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into the depths of addiction. as i often do, i follow the example of the committees that wrote the literature of my fellowship, to lift passages out of context to provide the seed for something that is only tangentially related. i do so, because the body of what i read, quite often triggers a whole new line of thought and understanding, based on a brief passage in the hundreds of words i read. so i can hardly throw any stones at those who wrote the daily meditation book for doing something similar here, and people-pleasing is a topic that is common to many of us.
do i people-please? of course i do, but i am doing it less. so i understand what people-pleasing is? yes, it is doing something that is against what i stand for, or allowing a boundary to be crossed, simply because i am seeking approval. do i really need to say anything more? nope, that is it in a nutshell, so i will move along the tangent that popped into my head as i was listening this morning.
a long way to get here, nevertheless, what i heard this morning, dealt with the so-called positive and negative feedback outside approval cycles. this is something i know quite well, and whether or not it is part of being human or being an addict does not really matter. sure i want praise when i am doing something good, and often i will jump up and down and flail my arms to attract attention to the fact that i am doing something good. when i am doing something that is “bad” i slink into the shadows so as not to get caught and have to suffer the slings and arrows of the disapproval of others. neither of those are all that healthy. neither are a symptom of self-respect or self-esteem. both play into the part of me that i call addiction and without a doubt, they both keep me from being genuinely who i am. this goes beyond the surface of people-pleasing and dives straight into the heart of the symptoms that addiction is still an active part of me. i can tell because it takes a healthy human behavior and warps it into something that continue to make me ill. yes, felling good about getting positive feedback from others is part of the human make-up. it and its converse is the whole basis of human civil society. this need to be socially accepted creates the saints and the martyrs, as well as defines the sociopaths and psychopaths. the so-called saints as well as the sinners. it has been used and abused since someone figured out it was an excellent tool for controlling others, and is abused by mass media and those in power today, to further their own ends. i have as you can see, quite a strong opinion about conditioning, social and cultural. as i see it, it is this conditioning, and my apparent ability to conform to it, that sent me into active addiction and kept me there for so many years. no i am not blaming society, or TV or even madison avenue. they were part of the problem, it was ME who was and still remains the problem and only i can change that. the irony here, is that last night a fellow member who uses the room as their group therapy session came up to me, and tried to engage me on how my share was helping them to “shape” their behavior. shapi9ng my behavior is what got me into active addiction. shaping my behavior to get the approval of whoever happened to be around is what kept me in active addiction. today, i do my level best to be present, respond appropriately and allow my behavior to be shaped by the process of active recovery. i do not need nor want to hear all the psycho-babble trappings that can be attached to that. it is what it is, and as the evidence accumulates, it is a better manner of living, and one that builds my images of myself and my self-respect. doing good things just because they are good, not doing bad things because they are harmful, and not caring who or what catches me in the act. that is the man i desire to be, today, and that is what i will become, by living a program of active recovery. when i fall short, as i know i will, i can and will forgive myself, once again, the foibles of being human.
time to go work out and become a little less of a man, in at least one sense.

∞ DT ∞