09-12-2011, 05:07 PM
My name is Dave of Beckenham. I am a compulsive Gambler! Today my pains from my past are being nurtured and healed, my fears willingly faced and frustrations resolved by accepting the understanding of the serenity wisdom and I live a much healthier spiritual life today, I am healthier and stronger in myself than ever before in my life simply JUST one day at a time.
The wording in red book step three âGamblers anonymous is a spiritual program, not a religious fellowship.â It is not mentioned often enough about recovery being a spiritual recovery program.
Once I understood that simple fact recovery program is a ehaling process I knew I could succeed in the spiritual recovery healing program.
For me I thoroughly enjoy the rewards of working my recovery program in a very selfish way, it is almost like I am living a new life.
I walked in to recovery very weak confused hurt lost inept inadequate insecure immature and irresponsible and thought and felt that the gambling controlled me and my life.
I went against my own conscience and went against spiritual values and even tried to justify my cruel actions and my cruel words.
For a long time lots of people said they escaped to gambling yet would not admit to themselves their own fears.
People kept saying it was their pride and ego that stopped people progressing.
When I walked in to recovery I felt lower than dog crap I did not have any pride in myself, so how could pride be stopping me progressing.
People would talk their war story over and over again and they could not or were not willing to move on from their past.
After all the money and the gambling were just the symptom of the emotional illness if you can call it an illness.
Ask any one in recovery what this emotional illness is and watch their face go blank?
Step one was about my surrender my acceptance my not living in the same level of fears I use to live in and for me to start to be honest with myself.
In time I did not fear going to the rooms of recovery, in time I did not fear who saw me in the rooms of recovery, in time I did not fear the things I use to fear and in time I was completely comfortable with being completely honest and open in the rooms of recovery.
Step one when it says that life was unmanageable had nothing to do about money or gambling but more about when I felt vulnerable and understanding my triggers.
In the old days they use to say we found excuses to gamble, that is very twisted thinking, we needed to understand our feeling just before we gambled.
I can now count the number of times I am angry, I can name any resentments I have, and I can see and feel many unhealthy people and yet not take their pain fears or frustrations on board as my own.
For the first 10% of my life I suffered emotional abuse and physical abuse
For the next 10% of my life I suffered emotional abuse physical abuse and sexual abuse.
During the second 10% of my life I was rebellious risk taking and doing naughty things and had lost the ability to absorb and understand basic education methods.
At that early point in my life I did not care about myself or value myself so how could I value or respect other people? I even felt somehow responsible because people were doing these things to me.
At the first 30% of my life I found escape in one way or another, hiding in cupboards, I had learned to put up a facade and was a different person with different people.
I had been hurt and betrayed and was not able to give of myself or trust myself or other people any more.
I had got in to the habit of burying and suppressing my pains and hiding my fears yet deep down I felt more and less secure in myself which was all fear based emotional issues .
I was like the beaten dog that had no choice but to react in fear one way or another and to take up obsessive addictive ways.
So today am I more mature am I able to cope emotionally better than any other time in my life? Or am I just burying my pains deeper than ever before?
So long before my addictions and obsessions I could not heal my pains, I could not face my fears, I could not grasp that serenity would come about when I fully grasp my limitations and externally how little I am responsible for in my life.
The gambling the drinking the obsessions the escaping responsibility were just the symptoms that within me was a very hurt child who wanted and needed to be healed and helped to live a healthy life once more.
The hole in me was due to the fact that people around me as a child were not able to make me feel wanted loved nurtured and protected, the truth was adults were not even able to care for them self.
In understanding that I am equal to all people I now understand that if another person is able to achieve goals and be successful so can I.
There will always be unhealthy people in recovery rooms who are inept inadequate insecure immature and have not yet faced them self.
How committed am I today to understand reasons behind each one of the spiritual values today, that each spiritual value embraced is important in to my character building such as healthy unconditional loving unconditional giving forgiving apologizing caring trusting trust worthy patience tolerance humility sincere honest faithful loyal optimistic self assured and well self balanced punctual courteous respectful considerate grateful content productive creative constructive nurturing sharing encouraging optimistic cooperative aware content stable humble open minded self confident calm proud love and serene.
