16 Jul 2009
Chaos Living: It’s pants.
This blog is not about chems, booze or sex – so relax, it’s about the result of these pastimes – CHAOS LIVING.
Chaotic living comes from chaotic minds, so unravelling your mind set is a good place to start on the road to balanced thinking. For people with addictive personalities ( like me – but I can’t speak for everyone ) we do like to cram it in. When we go bang at it, something has to give, and it’s usually a balanced mind. In order to correct chaos living you first need to own it, and just because people who surround you are doing it too, does not mean that you will manage it as well as others.
It all depends on your awareness and game-plan.
Chaos Living is an ability, and a desire not to confront - which in time becomes a disability. Coupled with it sisters PROCRASTINATION, serial escape tactics and a hard drive for approval – the destination is RESCUE ME! . . . and a codependent ambulance friend is always at hand to hear your woes. They love hearing that record. They need you. They enable you. A true friend rarely enables.
Not confronting anger, rejection and betrayal in relationships is just a starter. Not confronting credit card debt, overdrafts and after midnight cashpoint withdrawl is the seed for future moonlight flits, change of address, gone away etc. It is also sad to witness relationships that should have ended long ago but remain held together by debt, one staying just to get the money back they loaned in the heady daze of romantic capture. It happens. Saying NO to m8′s is difficult ( they may not like me ), so YES goes on automatic pilot, another free night goes booked instead of doing the ironing you promised yourself.
Chaos living is always about shame. John Bradshaw called the core of codependency " toxic shame " and codependency is the core of all addictions. If your life is chaotic use the Highway code – Stop, Look & Listen. STOP thinking you can sort it alone, LOOK at why you have created this and LISTEN to your emotions other than fear, crisis & panic. You may need to do a bit of searching but peace, harmony and plenty of time for eveything is in there somewhere. That last clean pair of pants is always at the bottom – they need to be on top.
The Swarmite REHAB suggests that you take one night off a week to simply potter around doing all the things you meant to do and if one of the reasons you embalm yourself with escape routes and approval seeking is because you live in a shit hole – then take steps to move. Confront it. The reason that many take facebook suicide is that they can’t cope with a constant mammoth INBOX pile of unread, unwanted invites so my tip is to confront the back log each day for a short time until you see the light. DELETE, Delete, delete. Do the same with your phone and all your email addys. An untidy inbox is like a drawer with no pants in except the pair with a carrot up the front or for the ladies that pair you promised to burn but never got round to it . . . you meant to do the laundry but somehow . . .I know it’s tedius but having food in the fridge helps. Get into the habit of stocking up instead of staring at dried pasta and a tin of tomatoes. Getting ahead is essential to enjoy saner party weekends because the party of reward is lighter than the party of guilt. Yes we do need to rehab our thinking, our habits and our purposes and yes we even need to be converted – from chaos living to a clean stocked pants drawer. So this weeks healing task is to check your weekend, check your phone is charged, check the fridge and check your state of mind. Then check your Bank & CC statements. Confront the worst, the feeling will surprise you. Then prepare to party on.
ABUNDANCE comes in many forms.
I used to believe that advice to get rid of ‘unwanted behaviour’ was exactly that. That it had to focus on the fact the ‘problem behaviour’ really was something bad that needed to be fixed. And don’t get me wrong, I still agree with that. But learning more about human behaviour I have also come to see that the really interesting part in changing behaviour is to dig deep enough to get to its positive origin.
And yes, I do believe that even very bad behaviour has its origin in a positive thought. Not always on a direct level, but that all forms of behaviour are attempts to satisfy our basic needs (of being seen, heard and accepted by the group atc). So even if the end result is self-destructive addiction, it has a positive root. Not that it usually changes the things you need to do to change to a more positive and self-afferming lifestyle. But just as a little cheering up in the struggle to change a pattern that has taken a lifetime to create. To say that even if your life is a mess now, it didn’t start like that. And that there is a way back.
Anyway, that’s just me. Keep up the good work.
Swedish chef
July 20th, 2009 at 9:32 ampermalink
” To say that even if your life is a mess now, it didn’t start like that. And that there is a way back. ”
Thank for this thought Swedish Chef – yes alcoholics on park benches didn’t start there, it’s where they ended up and I have seen many turn around their lives. Feral kids on sink estates were once little babies but dysfunction occurred along the way. Chaos living is used by many people as a motivator so it works, but then I used drugs as a motivator too until the chaos was so great I could not walk my way out of it, only crawl. Then I had to be carried. Now I have the experience of saner thinking and living – the old way holds no allure.
theswarmite
July 20th, 2009 at 9:47 ampermalink
Very timely writing.
Addictions take many forms.
Realizing what behaviours are addictions/distractions from working on oneself is a start. To move from there and break those cycles is harder, but we are all ‘worth it’.
Lafang
July 21st, 2009 at 2:18 ampermalink
Thanx Lafang for reminding me that everyone is capable and worthy of change. The problem is I think that many try to do it alone and stumble at the first furlong and give up. That’s why gyms are full of Personal Trainers.
theswarmite
July 21st, 2009 at 8:09 pmpermalink