Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Piecing Our Marriage Back Together Again Letting our light shine...Pam and Sage DB !!!

Allrighty...the title is from the amazing Marianne Willimason:

"...Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

~ From A RETURN TO LOVE by Marianne Williamson
© 1992 (Paperback; pp 190-191)

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The point of this thread, for me, hopefully for Pam and for anyone else who cares to join in, will be to specifically apply the DB principles to ourselves with the goal of having a love affair with ourselves!!! IOW, in many ways, I feel as though I am a walkaway from a positive relationship with ME!!!!

Now, I should note, that DB'ing is AWESOMELY constructed for this task...in fact, many DB'ers come to this conclusion while DB'ing their M (as Michele likely intended!).

So...I'm planning on starting tomorrow with step 1...a beginner's mind...I will post the ASSumptions that I have about myself that I think need to be kicked to the curb.

Sage

I, too, have let myself down in many ways. I would like to ask for help in becoming more psoitive about ME.

An affirmation I found -

"There are things I want to improve about being a mother/child/lover/spouse/worker, but there are also parts of these roles I am very good at."

This can be adapted to say we want to improve things about being true to ourselves. Though we have good points, we sometimes forget them in the rush of daily life.

Another affirmation-


"I will make sure my self-presentation is true to who I am. I speak as I am, what I am, and about who I am. I make it clear where I stand on things.

I figured I couldn't be number one on a thread with my name in the title!

I was just thinking of digging up the threads you had started last year.

You were much more productive than I.

I think I am going to work on my house tonight, but may hit some ASSumptions as well.

This is wonderful

I'm going to let some assumptions percolate overnight, see y'all tomorrow

Slowly

Things that impact my "self-esteem" --

1. when I say I'm going to get something done by a particular time and I don't!



I haven't had time to read step one again in DR...and I wanted to do that before posting...but let me throw some stuff out there to get the ball rolling and I'll revisit tomorrow.

NOTE: I wanted to reiterate what my goals are for this thread (can be completely different from other people's!). I'd like to apply DB'ing to how I feel about me...cause there are times when I'd like to "walkaway" from myself . I plan to focus the steps on my goals, etc.

I'm about to post some ASSumptions and I hope they don't freak anyone out...first off, I hope they don't come off as too melodramatic and secondly, I hope no one gets caught up in my drama (wow! I didn't think of THAT!)

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ASSumptions that need to be turned around:

1. If I mold myself into a "perfect" being then people won't leave me and I won't get hurt. This is further complicated by the "fact" that I'm trying to mold myself into MY ASSumption of what OTHER people think "perfect".

Well...fortunately or unfortunately, I cannot control suffering and loss through my actions.

Being myself -- true to my values and beliefs -- provided I live a life of insight and compassion -- is a far better way to attract love and others than trying to shape myself into something I am not.

2. If I seek to do things that are important to me, people will stop loving me or will leave me (this is partly based on my mother's begging me not to go away to college and partly based on this absurd connection that I have made in my mind that my studies somehow led to my h's EA)

See #1 It's not fair to myself or others to ASSume that molding myself into less than I want to be somehow creates a positive situation. Of course, I need to be conscious of the commitments that I have made and wish to honor, but no one is asking me to dull my "light"

3. I am somehow fatally flawed (and clearly have been forever) and am inherently unloveable -- otherwise my mother wouldn't have become a basket case, my father wouldn't have left and my h wouldn't have fallen in love with someone else.

Have at it! I am not responsible for the actions of others. I am 100% responsible for my choices, actions, behaviors, etc, but I cannot take responsibility for the choices and actions of others.

4. If I ask for what I want from other people, they will not give it to me.

If I ask for what I want from other people, they will stop loving me for being too high-maintenance.

If I take care in asking, I may or may not get what I want from others...and I will survive if others cannot provide me with what I want

5. I am boring, dumb, unloveable, not worth the time, less than other people. No one wants to be my friend or listen to my thoughts, interests, etc.

I have made this ASSumption and have therefore stopped sharing with people in my life because I fear boring them to tears. In fact, I am an interesting person with a lot to offer.

6. I don't know how to make friends. This is exacerbated by the fact that I am socially inept.

It's true that I tend to be an introvert. It's also true that I can be shy at times but I could make friends if I dedicated more time to it.

7. If I spend more time away from home/h, my DB'ing efforts will go down the tubes. This is based on the ASSumption that my outside interests were the death knell for my m.

QT is a big one for my h but I don't think he necessarily wants me by his side 24 hours a day. In fact, a bit more separatedness may make HIM feel more free to do things on his own.

8. I am everything that my h said during the bomb dropping phase

The bomb dropping discussions may have given some hints into areas I could improve but there's no way I'm THAT BAD!

9. I'm a failure at work. I'm a failure at M. I'm a failure at family relationships. I'm a failure at maintaining friendships.

I should probably break these up. I imagine these faulty ASSumptions could be broken up nicely into goals!

I'm sure there are more but I'm running out of time here!

