This is http://www.essayz.com/a9004291.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %CHOOSE BE DISHONEST CODEPENDENT ADDICT VICTIM ROLE 900429 Some people choose to be, to play at being, victims who choose to perceive themselves as without any power to fundamentally change their lives. They talk themselves into their roles and sincerely play their roles in the belief that they do not have the power to play any other role. Addictive and codependent people play the roles which they play in the light of how they talk to themselves about themselves. By how they choose to talk to themselves about themselves, they cast themselves in the role of helpless victims and see themselves in that light. Blame, fault, responsibility, power and authority is talked away from themselves in their self-talk. Addicts and codependent people do not honestly accept responsibility for the choices which they do make, and so they cannot learn from their mistakes. They blame others, saying it is other people's fault because it is other people who have the responsibility, the power and the authority to do what needed to be done to rescue the actor from the condition of being a victim. Their condition cannot be their fault because they do not have power, authority or responsibility; they are essentially victims in their own eyes. Addicts and codependents do not regard themselves as being the authors of their choices; they regard themselves as not having author-ity, as not having power to author any creative initiatives by which their lives would be more satisfying. Addicts and codependents do not regard themselves as having the power to be response-able; they regard themselves as not having the power to be honestly responsive in imaginative ways. They compulsively react without integrative thought or affection. Addicts and codependents play their roles as victims because they are under the dishonest impression that it is more satisfying to play the role of victim than to demonstrate response-ability, author-ity, and power in being themselves with integrity. So long as addicts and their supportive codependents continue to choose to play their roles as victims; no amount of technical assistance, no clever choice of fixes, and no amount of external unsolicited advice will get them out of their gutters. Only they can start to get themselves out of their gutter by choosing to stop playing the chosen roles of helpless victims. They do have the power to choose to talk to themselves, and to invent new roles in which they are unwilling to be victims, and do all that they can do to avoid being victimized by themselves and/or others. People who associate with addicts and their supportive codependents have the power to help to create contexts in which people can all learn from their own and other people's mistakes; doing so in the absence of rejection, alienation, defensiveness, and invulnerability. Addicts and codependents need the support and encouragement of healthy people of integrity in a community which has communal integrity. They do not need to be rescued by heroic efforts designed to compensate for their foolish dishonest choices; such heroic efforts teach them to continue to play their foolish dishonest roles as victims. Addicts and codependents need to be confronted with the truth about their choices and the natural consequences of their choices. Heroic efforts to rescue them from the consequences of their foolish choices help them to continue to play their collusive games of mutual self deception as apparently helpless victims. Dishonest games do not lead to recovery from their dis-ease. Their efforts to achieve ease in dishonest ways is what leads them into their dis-eases; they cannot be honestly at ease in the face of their dishonesty. Addicts and codependents often seek to show that they are victims of purely objective conditions; looking for scientifically provable causes for their dis-ease. When such efforts to find causes help them to maintain their collusive games of mutual self deception, the efforts will not help them recover; for recovery is undermined by all forms of dishonesty, even in the presence of knowledge and technology which is objectively correct. Addicts and codependents are ill-at-ease with their dis-ease because of their dishonesty which cannot be fixed by any form of technology or objective knowledge. It is not the knowledge or technology which is lacking. What is lacking is the willingness to play their own unique roles on the stage of life in honest ways and with personal integrity. Seeking more knowledge and technology as fixes for the dis-eases of addiction and codependence is often a dishonest game of technocratic pretense. Knowledge and techniques are not evil; they do not of themselves generate alienation. It is people who dishonestly seek, represent and use knowledge and techniques who generate alienation. Their behavior is alienative, even when it is objectively correct and successful. Successful science and technology are not the keys to achieving control over addictive and codependent behaviors. Addicts and codependents are trying to gain control over their behaviors by trying one fix after another without being honest about themselves; and while their efforts fail time after time, they do not learn from their failures because they are dishonest. Their dilemma is a reflexive personal dilemma, not an objective technical problem. Recovery of integrity and health is possible through honest reflexive dialogue, not through dishonest technological fixes. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================