The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
There are five character virtues which, when brought together, make a relationship magical. If all five are present and balanced (more on that in a moment), there will be joyful harmony, despite the woes and travails of life. If one is missing, the magic will disappear. If two or more are missing, the relationship will be toxic.
Each of these “Elements of Harmony,” when enacted by one party, banishes a different fear in the other:
Honesty banishes the fear of hidden things
Loyalty banishes the fear of ulterior purposes
Kindness banishes the fear of judgment, undeserved or deserved
Laughter banishes the fear of drama and seriousness
Generosity banishes the fear of lack and loss
If one party is doing all the “Honesty” or “Laughter” heavy lifting in a relationship, for example, the Elements are out of balance, and it’s probable the other has a fear which is not being assuaged. They can’t banish the other’s fear because they are not free from it themselves.
There are many ways to go against the Elements and thus against relationships. The most pernicious are what I call the Seeds of Discord, five forms of defensiveness or selfishness which strike at the heart of a relationship:
Deceit defends self from loss of control but selfishly robs the other of a true perspective
Hypocrisy defends self from loss of freedom but selfishly robs the other of a whole relationship
Slander defends self from loss of clarity but selfishly robs the other of a chance to be forgiven
Malice defends self from loss of will but selfishly robs the other of the slack to make an honest mistake
Envy defends self from the despair which comes from loss but selfishly robs the other of a sense of securely having.
These two lists of five, the Elements of Harmony and the Seeds of Discord, are particularly useful when used with a Fourth Step worksheet, such as those used by CoDependents Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Families Anonymous, or Al-Anon (for lovers, friends, or family of alcoholics).
Here is a sample worksheet, a 7-page PDF, of which pages 4-7 can be printed out and worked on. If anything in here seems judgmental or religious or focused on failures, skip it; the goal isn’t to make you feel shameful or blamed, it’s to give you a safe space to discover your fears, resentments, self-judgments, self-betrayals, and motivated thinking, which hold you back from healthy and fulfilling relationships. Only when you live for shared purpose are you truly partners.
More options
Context Copy link