Post by primrose on Jun 13, 2010 7:21:02 GMT -5
I'm on Step Three in DA right now, but for me my love addiction and underearning are so interlinked, that I think it's quite helpful for me to write some of my step work here.
Question 7. Discuss and reflect upon the idea that your discipline or lack of it had played an important part in your life.
I didn't understand the word discipline very well until I got into recovery. I don't think I ever had any. I had control or lack of control. Growing up I saw people who were very controlled or out of control. My parents did things because they were afraid. I learnt how to live like that too. I did things out of fear or to avoid fear. Work was about struggle and pain and so was making money and so was studying or learning how to do things. I was rigid and controlled or loose and out of control.
The more I do these questions, the more I see that because I worked from the age of 12 (and worked hard 9 in the morning till 7 at night with no break for lunch) I really have a very dysfunctional relationship to work. At 12 I worked after school, at the weekends, I went to school where I was very academic and badly bullied because I didn't fit in, at home my father drank and was out of control, my mother was depressed and angry. There really was no safe space for quiet time. How could I process that as a child? I couldn't. So I learnt to control and I learnt its opposite. I swung wildly between those two extremes and that pattern has been with me ever since. Mostly, I became controlled and anorectic and copied my mother's personality, but I also internalised my father's addictive personality. I behaved the way he did too and rejected responsibility and scorned control.
My work life in some ways has been a mess because structure and planning and saving and all the good things that discipline brings, I haven't done. I've rejected those things. I see that actually I'm frightened of discipline, probably because I don't know how to do it. Discipline is self-care I think, so to me it's been an unknowable thing. In recovery I am learning about it. I do take care of myself now and because I'm doing that I have discipline in some areas of my life. I have it domestically, I have it in my studio. I keep my tools in good order and my workspace isn't chaotic at all. Bit by bit my life is becoming more disciplined. I know I need things like timesheets at work. I think work when it comes to making money, is the area of my life where I am still acting out and I still have unmanageability. I am still really a child at work in some key ways.
As a child working for my parents, I was very dutiful when I worked, and I worked hard and I worked well but part of me just wanted to be free to be a kid, and that part of me was repressed. I lost that carefree girl in me who was angry that she was always working. I was cut off from other kids my age and I was confused by children, I only knew how to relate to adults.
I'm stuck there emotionally in a way. If that little 12 year old girl had been told to run a business, she would have done it. She would have been frightened and worked hard but also she would have been lost and wouldn't have known what to do in a grown up world. When I think about that I see how true that is for me and I see that at 38 I'm still that 12 year old girl, off dreaming at every opportunity she can because it all seems too much. There's too much responsibility. Banks, bills, clients, taking care of myself, running a house, money, saving, holidays, debt, expectations, deadlines, things going wrong. All of it, any of it, seems too much and I would rather dream it all away in fantasy. I really have a lot to learn about discipline. I want to do it in a gentle way and sooth my 12 year old. Really, she has had enough to deal with. I need to be gentle but firm with her so she and I can get some recovery around all of this. P.
Question 7. Discuss and reflect upon the idea that your discipline or lack of it had played an important part in your life.
I didn't understand the word discipline very well until I got into recovery. I don't think I ever had any. I had control or lack of control. Growing up I saw people who were very controlled or out of control. My parents did things because they were afraid. I learnt how to live like that too. I did things out of fear or to avoid fear. Work was about struggle and pain and so was making money and so was studying or learning how to do things. I was rigid and controlled or loose and out of control.
The more I do these questions, the more I see that because I worked from the age of 12 (and worked hard 9 in the morning till 7 at night with no break for lunch) I really have a very dysfunctional relationship to work. At 12 I worked after school, at the weekends, I went to school where I was very academic and badly bullied because I didn't fit in, at home my father drank and was out of control, my mother was depressed and angry. There really was no safe space for quiet time. How could I process that as a child? I couldn't. So I learnt to control and I learnt its opposite. I swung wildly between those two extremes and that pattern has been with me ever since. Mostly, I became controlled and anorectic and copied my mother's personality, but I also internalised my father's addictive personality. I behaved the way he did too and rejected responsibility and scorned control.
My work life in some ways has been a mess because structure and planning and saving and all the good things that discipline brings, I haven't done. I've rejected those things. I see that actually I'm frightened of discipline, probably because I don't know how to do it. Discipline is self-care I think, so to me it's been an unknowable thing. In recovery I am learning about it. I do take care of myself now and because I'm doing that I have discipline in some areas of my life. I have it domestically, I have it in my studio. I keep my tools in good order and my workspace isn't chaotic at all. Bit by bit my life is becoming more disciplined. I know I need things like timesheets at work. I think work when it comes to making money, is the area of my life where I am still acting out and I still have unmanageability. I am still really a child at work in some key ways.
As a child working for my parents, I was very dutiful when I worked, and I worked hard and I worked well but part of me just wanted to be free to be a kid, and that part of me was repressed. I lost that carefree girl in me who was angry that she was always working. I was cut off from other kids my age and I was confused by children, I only knew how to relate to adults.
I'm stuck there emotionally in a way. If that little 12 year old girl had been told to run a business, she would have done it. She would have been frightened and worked hard but also she would have been lost and wouldn't have known what to do in a grown up world. When I think about that I see how true that is for me and I see that at 38 I'm still that 12 year old girl, off dreaming at every opportunity she can because it all seems too much. There's too much responsibility. Banks, bills, clients, taking care of myself, running a house, money, saving, holidays, debt, expectations, deadlines, things going wrong. All of it, any of it, seems too much and I would rather dream it all away in fantasy. I really have a lot to learn about discipline. I want to do it in a gentle way and sooth my 12 year old. Really, she has had enough to deal with. I need to be gentle but firm with her so she and I can get some recovery around all of this. P.