From Al-Anon Booklet “Alcoholism the Family Disease” (Page 4)
A central issue to recovery as well as personal growth and development is taking responsibility for your problems. If you're feeling inadequate, depressed, overwhelmed, lonely or any other of the many problems we humans experience you must first understand that these are your problems not someone else's. Possession is yours and so is accountability. In the final analysis, it's up to you to do something about the problem.
The achievement of responsibility is a giant step toward fulfilling your potential. “I can take responsibility” may be a new idea for you. Try it on for size. When you really think about it, not only can you take responsibility for yourself, you must if you're going to direct your own recovery and therefore your life.
Taking responsibility for you is hardly easy. The chief difficulty rests in the fact that it requires change. The psychotherapist, Sheldon Kopp, points out that, though most of his patients enter therapy insisting on change, what they really want is to remain the same while the therapist helps them feel better. They really want to be more effective neurotics.
The fact is that—even the alteration of an unsatisfactory form of behavior—is frightening. Most mannerisms you don't like in yourself developed to defend you against fearful pressures. Using Abraham Maslow's image, “The house may be resting on sand, but at least it's standing.” The greater the threat you still perceive, the more you'll resist abandoning your defenses.
In taking responsibility for yourself, you need to give us a lot of favorite villians: parents, spouses, and friends. What they've done to you is usually minor compared to what you're doing to yourself. The analogy is sometimes made between an emotional problem and a broken leg. It's of only secondary importance how it cam about. The main thing is to repair it.
You need to face up to many ploys whose purpose is to divest you of responsibility for yourself. One is to say, “I can't,” when you mean, “I won't,” “I'd like to, but” may be translated as “I'd like to, but I won't,” which can then put your problem in focus. Another strategy is to explain you as Freud might have. Why don't you do such and such? “I can't help it; it's a compulsion.“
You can impose the impersonal form of speech on virtually every area of life. You may say, “It dropped out of my hand,” instead of “I dropped it.” “The train went off and left me,” rather than “I missed it.” IN nearly every instance the depersonalized statement is a verbal hop and jump, an effort to keep some distance between you and responsibility.
In summary, if you avoid taking responsiblity, your prospects for achieving your potengtial are unfortunately very dim. If you want to grow, you need to take responsibility for what you are doing to yourself.
Karen E. Christensen
May 3, 2009