Thursday 18 January 2007

Ambivalence - yes and no!








So here's the thing I learned today about being in a state of ambivalence - my interpretation, is that I can know what I need to do, and yet not be able to get the necessary UMPH to do it.
That means for example that I can be feeling like shit, know what I need to do in order to not feel like shit, yet not be able to motivate myself to do it.
Is that laziness? Sloth? The opposite of self care? Is it the emodiement of "faith without works is dead"?
For example, knowing that writing a step 10 down about something will make me feel INFINITELY BETTER, yet simply not doing it. Whats that all about?
Here's what Wikipedia says:
"Ambivalence is a state of having emotions in contradiction, when those emotions are related to the same object, idea or person (for example, feeling both love and hatred for someone or something). The term is also commonly used to refer to situations where 'mixed feelings' of a more general sort are experienced or where a person feels uncertainty or indecisiveness concerning something."

Mixed feelings? Uncertainty? Indecisiveness (one of today's Two Pests!). That's me! C'est moi.
But it actually goes a lot further than that.

Well, today I took action. I shared something painful with a friend. I phoned my sponsor and shared it with him. I was honest with him and I asked him questions about acceptance.

As ever, he related it all back to character defects, acceptance, wilfullness, Step 4 & Step 10. Which is totally right. And am I ambivalent about it? No. Decisive action. I just ripped up someones phone number who is potentially harmful to my recover. My peace of mind.

Do I overthink things?

YES!

1 comment:

Judith said...

Hiya. Heard that I should check out your blog, so here I am. Welcome to recovery. I just did a post myself on ambivalence also partly in relation to a friendship that seemed to be affecting my sanity. Self-awareness is sometimes a nuisance.

Anyway, glad to read you, and I'll be back. ~Judith