Compliance and
guilt are ways that many a client has hoodwinked an unwary sponsor or
therapist.
Shame-based
people tend to seek out and even embrace punishment.
Admitting
guilt and paying for it enhances the denial of what they most deeply
feared - quitting doing ... fill in
the blank. To have quit whatever it was ... fill in the blank ...
then the individual would have to admit that his or her life was out of control
... drinking say ... thus by
admitting that would expose the drinker as a flawed and defective human
being.
The theory that is held by the uninitiated says,
no one willingly wants to have their face
ground down into their shame or pain … that
is not necessarily so, some need their shame fix and thus will go out of
the way to obtain it.
A Shame Fix.
The conundrum to the whole thing is: the only way out of the compulsive/addictive
shame cycle is to embrace the shame, not ignore it and don’t pretend it does
not exist.
That is what it means to surrender.
Surrender is
motivated by the acceptance of shame.
For an addict, surrender is the first true act of freedom since
beginning the addiction. It is best
embodied in the following: Talking about our
problems, mapping out our family’s dysfunction is not the same as taking
action. Action means that I've let go of
control and I'm willing to listen to someone else and do it his way, rather
than my own way. [1]