Suz,

Don't take any offense at what I am about to say, because I think you are a swell girl. So with that said, here goes -

Sometimes there is such a thing as taking yourself too seriously. Now I know that you are already thinking "well I need to take myself seriously, this is serious stuff". But what if you take all those things you know about yourself and just put them in a binder for now. You have identified them, you will continue to work through them...but your first priority is going to be to just enjoy yourself, and life in general.

I think we'd all be so much better off if we just stopped taking ourselves so dang seriously and went about the business of having fun with our lives, and I think the rest would somehow just work itself out.

I read something the other day that went something like this (a quote from Ann Landers, I think"

In our twenties, we worry about what others think of us.

In our forties, we don't give a damn what anybody thinks of us.

In our sixties, we realize that nobody ever thought about us at all. People are too busy thinking about themselves.

I think you just need to lighten up on yourself a bit Suzette. You really ARE your own worst enemy, as was I but then I forced myself to stop it.

PS. Mel, thank you!

Weaver, I know what you’re saying is true. Thanks for your thoughts and thanks for being honest with me. I appreciate it and I know you did it because you care.

God Bless all of you with your helping hearts.

I'm serious.

My inventory short list:
1) I'm happy. I so appreciate my H and marriage after reading here again.

2) Marital skills can't be dropped once you relax into recovery. Plan A goes away, because it is one-sided. Both partners must mutually do 15hr/wk, POJA, EN meeting, honesty, love/care, no LBing for ongoing successful marriage.

3) At this point I am more of an MB emotional supporter because that is what kept me grounded for 2 years in seeing my marital reconciliation as my optimal goal, that and an excellent counselor.

So when I do receive EMOTIONAL SUPPORT, it's a SPECIAL TREAT..a GIFT..a choice that a poster is making to step out of the purpose of the FORUM..

That's why I always make sure to say THANK YOU..cause it is not EXPECTED nor necessarily WANTED by me...


The LAUGHS here are a SPECIAL TREAT as well..sometimes I'm almost falling out of my chair..haven't run to the LADIES ROOM yet... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

But still...my PRIMARY PURPOSE for coming here is about MARRIAGE...

Mimi...high on KOOLAID... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I don't understand why you would see these two things as mutually exclusive.

Here Dr. Harley, in discussing his work with addicts wrote, "Having spent some of my life helping people overcome addiction (when I operated chemical dependency treatment clinics), I am very aware of how difficult it is to give up something that gives a person considerable pleasure. The procedure we used was to provide emotional support to help people keep the commitment they had made."

and

"I believe that the same principle applies to overcoming very enjoyable but thoughtless behaviors in marriage. At first, you may need support from someone who can not only provide emotional encouragement, but also accountability. "

Harley, in dealing with *addicts*, points out that he promoted emotional support and emotional encouragement as well as accountability.

If addicts are deemed deserving or needful of emotional support (especially when the "wrongness" of addiction is easily determined for most folks), why would BSs be denied that (especially when the specific "rightness" of any particular MB posting advice is not so easily determined) help?


On this LINK Harley writes:

"These two courses are designed to help you understand the problems in your marriage, create plans to change habits that overcome those problems, and then practice those changes until your problems are solved. "

"If possible, you should understand and practice as many Basic Concepts as possible right from the beginning. "

" And there are some who don't understand it even after they watch it. They have many unanswered questions.

If one spouse doesn't understand how each lesson of these courses help create a great marriage, how can he or she be motivated to complete the assignments? Where there's no vision, there's poor motivation."

From the reading, it appears that Harley recognizes the benefits of understanding.

Bastages is from a film, "Johnny Dangerously." And, in its full glory was stated as "fargin bastages."

Graplin, Dr Harley is not talking about this forum when he references "emotional support." In one quote he is talkng about the "emotional support" he provides as a PSYCHOLOGIST. In the other, I think he is referencing Alcoholics Anonymous. It would be ludicrous to imply that an alcoholic should come to an anonymous internet board [MB] for "support to stop drinking. Believe me, that would never suffice.

And secondly, you are taking the word "understand" out of context. He wants us to understand his principles and the dynamics of our MARRIAGE, not our feelings. What Mimi said is exactly right, when coaching with the Harleys, they give guidance and direction in putting the principles into ACTION.

thankee, Frank! That is exactly how they say it, too! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Great points, Graphin! Thanks! Of course, I'm lovin' that you are quoting Dr. Harley.

Take a look at this part that you say though..let's emphasize this too.



You go on to quote Dr. Harley as saying:



That is a great point for you to bring out about the significance of EMOTIONAL ENCOURAGEMENT. But note that he also speaks of the importance of ACCOUNTABILITY. I take that to mean signs of BEHAVIORAL CHANGE/COMMITMENT TO THE PLANS.

I see that I need to express recognition of the importance and value of emotional encouragement. But I do get concerned with that becomes the FOCUS here.

AND I have problems with understand without PRACTICE, ACCOUNTABILITY and BEHAVIORAL CHANGE. I'm going to take your same sentences and highlight different words.










Do you see the BEHAVIORAL aspects of this approach?

Yes UNDERSTANDING is necessary and essential but USELESS unless put into PRACTICE. The purpose of UNDERSTANDING is for REFINING the PLANS, determining the most appropriate behaviors to put into PRACTICE..to be OBSERVED...and to be evaluated for ACCOUNTABILITY.

He was pointing out that he uses a procedure that provides BOTH emotional support and emotional encouragement ALONG with accountability and he wrote about it right here on his Marriage Builders website.

My understanding of what you wrote is that this forum would be an exception to the use of emotional support and emotional encouragement along with accountability.

