I was in an online meeting about Step 4 the other night, and this was the question:
9. How has my behavior contributed to my guilt and
shame?
Here's what I had to say: My head gets the difference between guilt and shame;
my heart, not so much! Guilt is a healthy emotion for me. It lets me know when
I've got something to take care of, kinda like when i put my hand on a hot stove and
know immediately that I need to move it away. But shame gets me stuck and sends false messages to my brain. Sometimes it tells me that the stove isn't really hot and I leave my hand there and get burned. Sometimes it tells me that a cold stove is hot, and I'm constantly jerking my hand away when I don't need to. Even though my head knows this stuff, I confuse myself ALL the time. I take responsibility for what's not mine. I think that's my way of fooling myself into thinking that I've got control when I don't. And sometimes I don't take responsibility for what IS
mine.
You know, I'm looking back on this now and it's not making anywhere near as much sense as it did to me when I first said it. I'm not sure it addresses the prompt. And I'm not sure where it came from. But there it is.
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3 comments:
There it is.
Recovery stuff is so hard to write about/think about. I find myself confused a lot. There is always so much going on that's true at the same time...and healthy impulses spill over to unhealthy impulses, or unhealthy impulses are transformed in to healthy ones. Within an hour, I can go through 50 million emotions, and they're all valid. It's infuriating.
I like what you said about guilt, though, and how it can be useful in helping me find things that I need to deal with...at least when I'm able to sort out what's mine vs. what's his vs. what's no ones.
This shit makes me tired. Let's go on vacation.
I totally understood everything you said. All of it made sense to me.
I too understood every word. I thought it was rather well said actually.
It is a hard to figure all that shit out- it's like algebra
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