So the conscious decision was important to take recovery seriously and stop hurting myself emotionally through beating myself up all the time, by stressing myself worrying about things I could not change.
I am not willing to give up faith or hope in myself.
I know that if I see and feel that I am equal to all people in recovery no matter how long since their last bet.
Being equal to all people I understand if they can achieve something they set their minds to do so can I.
The consequence of painful experiences if fears, often the fears I had as an adult were a consequence of emotional or physical pain caused up on me in my child hood.
I think the easy way to explain recovery is to relate it to mountain climbers.
That mountain climbers use the rope for the feeling of safety and helps progressing without fear holding them back? The strength or our recovery rope is our honesty?
The number of people is not a measure of our recovery or our progress it is our honesty and shared wisdom which is about but the quality? Our honesty is the best policy?
Often as we move through recovery helping each other it is important to stay tied to honest stable confident people and strong groups so that our progress is both healthy and steady.
Even the slowest person moves with the healthy spiritual group that are all tied together in their recovery.
What is important in our path to being able to help our self is to learn the safest paths in our recovery, what to avoid and what to embrace and make regular practice and habits in our life.
Some people want fast recovery and go on their own and fall in to pit holes and often slip away.
The healing recovery program is based up on spiritual based values and actions, my actions are my responsibility in interacting with healthy people in recovery.
Today my anger is my responsibility.
Today my happiness is my responsibility.
Today my goals are my responsibility.
Today my progress is my responsibility.
Whenever I got angry I hurt myself.
How much do I value myself today and how much am I willing to do about it?
I have given up being a hypocrite my actions are my words today.
I am not a cut and paste merchant today, what you see is what you get today.
Anonymity use to be something I hid behind because I could not come out from living my life in fear.
I now understand that new peoples anonymity is very important part of recovery and I still respect others peoples anonymity yet for me I am not worried about people thinking or feeling knowing that I am a person in recovery.
If people love or hate me that is their problem not mine.
I often wonder how many people practice what they paste.
Love and peace to everyone.
Dave.
The wording in red book step three âGamblers anonymous is a spiritual program, not a religious fellowship.â It is not mentioned often enough about recovery being a spiritual recovery program.
Once I understood that simple fact recovery program is a ehaling process I knew I could succeed in the spiritual recovery healing program.
For me I thoroughly enjoy the rewards of working my recovery program in a very selfish way, it is almost like I am living a new life.
I walked in to recovery very weak confused hurt lost inept inadequate insecure immature and irresponsible and thought and felt that the gambling controlled me and my life.
I went against my own conscience and went against spiritual values and even tried to justify my cruel actions and my cruel words.
For a long time lots of people said they escaped to gambling yet would not admit to themselves their own fears.
People kept saying it was their pride and ego that stopped people progressing.
When I walked in to recovery I felt lower than dog crap I did not have any pride in myself, so how could pride be stopping me progressing.
People would talk their war story over and over again and they could not or were not willing to move on from their past.
After all the money and the gambling were just the symptom of the emotional illness if you can call it an illness.
Ask any one in recovery what this emotional illness is and watch their face go blank?
Step one was about my surrender my acceptance my not living in the same level of fears I use to live in and for me to start to be honest with myself.
In time I did not fear going to the rooms of recovery, in time I did not fear who saw me in the rooms of recovery, in time I did not fear the things I use to fear and in time I was completely comfortable with being completely honest and open in the rooms of recovery.
Step one when it says that life was unmanageable had nothing to do about money or gambling but more about when I felt vulnerable and understanding my triggers.
In the old days they use to say we found excuses to gamble, that is very twisted thinking, we needed to understand our feeling just before we gambled.
I can now count the number of times I am angry, I can name any resentments I have, and I can see and feel many unhealthy people and yet not take their pain fears or frustrations on board as my own.
