Free online summit: Eneagrams 11 – 15 June

Hi,

More free online summits. This on the use and possibilities of the Eneagrams.

I am going to join because I need to look for another way of making money and my enneagram says ‘Perfectionist’ – which is funny in a very much not funny way.

Here is part of the email I got:

What if you had a roadmap — a “soul map” — for understanding who you are and what makes the people around you tick? A time-tested system that integrates your whole being and can be applied to every area of your life?

And what if this map could help you tap into your essential nature, resulting in truly authentic relationships and a deep sense of living on purpose?

This map exists, and it’s the Enneagram… a powerful personality typing system that serves as a profound gateway to your inner wisdom.

It can shed light on behaviors which might be undermining your ability to access wholeness, true intimacy and fulfilment of your life’s dreams.

Studying the Enneagram can be life changing — not only personally, but professionally as well…

That’s why I’m excited to invite you to one of our most popular annual events, The Enneagram Global Summit — a gathering of today’s top Enneagram experts who’ll bring light to this powerful psychological and spiritual tool for accessing more self-awareness and compassion for yourself and those around you.

Free Online Event
Enneagram Global Summit
June 11–15, 2018

We’re excited to bring you more than 45 of the world’s top experts — including Claudio Naranjo, Russ Hudson, Helen Palmer, Cheryl Richardson, Dan Siegel, Katie Hendricks, Robert Holden, A.H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), Jessica Dibb, Dr. David Daniels (posthumously), and others — sharing the latest insights and applications to integrate into your own personal growth journey and to take your Enneagram knowledge deeper.

During The Enneagram Global Summit, you’ll discover key insights and practices to break free from unhealthy patterns, reconnect with your true Self and realize your highest potential.

I hope you’ll join us for this special online gathering!

RSVP here for The Enneagram Global Summit — at no charge.

If you’re new to this ancient system, you’ll be guided to the best tests and practices for determining your individual type — including ways to differentiate between “look-alike” types.

You’ll start working with the core patterns of your type and begin to connect with the parts of yourself that allow you to respond to life spontaneously and creatively.

If you’re already well-versed in the Enneagram, you’ll take your work even deeper — empowering you to make YOUR contributions to the world!

Plus, you’ll fine-tune your understanding of how to use the less balanced aspects of each type as catalysts for personal and spiritual growth — and how to use the higher aspects of each type to raise your level of consciousness.

If you want a greater connection with your unique gifts, as well as more self-acceptance, self-love and compassion for others, join the amazing panel of presenters for this life-changing event.

RSVP here for The Enneagram Global Summit — at no charge.

I am happy that I quit. Having difficulty with not eating chocolate for the ‘Ramadan-light’ (no, that is not an official term :-)) I do pointed out that my transfer addictions are big so I started reading ‘The addictive personality’ by Craig Nakken again. I read that 2 times now and this is the 3rd. Still, every sentence is quote worthy. And again I experience it as comforting that this whole disease or what you want to call it is described in a book(let) even before I reached the legal drinking age. If you don’t have a copy, look it up on the net, plenty of second-hand versions around too.

What I find stressful and depressing but at times invigorating is that there are so many layers to peel off, so many layers of denial. And again and again I notice that it is COMPASSION which actually enables me to open my eyes to the denial. The hugbudy appreciating the abundance of my figure enabled me to actually look at it instead of scan it (while irritated).

And about compassion; I finished the ‘There is nothing wrong with you and on days I could stick to what it says but wow, it is difficult to change this dismissive behaviour of mine around. It does not make sense to re-read now so I continued in the Nakken book in order to see how he finds addiction leads to self-hate and lack of compassion. There is so much going on in the world which weighs me down deeply. But 2 things happening these days, thanks to Cristal Clear: I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. And also: if I want to be able to work on worldpeace, I need to make peace with me and my past first. Isn’t it funny how the 12 steps pass by in my life and writing and they all seem to be needed in order to become clear, transparent.

A quote from Nakken: ‘Addicts keep delaying life issues as a way of nurturing themselves.’ How is that for a spot on description of procrastinating? By the way: the book includes a very clear explanation of how perfectionism builds up in a life and why it is so strongly linked to addiction.

Wishing you a nice sober evening/day. Hope the new week brings good sober stuff into your life.

xx, Feeling

 

Uninspired post

Well, post number 296 about trying to do stuff.

I did stuff. 😦 I changed GP to a homeopathic one.  All worked out rude because GP3 had already send a file request to GP2 and I did not know that. Not elegant at all. 😦 So much for taking care of me myself and I.

