, and ask yourself, "Will I die if I am alone on Valentine's Day? The answer is, of course, no you won't die. As mentioned, the ego is focused on survival. That translates into avoidance of pain. In order to help us avoid what it perceives as survival threatening pain the ego generates fear and then magnifies it - turning it into a huge monster. It is very helpful to force ourselves to take a realistic look at the monster in order to stop giving our emotional reactions all the power.

In our disease, the fear of being alone on Valentine's Day feels life threatening. It feels like a big monster. If we give power to that fear, what happens is we get so uncomfortable living with the fear that we try to find some way to repress it. The ways we find are usually self destructive - alcohol, drugs, food, whatever.

If we can take a realistic and honest look at the monster, and say to ourselves, "No, I won't die if I am alone on Valentines. But I will be sad." Bingo! The reason we are afraid is because we have a lot of unresolved grief over lonely holidays, pain over failed relationships, etc., - all going back to the core wound of the little child who felt alone and unlovable.

If we can start to be emotionally honest with ourselves, by owning our grief, it will help us to take power away from the fear.

Learning to be emotionally honest with ourselves, is a whole other aspect of the processing dynamic that I am not going to talk about in this article - I will get into that in another articlle in this series and there are other articles on my web site about that. What I will say about it, is that it is very important to do some of our processing verbally or through writing. We do not get in touch with our feelings through thinking. It is when we start talking about or writing about what is going on internally that we start actually feeling and releasing the emotional energy.

There are certain other things that can help us to get in touch with emotional energy - including through various types of art, drawing, painting, collage, etc.; movement and music; body work; etc. - but the primary processing tools are writing or talking.

~^^V^^~ Writing About Fear ~^^V^^~

In the update announcement that sparked this article, I was processing through some levels of fear in order to become clearer on where the fear was coming from. I was having resistance to finishing an article, and since I knew that resistance comes primarily from fear, I was processing. First, I looked at the reason that my head was telling me I was procrastinating. Fear about stating a controversial Truth in public. Almost as soon as I wrote that, I knew that was not the main level. I have been speaking and writing my controversial take on Truth for many years now and that one does not have any real power anymore.

I then went on to a different level, that of fear of saying things in a way that a reader could use to beat themselves up with. Ultimately I am powerless over how someone reacts, but it is something that I give some power to because I want to communicate as clearly and cleanly as possible.

By touching on that level of fear, I could put some effort into clear communication and then let go of the outcome. By focusing on a level and then surrendering to my ultimate powerlessness over others, I can take a little of the fear that is out of balance out of the equation. The next level I touched on was that of the "out-of-control" feeling that I get with my writing. This is jumping off the diving board kind of fear that is just inherent in the process for me. That there is a basis to feeling not in control of my writing process is proven by the reality that writing about my fear in that update has lead to at least five other articles so far. I was afraid of where the writing was going because I had a picture of what was supposed to be written next - of what my priorities were for my writing time and energy. By acknowledging that certain things cause me to feel afraid because they feel out-of-control, I can take a little more fear out of the process.

Through writing about that fear, I could get in touch with what attitudes of mine were magnifying the fear. That is, how my picture of where I needed to focus my time and energy was causing me to resist going where the writing was taking me. I am responsible for how my perspective, my attitudes, set me up to have emotional responses. When I am not open to events unfolding in way different than I had planned, then I am setting myself up for feelings.

When I think that things have to go a certain way for me to be OK, then I am setting myself up to be a victim when they do not unfold the way I think they need to unfold. I am making a choice to see life in a certain way.

That choice, that attitude, then sets me up to be afraid if things go differently than I want them to go. I am responsible for that fear. I am creating that fear out of the intellectual paradigm, the expectations, that I am choosing to empower.

If I have a picture, an expectation, of how I want life to look today and you do something that messes up that picture, my codependent reaction is to get angry at you and blame you for messing up my day. This is doubly dishonest. First of all, I am getting angry in response to my fear that I will not be OK if things do not work out as I had planned. That is emotionally dishonest. Secondly, I am blaming you for the feelings that are being caused by my attitudes, my expectations. That is codependency. In regard to the situation I have been talking about, there was no other person involved - so I was getting angry at, and blaming, my self. I was having a hard time finishing the article I was writing. I had a self imposed deadline for finishing that article that was part of my agenda for how I saw the immediate future unfolding. I felt that I needed to finish that article so that I could send out my update announcement so that I could get on to whatever the next important thing I thought I needed to get done.

