Hugh Smith is a person in Recovery and sponsors face-to-face Depressed Anonymous (DA) Meetings and Online DA Meetings. He has a website and does an occasional blog. https://depressedanon.com Last evening during a local DA Meeting our facilitator directed our attention to his blog for the day. He states, “As we dig deeper into the benefits of the Inventory (part of the 12 steps), we want to get started with asking ourselves some basic questions,
Who am I? What do I want? Who is my God?”
He suggests we take time to ponder these questions. This includes a screening of the way we think, feel, and live our lives.
Looking back to my childhood I was unable to experiment and find an identity for myself. I was busy people pleasing, achieving, and operating out of fear. I was attempting to be perfect in an effort to avoid physical abuse and doing anything that would disrupt my mom’s mental health. I strived to be a “good boy.” This became my script for how I functioned for 50 years.
I began to function differently during and after an outpatient program. A belief I now hold is, “To be perfect is to be imperfect.” I am self-aware when I have the urge to achieve. For example, I tell myself “200 books will be sold by Thanksgiving.” It is good to have goals in our lives as long as our self-worth is not crushed as a result of failure.
Whether you are in Recovery or supporting a person in Recovery write down your thoughts and feelings to the three questions. It is important to go within to find the answers to these questions and not who people say we are.
Hugh states, “I hope you will have made a start in discovering something about yourself. The inventory is about making progress – not being perfect.” This aligns with the subtitle for my book, “Be Bold, Be Imperfect, Be Present, and Recover.” Remember you are a “SuperHuman Being”
Peace
Larry
email: ljw@superhumanbeing.net
website: https://superhumanbeing.net/