Intellectual Discernment - Choices, not 'shoulds'
Intellectual Discernment - Choices, not “shoulds”
“We all, of course, do have “shoulds” in our life because we grew up in shame based, emotionally dishonest, dysfunctional cultures that were trapped in a black and white perspective of life. Those “shoulds” are causal in creating the self sabotaging behavior patterns in our lives.” “It is human not to want to get up out of a warm, cozy bed in the morning to go to work. It is mature to understand that the law of cause and effect dictates that if we don’t go to work enough times, we won’t have a warm, cozy bed. So, we choose to get up and go to work because that is the best choice for our own well being. However, as I mention in other articles, if we get up and go to work because we “have to” then we will feel like a victim and be resentful instead of owning that we are making an empowered, Loving choice for our self.” “Not only do we have wounded inner child places within us, out of which we react in ways that are self destructive, we also have certain archetypal energies that are vital parts of our psyche. One of those is the rebel. We all have a rebel within us. When we “should” on our self, the rebel in us rebels by going to the opposite extreme - “I’ll show you for shaming me, I’ll do just the opposite.” We act out against the “shoulds” in ways that are harmful us.”
This is the ninth in a series of articles focused on how to apply the Serenity Prayer in our lives by having the wisdom and discernment to recognize the things we do have the power to change.
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995. Material on Joy2MeU web site (except where otherwise noted) is copyright 1996 thru 2015 by Robert Burney PO Box 98 Fallbrook CA 92088.
Intellectual Discernment - Choices, not “shoulds” was originally published online on the Inner Child/Codependency Recovery page that I used to edit for Suite101.com Directory on February 28, 2003. There is a list of - and links to - other articles recently published on that Directory on my Suite101 Articles page.
Originally published at https://joy2meu.com/Choices.htm