The persistent delusion

I want to believe that I can manage money like a normal person. I am loathe to admit I cannot. I hate feeling foolish and "less than." In my debting days, I pretended that I could handle credit cards. Even after twenty years of working the D.A. program, I still find myself thinking more money will solve all my problems. The persistence of the delusion is astonishing. I know this dis-ease is not about money, but money is the symbol by which I measure my self-worth. It is so hard to break that conditioning.

I believe this "money problem" will never get better as time goes on. In fact, I've been told it will get worse, that it is a progressive malady which can never be cured. When I first got to D.A., I never imagined I would still be going to meetings twenty years later. I thought I'd be out of debt in two years.

I've heard that scientists have developed a pill to treat compulsive shopping addiction. I don't know if this is true or not. I've never been a shopaholic (except when on vacation). I'm more of a deprivation addict (at least around town). I wonder if there is a pill to treat the delusion that one is "special."

To a normal person, compulsive debting must seem like a joke. Like the nonalcoholic says to the alcoholic, "What's the big deal? Why don't you just stop drinking?" the normal person says to the compulsive debtor, "Why don't you just stop overspending? Why don't you just earn more money? Why don't you just get a decent job? Why don't you just cut up your credit cards?"

It sounds like no-brain territory to a normal person, but not to the compulsive debtor.

My family and most of my friends never understood my angst around earning. My father thought daughters should stay at home forever, my mother thought I was just lazy and refusing to work like normal people have to, my friend said I would earn money when I finally decided to earn money...I never felt truly understood until I was at my first D.A. meeting.

Step One was an admission of my powerlessness over debt. It was not an abdication of my responsibility to earn my way in the world. I'm not helpless, and the situation is not hopeless. There is hope, and I found it in the program of Debtors Anonymous.

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"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, and borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website.