This is http://www.essayz.com/a9102022.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.} ========================================================== %IMPROPER UNCERTAIN FEELINGS EMOTIONS AFFECT ACCEPT 910202 Codependents often seek to be proper about how they feel, think and relate affectively. They feel uncomfortable if they are not feeling, thinking, emoting and relating in the properly defined ways. In the absence of proper definitions of how they should feel, think, emote and affectively relate---they feel ill at ease. If they fail to have proper feelings, thoughts, emotions and affective relationships---they feel ill at ease; even if they do not know what is proper. Feeling ill at ease is not a proper emotion when one should know how properly to feel. Thus codependents are doubly ill-at-ease when they feel ill-at-ease due to failures to be proper through lack of conformity and lack of definitions to conform to. Yet, for them it is impossible to identify the source of their feeling ill-at- ease, for the collusion within which they play their games of mutual self deception have a rule which says that they are not playing any games of mutual self deception; and that they must not stop playing those games which they are not playing. Children learn that there are both proper and improper: feelings, desires, thoughts, fears and hopes--- by how they are treated and responded to in their early years when issues first come up regarding: sexuality, fear, desire, holidays, visits, departures, religion, etc. They are taught by example that there are proper and improper responses; and that it is ultimately important to know what is proper. These lessons are programmed in in ways which are barely accessible to conscious and rational thought. Thus it is very difficult to amend the lessons in adult years, because they cannot be fully remembered, they were not cognitive, they were programmed in by ultimate authorities who were not to be consciously questioned, and the lessons are overlaid with blankets of fear. Children learn messages at a number of levels: (1) There are particular proper emotional and cognitive responses to particular situations and it is important to control your responses so as to be proper in those particular situations. (2) There is a proper response to each situation and it is important to know what the proper response is in each situation; it is unacceptable not to know because ignorance is no excuse before the law. (3) It is not o.k. to ask, if you do not know. The message to children is that they are as persons not o.k., are defective. There must be something wrong with them if they cannot cope within the rules of the most powerful and most supportive people that they know. Thus they cannot think of themselves with healthy self esteem. They are thus set up to become addicts and codependents, just like their parents. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================