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and seek to be of service to them. although this may seem to be a way of avoiding the issue, there is really nothing i can do by dwelling on my low sense of self except work myself into a stew of self-pity. as i have come to discover, self-pity is not something that i need to add to my life on any given day, as i can do it without much effort at all.
so what did this reading really speak to me about. well there was the topic of gossiping to build my low self-esteem, and i am sure i have written about the whole gossip gig before, and do not need to rehash that this morning, there is also the replacing low self-esteem by acting as if i was selfless, by practicing selfless service. i probably have also written about service work and me before as well, so i need not go there either.
no what i heard was the whole self-esteem gig, and when i finally quieted down and listened this morning, i can see that for me, right now, it is important to see where i am on this particular topic. i know that i came to recovery with chronic low self-esteem, in fact by the time i got clean low self-esteem had turned into no self-esteem. getting clean did not help that very much, as all of a sudden there i was with no mind-numbing cushion to protect me from myself. so in this painfully desperate state, i embarked on my 12 step journey, just to see ‘as-if’ there was really something inside of me worth uncovering.
not that this has been easy. more than once i thought what i found would destroy me, and the FEAR of change overwhelmed my sense of living without self-inflicted pain, you know the sort of pain one may feel when one chooses NOT to do STEP WORK, or at least that is how it works for me. part of this whole topic goes back to what i was writing about yesterday, most of the damage i did to myself, was because i did not esteem myself to stand up and be counted. it is also quite true, that i have a ways to go with learning how to do this properly, and my 10TH STEP inventory is teaching me how to behave better, without hammering myself into the ground of low self-esteem. this morning i feel good about myself. it has been a helluva a week, but the rewards of arriving here are beyond compare, there is a monetary reward, as well as the satisfaction knowing how to fix this seemingly intractable problem without resorting to the nuclear option of reloading an operating system.
anyhow, there is also the part of my amend about taking care of my physical needs, so it is time for me and the dawg to take a tour of the neighborhood, after all, both of us feel better when we get our circulation flowing.

∞ DT ∞