Developing Skills for a Successful Family Meeting
Battleground Beliefs
The Biggest obstacle to creating change in the lives of the iTeam and your loved one are their Battleground Beliefs. Battleground Beliefs are adaptive beliefs that drive coping behaviors and routines.
Battleground Beliefs are developed over a lifetime and are created to manage emotions around life's tragedies and triumphs. What served someone in the past to get by, get ahead (and get stuck) may be "voted off the island" so to speak and eliminated forever if necessary to make way for change.
Beliefs are often potent and can be either positive or negative force in your life. They determine what type of work you do, what sort of home you live in, and how healthy you are. Beliefs can be used as excuses that stand in the way of success.
Explore what common Battleground Beliefs are, and understand how they shape the iTeam and the intervention effort. Each of these fundamental zones of self-belief become a battleground on which the loved self and the unloved self go to war over the self-soothing and formed habits.
Relationship Beliefs
The satisfaction you get from relationships with family and others in your life also influences your self-concept. Too many of us lug around beliefs about how we should relate to others such as the following:
When we hold beliefs like these, we torment ourselves. By cluttering our minds with repeated thoughts of unworthiness, we disconnect from others. All of these lead to destructive habits.
Capability Beliefs
More often than not, people facing addiction believe that they are bad or unworthy. They feel inadequate and play down their gifts, talents and abilities. They suffer from pessimism and low self esteem and find it challenging to love themselves with consistency and vigor.
Some of the dark, dis-empowering beliefs here include: "I'll never be able to lose weight", "I'm a weak person", "I'll never succeed in life".
Capability beliefs produce destructive "I can't excuses". When you use the excuse "I can't", you send a negative and self-limiting message to your brain. Consciously, you might just pass it off as a simple excuse, but to your subconscious mind it send a message about your abilities or inabilities. Telling yourself repeatedly that you can't do this and can't do that will have you believing that you can't do much of anything after a while. How you view yourself and your capabilities definitely affects your health too.
Self-soothing Beliefs
Situations do not cause you to eat, drink, or act destructively. Rather, it's what you internalize about those various situations. If you didn't get a promotion, would you assume that your boss doesn't like you? That you're about to be fired? If you tend to interpret events in the most ego-deflating or anxiety-producing way, then your tension is at least partly self-generated.
It's common for people with addictions to use day to day stressors as an excuse to overheat, drink, or make unhealthy choices. It is important to take a look at how you respond to events, and then modify or change your response to a healthier and happier one. When you do that you develop a new understanding of how you can view yourself and treat yourself.
Beliefs As Choice
The most important thing to realize about a belief is that it's a choice. A belief is something a person holds to be true without necessarily being able to adequately prove it. Battleground Beliefs create reality, meaning that whatever one believes affects their actions, which in turn means that beliefs will be gradually reinforced and will persist.
To change our negative beliefs, we have to know what they are. It seems like a simple step, but in reality, some of our strongest beliefs i.e. so deep in the subconscious mind and it's challenging to bring them into the consciousness. If you find yourself repeating a negative phrase or generalization frequently, then it's a belief. Simply put positive beliefs serve you but negative ones do not. Be aware of the way you speak to yourself and make changes accordingly.
Family Roles
The Identified Loved One (ILO, the addicted or afflicted person) swims in shame, blame, guilt; and feelings of pain evoke self-soothing solutions and otherwise protective behaviors. Needs to soothe and check out through self harming, or addicted patterns as primary adaptive behaviors.
At the core, the ILO is living in:
ILO's Self-protecting acts:
Anger/rage (conning, smiling, "making right" and trying to fix wrongs or mistakes), rigidity, aggression, perfectionism, compulsivity and narcissism. Self protecting routine is a trap, tied into a dishonest version of "the story".
ILO Needs to:
ILO's Assets
Resilience
Survivor State
Humor
Will Power
Courageous
The Biggest obstacle to creating change in the lives of the iTeam and your loved one are their Battleground Beliefs. Battleground Beliefs are adaptive beliefs that drive coping behaviors and routines.
