thanks Joe/ self-deprogramming

[Guest guest]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for your reply re motivation. It really

helped. You're right- as soon as the words " Do I

DESERVE to be happy ? " I started wondering what

deserving had to do with anything. It is nice to have

someone else confirm that. I love the image of a cat

lying in the sun, because the cat enjoys it and what

does deserving it have to do with anything?! Cats are

great. They have so much dignity. All animals do.

I don't care much for the books you mentioned about

it, but I have been finding disputing AA beliefs on

paper to be an enormously helpful suggestion of yours.

It has taken me a long time (2 years out of NA!) to

get around to it. this is because AA's step 1 impedes

self-deprogramming- for the longest time I believed it

was impossible for me to deprogram myself.Isn't that a

clever trick of theirs.Wow. But I'm on to 'em! On the

contrary, although help from this list and my

counsellor does help, I find that by far the most

helpful thing has been to write by myself. I wrote out

what each step means to me, not thinking much about

it, just writing,eg- " Step 2 means I'm an idiot who

can't learn from their mistakes, Step four means I'm a

piece of shit and a bad person " ,etc. I went on for a

couple pages for each step. Then I wrote the Antidotes

to those steps. It is an absolute goldmine this

writing idea. I am finally making progress. Yah!

Cheers,

Kim

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