the origin of our character defects

I am leading the 11am ACOA meeting tomorrow and need to start praying about my topic.

I think I am going to talk about nature vs nurture. Sometimes I blame my parents but hanging with my DH's nieces made me see that I chose my coping skills. My brother-in-law got a bunch of DUI's right after college and was forced into AA. He stayed sober for many years (obviously has no program by the way he talks) and is now back to actively and secretly/hiding the amount he drinks. It was fascinating to hang out with his daughters aged 9, 8 and 6. It was like holding up a mirror in some ways. The oldest has a lot of the personality traits deemed classically alcoholic. To me it just seemed that she is wound so tight that she really needs to take the edge off...at 9...so if alcohol works she will be off to the races.

They got me to thinking...do we become "people pleasers" "negative Nellie's" "glass half empty" "judgmental in a passive aggressive way" because of our parents or is it just in our personality and no matter what our childhoods we would have these character defects?

These girls were constantly saying things like "what don't you like about ..." instead of "what do you like", another favorite expression "oh, I feel sorry for them..." we were going through a photo album about the boat and there were a ton of pics with kids in them hanging out w/ us. I liked to entertain and b/c we had tons of water & electricity I let kids come over to shower and watch dvds. I know it was for the company so I would have an easy excuse to offer a drink to their parents and I wasn't drinking alone at 10am! My nieces looked at the kids and were obviously jealous or felt different than them, so they took the stance that they would feel sorry for these kids. It made me wonder where they get that from...their parents...who do say a lot of inappropriate things in front of their kids. Or are we just born feeling different than our fellows?

I can see how b/c my parents felt less than that they encouraged me to take others inventories along with them to make them feel better. If I went to friends house the next day my mom would sit and talk w/ me if I was telling her how messy the house was, how fat the mom was etc. But if I had nice things to say she left the room. So now out of habit I still look to the negative when talking about my day. As if I will be ignored if I say I had a good day.

Also my parents were nasty drunks so if they knew I liked something they would take it away if I made them mad. So I tend to criticize things that I am going to do. "oh god I need to go to the movies tonight ughhh" as if it is an imposition on my time/life. I know internally I am excited but I rarely say I am excited...as if I say I am excited the gods will take it away from me.

I definitely cop to the negative when talking about anything. I do believe that what you say effects how you feel. Plus it is lying to say I am not excited when I really am. The choices I make should not be impositions in my life. Like in the song "I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying" it is some county song. and he says..."suddenly going fishing wasn't such and imposition" and I completely identified.

xox WR