Feel like you're up to your neck in hot water? Depressed or angry and don't know how to cope? Learn how to manage emotional issues with 12 step slogans! 12 Step programs like Al-Anon and AA have proven successful in the treatment of all sorts of emotional issues. Depression, anxiety, addiction, bi-polar, eating disorders, OCD and other emotional health issues respond well to 12 Step programs. Here are some reflections on the Al-Anon and AA slogans.
There are treatment, drugs, therapies available; most are expensive and all of them require that you practice some form of self-help techniques. And that is appropriate. If I wait for someone else to make me well, it isn't going to happen. Even if I am a praying person, I have to take some initiative. So why not begin the self-help techniques now. One of the best programs that I have found and used is the 12 Step principles of AA and Al-Anon. The whole premise of AA is to 'work your own program'. Many of us have suffered at the hands of others. But if we wait for someone else to 'get help' or 'make it right', it probably will never happen and worse yet, we miss precious chances to work at healing our own thinking and behavior. No one else has the power to make us whole, except we ourselves.
One of my favorite part of the Al-Anon program is the slogans. The slogans are just short simple sayings that contain an ocean of wisdom. For me they are like mini prayers or even mantras. I have always had this bad habit of practicing what I call 'emotional self abuse'. My mind with out any clear consciousness on my part will begin to play a series of very hurtful and toxic tapes. I rehearse all my errors and faults, I call myself names, I criticize every little thing about me. Pretty soon, I am putty in the hands of anyone who wants to take pot shots at me. And unfortunately, even in the happiest home or workplace or social situation, we hurt the ones we love. So I am even more vulnerable to anything anyone says, even innocent remarks or common occurrences can shake my sense of self to the core when I am already on a downhill roll in my own head anyway.
So I practice saying these slogans to myself daily. Now a lifetime of prior negative messages will take some time to erase and tape over. And recorded tapes, are literally and metaphorically magnetic: what touches them sticks to them. And repetition is the best way to learn something, right? That is how people are 'brain washed' so to speak.
So I must literally meditate on the Al-Anon slogans, these little nuggets of wisdom many times a day. I am repairing the damaging messages and replacing them with new healthy messages. And when life does fall apart, as it does on a pretty regular basis, and my subconscious goes into auto pilot, I have a new set of tapes that begin to play. So that when a major problem occurs, instead of the old 'tapes' which played 'You're an idiot, you should have known better, what were you thinking' and other nice stuff like that. my brain is playing some new tapes.
Easy does it.
One day at a time.
Keep it simple.
Let go and let God
Think.
How important is it?
Just for today.
First things first
These 'tapes' and others in the program I can stay glued listening to.
When I use the slogans, , they are most instrumental in bringing about inner peace, even when situations are in chaos. All it takes is time and practice and the rest of your life. Because it is a one day at a time process. We fall off the bike, but we get back on. 'But like Charlotte in Charlotte's Web says, that's what we've got isn't it? A lifetime...'
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