about fear and fulfillment

I am convinced that fear is the enemy of my achieving my highest good. Fear stops me in my tracks, makes me doubt my instincts, blinds me to possibilities.

In one of those strange paradoxes, I had no idea how fear limited me until I felt safer in my life. Only when I felt more self-love, only when I felt I was among people who understood and cared for me -even a little bit - was I able to observe the fear that virtually governed me.

I was afraid of making any mistakes and thus being hit or yelled at. I was afraid of being too smart, too successful and thus being accused of "being too big for my britches." I was afraid of loving, for fear of being betrayed and abandoned.

So I did very little, hid my talents, and became isolated from others. It was a profoundly dissatisfying way to live.

Fortunately, I arrived in a safe place: 12 Step programs. And I began to speak, in a louder voice. People began to respond to what I said, saying I helped them. That gave me more confidence, both to believe I had something of worth to say, and to believe that I was getting better.I started to get some perspective on my fear.

As one person wrote, I began to identify my fear - what it felt like, when it appeared, what it sounded like. I read tons of self-help books and went to hundreds of meetings and heard other people talk about how they dealt with their own fear.

One woman said "I just put my arm around it and say 'Fear, let's go!' and we go together to do what I want to do." That was amazing! I didn't have to deny my fear, nor did I have to deny myself doing what I wanted to do, needed to do, was inspired to do, felt good doing.

Someone else pointed out how much alike fear and excitement are. They both cause my pulse to race faster, my mind to go a little blank, and slow me down a bit. The difference is that when I'm excited I smile, and when I'm afraid I frown. So I started practicing thinking I was excited instead of afraid, and smiling instead of frowning. And I changed how I talked to myself: instead of "oh, this is scary! I can't do it! How can I do this?" I began to say "wow! I must be excited to do something new! Let me give it a try, see what happens. What's the worst that can happen?"

I got LOTS of help. Help in saying "I won't" instead of "I can't." In playing out "what's the worst that can happen?" and realizing that the end result is that I would die, and well, guess what? I eventually will die, but probably not as a result of taking a class or telling my mother "no." My FEELINGS may tell me that I will die if I focus on myself. The FACT is that I won't. In fact, I will come closer to being my true self.

Which brings me back to where I started. For me to be my best self, I needed to learn to put fear in its place - as a sign that I was going into unknown territory, and that I needed to have some faith - in myself, in my intuition, in my relationship with my higher power, and in my now unshakeable belief that whatever happens as a result of my loving actions is for my best.

I really needed to write this to remind myself of all this. Because I am now in a transition period, where fears are surfacing that I didn't even know existed! How wonderful it is that they are surfacing, because that means I am already far along in my transition and in changing my mind-set. I'm moving from the mind-set of scarcity into the mind-set of abundance, from emotional loss to abundant and enduring love.

I feel fear tugging at my hem trying to trip me up, and I can simply stop and say "well, take my hand, and we'll go together. You don't have to be afraid, because you're not alone. I'm with you and I'll take care of you. Everything will be just fine and lots of fun. And together we can handle anything that comes up. You'll see!" Just as I'd talk to my 5 year old niece, and as I wish someone had talked to me when I was little. Well, today I can talk to little Julie like that, and we'll see together what further joys this life has to offer.

about resentment and forgiveness

Resentment - re-sentiment - refeeling. My resentments are usually my refeeling my anger, hurt, humiliation, disappointment, and pain. It means I haven't completely processed the event, or found a way to forgive the person or myself (or both of us), or come to terms with what the event means in my life.

I have dreamed a lot recently about two jobs from which I was fired -one two and a half years ago for political reasons after being there 11 years and doing a fantastic job, the second a year and a half ago because of a personality conflict with the organization's founder.

Even as I write this I see myself trying to convince you all that I was not to blame in any way. This is a sure-fire way to gear up my resentment engine. See, they did it to me! Mean, horrible people!

