Guilt, Rewards, and Threats

I am intrigued by the concept that as we grow up our personality is forced into a semi-permanent mold by a combination of nature and nurture.  I do think we all have some internal wiring that is going to determine how we behave.  More or less.  Not that we can't change these behaviors but if you're outgoing then you're outgoing and no amount of Step work or counseling is going to change that.  You can learn to shut your mouth from time to time when you want to talk but you're not going to transmogrify into an introvert.  And then we're raised in a certain way - sometimes it's a wonderful experience, sometimes it's a disaster, more often than not it's a combination of the two.  Lots of us bitch about our parents and our childhood circumstances but admit grudgingly, cursing under our breath, that it wasn't as bad as we're making it out to be so it's time to quit complaining about it already.  Nothing worse than a thirty year old bitching about their parents.  Nonetheless, there's a tendency for well-meaning parents to socialize their children with a combination of guilt and reward.  "Finish your breakfast so you can grow up big and strong like Superman"  (Reward.)  "Finish your breakfast or you're not getting any dessert tonight." (Threat.)  "Finish your breakfast.  Don't you know there are starving children who aren't getting enough to eat today?"  (Guilt and Shaming.)  Maybe the child is full, did you ever think about that?  If he/she complies there's a reward!  If he/she doesn't, there's punishment of some kind!  So the tendency is to sort our decisions out on the Reward - Threat - Guilt paradigm.

A couple of lines from The Big Book that caught my eye today . .  . 

"The last two years of my drinking my personality changed to a cynical, intolerant and arrogant person completely different from my normal self."  There's a reference somewhere about the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome.  Normal drinkers lose some inhibitions.   Alcoholics lose themselves.

"There comes a time when you don't want to live and are afraid to die.  By now it had become difficult to visualize a life without alcohol."  This is the Jumping Off Point where the alcohol no longer has the ability to soothe the tortured mind but the alcoholic can't imagine not drinking.  Really, really awful, is this realization.

"He cannot imagine life without alcohol.  Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it.  Then he will know loneliness such as few do.  He will be at the jumping-off place.  He will be at the end."

I love the phrase "jumping-off place."  We walk on our journey until we get to the cliff at the end of the trail.  We can recover . . . or we can jump.