Arrogance (blame shifting)

This is my 25^th anniversary of stopping cigarettes
My 37^th anniversary of stopping recreational drugs
My 20^th anniversary of stopping sugar and gluten
Self Care Strategies
Thirty seven years ago my ex-job in logistics became computer operated, and I was to operate the computer. I was working as the Art Director at a plastics manufacturing company. I made my living with a pencil. Graphic design, commercial art. Boring as fuck. Surrounded by working class morons. Their big entertainment was 2 and a juice at the stripper bar on Friday afternoon before going home to fuck the wife and kids while watching the hockey.
My ex-employer, (I was a radio taxi dispatcher) created a position for me when I called them up as I had heard they bought a computer. All their dispatchers had quit in protest. They gave me a job learning FORTRAN mainframe database management for their taxis. Google maps weren’t invented yet so we had to build our own in the computer dark ages of 1986 or so. Also the internet was a series of bulletin boards; it still is really, just graphic art-ized and monetized. I chose to quit smoking pot in order to help remember the computer commands and so I needed different coping strategies to work in a frustrating chaotic narcissistic family run business.
To accomplish these goals I tried several things: 12 step programs, yoga classes, till finally I visited a dependence counselor who said just put up with The Discomfort. Stop manipulating myself with weaponized helplessness and thereby creating the Discomfort Anxiety I learned at my mother’s knee.
Years later I read a neurologist who said in order to sleep, don’t drink coffee 12 hours before bed. I had smoked dope to sleep; I was a 10 cup a day very busy taxi dispatcher.
More years later (last week) I learned that the frustration, anxiety and depression I lifetime experienced were normal reactions to abnormal situations. Like that taxi company and my mother. It wasn’t me that was a broken victim; I was affected like any normal person by psychopaths.
Also, at the time being very sad, vulnerable in loss and transition, still calling myself a loser, I decided to try religion for comfort. The Hindu yoga community and I got closer as I bought into their centuries old ‘you are a loser’ cult recruitment. They taught that the reason for your reincarnation is your loserness. They were gonna fix it for a price but you had to keep paying and coming to more classes because it didn’t work. I had now weaponized helplessness myself or I had more probably been culled from the herd because I was already indoctrinated to be that way by a helpless parent/wife/girlfriend reward system. Now it was Divine Mother who needed my help, the Divine had weaponized their helplessness and I was charged money to assist and convinced to be celibate as I was subject to being in relationship with any helpless woman for free. Initially. The costs came later.
When the taxi guys fired me after 12 years, (for incompetence) as I quit subjecting myself to rescuing them, I hung out at the Ashram volunteering my labour, since I had no money, and made a plan to finally upgrade at Art School to get qualifications on student loans.  
Today I watched tiktoks about different kinds of manipulations. These yoga guys use them all, and have been for centuries. No wonder it felt like home.