the steps i am working through to recovery

[corraline]

I understand that i have been in crisis and I am trying to resolve this.  I have been describing this here and processing it with my counselor.  I have put this problem in front of myself and have acknowledged it.

My attention is now on what i have to deal with.  Accepting responsibility for what i have to deal with and owning the facts and my feelings.  I am choosing to work through it and transform it. This crisis has left me wounded but it brings a message.

I am asking the questions :

Who am I ?

What conditioning from my upbringing has brought me here ?

Am I feeling like a victim again ?

I have a choice to either break down or break through.  This is where my courage comes in. Can i use this experience to learn more about myself and change my old habits and attitudes ?  I am finding that this is requiring alot of energy on my part and sometimes i just want to go back to breaking down. Its what i am used to doing.  Its an old habit pattern that keeps me stuck.  Making the resolve to change requires will power, courage and tenacity.

So basically I am setting myself a new aim.  I feel that this is part of integrating this crisis into my own personal biography.

I am working on a plan and I am trying to be realistic about it.  I tend to get overwhelmed easily so i am taking it easy on myself.

It started with the decision to honor and respect myself by removing myself from the relationship, then the self care to put the focus back on to myself and also to nourish my ravaged nervous system .  Being here processing, help with my counselor, reading helpful material, looking inward and acceptance for every stage of my process.  Not so easy.  But I made a commitment to myself and I am sticking to it.  I fall often, but i keep picking myself back up.

I am learning and growing with the intention that I will be able to look at this experience as a gift and a learning experience. One day i will be able to find peace inwardly and forgive myself and my ex.

[Ihope2]

Hi Corraline

Thank you for your post, it resonates a lot with me.  I appreciate your honest and open account of where you are now.

I feel very similar about my situation, this short-lived marriage to my exBPDh (we got divorced last Friday), has cracked me wide open and is finally getting me to a point in my life where I am examining everything about myself and my childhood, my FOO and the decisions I have made in my adult life to get me to where I am now at almost 45 years of age.

I am still hurting and licking my wounds and detaching from my exBPDh emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, but I am so grateful to be at this point of self-realisation now, and I hope I do not run out of energy to keep moving forward and keep learning and growing.  I have a long road ahead of me, but I am on it and I am taking one step at a time.

At this stage, I have a great thirst for literature on the subject of recovery, codependency, healing the inner child, trauma bonds, personal growth, surviving childhood emotional neglect and a dysfunctional FOO, spiritual wisdom, etc.  I am compiling a reading list as I go along and I have made a note of many excellent and insightful sounding books on this message board.

So far I have greatly benefitted from reading Charles L. Whitfield's Boundaries book and also "A Gift to Myself" and Healing the Child Within.  Also, I have just finished Patrick Carnes' Betrayal Bonds.  I hope to read Alice Miller's The Drama of Being a Child, soon. 

Take Care.

Yours in Recovery,

Ihope2

[Reforming]

Well done Corraline. I know how hard it can be putting yourself back together or more importantly trying to build a new you.

I feel a bit like humpty dumpty without the kings men. When I stick one piece of me together another one falls off.

But I have a print out of Calvin Coolidge's pop up in my head;

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

I'm train to pick myself, take responsibility for myself and my decisions but it's a battle and quite often I find myself flat on my face. Or more frustratingly revert to old, destructive patterns of behaviour that I've allowed to define my life"

But I'm feckin stubborn and I refuse to give up

The very best of luck and as Calvin says - Press on!

Reforming