Because I was judging myself and impatient with myself, the rebel within me was rebelling through procrastinating. I was then judging myself for my procrastination - and then turning around and shaming myself for judging myself for my procrastination. (I stopped judging and shaming myself in gross ways years ago - i.e. I don't call myself names like stupid or loser or whatever - but the disease dynamic still kicks in on much subtler levels.

As we make progress in treating ourselves better in recovery, the disease gets more subtle and cunning. This recent judgment/shame upheaval would be like a 3.0 earthquake vs. what used to be a 9.0 earthquake.) This is the disease of codependence working in it's most insidious, malevolent, treacherous, and powerful expression.

"If I am feeling like a "failure" and giving power to the "critical parent" voice within that is telling me that I am a failure - then I can get stuck in a very painful place where I am shaming myself for being me. In this dynamic I am being the victim of myself and also being my own perpetrator - and the next step is to rescue myself by using one of the old tools to go unconscious (food, alcohol, sex, etc.) Thus the disease has me running around in a squirrel cage of suffering and shame, a dance of pain, blame, and self-abuse."

~^^V^^~ An Innocent Little Child ~^^V^^~

And it all goes back to being afraid that if I do it wrong I will not survive the shame and pain of being imperfect. It all goes back to a little child who was terrified of his own father and could not count on his mother to defend him from his father. The little child whose higher powers were wounded and were reacting to life out of their fear and shame. That fear is not rational. It is not logical. It is not conscious. It is an emotional reaction caused by early childhood trauma. If I am alone on Valentine's Day I will die. If I do not get this article finished on time I will not survive.

These fears are not stupid, they are not ridiculous. They are the result of the emotional experience of a little child. That child deserves, and needs, compassion - not judgment and shame. When we judge ourselves we are abusing that little child inside of us. When we are impatient with ourselves, we are dragging that child behind us as we run to get "there" - to the outcome, the destination that will make us OK.

I heard Claudia Black in a workshop many years ago, talking about going for a walk on the beach with a 4 year old child. She asked something to the effect of, "What pace do you walk at, the child's pace - or do you drag the child along behind you at your pace?"

We have spent our lives either dragging the child along, or running away from the child within us. Working real hard on getting "there" - and/or doing whatever we could to go unconscious to our own feelings. We locked the child up in a dark place within us, at the same time we let the child's emotional wounds run our life. We were powerless to do life any differently until we got into recovery. Just as our parents were powerless to do life any differently because of the wounded children within them. In early recovery I learned to catch myself every time I heard myself calling myself stupid. I would change it to silly. I couldn't go from calling myself stupid to calling myself a blessed child of the Goddess in one step. So, I substituted silly in order to be less abusive to myself.

In order to start decreasing the shame and judgment I was laying on myself and the innocent child within me.

It was not stupid, or wrong, that I fell into the judging-resisting-shaming running around the hamster cage cycle of the disease dynamic. It was a little silly - and entirely human. It was a natural, normal part of being a recovering codependent. It was a perfect part of the process of learning/teaching, remembering/reminding.

I was afraid. Fear is part of this human adventure we are experiencing. It is through changing our relationship with our own fear that we transform being human from an ordeal to an adventure.

~^^V^^~ Fear Is Primal ~^^V^^~

Fear is an innate, genetically ingrained, emotional impulse in human beings.

It is a programmed response to survival instincts. Fear is an emotion that can serve us. It is a necessary tool for survival in a hostile environment.

I get really angry when I hear some old timer in an AA meeting say, "Fear is the absence of faith." That is bull. If we did not have fear, we would not need faith. Faith is what gives us the courage to walk through our fears.

It is important to accept fear as part of our reality. It is important to clear up our relationship with our fear. The disease of codependence, our damaged ego, is programmed to react to life out of fear of what caused us pain in our childhood. Our ego is fighting for survival based on programming from early childhood - that is what is dysfunctional. It is important to learn new tools to counteract the powerful programming of the disease / condition of codependency. It is important to change our relationship with our own fear by changing our perspective of our fear. Denying our fear is dysfunctional. Relating to our fear as if it only comes from one place - is only about one thing - is dishonest. There are multiple levels to our fears. A few of those levels may be right on - most of them are dysfunctional. There are some levels that are about False Evidence Appearing Real - to use a 12 step acronym - based on assumptions, mind reading, and fortune telling, our fantasies/nightmares that we project onto others and life. Some of the levels are reactions to our childhood wounds:

'if I am alone I will die;' 'if I take the risk of loving someone and they don't love me back, I will die;' 'if I don't have security, I will die;' etc.

