WHOLENESS
Dec 7, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“In ACA, we believe we were born whole and became fragmented in body, mind, and spirit through abandonment and shame. We need help finding a way to return to our miracle state.” BRB p. 173
When we find our way to ACA, we may feel like our outsides don’t match our insides. We are used to acting as though everything is fine in our lives, knowing in our hearts this is not the case. We are adept at controlling how we appear to others, careful to conceal the pain behind the smile.
As children, we had to hide our true feelings, our True Self, in order to survive. We were sometimes shamed or abandoned when we expressed emotions our parents could not cope with. We learned to keep our thoughts and yearnings to ourselves out of fear.
With the help of our Higher Power and others in ACA who know of our pain, we begin to speak the truth of our experience and gradually align our thoughts, feelings, and actions. We know that wholeness is again available to us when we experience love and acceptance from others in recovery and from our Higher Power. With the help of ACA, we can learn to tap into all of our emotions, including joy.
On this day I welcome my True Self by acknowledging and accepting my feelings. I feel whole in my Higher Power’s loving embrace.”
My experience:
A couple of things recently happened. I was encouraged to discuss my feelings about the impending holidays. Although I had agood idea of the outcome of the conversation and the subsequent abandonment, I decided to have the conversation anyway, almost as a way to test how my recovery was going. Sure enough, it went the way I thought it would. But instead of getting angry and yelling as I would have pre-recovery, I decided to end the conversation as it was fraught with misinterpretation, excuses and abandonment. Prior to the conversation, I only thought what the response might be to my concerns. This produced fear and anxiety in me as the resultant abandonment was only imagined at that time. Power comes from knowledge. After the conversation, armed with knowledge of their actions, I now get to choose my next steps. As painful as the knowledge is, how empowering the reality and choices are.
Interestingly enough on the same evening a question was asked of me: “do loud noises cause me to jump/react?” I didn’t have to think long for the answer and quickly responded no. However, as the night progressed, the more I thought about my response. I thought about how I learned to control my emotions to the point that allowed me not to jump at a loud noise. I thought about how I learned to control my emotions to the point that caused me not to be afraid of movies like the “Exorcist” when I was 9 years old. I thought about how I learned to control my emotions to the point that I would not allow myself to react when someone tried to tickle me. I thought about how I learned to control my emotions to the point that I would not allow myself to feel too much joy in things that should produce joy, for fear of them being taken away. How fucked up is that? I have walked through life as a zombie, just because I had to develop a suit of armor in order to survive childhood.
Well no more! I continue to actively work on aligning my inside emotions with my outside face. As I cinch the corset strings, there are a still a couple of pounds to lose, but the corset is getting closer to closing everyday.
For any of you reading this, there is hope and help out there for you. Just 2 years ago, what I describe above would have caused me to feel trapped with no options and I would have blown up. Not today. Today I get to rejoice in the fact that I have grown and am still growing. I may never be perfect, but I will be better and you can too!!