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Early indications of what things make me feel positive:

* doing a good job at work
* having fun with a friend
* spending time with h
* having h express love and enjoyment at being with me
* accomplishing what I say I'm going to do
* trying out new interests
* achieving something that I wasn't sure I could accomplish
* new clothes!
* a job well done at home (cleaning, whatever)
* balancing my checkbook
* seeing my family (well, some of them)
* exercising and eating right
* meditating!
* dancing
* singing
* yoga
* going for walks
* hiking
* doing well in school
* learning something new
* cleaning my office/car
* others????

I'll be back tomorrow!

Sage

Sage,

Sounds like you made a great start!

Since it is early times in my DB career, I have decided that I need to focus on that - DB, and thus, will do most of my "self improvement posts" on my thread in I Need Support for my marital problems.

How do I reconnect?

Sage:

I could relate to so many of these!

OK here is one of mine. I have a really hard time telling my mom no. I have this intense fear that if I tell her I don't want to do something or I don't like something that she will not love me anymore. Its a huge ASSumption on my part that she will be furious with me if I don't go along with everything. I actually did something about this recently. H wants to go out of town for Thanksgiving. I have never missed Thanksgiving with my family. My first thought was mom will be furious and not speak to me. I sucked it up and told her. She was thrilled and said have a good time. She said she was relieved because now she can go out to dinner on Thanksgiving instead of making a huge meal. I almost gave up something I wanted because I was ASSuming I would make her upset.

The being boring comment also got to me. I am very quiet with everyone except a few people. H asked me once why and I replied why would anyone want to hear my boring stories. I ASSume no one is interested when I should ASSume I am fascinating and of course they want to hear me drone on.

Hi,

I hope you don't mind me joining in here as well. I can, as MF mentioned, relate to so many of the things you mentioned.

My wants to D me because "we're too different", "We have nothing in common". I was thinking about these things last night as well as this thread and I realized that I agree with H and actually have more to add.

-I am boring, have no outside interests, don't have many friends, am too shy, have no interesting conversation, am not athletic, am a "geek", etc....so much so that even my H, who adored me, figured it out and left me....I've actually wondered what took him so long

*I have friends...have had the same friends for 15+ years...they must like SOMETHING about me.

-I don't know who I am or what I have to offer so how can I expect others to know

*I have started to stop controlling myself (yes, I know this sounds strange), to strop projecting a certain image of myself and just let myself BE.

-I am selfish and controlling.

-I feel the need to please my mom or be "down in the trenches" with her when there's a crisis with brother #1; if I don't, she will no longer love me.

-I am not smart enough for my job, much less a higher position.

-I don't have my own opinions; I need re-assurance from others.

*I've started to work on this through DB. I found something (DB) that I believe in, something that the "mainstream" doesn't necessarily know/agree with but I'm still standing by what I believe.

So, I know what's wrong; not sure how to DB msyelf though.

Thank you Sage for starting this thread; it came at the right time.

Minnie

All right Pam and Sage!!!
WTG!!!
This stuff is dynamite......I am soo happy to see all the great info here..
I think you have infused the board with some desperately needed rays of sunshine!!

I will be back tommorow after giving myelf a good "going over"...to see where I am letting myself down.....

BTW what a wonderful way to start out with the Mary Williamson quote...you brought my PMA up by at least 80%!!!
Funny, you might think looking at how down one is on themselves would be depressing but strangely it is inspiring because the only thing we can really do anything about........IS OURSELVES!!
Gives me a wonderful sense of control...when I have been feeling so Out of control

Hugs to both of you!
Trish

I've been mulling over this for a few days now, and still cannot get my arms around the issue. Until the bomb, I would never have considered myself to be of low self-esteem. But since then, and the way in which I have been handling myself, has made me question many of my perceptions.

Here is the biggest one that hits me in the face sometimes - why do I feel, deep down, that NG's betrayal is something I deserve, that it is the 'best' I could have expected in my love life I know it will take me a really long time to process out this one, and I suspect it has roots from a long, long time ago. It just may be more constructive to focus on the things that I can control for now. My goals are the same as Sage's - I'd like to apply dbing to myself, so that I am no longer a WA from me

Here are a couple of assumptions about myself, and my current clumsy attempt at turning them around:

1. Assumption - For me to be worthwhile as a human being, I should be the smartest, prettiest, wittiest, etc-est. Anything else is just a waste of life on earth

This has been the main driver behind the work-harder, keep going every waking minute, be ultra competitive person that I became. Being diagnosed as diabetec two years ago was my first wake up call that this approach to life was not right, and of course the bomb, when NG had an A with a woman who was older, shorter, less educated, less accomplished just made me crash into the wall of this assumption.

Turning this around seems to be a lot trickier than I expected. For starters, folks who have known me have now come to expect a lot - so it is a long process to re-establish my 'norms'. Personally, it is a constant mantra that I am OK as person just doing what I can, it does not have to be in the superlative scale. This is very much work in progress

More assumptions later. Gotta run to a meeting.
Slowly