My Role as Helper

[Somerville Cares]

Hello Everyone,
Sorry it's taken me so long to post, I've been so crazy looking for a
job. I'm here in my new house in NC, and going nuts without any work
to do.

I read your post Lorna, I'm sorry things have been so bad for you
lately. I wish I could blow all the problems away, but the truth of
the matter is if he doesn't want help, you can't help him. You've been
so good to him and trying to be good to yourself by standing by your
man. It's time for you to take care of you!! Hang in there!!

Here is a reading we do in our Families Anonymous group. I don't know
if I've posted this before, but it always helps me when I'm trying to
help someone I love:


Helping

My role as a helper is not to do things for the person I am trying to
help, but to be things, not trying to control and change his/her
actions, but through understanding an awareness to change my
reactions. I will change my negatives to positives; fear to faith;
contempt for what he/she may do to respect for the potential within
him/her; hostility to understanding; and manipulation or over-
protectiveness to release with love, not trying to make him/her fit a
standard or image, but giving him/her an opportunity to pursue his/her
own destiny, regardless of what that choice may be.

I will change my dominance to encouragement; panic to serenity; the
inertia of despair to the energy of my own personal growth; and self-
justification to self-understanding.

Self-pity blocks effective action.

The more I indulge in it, the more I feel that the answer to my
problems is a change in others and society, not in myself. Thus, I
become a hopeless case.

Exhaustion is the result when I use my energy in mulling over the past
with regret, or in trying to figure ways to escape a future that has
yet to arrive. Projecting an image of the future, and anxiously
hovering over it, for fear that it will or it won't come true uses all
of my energy and leaves me unable to live today. Yet living today is
the only way to have a life.

I will have no thought for the future actions of others, neither
expecting them to be better or worse as time goes on, for in such
expectations I am really trying to create. I will love and let be.

All people are always changing. If I try to judge them I do so only
on what I think I know of them, failing to realize that there is much
I do not know. I will give others credit for attempts at progress and
for having had many victories which are unknown to me.

I too am always changing, and I can make that change a constructive
one, if I am willing. I CAN CHANGE MYSELF, others I can only love.

[sunni]

Feb 28, 2008
I ws reading all the emails and had to join this group. I am taking a
course in substance abuse and I truthfully like the information am
learning.
Through the years as a substance abuse counselor I have learned many
lessons, from the clients and the proffessionals that I have worked
for. Lorna, you are absolutely right, you will never be able to make
an addict quit, the chose is theirs to make. I never believed someone
has to hit bottom before they get it, but in most cases that is why
most see the light.
I look forward to talking and reading your emails
Take Care
Sunni

On Feb 18, 9:08 pm, Somerville Cares <mongostattoomadn...@gmail.com>
wrote: