Author: brian coates

THE PROBLEM

THE PROBLEM

Dec 24, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader “This is a description, not an indictment.”  BRB p. 589 Even though it says in The Problem that it’s not an indictment, it may still feel that way at first.   Many of us felt locked forever in continually repeated patterns of family dysfunction. But in spite of…

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FORGIVENESS

FORGIVENESS

Dec 23, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader “We cannot forgive another until we forgive ourselves.  BRB p.233 As children, we learned to be critical of ourselves and to see ourselves as never being good enough. This was told to us so many times and in so many ways by the adults in our lives…

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GOOD ENOUGH

GOOD ENOUGH

Dec 22, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader “Yet, we come from homes in which doing our best was never good enough.  Or it seemed never good enough.  BRB p.37 As children, many of us were expected to perform.  But no matter how well we did, we didn’t receive praise – just higher expectations.  It…

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STUCK GRIEF

STUCK GRIEF

Dec 21, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader “Grief is loss that is stuck beneath denial, willful forgetting, and the fear of being perceived as dramatizing the past. Grief is the built-up defeats, slights, and neglect from childhood.”‘ BRB p. 199 Before we came into ACA we might have thought of grief as something we…

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