For the first 10% of my life I suffered emotional abuse and physical abuse
For the next 10% of my life I suffered emotional abuse physical abuse and sexual abuse.
During the second 10% of my life I was rebellious risk taking and doing naughty things and had lost the ability to absorb and understand basic education methods.
At that early point in my life I did not care about myself or value myself so how could I value or respect other people? I even felt somehow responsible because people were doing these things to me.
At the first 30% of my life I found escape in one way or another, hiding in cupboards, I had learned to put up a facade and was a different person with different people.
I had been hurt and betrayed and was not able to give of myself or trust myself or other people any more.
I had got in to the habit of burying and suppressing my pains and hiding my fears yet deep down I felt more and less secure in myself which was all fear based emotional issues .
I was like the beaten dog that had no choice but to react in fear one way or another and to take up obsessive addictive ways.
So today am I more mature am I able to cope emotionally better than any other time in my life? Or am I just burying my pains deeper than ever before?
So long before my addictions and obsessions I could not heal my pains, I could not face my fears, I could not grasp that serenity would come about when I fully grasp my limitations and externally how little I am responsible for in my life.
The gambling the drinking the obsessions the escaping responsibility were just the symptoms that within me was a very hurt child who wanted and needed to be healed and helped to live a healthy life once more.
The hole in me was due to the fact that people around me as a child were not able to make me feel wanted loved nurtured and protected, the truth was adults were not even able to care for them self.
In understanding that I am equal to all people I now understand that if another person is able to achieve goals and be successful so can I.
There will always be unhealthy people in recovery rooms who are inept inadequate insecure immature and have not yet faced them self.
How committed am I today to understand reasons behind each one of the spiritual values today, that each spiritual value embraced is important in to my character building such as healthy unconditional loving unconditional giving forgiving apologizing caring trusting trust worthy patience tolerance humility sincere honest faithful loyal optimistic self assured and well self balanced punctual courteous respectful considerate grateful content productive creative constructive nurturing sharing encouraging optimistic cooperative aware content stable humble open minded self confident calm proud love and serene.
So the conscious decision was important to take recovery seriously and stop hurting myself emotionally through beating myself up all the time, by stressing myself worrying about things I could not change.
I am not willing to give up faith or hope in myself.
I know that if I see and feel that I am equal to all people in recovery no matter how long since their last bet.
Being equal to all people I understand if they can achieve something they set their minds to do so can I.
The consequence of painful experiences if fears, often the fears I had as an adult were a consequence of emotional or physical pain caused up on me in my child hood.
I think the easy way to explain recovery is to relate it to mountain climbers.
That mountain climbers use the rope for the feeling of safety and helps progressing without fear holding them back? The strength or our recovery rope is our honesty?
The number of people is not a measure of our recovery or our progress it is our honesty and shared wisdom which is about but the quality? Our honesty is the best policy?
Often as we move through recovery helping each other it is important to stay tied to honest stable confident people and strong groups so that our progress is both healthy and steady.
Even the slowest person moves with the healthy spiritual group that are all tied together in their recovery.
What is important in our path to being able to help our self is to learn the safest paths in our recovery, what to avoid and what to embrace and make regular practice and habits in our life.
Some people want fast recovery and go on their own and fall in to pit holes and often slip away.
The healing recovery program is based up on spiritual based values and actions, my actions are my responsibility in interacting with healthy people in recovery.
Today my anger is my responsibility.
Today my happiness is my responsibility.
Today my goals are my responsibility.
Today my progress is my responsibility.
Whenever I got angry I hurt myself.
How much do I value myself today and how much am I willing to do about it?
I have given up being a hypocrite my actions are my words today.
I am not a cut and paste merchant today, what you see is what you get today.
Anonymity use to be something I hid behind because I could not come out from living my life in fear.
I now understand that new peoples anonymity is very important part of recovery and I still respect others peoples anonymity yet for me I am not worried about people thinking or feeling knowing that I am a person in recovery.
If people love or hate me that is their problem not mine.
I often wonder how many people practice what they paste.
Love and peace to everyone.
Dave.