Excuses, excuses.

Excuses, excuses.
J

jjt

Registrant
I have realized that no matter what happens in my life or no matter how awful I act out towards people that I supposedly loved and should care for I have an excuse for EVERYTHING. I have an excuse for lying, being manipulative, being cold. I guess it's easier for me to think of excuses rather than take a long hard look at how awful I have acted in the past.

I find if I don't rationalize and make these excuses for myself then I just find myself totally and utterly depressed thinking about what an awful person I am when I allow myself to think about my actions. At what point does one actually forgive oneself, and begin to move forward with making oneself better. I'm in a rut now. Am digging things up and now I just feel worse.
 
I think that when our determination to change our life and be our best self is stronger than our need to blame everything bad that we do on our abuse--then it is that we can move forward.

We get nothing out of condemning ourselves nor out of lying to ourselves. We have had enough of that.


There is goodness in everyone--try to find the authentic goodness in yourself rather than beat yourself up. No one should harm you anymore, not even yourself.

Bob
 
Originally posted by jjt:
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I find if I don't rationalize and make these excuses for myself then I just find myself totally and utterly depressed thinking about what an awful person I am when I allow myself to think about my actions. At what point does one actually forgive oneself, and begin to move forward with making oneself better. I'm in a rut now. Am digging things up and now I just feel worse.
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How about changing your thinking?

Try thinking of excuses as a bad habit. The first step in breaking a bad habit is admitting that there is a bad habit to break.

Have you ever read any of the AA / Al-Anon books? There are plenty of them cheap and used book stores. I found them useful for me in breaking a bad habit of blowing-up, getting really furious, at machines! As if machinery cared about my anger!

Don't know if this is a useful track for you. But it might well be something to think about.

Also, getting down on one's self is never useful. I've found that thinking of my inner man as I would a small kitten is helpful. I once bread Siamese show cats; had a lot of kittens around. I can cuddle my inner man as I would one of the kittens and THAT helped me.

jw
 
Rhetorical:

What is the difference between an excuse and an explanation?

I think that, for those of us who have been abused when we were children, distinctions like that start out and can remain pretty fuzzy.

Self-esteem. Self-loathing. Self-confidence.

I feel guilty about explaining what is going on with me and why it is happening because it sounds like excuse-making to my distorted hearing.

(Is it distorted? How can I know?)

I'm over 50 now and have struggled with this sh-t for practically my whole life (first abused when I was an infant).

I'd like to hear from anyone who has successfully left it all behind once and for all and how that was accomplished.

The so-called cures I've heard about so far look delusional, temporary, and are thin stuff, after all. Where is the permanent healing of our emotional cores? Where is the path that leaves it all behind? Where the door to an untainted life?
 
Well here goes.
I am 63 abused at 16-17 and a prostitute 18-21 acted out for 40 years afterwards. Member of AA since October 29,1976. Kicked heroin at 21 with help of a good friend. Tried suicide three times. Apparently I am either lucky or lousy at it. Sought help for the first time when I was 56. Found MS about 18 months ago. Am in therapy now only once a month. Joined a health club 18 months ago. Have been married to the same wonderful woman since 1967.

I have found inner peace with myself. I am not proud of my life as a prostitute or my life of acting out and putting everything I love at risk. I do however accept that I did that. I also know why I did it. I now recogize that these acts were a form of coping as was drowning in booze and spacing out on heroin and seeking a lousy death. I cannot change what happened to me or how I coped. But I also know that despite the best efforts of those three guys so many years ago I am still here. And that is a great accomplishment as far as I am concerned. My beliefs around my actions have changed and I know it was not by choice I did what I did. But it did become comfortable for me. I know that while these coping mechanisms did in fact keep me alive the did Sweet Fxxk All for my sense of self worth and self esteem. As a matter of fact they pushed me deeper into the pit and I thrived on the sense of uselessness and deserving what I was. What I never did was get mad at those god damned perps. You see it was my fault or so I thought. I also did not get mad a my Johns as I thought it was my lot in life. And I served the most violent and kinky men from the so called normal side of humanity. I came to realize deep inside that that was total bullshit and then I got mad; I mean really mad and it was a time of real scariness in my life. I had left everything that was familiar and safe but there was no effen way I was going back. In time I came to realize that I did have worth. When MaleSurvivor approched me to be a Moderator I could not believe it. My opinion of Mods here dropped like a stone. Hell if they thought I would be ok then all the others were jerks just like me. How wrong I was about them. Hey I am not perfect but who is. But it helped with my self esteem.

All my life I had been hiding a body that got me into SA. I was a rock hard 215-225 pound 5'10" piece of fresh innocent meat. Thereafter (after the prostitution) I fluctuated between looking like the Goodyear Blimp and Twiggy the model. I had anorexia and bulimia almost simultaneously it seemed. In January 2003 I joined a health club determind to get an older version of that body back. WHY?? They took it from me and it was all I had and I wanted it back. Now I have ABS again and low body fat and some good definition and to be quite honest I am beginning to like what I see im the mirror. And that has done wonders for my self esteem as has the revised thinking.

Now the last is important too. When I had been in AA for five years I found that my healing accelerated as I gave back. It is the same here. Hey I am never going to be perfect but it adds to my self worth everytime I think that I have made a difference in someone's life. I think that It is important to remember , All OF US, that we have to be strong for those unfortnates who are still under some asshole right now.

I do not know if this is what you wanted Brayton but is the best I can do.
 
Here's a thought for you: When you're in a hole, the first thing to do is quit digging. In other words, if lying, manipulating and being cold are the problems, don't worry about why you do it or whether you should blame yourself or excuse yourself. Just quit doing it. Lay out a plan to change these behaviors and act on it. You can figure out the whys later. After you've got the behavior under control for a while, it can be a lot easier to clean up the aftermath.

As for forgiving yourself, I'd start out there. Unless you're a God and not human, in which case you're supposed to be perfect. In that case, I don't know what to suggest. But for me, I forgive myself from the get go for all the stupid shit I do.
 
I know it is hard to break the cycle of conditioning going on year after year, keeping the lie for so long, makes us turn inward and to others, it can make you seem cold and unfriendly, evem remote.

A woman hit the nail on the head at work, she said. You don't say much about your life.

I thought? Is it any wonder, but it turned into a really great conversation, and I talked about a lot of stuff with her. It really did make me feel so good afterwards, I obviously only said the good things, and not the bad.

If we can get to doing these things, and slowly letting others more into our lives, by discarding some of the negativeness, then we can try and start to get there, you will find more friends.

Only if you are prepared to let them in, and I know it is really hard.

ste
 
I do think there is a difference between explanation and excuse. Yes, there is an explanation for any negative behavior. It does not excuse it. Because still, it is me choosing to do something negative. I can rationalize it, and tell myself and anyone else who will listen why I am doing it. But that does not excuse me.

I agree with others here. Try to forgive yourself. And try to question why you are doing what you are doing, what you get out of it. Most of the time, we do things because we recieve some positive reinforcement from it, even if it is something negative.

Good luck to you, and take good care yourself.

leosha
 
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