Lesson #2 Powerless (3 of 3) - For God Fore His Glory

STEP ONE

(WHILE SEEKING FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS)
WE ADMITTED WE WERE POWERLESS OVER OUR ADDICTIONS
AND COMPULSIVE BEHAVIORS AND THAT OUR LIVES
HAD BECOME UNMANAGEABLE

“For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, In my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” Romans 7:18

PRINCIPLE ONE

REALIZE I’M NOT GOD. I ADMIT THAT I AM POWERLESS
TO CONTROL MY TENDENCY TO DO THE WRONG THING
AND THAT MY LIFE IS UNMANAGEABLE

“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor,” Matthew 5:3

LESSON TWO
POWERLESS
PART THREE

UNMANAGEABILITY occurs when, for whatever reason, we believe
- We do not have choices about how we want to act
  - Regardless of what another person is or is not doing
We become
- Frustrated
- Confused
- Often immersed in
  - Negativity
  - Delf-hatred
  - Repression
  - Depression
We stop being kind and caring toward ourselves
- We’ve been caring way too much about others
  - Caring in ways that don’t work
    - For them
    - For us
    - For the benefit of the relationship
UNMANAGEABILITY is a result of a life pattern of
- SELF-NEGLECT
Five unmanageable consequences that follow powerlessness are identified:
- 1. Negative Control
- 2. Resentment
- 3. Distorted or Nonexistent Spirituality
- 4. Avoiding Reality
- 5. Impaired Intimacy

CONSEQUENCE 1: NEGATIVE CONTROL

Codependents primarily live in constant reaction to others rather than
instigating action for themselves
- As a result they get involved in controlling or determining other
  people’s reality in order to
  - Feel safe
  - Feel comfortable
NEGATIVE CONTROL
- Whenever you give yourself permission to determine what another
  person’s reality is to be
  - You do this when you tell a person what they should look like
    - THE BODY
  - What meaning they are to give incoming data
    - THINKING
  - What emotions they should be having
    - FFEELING
  - Or what they should do or not do
    - BEHAVIOR
On the other hand, you are also involved in NEGATIVE CONTROL
- When you give someone else permission to determine
  - What you should look like
  - How you should interpret incoming data
  - What you should feel
  - What you should do or not do

POSITIVE CONTROL involves your determining your own reality
- Apart and distinct from the reality of others
You establish for yourself what you’re going to
- Look like
- Think
- Feel
- Do and not do
You are in control of your reality
- Knowing what it is
- Embracing it
- Expressing it
  - When it’s in your best interest to do so
POSITIVE CONTROL IS INNER HEALING AND RECOVERY
- THE OPPOSITE OF NEGATIVE CONTROL

CONSEQUENCE 2: RESENTMENT

Resentment seems to come from your perception that someone has
committed an injurious act against you
- Not meeting or filling expectations of them
The event could have been an authentic act of offense or an incident in which
your value system clashed with someone else’s
- Although the other person did not transgress your boundaries it doesn’t
  really matter which one it is
  - You are likely to experience resentment as a result of either one
The resentment process involves
- Obsessively thinking about what happened
A pattern develops in which you first recall the incident, which generates anger
Next, out of the anger you focus on ways to
- Get revenge
- Punish the perpetrator

CONSEQUENCE 3: DISTORTED OR NONEXISTENT SPIRITUALITY

Two unmanageable consequence fall under this heading
- 1. Difficulty sharing who we are with others and hearing who they are
- 2. Difficulty experiencing a Power greater than ourselves

Many people seem to believe
- The closer to perfection we get
  - The more spiritual we are
A similar belief
- We must be perfect in order to be assure of getting into heaven
But any belief that we must not have any imperfections to be acceptable to God
and to others is one of the ways our spirituality is
- DISTORTED
The belief is accompanied by the conviction
- We ourselves must achieve perfection
- Whenever any imperfection is apparent, there is something we are not
  doing right in our spiritual lives

This belief can bring about real difficulty
- Owning our own imperfections
- Being accountable for it when we hurt someone else
This form of skewed spirituality contributes to our loss of awareness of our reality
- Cognitive
- Emotional
- Behavioral
- Physical Reality
  - Because anything that is not judged to be perfect or “spiritual” in
    distorted sense is
    - Unacceptable
    - Must be put away from us
    - Somehow hidden

Believing that a human being can ever be perfect is part of a codependent’s
- SKEWED THINKING REALITY
In addition, people following this belief
- Spirituality is perfection become involved in judging
  - Comparing themselves to other people
Deciding how well people are doing and how “spiritual” they are begins to take
up more and more
- Mental
- Emotional energy
Judging who is better and who is worse is a part of codependence
- Stemming from inappropriate levels of self-esteem
  - The unmanageable consequence of negative control

Whenever we can’t embrace our own imperfection
- We are not open to experiencing spirituality
Either we believe we are perfect or deny that we are imperfect
- Which results in acting as our own Higher Power
Or we may believe
- We are abnormally imperfect
  - Which results in our not being able to tolerate sharing our
    imperfections with ourselves or anyone else because it’s so awful
    - We’re convinced that people will go away if we tell them
    - A Higher Power would not accept us either

Along these same lines, when we are not able to accept
- Other people are imperfect
  - We obstruct our own spiritual experience
When we hear someone else share their imperfection with us, or that person’s
imperfection causes trouble for us we either
- (1) Try to exert negative control over that person to change their imperfection
- (2) Experience inordinate amounts of pain and anger
  - Which ultimately leads to
    - Criticism
    - Disrespectful judgments
    - Resentment