If I understood you correctly, on what do you base that belief?


That might have some bearing if anyone had implied that an alcoholic should come to an anonymous board, etc.

But since no one implied that, I won't attempt to address it.

He wrote about the need for emotional support and emotional encouragement along with accountability on THIS PAGE in which he is discussing marriagebuilding.

So, based upon the Dr.'s writings, emotional support and encouragement goes hand in hand with marriage building.

Do you agree or disagree?



Mimi wrote:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"The MARRIAGEBUILDER'S APPROACH, the way I see it, is BEHAVIORALLY FOCUSED.

Steve calls what he does COACHING and not COUNSELING..not helping you to develop INSIGHT or UNDERSTANDING...

The MOI..Get your pencil and paper out..DO THIS, DO THAT, SAY THIS, SAY THAT..to work towards the GOAL of MARITAL RECOVERY...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I may be misreading Mimi and if so I am open to being corrected.

But, I don't see where she's limiting it to feelings. My reading of the text is that Steve's method is:

"You don't have to understand why you should do this or have insight as to its benefits, you should just do what I tell you to do."

As an adult, I would have issues with blindly following something with no attempt to help me understand even when it was coming directly from the professional doctors.

Even more so to have forum members, as experienced as they may be, posting as if their directions should be followed to the T while treating the desire for understanding & insight as "rebellion" of some sort.

OTOH, I recognize that feelings cannot always be the guiding arbiter of interactions and perhaps that's what Mimi was saying. But it seemed that some sort of hardline, "d*mn feelings, d*mn emotional support, just do what you're told to do without question or dissent" was being promoted as the ideal goal.

Again, he was writing about his practice, not the forum. He never mentions the forum. The forum is just a group of posters like you and me that is not equipped to provide the level of emotional support that one needs, especially a recovering alcoholic/addict. The goal of the forum is for novice members, like you and I, to discuss and learn MB principles.


Oh, I thought you had with this comment:

"Here Dr. Harley, in discussing his work with addicts wrote, "Having spent some of my life helping people overcome addiction (when I operated chemical dependency treatment clinics), I am very aware of how difficult it is to give up something that gives a person considerable pleasure. The procedure we used was to provide emotional support to help people keep the commitment they had made.""


No one is saying that. Mimi is just saying that the focus with coaching is based on behavioral changes and ACTIONS. It is not spent examining feelings.

Isn't the Emotional Needs questionnaire and how to deal with Emotional Needs often a part of the discussions here?

I agree that emotional support alone isn't enough, direction and action is key, I'm not arguing against that. I'm not understanding why emotional support is being seen as superfluous in gaining rapport among posters.

Oh, thank you, now I have a movie to pcik up. I bet it's in the 2 for a buck bin by now, eh? Bonus!

The fargin bastages! Sounds like that beer 2long always raves about, bastud ale.

Around here we say "the bastuds, every last one of 'em, bastuds" For effect it is nice when one uses this phrase along with sligtly clenched teeth, parted lips while gently shaking their head back and forth. And then I always throw a good little chuckle along after it. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Oh man...there are a couple of movies that I quote from a lot...

Most Mel Brook's films (History of the World Part I, Spaceballs, etc...) are the main ones.

But Johnny Dangerously is a CLASSIC!!! Now that my kids are all older (19 and 21), I'm going to HAVE to go find this one for them to sit and watch with me!!

I read this, since this was new on the EN Forum, which is the first forum on the list, so I assume a bit of a guide for all the forums, I think it is interesting in this discussion. Certainly Justuss is part of GQII as well.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...e=0#Post3160870

Oh yes, Mel Brooks. I forgot about those.

There aren't very many funny movies out any more. Well I think Adam Sandler is usually pretty hysterical.

That old Clint Eastwood movie where he is alway spitting chew on that dog was pretty funny too, in a way.

This makes no sense to me.

What does whether or not he was talking about the forum have to do with the idea that emotional support & encouragement is supported by Dr. Harley's theory of Marriage Building?

Using the logic of "he was writing about his practice, not the forum. He never mentions the forum," as the reason to NOT include emotional support with Marriage Building support would leave you with the very limited option of never discussing Marriage Building at all since Dr. Harley wrote about it but he never mentioned the forum.





This also does not make any sense to me. The group of posters here are just as equipped to provide emotional support as they are equipped to provide Marriage Building support. Of if you prefer discuss emotional support while we discuss MB principles.




The original post was:

"The procedure we used was to provide emotional support to help people keep the commitment they had made. ...

and

"I believe that the same principle (ed. note: referencing back to the procedure described above) applies to overcoming very enjoyable but thoughtless behaviors in marriage."

The two paragraphs went together. The complete article is located HERE and contains his comparison of his procedures of including emotional support & encouragement with accountability for both addicts AND Marriage Builders.

If you have not seen "Fifty First Dates" I highly recommend it. Prolly the finest Adam Sandler movie made. It is quite funny and poignant. Now that my mom has been diagnosed with Alzheimers there is a sadder twist to it for me as well.

Self-inventory eh? I need to laugh more.

I didn't see that one Faith. P did with her dad, so I didn't pick it up. Now I can, though.

I need to go over to Gray's thread and ask how you are doing with your Mom. It's the saddest thing, I know. Especially your mom. We didn't experience anything so awful as that. I'm sorry.

Graplin, the moderator post quoted above supports the argument that the forums are for support. I'm quite sure Justuss didn't write that alone, I'm sure it was with official MB guidance.

Anyway, I'm hearing you. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

FF, 50 first dates is one I can watch over & over. So sweet for how dad, brother & community compensated so she never got upset...but didn't go on with her life until the Adam character.