LANGUAGE OF LETTING GO - AUGUST 2014

[MajestyJo]

Friday, August 22, 2014

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Responsibility for Family Members

I can still remember my mother clutching her heart, threatening to have a heart attack and die, and blaming it on me.
—Anonymous

For some of us, the idea that we were responsible for other people's feelings had its roots in childhood and was established by members of our nuclear family. We may have been told that we made our mother or father miserable, leading directly to the idea that we were also responsible for making them happy. The idea that we are responsible for our parents' happiness or misery can instill exaggerated feelings of power and guilt in us.

We do not have this kind of power over our parents - over their feelings, or over the course of their lives. We do not have to allow them to have this kind of power over us.

Our parents did the best they could. But we still do not have to accept one belief from them that is not a healthy belief. They may be our parents, but they are not always right. They may be our parents, but their beliefs and behaviors are not always healthy and in our best interest.

We are free to examine and choose our beliefs.

Let go of guilt. Let go of excessive and inappropriate feelings of responsibility toward parents and other family members. We do not have to allow their destructive beliefs to control our feelings, our behaviors, our life, or us.

Today, I will begin the process of setting myself free from any self-defeating beliefs my parents passed on to me. I will strive for appropriate ideas and boundaries concerning how much power and how much responsibility I can actually have in my relationship with my parents.

A good one and one that took me a long time to learn. Everything was followed with a "Yeah but...."

Those old tapes are killers. I even found God to be an old tape, I had to go on a Spiritual Quest to see who and what my God meant to me and build a new relationship with Him daily. I didn't lose my long-time beliefs, I just learned more and that God was much bigger than any pre-conceived idea that I ever had.

It is like the old saying, "Just because you sat in a pew, sang in the choir, taught Sunday School, and much more, doing service in the church is good, but it doesn't do you any good unless you are a believer and not just reading the words or saying them from memory, to my way of thinking it comes from the heart and a place of Love.

Maybe because I rebelled for so many years, especially about the rules and regulations of the church, that when I came into recovery I had to change my attitude and my perspective to include them. I used my Bible for my first year of recovery and found out that I needed more, if I wanted to stay clean and sober and let go of old habits, behaviours and ways of thinking.

My God is as He reveals Himself in today. My God utilizes people, places, and things to show me a better way of living. He also shows me people, places and things that are harmful to my sobriety. That doesn't mean they are wrong, it just means it is not right for me. It doesn't mean that won't change, but for the most part, I have been there, done it, and wore the T-Shirt (seem to have collected a lot of them), especially with family and friends.

Both my parents passed young, especially my mom who died at 40 because of her food addiction. They are no longer here, but thanks to the program, I understand where they both were coming from.