Anyway, my dreams are about being invited back to the organizations. In one set of dreams, I'm very close to coming back and they have sought me out as the only person who can help them. They realize I was the right one all along, and now need me. In the second set of dreams, I'm up to being asked to come back because some people realize they were wrong and treated me horribly. But other people don't recognize it and there are still too many obstacles to my coming back.

What I glean from this is that I am coming to terms with what happened in both cases, that I am recovering my self-esteem and sense of self-worth. I may also be turning humiliation into humility (actually, my higher power does that, not me alone).

The point is that I am sick of having these resentments. They keep me tied to the past, keep me from moving on and feeling good about myself. I do believe I was treated badly by the first people for no good reason and I do hope they realize it someday. Yet, I can see now how it might have happened because I was absent with illness for a while and not able to "defend my turf." Clearly, too, it was time for me to go. If not, I'd still be there.

Coming to realize that I didn't deserve to be treated badly has been helpful for me when I get that urge to refeel the humiliation and anger. I don't need to feel that again, thank you very much. It was pretty bad then, and it is still highly unpleasant. I'd much rather say "forget them" and move on into new areas, leaving them behind in my dust. I'm not yet to forgiveness, but understanding how things could have appeared to them is a step toward that. I still would like the satisfaction of an apology, thank you very much, but I do not hold my breath.

I think part of getting over the resentment is rejecting their treatment of me as somehow justified. No, it was not. I see that, so I do not have to respond as if I am still affected by it. It was a long time ago. Time does heal, and I have taken some actions that have helped heal me. Maybe I'll need to take more, maybe I'll need to "amend" my behavior to tell someone that the treatment was unacceptable rather than just keep my mouth shut. If I do that, I will need to let go of any expectations of how they will respond, and do it simply because I can't forgive someone until I tell them what they did wrong. And maybe I'll move beyond that need and into forgiveness.

I guess the bottom line is that resentment hurts me. The other folks move along clueless while I hurt. My goal is to rid myself of resentment. It does take some time, and lots of talking and processing with other people, including doing written inventories and turning them over to another human being. And recognition that the resentment is mine, no one else's.

Sometimes I love the resentment. I nurse that feeling of self-righteous indignation, asking others to support me in condemning those terrible people. It makes me feel a little better for a while, yet at the same time plunges me right back into that feeling of shame and grief and powerless anger. So I do less and less of it.

It feels a lot better to say "well, it was time for me to be gone. Sure, they could have done it in a better way. But they didn't. Oh, well. I'm pretty happy now, and I wish the organization well." It feels a LOT better.

about rejection

You know that saying "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you?" I feel the same way about fear of rejection. Just because I fear it doesn't mean I won't be rejected.

And in fact I have been rejected many a time - by lovers, friends, colleagues, bosses, and yes, my siblings and my parents. What's different is how I respond to being rejected.

I use the word "respond" because I've learned that I don't have to react, I can respond. "Responding" means taking my time to consider how I feel, do a reality check to make sure what I think happened has happened, and then decide what I need and/or want to do - if anything.

The reality check is important because I can get very carried away by my feelings and fall back into old patterns of behavior - such as allowing one rejection to color my entire world view. In reality, my life is made up of many different situations and areas. A rejection in one area doesn't negate acceptance and success in another.

Talking to someone else often helps me get some perspective, although I am able now to talk to myself to good effect. I'll catch myself saying to myself "I'm depressed" and then ask myself "what are you depressed about?"

Nine times out of ten, I have nothing really to be depressed about. It's just a habit I've gotten into, of feeling depressed when I haven't been in touch with a friend for a while, or someone isn't available to do something when I want to do it, or my latest class is frustrating.

Some of those things feel like rejection ("I don't fit in!" or "Why didn't she call ME?"). Yet I now realize they are just ordinary circumstances that happen in my life as well as everyone else's. What's not so ordinary is the import I place on them to define my mood.

Luckily, I have learned that I CAN do something about all of this. I can pick up the phone and call my friend. I can talk to a classmate about the work and also complain about it a bit to my sister or housemate (and usually in the complaining, I figure out the most frustrating bit and can move on with the work). I can make an alternate plan with my friend, or call someone else to see if they are available.

