"Damsels- All of us out there- Arise!"

Monday, June 13, 2016

Word Game

Semantics... a word game...

“But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”

Matthew 12:36

Idle is defined as any word which is not profitable.

So, that’s gossip and slander.

But it’s also self-defeating words we, all too often, hurl at ourselves. Words like...

Hopeless...

Worthless...

Stupid...

Ugly...

Unlovable...

And these words need to be challenged, via the Twelve Steps. Word power is certainly found within them.

1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.

“Unmanageable” behavior, does, in fact, include these destructive words used against ourselves.

2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

We need to understand and internalize how we do not have the final say; God does.

And He uses none of these toxic words to describe or view us.

“Since you were precious in my sight… I have loved you…”

Isaiah 43:4

“I have chosen you and have not cast you away.”

Isaiah 41:9

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11

“All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.”

John 1:3

3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

We need to admit our self-perception is faulty; His estimation, however is perfect- and accurate.

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he...”

Proverbs 23:7

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

And now, we need to examine why we view and speak of ourselves in such a derogatory way? What is the payoff?

“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

Proverbs 4:23

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

We have to admit we are in the wrong concerning our viewpoints.

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Romans 9:20

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Are we willing to change our ways? Are we really?

“If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.”

Isaiah 1:19

7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

What new behavior will we incorporate in our lives?

Are we willing to stop some of our habits, adopting newer, healthier ones?

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Have we apologized to others for the role self-pity has negatively impacted their circumstances?

For, as we have viewed ourselves with such contempt, self-hatred and recklessness, there has been a ripple effect. No man is an island...

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”

Proverbs 18:21

10. We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

Included in our newer approach to life is our ongoing commitment to do reality checks with ourselves. Our recovery is not a one-time, perfect cure. It is a lifelong, imperfect practice, filled with mistakes and setbacks. We need a realistic attitude as we progress.

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

We need to confront our self-talk as we interact with the Most High. He knows our every thought, anyway. Challenging our thoughts, words and beliefs can help us attain a stronger relationship with Him and a healthier way of life.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Again, we need to remember the ripple effect. We are to encourage, empower and educate others. And that includes the power of words.

“Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.”

Psalm 19:14

That is the challenge. Therefore, if we, ourselves, do not necessarily possess the vocabulary, we need to rely on scripture for the proper value estimation.

“But he answered and said, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’”

Matthew 4:4

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

Hebrews 11:3

The power of our words...versus the Power of God’s Words?

There is no contest!

Pray For Orlando

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Were You Born Under The Gaslight?

When applied to a family, the gaslight treatment is a special form of dysfunction. It happens when you, a child, receive messages or encounter experiences within the family which are deeply contradictory. Messages which are opposing and conflicting; experiences which can’t both be true. When you can’t make sense of something, it’s natural to apply the only possible answer:

“Something is wrong with me.”

Today, scores of children are growing up under a gaslight of their own. And scores of adults are living their lives baffled by what went on in their families, having grown up thinking that they, not their families, are crazy.

I have seen gaslighting cause personality disorders, depression, anxiety, and a host of other lifelong struggles. Receiving contradictory messages that don’t make sense can shake the very ground that a child walks on.

The Four Types of Child Gaslighting:

1. The Double-Bind Parent: This type was first identified by Gregory Bateson in 1956. The double-bind mother has been linked by research to the development of schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder. This type of parent goes back and forth unpredictably between enveloping (perhaps smothering) the child with love and coldly rejecting him.

The Message: You are nothing. You are everything. Nothing is real. You are not real.

1. The Gaslight Effect: As an adult, you don’t trust yourself, your validity asa human being, your feelings, or your perceptions. Nothing seems real. You stand on shaky ground. You have great difficulty trusting that anyone means what they say. It’s extremely hard to rely on yourself or anyone else.

2. The Unpredictable, Contradictory Parent: Here, your parent might react to the same situation drastically differently at different times or on different days, based on factors that are not visible to you. For example a parent who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs one day and not the next; a parent who is manic at times, and depressed other times, or a parent who is extremely emotionally unstable. Whatever the reason for the parent’s opposing behaviors, you, the innocent child, know only that your parent flies into a rage one moment and is calm and seems normal the next.

The Message: You are on shaky ground. Anything can happen at any time. No one makes sense.

The Gaslight Effect: You don’t trust your own ability to read or understand people; you have difficulty managing and understanding your own emotions, and those of others. You struggle to trust anyone, including yourself.

3. The Appearance-Conscious Family: In these families, style always trumps substance. All must look good, or maybe even perfect, especially when it’s not. There’s little room for the mistakes, pain, or natural human shortcomings of the family members. The emphasis is on presenting the image of the ideal family. Here, you experience a family which appears perfect from the outside, but which is quite imperfect, or even severely dysfunctional, on the inside. This can stem from Achievement / Perfection focused parents (as described in Running on Empty), or from narcissistic parents.