GP3 said I should lose weight if I wanted to lessen the amount of oestrogen in my body. My breasts are swollen because of it. Luxury problem, I know, I know. 😉 Lost 3 kg, then gained a kilo in 3 days. Did not eat that much, used to eat waaaaay more. Guess I’m not flushing it out anymore.

Finished Nakken, tried reading a new book but it is all too 12 steppy for me. Too much association with the strict religious threats my father made. Can’t read 1 sentence without feeling suffocated. My father was addicted to fantasising about the end of times. He would lecture us about it, on and on and on and on. Everybody would be saved, but only if we did what he said. Not me because I was a whore, so he decided. Getting tired of all the old pain shit. Should be doing stuff. The good thing of not drinking is that things are actually leaving my system. When I cry it helps to cry while before it felt like I was only adding onto the pile of shit.

Gonna do my online anti-alcohol training. It is getting a little boring. Same pictures, same buttons and they don’t mention if I ‘m doing better or worse. I asked them if I can get a view of my scores but they have not yet replied.

Sooo, nothing nice to write? Well, today’s weather is my favorite. (So why am I here inside?)

And I am moderately happy that I quit. Still happy, but it is not very special anymore. Is that a trap? Doesn’t feel like it but I notice I do get susceptible to feeling bad if I’m not happy. Hahahaaa! And I have only just worked that out. Hmmmm.

Happy

‘Happy‘ Use it in a sentence today!  😉

Well, shitload of sadness here. Nakken is continuing on how families should be to be functional as opposed to well, dis-functional. Not crisis-focused but supportive, again, functional. Sorry for the moaning and self pitty but I found I did not get to get that. And it hurts. Reading how things could have been hurts more than reading and realising how fucked up I am. And finally, at 44, I get this feeling, I wish I had a family of my own, I would have done it aaaaaaaaaalllllll differently and we would have been happy ever after.

Yeah, right.

Happy that I quit, not happy with the stuff I need to work out. Happy that I did give me a second chance at live though. Happy for meeting the old GP that showed me that there was a way out. Proud that I did get out. 🙂

Answering my own blog

Hurt. Damage.

In my earlier post on addiction and blogging I was wondering about my way of writing. How I throw stuff ‘out there’, hardly do/did any censoring and treat people like speaking to a wall. The point is not so much in the throwing, well it is but the point is this sentence:

But that’s what I do, use peoples as a wall to talk to.

What!?!?! It would be sad enough if I said ‘use walls as people to talk to’. But the other way around? That is, rather disconnected. Hmmm. And what’s with the ‘peoples’? And ‘use’? And ‘talk to’ in stead of ‘speak with’?

I guess this is why I can write this blog and leave the crazy shit in it without censoring (too much). In my mind I can retreat in 2 seconds and delete it. Shit, haven’t looked up if I can actually delete the blog. In my mind nobody listens anyway so it does not really matter how crazy and unadjusted I am. That is some fucked up shit. :-(. Sigh. Sad now.

Came to realise this while reading up on trust and how families with addicted parents are crisis-focused. Works out that there are a whole lot of people out there that actually trust people and that people can generally be nice AND continue to be so because they are trustworthy. Didn’t know, thought it was only in LHOP.  But ‘Castastrophe muss nicht sein.’ it seems.

‘Do you trust people?’

‘Yes! Well, No. But I pretend I do. That makes it easier.’

Shitload of pretend behaviour around me. Keeping up appearances. I HATED that in my mother. Well, actually glad I did pretend because some of the intentions are destructive enough as they are. Aaah, drink craving. Fuck off!! You’ve done enough damage.

Image flush. Like seeing my life pass in front of me. Not rewinding this time, just circling. Whaaaaaa! Wheeeeheeeee! Damn, who needs shit when you’ve got yourself?

This just feels very appropriate now.

The sounds, the fun, the melody, the name of the original song, the overwhelming beat and most likely the empty hall 😦 and the person coming to set a stop to it all :-(. Not sure how the third person watching fits in. Ha! Should have wiki-ed that before I wrote it :-D. Gheghegheghe. No, not funny.

All in all happy that I quit and proud of it.

 

Resistance and the Nakken diagram

Reading Nakken again. It’s on resistance and I LOVE it. Finally, finally an answer to a question that has bothered me for years. I’ve been doing courses in haptonomy and the were lovely. Following a course I would be zen for days, really Digging It All. And then when the next course would come up I would feel this resistance. Something nagging, something that wanted to sabotage me, something that made me set two alarms instead of one, that made me distrust my intentions, that made me check, check and double-check the timetables of the train I needed to take. And then when I’ld arive I’ld be like ‘NOOOOOOOOO’.

