Catching Up

OMG, It's been such a long, long time since I posted. Since I am pretty sure that hardly anyone ever reads this, so then I guess that I can just ramble.

I have been attending 12 step meetings for my codependence. I am working on my fourth step, which is to list a moral inventory. Step 4, Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. I.e., what I have done that dysfunctional. This has been a tortuous and torturous process. It seems that it has taken forever. I have documented all that I have done dysfunctionally and much of the abuse that has been done to me. The latter is important, as it indicates my dysfunctional responses to the abuse done to me. I am not sure as to when I will be "done" with step 4, however. I see that I have lived most of my life in despair, and I am learning that by meditation and centering my mind, I can begin to reprogram myself out of this despair.

It is refreshing. Jon and I have been together almost two years now, and we have decided to become married in August. After some difficult trials together that we have faced successfully, I am confident that making this step is the right one. I am doing my utmost not to become a bridezilla though. Fortunately from my 12 step meeting, I have some wonderful friends who are very supportive in planning all of this.

Assimilation & Accommodation

I am a dyed in the wool Piagetian constructivist. For those of you who do not possess a background in cognitive developmental psychology, I am saying that a human learns by building structure for knowledge, and then putting individual pieces of learning into that structure. Piaget, a ground-breaking cognitive developmental psychologist, defined building the structure as accommodation. Learning that puts pieces of knowledge into the structure is assimilation.

From my professional experience, I have discovered that learning by accommodation is far more powerful learning than assimilation. Accommodation is life changing, and therefore life expanding. Assimilation is more like adding bits and pieces of knowledge and therefore like adding trivia. Accommodation also requires readjusting everything you know to learn something new.

In the past I have discovered that there are those who fear learning by accommodation. I suspect that since accommodation makes the learner change who s/he is, that it induces fear of change into them.

So those who are fear-ridden are reluctant to change, and resist learning that shifts her/his paradigm.

I believe that I had been one who feared changing his paradigm. Thus I was stuck in an uncomfortable place, and desiring a change, but not necessarily willing to actually change.

More details later.