There is an appropriate level of pain and anger when someone hurts us
- The acceptance of imperfection in others can help lessen the
  degree and duration of such feelings and help us avoid
  - Being critical
  - Judging
  - Resenting them
Some people approach this process of inner healing and recovery with
the hope
- It will help them stop being “crazy” and out of touch with their identity
- Teach them how to be perfect
This search for a way to be a DO perfectly is part of our
- Skewed thinking reality

CONSEQUENCE 4: AVOIDING REALITY

As a result of experiencing abuse in childhood
- Adult codependents try to avoid “intolerable” reality
  - Even if you try to avoid the reality
    - It is within you anyway
Codependents are immature people in adult bodies
- Who often have difficulty functioning as mature adults

CONSEQUENCE 5: IMPAIRED ABILITY TO SUSTAIN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

One of the hallmarks of codependence
- We have difficulty in relationship
  - With others
  - With ourselves
  - With God
Intimacy means
- I can share myself with you because I feel good about myself
- I can let you share yourself with me without trying to change who you are
Intimacy also involves an exchange
- One person is giving
- The other is receiving
Life can be considered unmanageable:
- When a loss of peace and serenity occurs that can bring about
  - Excessive fear
  - Feeling panicky
  - Guiltiness
  - Shame
- When we stop dealing with our own feelings
- When we stop nurturing and caring for ourselves
- When we get caught up in trying to control events and people
- When we stop pleasing God to please people
During this Step we begin to accept and acknowledge our “Serenity Robbers”
- 1. Pride
- 2. The only if’s
- 3. Worry
- 4. Escape
  - By living in Denial
- 5. Resentments
- 6. Loneliness
- 7. Emptiness
- 8. Selfishness
- 9. Separation

Working this Step means:
- We are ready to face and feel our pain
- We are ready to recognize those personality deficits that cause us to
  - Avoid
  - Deny
  - Divert our pain
- We are ready to be kind and gentle with ourselves and others
  - As we move from denial to acceptance
- We are ready to acknowledge
  - Part of the control we were taught to have is due to the repression
    of our emotions
    - Many of us grew up believing it wasn’t okay
      - To have feelings
      - To reveal them

Taking this First Step means:
- We are ready to examine ourselves
- Seek out those self-defeating behaviors
  - Those feelings we haven’t been willing to feel
  - Our unmet needs
    - End up controlling us
    - They drive us
    - They compel us as fear does
- Our response could be and has been to
  - Control everyone and everything around us
- We are ready to acknowledge
  - FEAR is the undercurrent
    - The force, for much of what we do that we call CONTROL
    - ANGER IS AN EXPRESSION OF OUR FEAR
- We are ready to acknowledge
  - Fear could be controlling most of our actions
    - The resulting anger could escalate into panic
    - At times even terror

This step gives us permission
- To relax
- To stop controlling others
- NOT to allow others to control us
This step prepares us to acknowledge:
- When we love others too much
- When we want and need what they have – whether it is
  - Acceptance
  - Approval
  - Validation
  - Love or friendship
- We could FORFEIT our ability to take care of ourselves with them
  - Out of FEAR
    - We may not get what we need or want

Taking this Step means
- We are ready to admit we are POWERLESS
- We are ready to admit
  - In the attempt to control ourselves by repressing
    thoughts and feelings
    - WE LOSE OURSELVES
- We are ready to admit that we are responsible:
  - For stopping our own pain
  - For facing and dealing with our own fears
  - For saying no
  - For giving ourselves what we need
  - For setting boundaries
  - For making choices and decisions we need to make
    to take care of ourselves
    - In any circumstance or situation

We are ready to admit we are NOT VICTIMS
This Step helps us begin:
- To identify the proper use and abuse of willpower
- To begin feeling instead of running from our emotion
- Learn the limits and extents of ourselves and our responsibilities
- Learn the freeing role of accountability
- Learn to identify what we can and cannot do
- To identify when we’re trying to do the impossible
- To identify if we are trying to do that which is not our job
- Stop focusing on the impossible and focus our attention on the possible
- To feel and respond appropriately to our feelings
- Put us in touch with feelings of
  - Fear
  - Hurt
  - Shame
  - Grief
- To accept whatever loss or area of powerlessness we’re facing
- Remove the burden of controlling and feeling so responsible for others
  off our backs
  - IF WE LET IT
- To experience
  - Peace
  - Relief
  - Comfort
    - Which enables us to DETACH from FEAR
- Detach
  - Let ourselves be
- Detach so we can stop trying so hard and doing so much
  - When doing so much doesn’t work
- To be kind to ourselves
- To accept ourselves – but not from trying so hard
- To learn the answer comes from detachment
- To become sensitive to feelings of
  - Powerlessness
  - Unmanageability
- To bring us knowledge of ourselves and reality
- To realize we are not alone
- To realize we are not unique in our pain or our dilemma
- To realize we are not isolated in our solution
- To believe it is safe to trust
- To begin tending to the affairs of our own lives
- To be who we are
- To surrender so Manageability can set in
- To trade in lives based on
  - Fear
  - Control
  - Shame
  - Low Self-Esteem for lives that are Manageable
    - The healing can begin

“I pray that out of His glorious riches, God strengthens you with power
Through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart
Through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,
May have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long
And high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love
that surpasses knowledge – That you may be filled to the measure of
ALL the Fullness of God”
Ephesians 3:16-19