Mail. We Get Mail

I realize I’ve been remiss in posting email to the blog so I will try to publish a few letters a week (every Friday) so keeps those cards and letters coming:

Letter: “Thank you for your blog. I broke up with my fiance right after Thanksgiving and the holidays were hell. Reading your blog and the holiday postings and the grief and loss MP3 really helped. I was better in January and lost it again right before Valentine’s Day. He called me and we went out. Stupid. Stupid. He told me everything I wanted to hear during our Valentine’s Day dinner and then the next day he was gone again. His ‘disappering act’ is one reason we broke up. What happened? Why did he come back one night and leave again? I feel like Charlie Brown and he’s Lucy with the football.”

It sounds like when he has an itch he scratches it no matter how it affects you. When someone approaches us at a moment of weakness, it’s easy to cave and give in. We are making a choice to do this now and deal with the consequences later. Sometimes we’re too weak to really make a good decision.

At some point you need to decide that NO MATTER WHAT you are not going to see him because this is what he does. You need to make that decision BEFORE you’re in the situation you were in on Valentine’s Day. You have to wake up in the morning and resolve NOT to have contact with him and continue to resolve it each and every hour if you must. Then when he calls, even if you’re feeling weak, you will know what to do. Do your affirmations, journal and listen to the grief and loss audio over and over again. You CAN get through this. Good luck!

Letter: “I come from a very dysfunctional, alcoholic family. All the men I am attracted to are “fixer uppers.” Even though I know better I am still attracted to only them. I haven’t done a lot of therapy and don’t really like Al-Anon meetings. I’m not sure how to fix me from trying to fix them.”

When we have unfinished business we try to win over that which has plagued us. In your case you are trying to “win” over active alcoholics, so you re-engage with that “type” over and over again. The only way to win is to NOT play the game. It’s hard when you’ve done things ONE WAY, but you can use our “Relationship and Life Inventories” podcast (on the right side bar) to figure out what is going on. I also suggest a therapist who has training in alcoholic families and I do suggest either Al-Anon or Codependents Anonymous. You will find lots of support there. If you don’t like an Al-anon meeting try another and another. If you’ve tried 3 and you still don’t like it, maybe it’s something in you that is resisting it. Figure out if that is the case and try to just keep going for at least 30 days to get used to it.

Letter: “I feel a deep shame over who I am and where I come from. I don’t know how to begin to deal with this. I don’t even know why I feel this way. I treat everyone in my life like gods just because they interact with me and they treat me like crap. Help!”

Shame is often a very destructive effect of low self-esteem. They are not the same thing but usually have similar symptoms. It’s helpful to go back and look at what your family situation was like. Who originally shamed you? Who originally made you feel less than? While we are responsible for our own lives NOW we still need to look at the past and retrace the steps in order to undo what was done. We’re not going to blame them but merely investigate and then, armed with the information, know how to address it.

Try to think of what was said to you and turn it into something positive and then write a series of affirmations with that positive spin. Affirmations, done right, are incredibly powerful tools. Unfortunately there are a lot of BAD guides to affirmations out there and these bad guides have led people to believe they do not work. They WORK. I used them to change my life and they only worked after I learned how to do them right! Make sure you are doing it right.

Journal each day about what shameful moments you had and try to figure out why that is. Finally, do something nice for yourself and fun for yourself AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK. It may be uncomfortable but tell yourself you deserve it for working so hard! After a while it change it to just you deserve it!

Letter: “I don’t think there is a lot wrong with my life, but there is not a lot right. I don’t know where to start or how to begin. You say that you need to be in great pain to change. I’m not in great pain and I want to change but don’t know how.”

Well I didn’t say you NEED to be in pain but I encourage people who ARE in pain to see it as an opportunity to change. For someone like you, it’s GREAT that you want to change just because you feel a general malaise. Most people just stay where they are when they are just somewhat uncomfortable. I call it Maintenance Misery or Maintenance Craziness. Just getting by…nothing hurts bad enough to change but nothing is terribly great and/or important. It’s a sad place to be. I’m actually grateful for the pain that propelled me to change my life, but you don’t have to be in that much pain to use the GPYP tools successfully.

I would suggest the same thing as all GPYP students. Set short term and long term goals and use the GPYP tools (journaling, affirmations, visualization, boundary setting, act as if, positive self talk etc etc) to make those things happen. Keep your eye on the prize and it can be yours.

Letter: “I love your blog and have been reading it every day. I downloaded the MP3s and love them as well. I like the podcasts. I would love to come to NY for a seminar but is it “general” GPYP seminar or is it geared toward breakups? I’d love to hear more on the grief and loss material.”

Thank you very much. My seminars are all different depending on who attends and what they say in their introduction. I did do a Learning Annex class one night and all the students were women who had just broken up a relationship. I changed the format considerably that night.

I would love to see you in NYC and we would definitely talk in depth about applying GPYP principles to a breakup. Hope you can join us on April 21st!

Letter:”One of my favorite posts on this blog is the Gratitude is An Action entry in the beginning of January. I’ve read it so many times and it makes me cry each time. I really do want to get better and pay it forward as you have. Thank you for sharing it.”

Thank you for sharing with me and for being here. The link to that particular post is here:
Gratitude is an action

Once again, thank you to everyone for being here! Keep those cards and letters coming!