Battleground Beliefs are developed over a lifetime and are created to manage emotions around life's tragedies and triumphs. What served someone in the past to get by, get ahead (and get stuck) may be "voted off the island" so to speak and eliminated forever if necessary to make way for change.
Beliefs are often potent and can be either positive or negative force in your life. They determine what type of work you do, what sort of home you live in, and how healthy you are. Beliefs can be used as excuses that stand in the way of success.
Explore what common Battleground Beliefs are, and understand how they shape the iTeam and the intervention effort. Each of these fundamental zones of self-belief become a battleground on which the loved self and the unloved self go to war over the self-soothing and formed habits.
Relationship Beliefs
The satisfaction you get from relationships with family and others in your life also influences your self-concept. Too many of us lug around beliefs about how we should relate to others such as the following:
- I have to be liked by everyone.
- I need to avoid conflict or anger at all costs.
- I avoid abandonment at too high a cost.
- If I show you who I really am, you won't like me.
When we hold beliefs like these, we torment ourselves. By cluttering our minds with repeated thoughts of unworthiness, we disconnect from others. All of these lead to destructive habits.
Capability Beliefs
More often than not, people facing addiction believe that they are bad or unworthy. They feel inadequate and play down their gifts, talents and abilities. They suffer from pessimism and low self esteem and find it challenging to love themselves with consistency and vigor.
Some of the dark, dis-empowering beliefs here include: "I'll never be able to lose weight", "I'm a weak person", "I'll never succeed in life".
Capability beliefs produce destructive "I can't excuses". When you use the excuse "I can't", you send a negative and self-limiting message to your brain. Consciously, you might just pass it off as a simple excuse, but to your subconscious mind it send a message about your abilities or inabilities. Telling yourself repeatedly that you can't do this and can't do that will have you believing that you can't do much of anything after a while. How you view yourself and your capabilities definitely affects your health too.
Self-soothing Beliefs
Situations do not cause you to eat, drink, or act destructively. Rather, it's what you internalize about those various situations. If you didn't get a promotion, would you assume that your boss doesn't like you? That you're about to be fired? If you tend to interpret events in the most ego-deflating or anxiety-producing way, then your tension is at least partly self-generated.
It's common for people with addictions to use day to day stressors as an excuse to overheat, drink, or make unhealthy choices. It is important to take a look at how you respond to events, and then modify or change your response to a healthier and happier one. When you do that you develop a new understanding of how you can view yourself and treat yourself.
Beliefs As Choice
The most important thing to realize about a belief is that it's a choice. A belief is something a person holds to be true without necessarily being able to adequately prove it. Battleground Beliefs create reality, meaning that whatever one believes affects their actions, which in turn means that beliefs will be gradually reinforced and will persist.
To change our negative beliefs, we have to know what they are. It seems like a simple step, but in reality, some of our strongest beliefs i.e. so deep in the subconscious mind and it's challenging to bring them into the consciousness. If you find yourself repeating a negative phrase or generalization frequently, then it's a belief. Simply put positive beliefs serve you but negative ones do not. Be aware of the way you speak to yourself and make changes accordingly.
Family Roles
The Identified Loved One (ILO, the addicted or afflicted person) swims in shame, blame, guilt; and feelings of pain evoke self-soothing solutions and otherwise protective behaviors. Needs to soothe and check out through self harming, or addicted patterns as primary adaptive behaviors.
At the core, the ILO is living in:
- Blame
- Shame
- Guilt
- Pain
ILO's Self-protecting acts:
Anger/rage (conning, smiling, "making right" and trying to fix wrongs or mistakes), rigidity, aggression, perfectionism, compulsivity and narcissism. Self protecting routine is a trap, tied into a dishonest version of "the story".
ILO Needs to:
- Begin an awareness around self-defeating behaviors
- Push pause on thinking too much
- Develop ability to see how others are affected by his/her behaviors
- Learn how to work through problems rather than raging, then exiting
- Swap self-harming behaviors with self-loving ones through healthier soothing behaviors
- Becoming connected with "group of recovery"
ILO's Assets
Resilience
Survivor State
Humor
Will Power
Courageous