And now I know how this works! Gonna do an old fashion content steal:

As shown in the Pleasure, Power, Meaning and Connection diagram on pages 68, 85, and 90, there is an area named resistance. It stands between our drive for pleasure and power and our drive for meaning. Our drive for connections which propels us upward toward meaning, can be subverted by our resistance. We can therefore stay caught in the cycles of power accruing power and pleasure-seeking pleasure, and though we may catch glimpses of meaning, we will not partake in it in a meaningful and beneficial way.

Human beings have a desire for change and a desire for permanence. Though we have a natural desire to express our spiritual nature, we also have a natural resistance to change and become spiritual beings. We resist transformation of the self into spirit because it goes against our survival instincts. We fear we will cease to exist if any form of spiritual transformation takes place. Because we fear giving up our egohold on the things of this world, we tell ourselves subconsciously that it is better to stay in control, avoid pain through pleasure, and not surrender.

YES, YES, YES!!! I subscribe to that, which is a piece of page 91 of ‘The addictive personality – understanding the addictive personality and compulsive behaviour by Craig Nakken’ – the 1996 edition. Do you agree that the book is quote worthy? 🙂

And I now I also know why I don’t understand his diagram. In the book Nakken explains that addicts are out of balance when it comes to pleasure, power and meaning. To much of the first two, too little of the last. Nakken seems to place pleasure and power opposite meaning although he recognizes that there are ethical versions of both pleasure and power.

I agree with everything I read so far but had (have?)  difficulty understanding the diagram that he made of this. I think it is because he aligns stuff vertically. To me, the power-driven person, that indicates hierarchy and I guess he means that too because he writes about ‘propelling upwards’. Meaning is up, power is down, obviously….

I do not agree with that. I think, in general, that all three (meaning, power, pleasure) are equally important parts of human and animal life. Kids do not learn if they do not experience pleasure, neither humans or animals can take care of their own if they don’t understand and practice power and sitting around being all meaningful all day is not going to take care of the mortgage. So I would not vertically align these 3 in a diagram and say that the one thing is better than the other.

By putting meaning up as the ultimate goal he disses both power and pleasure. But meaning is not the goal. The goal is sustainability in the sense of sustainable procreation-ish; to build a life that is happy (pleasure), responsible (power) and meaningful (meaning) in a society (connected) that supports that and to which I support. Traditionally, in the biological sense, power, pleasure and meaning contribute to that equally. And of course you can argue that happy is not only ‘pleasure’ but also ‘meaningful’ and responsible is not only power but also has to have some meaning. So I’d put sustainability in the center and have pleasure, power and meaning circle around that. Guess that did not fit on the page. 🙂

And I soooo need to get a life. Imagine taking one and a half hour to work out and write down why you don’t understand something and to come up with your own version in order to… Well, I needed to work it out because I thought it was me. Turns out it’s him?!  😀

And while you continue your life I’ll just sit here and see when I get to livin’.

Being right makes me superior

Today I continued with Craig Nakken on power issues. The first half of the book is about addiction and how it progresses and how an addictive personality develops. The second half, or at least for as far as I have come is about the pleasure and power driven versus driven by meaning. Where as the last thing is the good thing 😀 So it’s more about healing. And that’s good, I want some.

I started the second part about a week ago and never continued. Couldn’t read it. The words just made no connection in my head, could not understand it. When reading books like these I am very aware of situations like that because mostly it means that I’m taking off and don’t want to learn what it says. Traps, traps… The subject was about power issues. Hah. I got stuck on one of the diagrams  because to me it does not make sense. But he is very, very good with words so I finally stopped trying to understand his diagram and I could read again. He might have drawn it like it is just to fit on the page. Tricky things to say in a subject concerning power issues 😉 but I got stuck on the diagram for days so hey I put it out here.

The first half of the book was already mind-boggling because EVERY SENTENCE was applicable to me.  Here I am, feeling all not normal and way too special and then there are at least 60 pages written 1988!!!! and it is me on a platter. The second half of about 60 pages is the same, only some parts of the pleasure driven person do not seem applicable. I have always drank my mood from below zero to zero, so it it felt more like self medication than pleasure but maybe I should read that part again. I am big on the grieving and that comes with the pleasure driven mode.

