Step Nine Self-Help
  1. Write about your various adult roles or parts in your journal and explore how they operate in your life. Describe in as much detail as you can when these roles emerge, what behaviors are connected to them and what feelings about yourself and others they engender. Who seems to trigger the emergence of the roles in you: spouse or lover, child(ren), peers, superiors at work, family, members of the opposite sex or people of the same sex as your abuser? Do you "own" these parts for yourself or project them onto others?
  2. Ask the trusted people in your life how they see you. Don't react to anything they say immediately. Instead, reflect on their comments for a day or two and see how others' observations compare to the various roles you have identified for yourself.
  3. Share in ASCA meetings regarding your progress in identifying the various roles you play, and the aspects of yourself that are self-sabotaging. Also share how you are gaining mastery over these areas.
  4. If you haven't done so already, try to record your dreams in your journal so that you can see how the different parts of you interact on an unconscious level. Record each dream in story form, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Tell the story in the first person, and develop the details and imagery as you write. Many people think that, because they don't remember their dreams, they don't dream. This is inaccurate. Everyone dreams, although denial and repression may make your dreams unavailable to your conscious awareness. Practicing remembering your dreams will help you actually remember them. Develop a routine of leaving your journal next to your bed and, when you first wake up, ask yourself what dreams you had and record them.
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Survivor to Thriver, Page 87
© 2007 THE MORRIS CENTER, Revised 11/06