Hello and welcome back to Second Chance to Live my friend. I am happy to see that you decided to stop by to visit with me. Thank you. Today I want to share a lesson with you that I learned through my process. For many years, I did not feel that I made mistakes, but that I was a mistake. I also believed that I was responsible for anyone and everyone’s irritability, restlessness and discontentment. Because I had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and because I lived with a low sense of self-esteem, self-worth and self-value – coupled with an over-developed sense of responsibility — I attempted to be more than, so that I could feel as though I was enough.
Nevertheless, I found that my efforts to do enough to be enough never quite balanced. Actually, I rarely felt as though I was enough unless I was doing. In the process of my doing, I developed what I heard Terry Kellogg describe as a human doing. As a human doing, I attempted to qualify my worth and value through constantly doing. In the process of attempting to overcompensate for my feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem and low-self worth, I actively participated in a toxic shame based codependent dance that had a regular set of steps.The dance went like this my friend. If “you” were not OK with me, I needed to fix “you” so that we could be OK, before I could hope to be OK with me.
Because I bought into the notion that I was responsible for other people’s irritability, restlessness and discontentment, when ever I sensed that people were out of “sorts” with me, I spent my time and energy attempting to fix and make them OK. I struggled in my attempt to make people OK, because I bought into the belief system — that told me — that if I did not “fix” people, then they would go away and abandon me. My fear of abandonment led me to believe that if “you” and I were not OK, there was some thing wrong with me. In addition, I bought into the notion that if I took care of “you” then you would in turn take care of me. The dance, I danced was predicated on overt and covert expectations.
I bought into this notion for various reasons, but the bottom line reason was that I did not know how to take care of myself.
Consequently, for many years of my life, I frantically went about taking care of other people’s business in an attempt to fix them to qualify my worth, value and significance as an individual. Unconsciously, that is why I sought to be in a helping profession. My motivation was pure – in wanting to help people in their pain – but skewed from the perspective that I thought that by doing so, I could be OK with myself. As I mentioned above, I reached a point in time when I became sick and tired of being sick and tired. In my pain and anguish, I discovered why I was in so much pain. Under my pain, I discovered a tremendous amount of anger, resentment and disappointment – for a variety of reasons.
What made matters worse was that I began to realize that I had been turning this anger, resentment and disappointment inward – which led to my living with a low grade chronic depression. As I examined why I was experiencing a low grade chronic depression, I discovered that I had been living my life as a human doing — as described by Terry Kellogg. As I examined why I had been living my life as a human doing, I discovered that I did not know how to live my life as a human being.
As I continued to examine my anger and resentment (s), I discovered that I was created to be a human being and not a human doing. I discovered that I was not put here to qualify my worth, value or significance through making people OK with me. I discovered that I was not created to fix other people and that a loving God is the only one who can fix broken toys, like myself. With my awareness, I found that my motivation to help people slowly started to shift from a need to qualify my worth, value and significance by making other people OK, to sharing from my experience, strength and hope because I am OK. With my awareness, I discovered that I could let go of the outcomes through trusting a loving God. With my awareness, I discovered that could stop being driven by a need to do, and start living in the freedom to be.
A freedom to be myself, in ways that work for me for the people who want what I have to give. A freedom to trust the process, a loving God and myself. A freedom to to do the footwork and to then let go of the outcomes. A freedom to let God be God in my life. A freedom to be a servant with out predicated expectations.
Here is my Contact page. Send comments and questions and I will respond to you.
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