Whether or not you or someone you know has a personality disorder, healing our personal fears by strengthening our Will helps. However, some of the fears we have initiate from those around us, and sometimes,
by those closest to us, as they attempt to inflict fear, obligation and guilt (FOG) in subtle, or not so subtle ways, including but not limited to emotional blackmail and manipulation. Whether our fears originate from our own minds and hearts, or whether our fears originate as a projection from others that we consciously or unconsciously agree to accept, the remedy is still the same. Heal your Will by strengthening and using it.
FOG was first coined by Dr. Susan Forward, who wrote “Emotional Blackmail” with Donna Frazier. The book describes feelings that a person often has when in a relationship with someone who suffers from a personality disorder. These two women also authored the book, “The Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.”
One of the most recent courses I took was on personality disorders, and the possible solutions. As I thought, people with personality disorders rarely improve with medications. Whether people took medications or not, what improved their situation was their own drive and wish to improve. People did not improve when they chose not to, no matter how intensely those around them wanted them to. Addictions to drugs, alcohol, drinking, gluttony, gambling, and everything else in life we can over to it on, are crutches people with personality disorders use to cope with their dysfunction.
We can only heal our own addictions ourselves, with the help of the good God above, and only then, if we want to improve. Why do I say if we want to improve? There is a hidden trap that can sabotage us if we do not fully realize what is going on. On a surface level, we know when we feel bad, our self-esteem is low, or we know we need to do something because we know we do not like the way we are feeling. That is when the sabotage appears.
Sabotage infiltrates our thinking. Often the next step in the thinking process is that we review our past failures, even though we tried as best we could to overcome them. We acknowledge how hard we really did try, and then failed, again. After that comes the thought, “Why bother?”
The key to healing personality disorders as well as the addictions that so often accompany them, is in our next thought after that. We can break in to the negative stream of self-destructing coping behaviors.
The first order of business is to tell yourself to STOP. Stop in your tracks. You CAN take control of your thoughts. You can do this. You think your thoughts, always. Your thoughts do not think you.
Improving on how we feel is a three step process
- Desire to feel better
- Deciding to do something about it
- You are not a victim
Step One, desire to feel better. This comes naturally, no matter how sick we think we are, unless we have beat ourselves beyond recognition. Realize you are still “in there” and you can feel better. Yes, when it comes to the coping behaviors that we have learned like addictions, which backfire as they always will, know there is another way to healing your mind and your habits. Get back that desire to feel better.
Step Two, decide to do something about it. Yes you can. Today, like any other day, you will decide what to do with the next 12-24 hours. Even if an interruption or surprise happens in your day, you will decide what to do with that. You have been deciding what to do with every action your have ever made, good or bad, all of your life. Today you can realize that you can decide to do something different, like beginning the healing process to feel better.
Step Three is HUGE. YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM. You are not a victim of your life. Life did not happen to you without your consent along the way. Life is not always kind or loving. That does not mean that the answer to being hurt along the way is to become hateful, angry and bitter. That only increases the trouble you are currently having. Once you realize that you are not a victim of your life, you can then take the necessary steps to make it better.
Many of the postings in this blog are self help tools that benefit everyone who wishes to try them. They work 100 percent of the time. The only
time they will not work, is if someone stops doing them. In this case, focusing our attention on healing our Will, not giving in to everyone else’s ideas of what you shoud do in your life, makes our Will stronger. When your Will is strong, family, friends and everyone else, cannot pull your emotional strings as if you were a puppet dancing across life’s stage at the whims of your puppetmaster family, friends and others.
These dysfunctional habits of having or accepting fear, obligation, guilt, emotional blackmail and manipulation in our lives, often occur to us slowly. We may wonder if something is wrong with us, or why we constantly fall into these traps. It is not until we become aware we are living our life by walking on eggshells, that we say enough is enough, and strengthen our Will.
We must be in balance to be healthy. Strengthen your Will. It is a God-given quality for us to use. We are not doormats.
All personality disorders benefit from healing their Will. Even if you are a person with no personality disorders, you will benefit from strengthening your Will.
Stengthening our Will is not the same thing as turning into a bully, or bowling people over with our words or actions. If you are going to try to strengthening your Will, go easy on yourself as you start first observing yourself, then trying on new behaviors of finding your voice and asserting yourself. You will find a way that will work for you. But remember, it takes 21 days to change a habit. Stay with it and you will bloom.