January 2, 2012

New Year, Resolving to Face My Challenges

I do not have resolutions, but I have realistic hopes and  a plan (program) to make my hopes a reality.

I have my challenges ahead in the new year.  

One is that our family will always live with the possibility of my relapse. I disovered that Thanksgiving 2010. Was I ever dismayed to face that reality!  So far, so good, because in my face-to-face group I share details pretty freely and stay Honest, Open, Willing to use my last relapse as a yardstick for progress and perspective.  Also, because my own form of stinking thinking gets out of control when I lose out on sleep, I need take special care in my sleep hygene.   

Thankfully I am getting good sleep and I have learned this past year, using prayer and meditation, to be more self-aware. I am much better at catching my habitual reactions before they spiral out of control. I attribute that to a lot of mini Step-fours and continued work with Steps Five, Six and Seven. Also this year I have learned to make amends to myself.  One of these amends is underway--limited contact with my mom is really helping me to be much kinder to myself.

Second challenge is to find new ways to relate to my Inner Child and to care for her, that make it easier for me to communicate with my mom (once she has decided to resume contact with me).  I know I have a lot of things to learn about fostering a healthy relationship with myself when someone else needs to use me as a punching bag, mirror, or garbage can. Trick for me is not communicating out of anger, but out of self-compassion.  Anger is easy for me to communicate, but fragile people and the personality disordered, take that anger and run with it. The fragile run away, the personality disordered use my feelings of anger as excuse to "charge." I'll be using EA plus other tools to deal with the FOO-eey issues.

Third challenge is that we have been living in limbo since last March, and will continue to live this way until my DH hears final word about job changes.   I need to  keep things stable for my family while we are anticipating the change and then deal with the news when it comes. Serenity prayer time!

Fourth challenge is to take some moves with my primary vocation that will help me bring in new income with the potential for professional recognition. 

 So glad to witness others who are also turning over new leaves in their lives and  renewing commitments to mental health.  Let serenity and self-love be our guiding lights in 2012!

Looking forword to sharing my journey with you. 

4 comments:

  1. As you said, "I am much better at catching my habitual reactions before they spiral out of control." Me, too. I mean I see the need and I'm getting better, both. Not better enough yet though. I've seen enough of myself that I didn't like seeing, through Al-Anon, and there's more to see I'm afraid.

    I'm tackling my reactions with a combination of step one suggestions and a cursory step four character assessment and a God Box. By doing a character assessment - just on what I react to emotionally - I hope to see which assets and defects have kicked in and see what surfaces in terms of my patterns and motives.

    I just started yesterday with the new year and it has proven fruitful already today. Hear hear :) ! I mastered my reaction to some particularly challenging unpleasantness involving a salesman. Better than that, it wasn't just a matter of good rationale and controlled discipline on my part for the purpose of a good end result. My thoughts and my feelings and my actions were at one about it: no fracture or dissension among them. I'm wholly A-OK, harboring nothing. It's done. It's gone. It's over. And I'm loving it :) .

    Thanks for your inspiration...

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  2. Great goals/changes. The kind that take deep work and time..they cannot be bought.

    My limited contact with my mother (face to face) since she lives on the other side of the county, has kept me from confronting the issues we have. It is easier for me to appease her, agree with her, and just let her talk on and on. I'm not at a point where I want to make the enormous effort to have an honest relationship with her. I admire your boundaries, I'm not there yet.

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  3. Lou. I also have limited face-to-face contact with my mom. But I could no longer avoid the issues between us in our phone conversation. She was being too belittling and demoralizing to me to just keep quiet. Nor did I want to fight. So I have been asking questions and calling her game for what it is. Directly, calmly, and without backing down.

    I would not say this was helping us to get along better. And maybe that is why she has blacklisted me recently. In the past I would have been sad, bereft, guilty. It is a sign of my good mental health that I consider this interlude a gift from my Higher Power.

    I can finally see who I am, and what peace there is in this! My small still voice is telling me, though, that this peace is to serve a purpose for the spiritual side of our relationship. That I am going to be speaking even more from my heart when I am back in touch with my mom.

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  4. Smitty, I like that last paragraph! Good luck, I will be interested in how this works out.

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I welcome your thoughts. Keep me honest~