The Message: You must be perfect. Natural human flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses must be hidden and ignored. You are not allowed to be a regular human being.

The Gaslight Effect: You feel deeply ashamed of yourself and your basic humanness. You ignore your own feelings and your own pain because you don’t believe it’s real, or that it matters. You tend to see and focus on only the positive things in your life, which fit into a particular template. You are extremely hard on yourself for making mistakes, or you put them out of your mind and simply pretend they didn’t happen. You may be missing out on the most important parts of life which make it worthwhile: the messy, real world of intimacy, relationships and emotion.

4. The Emotionally Neglectful Family (CEN): In this family, your physical needs may be met just fine. But your emotional needs are ignored. No one notices what the children are feeling. The language of emotion is not used in the home. “Don’t cry,” “Suck it up,” “Don’t be so sensitive,” are frequently uttered by the CEN parent. The most basic, primary part of what makes you you (your emotional self) is treated as a burden or non-existent.

The Message: Your feelings and needs are bad and a burden to others. Keep them hidden. Don’t rely on others, and don’t need anything. You don’t matter.

The Gaslight Effect: You have been trained to deny the most deeply personal, biological part of who you are, your emotions, and you have dutifully pushed them out of sight and out of mind. Now, you live your life with a deeply ingrained feeling that you are missing something that other people have. You feel empty or numb at times. You don’t trust yourself or your judgments because you lack your emotions to guide you. Your connections to others are one-way or lack emotional depth. Even if you are surrounded by people, deep down you feel alone. None of it makes any sense to you.

Were you born under the gaslight? If so, you are not alone. You are not invalid or crazy or wrong. it’s vital to realize that you have been, by definition, deeply invalidated. But “invalidated” and “invalid” are not the same. “Invalidated” is an action, and “invalid” is a state of mind. You can’t change what your parents did and didn’t do, but you can change your state of mind.

Because No...AGAIN!!!

A large part of my recovery process involves using the word “no.” Indeed, saying “yes” gotten me into more trouble and disease than standing in my own okay-ness with stating it simply, but firmly.

My eating disorder experiences were driven by an insatiable need for perfection, approval and to be pleasing at all cost. So, “no” became a dirty little word. After all, a girl, filled with sugar and spice, should be completely fulfilled with making other people happy.

Right?

Wrong.

No matter how much I tried to push the truth down, it would eventually surface, screaming how unhappy and disease-ridden I was. This occurred as I simultaneously tried to convince myself how it was normal and logical for others’ happiness to be at my expense, even risking my life, health and well-being.

“No means no.”

We hear that phrase a lot, especially when it comes to rape. And it certainly captures that truth. But this phrase extends to all areas, especially concerning how a female navigates herself through the world. And, let’s face it, more often than not, the world is not respectful of a female’s “no”- on much of anything.

Indeed, my own experience with my no answer has been challenged many times. And you know what is further troubling? The challenge has come from males. On occasions, when I’ve politely given my “no” to a male, on everything from a date, to a family decision, to my refusal of a piece of cake, unfortunately, I’ve had to resort to my next response:

“No is a complete sentence.”

By now, you would think the point would be made clear. But, no. To that more direct response, I have gotten rebuffed and further coerced; this is usually from the standpoint of the male telling me how much better his reason was for doing things his way. He’d try to sell his persuasive, charm as the reason why I should change my “silly no” to his right “yes.”

This perspective is disturbing as it call into question a female’s rightful stance to have a response which does not agree with the male who wants something else of her.

Years ago, a self- defense expert, teaching women how to protect themselves against attackers, stated two things which changed my life:

“When a man says no, it’s the end of the discussion. But when a woman says no, it starts the process of negotiation.”

“When a person does not accept your ‘no,’ they’re trying to control you.”

Powerful.

It’s, unfortunately, an insidious, subtle mindset out there which still exerts an argument that, somehow, a female’s no is not as real or as valid as that of a male’s. The mentality encourages the behavior, therefore, of that male’s right to challenge, dismiss, convince and coerce the female until she gives him the “yes” answer he desires.

It’s a violating spirit. It demeans and destroys. For, make no mistake about it, God has instructed us on the “no” question:

“Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

Matthew 5:37

And, in case you didn’t notice, there was no gender distinction. A male’s no, a female’s no- both are valid- and to be heeded.

Life does not require we feel giddy when we’re told no. We’ve all had experiences in which “yes” would be so much more pleasing to our wants. Nevertheless, someone’s “no,” however unwanted, needs to be respected. You don’t have to like it. But you do have to honor it.

And, if you can’t do that, it calls into question, therefore, a larger issue concerning your spiritual health. Is your “yes” answer from someone more important to you than their life, sense of dignity and well-being?

What is your honest answer to that question?