"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."
Welcome
to a page of
Joy2MeU
The Web Site of Spiritual Teacher, codependence counselor,
grief therapist, author, Robert Burney and Joy to
You & Me Enterprises
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Robert is the author of the Joyously inspirational
book
Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls
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Included on this page are
quotes from both
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded
Souls and from other copyrighted work by Robert Burney. Online
pages quoted within this chapter will be linked so that they open in a
separate browser window - with the exception of any web articles referenced
which are quite long, or for some other reason not conducive to internal
linking. Links will be provided at the bottom of this page to any
such web pages.
This is Chapter 6 of a book being published online as it is written.
To find out more about the genesis of this work you can go to Codependency
Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional
Relationship with Life: Author's
Foreword
Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in
the Light
Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life
Chapter 6: ego strength and self worth
By Robert Burney
I feel that my life Truly began on January 3rd,
1984. That was the day I entered a chemical dependency treatment
center (aptly called the Independence Center) and started to learn how
to live life clean and sober. One of the reasons I was able to stay
clean and sober was because I had a considerable amount of ego strength.
I had some strengths and talents that caused me to think that I was better
than other people. That ego strength was my defense against the shame
I felt at the core of my relationship with myself. I had a capacity
for denial and rationalization that had helped me buy into the lie that
other people were to blame for the failed wreckage my life had become.
I used that ego strength - and the false pride
that told me I was better than other people - to help me stay sober.
One of the ways I did that was to make my sobriety date very important
to me. If I drank again, I would lose my sobriety date - and there
was no way I wanted people who had less sobriety than me to get ahead of
me. My twisted, distorted codependent thinking allowed me to turn
sobriety into some kind of race that I was winning over some people.
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. . . . .
. . . . . . One of the cornerstone principles of the twelve step process
is humility. Humility is required for growth to occur. On one
level what humility means is to be teachable - to be open to growing and
learning.
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