Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light

Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life

Chapter 6: ego strength and self worth

“My ego strength helped me to stay sober in the beginning of my recovery. It helped me to stay sober long enough to get into recovery from my codependency. My recovery from codependency led me into starting to dismantle my ego defenses. Breaking through my denial and rationalizations helped me to start getting emotionally honest with myself. Emotional honesty forced me to start owning the incredible reservoirs of grief and rage I was carrying. By the spring of 1988, my ego defenses had been weakened enough that the dam broke and my feelings started pouring forth. That was when I got the gift of entering another treatment center where I started learning how to deal with that grief and rage.” “What I wanted, when I started recovery, was to stop living life in so much pain. My selfish, human, primal instincts - arising from my ego - were focused on stopping the pain. But because my ego programming from early childhood was dysfunctional - was not aligned with the way life really works - that programming was actually causing me to keep repeating patterns that kept me in a state of suffering. My ego wanted desperately to stop the pain, but my ego defenses kept me suffering. This is the quintessential dilemma of codependency. The problem is internal, in our relationship with self, and we were taught to look externally for the answer / solution / escape - and to shame and judge ourselves for the internal conflict.” “I started to understand that trying to avoid the pain was what was causing the suffering. The twelve step process forced me to look at, take inventory of, me and my responsibility in creating that pain and suffering - at the same time it made it possible for me to tolerate looking at myself. The concept that I was powerlessness over my disease, my conditioning, meant that maybe I wasn’t shameful and defective as a being - maybe it wasn’t all my fault. While the concept of powerlessness opened up the possibility of a spiritual relationship with life and self by removing some of the shame I was feeling, the inventory process forced me to start looking at, and taking responsibility for, my part - for those areas in which I do have some power and can exercise some control.” “Humility means to stop judging and shaming ourselves for being imperfect humans. Humility means to own the inherent dignity and worth we have because we are children of God / extensions of the Goddess. Humility means being open to being teachable, being willing to surrender any ego definitions or dysfunctional beliefs that are blocking us from being able to open up to the possibility that we are Lovable and worthy. In childhood I got the message that I was supposed to be perfect, to do life “right,” in order to get to happily ever after. It is impossible to do life perfectly. Life for humans involves change. It is how we respond to change that determines the quality of our relationship with life.” “I was very blessed, because I was genetically set up to be an alcoholic. Alcoholism brought me to my knees so that I was forced to start dealing with my feelings. The progressive nature of the disease of alcoholism (Questions about Alcoholism - link below) caused me to hit an emotional bottom where it was impossible for me to stay in denial of how alcohol and drugs - which for many years had been my best friend in the internal war I was fighting with my own emotions - had turned on me and were now plunging me into the abyss of pain and shame within that I was trying so hard to avoid. I had to start becoming conscious of, and owning my power to change, the subconscious programming that kept me in denial of my feelings. I had to surrender some ego definitions in order to survive.”

On this page is the sixth chapter of an online book by codependency therapist/Spiritual teacher.

Inner Child Healing - Part 15 - True Self Worth

Consciousness of Self

Humility - essential to growth

The Blessed Gift of Alcoholism

Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Go to Chapter 7: Levels of selfishness - Published online August 28, 2002

September 2005 - Chapters 3 through 15 of this work are now exclusively available in the Dancing in Light pay to view component of Joy2MeU.com

Questions about Alcoholism Attack on America - A Spiritual Healing Perspective

Contact Robert

Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995. Material on Joy2MeU web site (except where otherwise noted) is copyright 1996 thur 2008 by Robert Burney PO Box 235401 Encinitas CA 92023.

Originally published at https://joy2meu.com/codependency_humility.htm