Today I read 25 pages on the power driven person. These were so intense that I went to bed and slept for 2 hours after reading. 🙂 I learned a lot. During the reading I am continuously aware of  ‘how does this information connect to my energy, body, thinking, intentions’. But somehow I have not remembered a lot, was not a brain-brain thing maybe. Might need to read it again.

The only thing  I do remember is: people who are power driven are convinced that being right makes them superior to others. Which is exactly a sentence that I have used I think 10 years ago no, if not longer, to describe the family I come from. The right fighting attitude does wonders for your scores at school, but that’s about al.

Went on a lovely evening out with friends. Booze is everywhere and today my old habits kicked in. I saw it was 22:00 o’clock when we parted and I thought: ‘Shit, just missed the openinghours of the supermarket, now I have to go to the shop with the late hour opening.’ Well, I never finished the second half of that sentence but the first was there. I notice I am getting a little bit more relaxed with drink think. But there is a curiosity in that which I don’t like. It is the one leading up to: ‘I have been such a good girl, I might as well give it one try to see what I miss.’  I know that from stopping with smoking.

I’m trying to find an answer to that which is not ‘AND YOU SHOULD NEVER DRINK AGAIN STUPID BITCH HAVEN’T YOU LEARNED FROM ALL THAT YOU HAVE DONE WRONG?!?!?!. IF YOU WANT  TO WASTE YOUR LIFE YOU CAN DO THAT BUT NOT IN THIS HOUSE!!!!’

Looking at this I think both the curiosity and the berating come from the addict. So this is what it looks like.

‘Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself  too much or berate yourself either.’

2,5 KG

Yeah, what I forgot: I’ve lost 2,5kg now and about 4-5 if you count the weight gain that I had directly after stopping. Not even training yet. Should though, had this 1 second nightmare view in a dream where all my skin was sagging. Gheghe.

On my way to read Nakken again. On power. Seems to be an issue. 😀

Get it right this time around

Day 10

It’s day 10, on, or during this day all the alcohol should be finally out of my body. Based on advice from Jason Vale I will now stop counting the days. ‘Counting days is something you do in prison, you are not in prison, you have free yourself!’

I’m on page 66 of Nakken. Something about the drive to connect. Big issue, can’t even read it. Words go in and out, don’t even stick in my the brain. It touches where I think (know) I am strange. Either too little or too much. Awkward. Awkward.

There are things in connecting that I have never learned. Having a father that has Aspergers probably didn’t help and living on a farm far away from other people neither. Very little social life.

Can’t change what’s done. Can try to see what’s going on now. Feel as awkward as I did when growing into my womens body, arms, legs, clumsiness and all these feelings racing. That is about the time that I first started drinking. I think it is why I started drinking and why I continued along that road. To get rid of all the awkwardness. To not feel.

Well, going to see if I can get it right this time around. 🙂

And breathe….

Day 9

Still reading Craig Nakken’s Addictive Personality. Thought I was unique, now it seems that every word he writes is applicable to my situation. I could quote the whole book here.

While reading I get flashbacks, see where the situation is/was applicable in my life, where it connects to me on an energy level, see where my intentions are corrupted. And, breathe through it. It’s a lot to process. I try not to go down the love/hate track and I only continue with another sentence until I have found a place within me where what I read, and how it affects me, has become knowledge, when I can see, understand and let go.

Sometimes, I don’t think I have the right to not hate me for what I have done to me and others. Then I feel back and realise that nothing of the harmful things that I have done to others and me, I would have done voluntarily.

Powerless. Overwhelming.

 

And breathe…

I stopped drinking, the cat is changing

Day 8

It’s day 8 and by now I was hoping to see some signs of weightloss because I eat 24 sandwiches less in one day. That should count, shouldn’t it? And I’m not frying eggs with bacon in the morning anymore to eat myself back to life. But the only one loosing weight is the cat. She eats less now I have more genuine attention for her. 🙂

Further: still reading Nakken. The book walks the reader through the processes of getting addicted and experiences and thoughts of the addict. While reading I get flashbacks of my own history, recognition. Doing a lot of grieving and trying to get the hang of ‘letting go’ and ‘to have mercy’ or, if not that, accept what I experience as knowledge of my history. Very curious after the schematics (is that the word?) that cause addicts to have power issues. They’re coming up in a few pages.

And as a real addict I still haven’t done what I should actually do:

1 Be in RL contact with people (am going out to do some shopping)

2 Start organising my life again (and pay bills)