{"id":5149,"date":"2016-05-07T16:14:50","date_gmt":"2016-05-07T20:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=5149"},"modified":"2016-05-10T16:33:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T20:33:22","slug":"step-four-searching-and-fearless-moral-inventory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=5149","title":{"rendered":"Step Four: Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to write about my \u201ccharacter defects.\u201d\u00a0 When we did the confession in Church I thought I could own some things.\u00a0 I think about hardening my heart or closing my heart against God.\u00a0 But I have good reason to do that.\u00a0 Of course I would protect my heart against the \u201ccapricious, malicious and willful<\/a>\u201d God.\u00a0 I am desperately willing and eager to hear the Voice of the real God, Creative Power of the Universe, and it happens so rarely.\u00a0 Perhaps I\u2019m too eager?\u00a0 But that\u2019s a problem for parents and boyfriends, not for God, surely, whose \u201cno matter what<\/a>\u201d love is always coming toward me.\u00a0 When I can\u2019t hear or feel Divine Presence \u2014 suddenly she\u2019s right behind me now, her hands holding my shoulders, sending me a wave of warmth and love \u2014 it\u2019s because I have so much trouble trusting, especially Higher Power, because my deepest understanding of Higher Power is based on my untrustworthy parents.\u00a0 I\u2019m not trying to blame them to get myself off the hook.\u00a0 I\u2019m just trying to understand how early experiences have shaped my expectations \u2014 and my expectations either bring what they expect, or only let me see what I expect.\u00a0 I think of the trip with Ricky where the people I was comfortable with were always leaving, and I would feel the pain of abandonment and not look forward to the \u201cnext friend.\u201d \u00a0It was years later that\u00a0I saw that \u201cnext friends\u201d kept showing up.\u00a0 Far from using my parents as an excuse, I have struggled \u201cunrelentingly\u201d to change those things about me that darken and restrict my life.\u00a0 One is my unwillingness to inflict my ugly and depressed self on anyone else.\u00a0 This causes me to hold back, isolate, and not ask for help.\u00a0 I\u2019m working on the \u201casking for help\u201d piece because I see how much I need it, and I also have some experiences of people being delighted to help me.<\/p>\n

One of the “character defects”\u00a0that comes to mind is spilling food on people\u2019s furniture and failing to notice it or apologize.\u00a0 I think of myself as a perfectionist who would never make a mistake, but there are a number of times when I have inconvenienced people, and not only did I not apologize, I didn\u2019t even\u00a0 notice that I\u2019d done it.\u00a0 I can see the cause, mother\u2019s inability to forgive or accept amends, so I don\u2019t beat myself up about it, but I still feel badly that I was so unconscious and and also lacking in self-knowledge.<\/p>\n

I was thinking recently about character defects and hating myself, and wanted to write down why it makes sense to hate me, and I couldn\u2019t think of a thing.\u00a0 That was an odd \u2014 \u201cslap in the face\u201d are the words that come \u2014 but it was more in the nature of a wake-up call.\u00a0 I thought of selfish, but I don\u2019t really believe I\u2019m selfish any more.\u00a0 I\u2019m beginning to see my enormous generosity \u2014 building and endowing Neskaya, large sums of money donated to good causes, helping my friends financially \u2014 \u201cselfish\u201d and \u201cstingy\u201d are things my mother called me or implied that I was, but she\u2019s the one who was selfish and stingy.<\/p>\n

I think about the labels I have for myself: \u201cdoesn\u2019t deserve to be alive,\u201d \u201cworthless and rotten and should be dead,\u201d although I don\u2019t think them in those words, it\u2019s just a felt sense that I\u2019m trying to verbalize.\u00a0 I see now that they aren\u2019t \u201ccharacter defects\u201d at all, they are judgements<\/span>. and they are not things I can change by effort.\u00a0 Either they are true or not true.\u00a0 Another thing is that when I am doing something like teach dance or make art, the question of \u201cdeserving to live\u201d just disappears, I don\u2019t even say \u201cI deserve to live.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s meaningless.\u00a0 I\u2019m here.\u00a0 Whether or not I deserve to live has nothing to do with that.\u00a0 I also see that those \u201cjudgements\u201d reflect how I was treated as a baby.\u00a0 I was treated as though my needs were unimportant, my cries for help were often unanswered, I never felt loved and cherished.<\/p>\n

I see that \u201ctoo quick to make judgements\u201d both of myself and of others is a character defect and I\u2019ve been working hard to change it.\u00a0 I think of a number of people who have told me that I\u2019m their only friend that doesn\u2019t judge them, and I\u2019m always surprised to hear that.<\/p>\n

Any other real character defects?\u00a0 I have a tendency to judge myself as \u201clazy,\u201d to say I haven\u2019t done anything, and other people have pointed out that I\u2019ve done a lot, and don\u2019t value what I do. Then there\u2019s pushing myself instead of taking care of myself.\u00a0 That\u2019s also something I\u2019m working on, because it can be tricky to discern whether or not something I want to do, or something I think I \u201cshould\u201d do, is draining myself too much.\u00a0 There are times when I want to do something and simply don\u2019t have the energy.\u00a0 The things I think I should do, rather than want to do, are probably \u2014 surely \u2014 applying someone else\u2019s judgement not my own.\u00a0 I am working to get this very tricky balance and it\u2019s a body feeling, a sort of IRNK inside me, that lets me know that something isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n

\u201cCharacter defects\u201d is wording used by AA.\u00a0 For myself, and I think mostly for other people, including alcoholics, what we are calling \u201ccharacter defects\u201d are not inborn defects, but dysfunctional behaviors learned from dysfunctional parents and a dysfunctional culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnrelentingly\u201d is a word my therapist used to describe my pursuit of healing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wanted to write about my \u201ccharacter defects.\u201d\u00a0 When we did the confession in Church I thought I could own some things.\u00a0 I think about hardening my heart or closing my heart against God.\u00a0 But I have good reason to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-spirit","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}