Not looking at our fears keeps us in the dark and gives them power. It is only by bringing them out of the darkness into the light that we can take the power away from them.

Once we bring them into the light of consciousness, then we can filter, sift through, get clearer on what is causing them. We can discern what part of the fears are being caused by our own attitudes - so that we can own the responsibility, and make choices to change our intellectual paradigm into something that will work better. We can get in touch with the inner child wounds that are being triggered so that we can have some compassion for those wounds and set whatever Loving boundaries we need to set. We can get conscious of the outcome we are trying to control so that we can take some action to let go of that outcome.

By taking the action of processing through our reaction, we can get in touch with what other actions we can take to lessen and let go of our fears.

~^^V^^~ Clarity Through Processing ~^^V^^~

So, by writing about my procrastination, I was able to see the causes of that procrastination more clearly. In processing through the resistance I was having, I could get clear that what I thought was the reason for the procrastination (controversial Truth) really was not the reason at all. I could see that there were several layers of reasons - and that the bottom line was that I was creating much of the resistance because I did not want to let go of my preconceived idea of the outcome. I diminished some of the fear by speaking it out loud (in this case, writing it.) And I got in touch with how my attitudes were adding to the fear.

Then I could take some action to let go of the attitudes that were amplifying the resistance. I could do some work to surrender my way of doing things so that I could stop creating emotional resistance by trying to control the outcome.

Acknowledging fear, actually speaking my fears out loud or writing about them, often diminishes them. I can own the fear and then accept it and move through it.

And the ironic thing, the silly part of it, was that the real - right on -reason for my resistance was not even in the areas I was looking at directly. The real reason for my resistance was that the article I was writing was not working in the structure I was trying to force it into. What would have been the best thing to do, would have been to walk away from that article completely for a period of days so I could come back to it with a fresh perspective.

It turned out that I surrendered the "wrong" thing. I surrendered to just publishing the article to meet my deadline, instead of shifting my paradigm to a completely new perspective - such as going ahead with that update without that article. But it wasn't the wrong thing at all, because the way the whole thing unfolded was perfect to set me up to write this series of articles about the inner child healing process. Thus the Universe has forced me to write about emotional honesty and balance, about internal boundaries and clarity, in a little bit different way than I had previously.

It is different because I am growing and learning, my perspective is shifting and changing. The adventure of recovery keeps getting different. The dance of balance is continuously changing, shifting, expanding. One of the most important things we can do for ourselves, is to not take it all so seriously, not take ourselves so seriously. Don't worry be silly, is a motto my Higher Self communicated to me many years ago. Instead of worrying about doing it right, instead of empowering our fear of consequences, instead of trying to force outcomes - it is much better to lighten up (dark to Light, heavy to light) because that helps us see with more clarity.

The inner child healing process is a journey from dark to Light, from serious to silly. As long as we are denying our fear, it has power to drive us to compulsive or addictive behavior. If we are not seeing the multiple levels of our fear clearly, then we are not being honest with ourselves. The only way to take power away from the fear is to own it, honor it, and take action to dissolve the levels of it that are codependent. When we are seeing our fear more clearly, we can see that a lot of it is pretty silly.

Fear is not bad or wrong. It is not the absence of love, as some spiritual teachers and authors would tell you. (Except in the metaphysical sense that the illusion is caused by an absence of/separation from LOVE.) It is integral part of being human. It is because we are afraid that we need to learn to Love ourselves. The more we learn to Love our self the less power the fear will have to define our reality. The more recovery tools we have, the sooner we will catch ourselves when we get caught up in the disease dynamics. The less we are reacting to life out of black and white, right and wrong; the less we are judging and shaming ourself; the less fear we experience. We can learn to feel Love and compassion for our inner child wounds - instead of fear, instead of shame and judgment. Your fears are the places within you that await your Love. Your fears are the teachers that will help you uncover your wounds. Uncover, discover, recover. Progress, not perfection. It is through the fear that we find our way home to Love.