What I realize is that I have options, I have choices, I have some power to act. Action is what helps me deal with any real or imagined rejection. I'm not a victim. I'm not a child dependent on her mommy for validation and security. I have a higher power, I have myself, I have my friends, I have my program - all of which validate and comfort me when I need it.

I've had brutal rejections in the past, truly brutal. And I did not cope well with them. Since I defined myself in relation to other people, rejection was a complete rejection of me. I felt invisible, ineligible to even exist on the earth. I compounded external rejection by rejecting myself.

Program was key to my returning from a really dark place, to beginning to embrace myself as a worthy being defined by myself. I learned to go where it's warm, to go to the hardware store for nails instead of oranges, to recognize early warning signs that this person or situation was not going to be good for me, and to forgive myself when I missed the clues and cues.

More importantly, I allow myself to feel the anger and hurt when I really am rejected. It really does hurt. And it takes time to recover. It's an opportunity for me to be really kind to myself, to love me and accept me.

Today, fear of rejection tends to be a little worse than the reality of being rejected, simply because it's abstract and it's hard to act on an abstraction. Far easier to deal with reality. I'm a great problem-solver given a real-life problem. In the abstract, I can drive myself nuts. Luckily, I can usually remind myself not to project into the future, and to be here now.

Stay in the now and I am usually fine.

about no longer being a victim

How miraculous is that shift in consciousness that can come in a 12-step program - from being "done to" to "doing," from blaming others to becoming responsible for myself, from looking outside for answers to looking inside for intuition and wisdom, from feeling overwhelmed and beleaguered to feeling confident and serene.

I spent about a year in program not understanding most of what people were saying. It was a foreign language and the concepts just didn't make sense. I do remember hearing "the V in Victim stands for Volunteer" and being both angry and perplexed. Perplexed because I didn't get it, and angry because - as I now know - it hit home. I thought and talked about this concept until I finally understood it.

Then one day, it seemed like the lights went on and all of a sudden all the concepts made sense. I'd stuck around long enough for osmosis to do its work, in partnership with my own curiosity and seeking. And critical to that breakthrough in understanding, that monumental shift in perspective was my realization that I in fact volunteer to stick around for pain, abuse, dissatisfaction, frustration, and overwhelm.

The essence of being liberated from the victim role was, for me, encapsulated in this sentence: No one does anything TO me that I have to tolerate for very long, if at all. If I don't like how someone is behaving toward me, I can say something or I can walk away. And even more intense - when I start setting some standards for who and what I want in my life, I will attract those very people, jobs, and places.

Wow. That freedom was both exhilarating and very frightening. I was shedding the warm cocoon of blame, irresponsibility, and self-loathing for a life where I am responsible for my actions and choices and feelings. What those are depend on how I feel about myself.

When I love myself, I want wonderful things for myself - loving, generous people, supportive environments, pleasant and serene surroundings. When I dislike myself, I'll settle for what I think I deserve. And in my case, it was bad enough that I contemplated suicide. Luckily, I didn't pursue that "permanent solution to a short-term problem" because people in program told me that I would want and could have a better life if I worked the Steps and used the program's tools.

Part of what I learned from the Victim/Volunteer theme was that I didn't love myself, if my external surroundings were any indicator of how I felt about myself. I went to another 12-Step program where I explored, faced and came to terms with the depth of my self-loathing.

It was there that I realized why I was so angry when I heard "V in Victim stands for Volunteer." The depth of my anger was the depth of my fear of what I would discover about myself - and the depth of my inner pain. Fortunately, I surrounded myself with loving people who helped me explore in spite of the fear, and helped me turn around my feelings about myself.

The amazing thing about this process was that, for the first time in my life, I owned my feelings. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to change them or the circumstances that enabled me to hate myself. Thus, the voyage toward recovery began with deciding not to volunteer for the pain of being a victim, and instead to try out my new wings and see where I would go on this uncharted journey toward serenity.

It's been a blast so far and I'm so grateful I have a program that allowed me to find myself under all that self-pity and powerlessness.