[Leed]

Days of Healiing Days of Joy.......................Oct. 1st

Others will treat you the way you treat yourself...........Muhamed Moussa

We set the rules as to how others see us and how we choose to be treated. Our self-image is what we project to others, and it is that image they respond to.

Just as the way we treat others is basically the way we treat ourselves, the way we see others and interpret their actiions and words is the way we see ourselves. If we are judgmental with others we are likely to be just as hard on ourselves, and vice versa.

Growing up in a dysfunctiional family can be likened to a forge, where white-hot metal is fashioned into an object for a specific purpose. All too often adult children have been "forged" to see themselves as flawed, imperfect, powerless people who have little say about what happens to them in life. This self-image invites a like response from others. As we learn to be different, we come to see ourselves as dfferent, and others will respond to our proud, emerging new self.
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I now see that I am largely responsible for my effect on others. I am learniing to teach people how I would like to be treated.

Before I joined AA, my self-image was terribly negative. I didn't really have a self-image, as I was nothing. I was treated as nothing growing up, so basically I thought I was nothing. I always treated people exceptionally well though as that was the way I was brought up. I was told to treat others - especially those older than myself, with respect and honor. Well, back then that was a LOT of people!!! When I joined AA, I began to learn that my idea of "self" was terribly skewed and I had to learn to care about myself and that was difficult. As the last sentence in the reading says "as we learn to be different" we will respond to our proud emerging new self.

I like this..like you , Lee, yet I can't really use the past tense, my self-image is extremely skewed. This has some to do with my mental disorder, but also conditioning from a dysfunctional family. Getting sober has not helped me to regain a decent self-image, rather it builds a new sense of self and purpose (from the ground up) because my old conceptions of myself were vastly different before sobriety.
"As we learn to be different," we are learning a whole new way to be but also a whole new way of looking at ourselves!

I fully agree that what we have within somehow makes it's way out...others will respond to it. If I have a very disturbed self-image I will interpret others through that lens...it is me changing..but by evolving others will respond to that and my whole perception can be based moreso on reality.