and as an aside, thanks for that last comment cat04. that was kind of you.
Oys,
While I am not 100% positive what comment you were referring to, I am going to venture a guess that it was my comment about my intention behind my post to Rick.
He was quite right in his assesment that it was crafted in a way to throw him off balance. To elicit a specific response.
Not to be mean spirited, but to make him stop in his tracks and really think about where he was, where he is, and where he wants to go.
In the sprirt of DB, I will disagree with you. Honesty is not a difficult thing if we want to be self aware.
It is the most important part of communication that we too often choose to avoid. Because it often hurts. Because it isn't the "nice" thing to say all of the time. Because it requires us to look at ourselves, it asks us to judge ourselves, and it always asks us if we can do better than we are doing.
It is the lack of honesty with ourselves and our inability to communicate in honest ways (which can be done with kindness) that has gotten a lot of us here.
Based upon my experience with abusive situations, which is extensive, negative qualities do NOT just die by extinction from lack of attention, simply because we focus on our virtues.
They get buried. Waiting, like landmines, for something to detonate them if they are not unearthed and destroyed.
SBT, works well as an initial response to those negative things. It allows us to become aware of them, make changes that isolate the behaviors and begin the external changing, allowing us the time to do the digging and the internal work that will kill them permanently.
Rick, exhibits a learned behavior. That means he has to unlearn it. NOT ignore it. He will have to examine it and learn to find forgivness of himself (not judgement and guilt)(and for the people he learned it from) for doing what he could with the tools he had at the time. Then he can continue to move forward with his new tools, which will require him to do better.
Anger is a reaction. It is an emotion not an impulse. It masks the true emotion and gives us permission to not always behave well, because we are "human."
Yes we will all feel anger at times. It truly is what we do with it and what we learn from it that counts.
If we allow it to control us, then it can and too often does become pathalogical. That is evidenced daily when we turn on the news, the internet, open a newspaper. Anger is destructive.
To gloss over it, as if it is not important, is a mistake.
For me, DB and SBT, isn't simply about busting a divorce. It is about becoming a better person. It is about being able to look in the mirror, and either know that I am always giving my best, or being able to face myself and say "you need to do better" and then having the guts and the tools to do so.
"Acceptance doesn't mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is and there's got to be a way through it."--Michael J. Fox
