This is a work in progress, but I wanted to put it out there
in case it helps someone.
1. Give up. hit bottom. Sit stay heal. Stop look listen.
Admit that you are powerless over others and your own life (without a Higher Power)
Surrender. Become aware. wake up from the dream and nightmare. Open up
your eyes and get on your knees if you're not already there. You may find
yourself broken, battered, bruised, and bleeding face down in the dirt. See
what a mess you're in and how dysfunction and the false self has been running
and ruining your life and world for years or decades
2. Rest, relax, breathe, and accept. Calm abiding. You can
stay here as long as you want and need until you are restored in peace, calm,
and equanimity. Just sit with yourself (your inner children, inner teens, inner
loving parent, and other adult states such as an inner warrior, leader, care
giver, artist, teacher, and others), your Higher Power, and natural world. You
are here now, and safe in the home of your own body, soul, spirit, and True
Self that is all of these and more – we are multitudes.
3. Look up. Come to believe that a power greater than
yourself can restore you to sanity and well-being. Make a decision to turn your
will and life over to the care of a Higher Power of your own understanding.
Reach out for help from your H.P. and safe and loving counselors, family,
friends, and others.
4. If you really want to dismantle your grievances take it to
the next level and focus and concentrate on thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and
ideas, (mind) as well as emotions, feelings, perceptions, and sensations
(body). Notice how body and mind are interacting (soul), and acknowledge there
is a part of you beyond all of this internally and externally that is
absolutely and eternally pure and perfect and always resting in infinite love,
peace, joy, and beauty (spirit).
Look and listen to your dysfunction, desires, inner child,
and intuition. Get curious about what's going on inside you and around you.
Seek to understand, accept, and embrace with love. Look at your world and what
attracts you: all the bright, shiny, beautiful things you truly love. Then look
at what repulses, annoys, or disgusts you. Acknowledge that your ego has
usually been in charge with incessant thinking, fear, anxiety, and control.
5. Reach out for help from your Higher power, as well as safe
and wise counselors, family, and friends. We can’t heal in isolation, as it is
more the problem than the solution. We are seeking to establish interpersonal
bonds for those who never had or learned them from their parents and family, or
re-establish them for those whose parents or family destroyed them long ago. We
must find safe and loving people we can be vulnerable with, and
share our pain and suffering with them to let it go.
6. Take stock. In Twelve Step this is “making a searching and
fearless moral inventory”. Tony A, the founder of Adult Children of Alcoholics
and Dysfunctional Families stated this as “Made a searching and blameless
inventory of our parents, because in essence, we had become them”. This
isn’t to shame or blame ourselves, but an act of compassion and self-honesty to
release blame and shame and be responsible for our actions.
7. Acknowledge and admit your mistakes to those you have
harmed when possible and appropriate. Apologize and make amends for where you
have wronged others. We would certainly want others to do this for us. The hard
part is when others don’t respond in kind even when they should. Here we must
take the higher road and practice humility in silence. Hopefully we won’t have
to take this step often. It is a very valuable step however, as we tire of
having to make apologies and amends, so work hard to avoid mistakes and
mis-steps.
8. Follow-up, keep it up, pray up, give up, diligently,
vigilantly. Stay awake and aware. We can do this daily and/or weekly by taking
some time to review what has been happening and how we responded to it. What
were the highs to celebrate and the lows to learn from. We also use this as a
planning session to set our intentions for the coming days and week.
9. Service. One of the best ways to get out of ourselves and
our problems is to focus on helping others for awhile. Being of service with
compassion and empathy is very healing if done mindfully and lovingly. This
also acknowledges our true place in the world as a part of rather than apart
from all others, life, and creation.
Prayer and meditation: Intimate and constant conscious
contact. Commune with Higher Power (Great Spirit, Over Soul, Eternal ONE) and
its infinite love, peace, joy, beauty, and being. Calm abiding meditation is
step 2, insight meditation is step 4.