Quote:
Sunday, May 11, 2014
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go
Perfection
Many of us picked on ourselves unmercifully before recovery. We may also have a tendency too pick on ourselves after we begin recovery.
If I was really recovering, I wouldn't be doing that again . . . I should be further along than I am. These are statements that we indulge in when we're feeling shame. We don't need to treat ourselves that way. There is no benefit.
Remember, shame blocks us. But self-love and acceptance enable us to grow and change. If we truly have done something we feel guilty about, we can correct it with an amend and an attitude of self-acceptance and love.
Even if we slip back to our old, codependent ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, we do not need to be ashamed. We all regress from time to time. That's how we learn and grow. Relapse, or recycling, is an important and necessary part of recovery. And the way out of recycling is not by shaming ourselves. That leads us deeper into codependency.
Much pain comes from trying to be perfect. Perfection is impossible unless we think of it in a new way: Perfection is being who and where we are today; it's accepting and loving ourselves just as we are. We are each right where we need to be in our recovery.
Today, I will love and accept myself for who I am and where I am in my recovery process. I am right where I need to be to get to where I'm going tomorrow.
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Like the thought and the question of being where I need to be to get to tomorrow.
Perfectionism isn't a recovery tool. It is part of my disease.
When I turn my day over to my God, my day will unfold as it should unless I choose to shut off and decide to go my own way. When I do that, I am playing
god with my life and that of others.
Perfection means it has to be just so or it is wrong. We are perfect in God's Sight, whether we are flawless or flawed. It is all in our own mind and the selfish, self-centeredness of our disease that is at work in our lives. I know, I have been there.
Having said that, I realized that I didn't format my post.
