Balance

Safe Places

June 25, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

I remember when I was a kid in Illinois there was a pond that a couple of us guys would ride our bikes to. It was called Old Man Hendricks pond. He was a retired farmer who had this private pond that he wouldn’t let anybody into. It had a row of high bushes surrounding the pond so you couldn’t see it except from the inside. He had a gate with a big padlock on it and a sign that said “No Trespassing”. The fence surrounding the pond was covered by the bushes. We had figured out that if you go two sections down from the gate, the fence was broken and you could climb through the fence and the bushes and get to the pond.

There were so many times that I rode my bike out to the pond and would sneak in through the fence. Hendricks never knew I made his pond a safe place for me. I would bring a garbage sack with some Susie Q’s or Twinkies and a transistor radio. I would swim out to the dock which had been built twenty yards from shore. I remember laying on my back, looking up at the sky and watching the jets streak across the horizon leaving a vapor trail. The planes looked like little matchsticks. I would wonder where they were going and dream about being able to go somewhere on a plane. If old man Hendricks had caught me trespassing, I am sure he would have run me off.

Hendricks pond became a safe place for me to escape. During those days there was a lot to escape in my young life. There was physical and sexual abuse, family chaos, and a lot of abandonment and neglect. Hendricks pond became a sanctuary for me. Later in life, I revisited the site of the pond which no longer exists. The bushes were cut down, the pond had been drained and made into farmland. However, I carry the memory of this pond and made it a safe place for me in my mind.

Throughout the years of addiction recovery, I have gone to this safe place in my heart and conducted many conversations about a host of issues with those I needed to address. There were many conversations with myself and my addictive rationale. I had some knock-down, drag-out type conversations with my understanding of God. There was a long discourse with my dad and mom about why they insisted that we attend a cult-like church. There was the rage about the abuse and everything around it. There were times at the pond when I shed a lot of tears about the deaths of my dad, mom, and brothers. It became a place in my heart where I have retreated throughout my adult life to settle my soul create calm and poise and bring myself back to center.

This is what I know about recovery. Life will blitz you with concerns, pressures, and chaotic moments. If you are not proactive, you can get caught up with reactivity about the smallest of things. A blue funk will descend, your partner will say something that triggers you, your kids will act immaturely, an old act-out partner will reappear out of the blue without an invite, and suddenly you get ramped up with worry, anxiety, and susceptibility to addictive response. It happens almost at the snap of a finger.

Everyone needs to establish a safe place to sort out the events of everyday life that trigger and create life imbalance. Sustained life imbalance is a dangerous high risk for addicts. As an addict, you can’t just sit with anger toward an experienced injustice. You can’t just blow up at someone over nothing and forget it or expect them to just get over it. Toying around with “eye candy” on the internet is not something that can be minimized or normalized if sex addiction is your drug of choice. Flirting with high-risk behavior, no matter what the addiction, is high risk. Clearly, when you are engaging in these behaviors, you need to retreat to a safe place and have honest conversations with yourself about what’s going on.

Safe place conversations are where sobriety and serenity are hammered out. This is the place that you forge clarity and certainty to do the next right thing. The challenge with safe place conversations is that they need to be conducted daily, with rigorous honesty and commitment to care for yourself. All of these are simple but really difficult whether you are an addict or not. A safe place is the experience you create to grow yourself up by confronting mistaken beliefs, victim posturing, and addictive rationale. As an addict, a safe place is the place you best nip in the bud and build up behaviors toward destructive actions.

Here is a list of suggestions to make safe place experiences effective:

1. Establish a time and place in which no one interrupts you. The biggest challenge is your own thought life. Typically, it is a battle to keep from distracting yourself with a host of diversions. Once the safe place is established people avoid grounding by checking E-mail, texts, latest news from the internet, X, TikTok, Snapchat, and on and on. Before long you will have distracted yourself from the purpose of getting grounded. Many people leave the safe place experience without addressing what needs to be faced and not grounded. To do this work, you must be intentional and purposeful. It’s a commitment to emotionally grow yourself up by holding your feet to the fire in order to create life balance and centered poise.

2. Quiet your spirit with silence in the moment. This is a compelling assignment. Most addicts are dominated by monkey-brain thinking. Their mind goes on and on constantly thinking about everything and essentially about nothing. It just races incessantly. A safe place will help you slow things down and focus. It will not happen all of a sudden. It will require conditioning, not unlike other aspects of your life that you have conditioned. I believe that developing recovery skill sets requires that we reach out to other aspects of living that we have accomplished through conditioning and apply that skill set to quieting your spirit. For example, you do not run a marathon just by saying you will, as you are running your first run. Rather, you condition yourself and in time you are able to complete the marathon run. To be able to quiet your spirt in safe place, you will need to condition yourself. Start with 5 minutes. Just focus on your breath. Each time your mind goes to some other thought just bring yourself back to focusing on your breath. It doesn’t matter how many times. Just do it. In time, you will condition your mind to think about nothing except your breath in that 5-minute period. Of course, mindfulness meditation really helps with this skill set. As long as you allow your mind to give way to monkey-brain thinking, your thoughts will thrive. You must develop the capacity to quiet your spirit in silence. Safe place is the work-out room to develop this skill set.

3. Determine that the last truth you want to face is the first truth you will embrace. Most likely, whatever it is that has triggered life imbalance is not the first thing confronted in your safe place. Usually, there is resistance to go there. It will take discipline and conditioning like so many other areas of life. Yet, safe place becomes powerful and sacred when you face yourself with what you do not want to look at. If you have a bad attitude about a situation or person, are resentful, discouraged or overwhelmed by shame, you must begin your safe place conversation there. It helps to verbalize what you are feeling, regardless of how irrational it might be. It can be helpful to write your thoughts and feelings on paper. If you are an addict, you will then need to sit with the part of you that wants to act out and hear it out. It is helpful to say it out loud as clear as you think it on the inside. To go back and forth—addict thought—recovered response—until you see clearly what you must do. Here’s an example for a sex addict. “I want to screw my neighbor” So, in my safe place, I put my addictive rationale in a chair and let that part of me argue for me and lay out the case for acting out in this way. Then, I respond to each point made in addictive rationale with recovery response. Like, “yeah, that would be exciting and the rush would be overwhelming. Yet, the hurt of ruining my committed relationship with my partner would be crushing. I would not only tear up my relationship but end a good relationship in the neighborhood. The result would be catastrophic for a short term thrill.”At some point, the power in recovery will need to override addictive response and create a pathway back to centered living. Then, reach out and connect with support people who are willing to hold your feet to the fire of sobriety in order to follow through with your safe place conversation.

4. Anchor yourself in affirmative thought. After you quiet your mind, sort your thoughts, and clarify your steps back to poise and centered living, you must bathe yourself with affirmation. This too is a difficult skill to incorporate as a lifestyle. Yet, my experience is that unless you create a mindset that actively lives out what you dream of becoming, you never get there. As an addict I have learned that what you think about is what will expand. It’s the very property of thought. So, if you think about what is missing then that is what expands. If you focus on what you have that is what expands. Affirmations about the tools for recovery and my positive reality of employing them are a secret to successful sobriety that leads to serenity. Yet the skillset of affirmative thought is underemployed. It is a simple yet difficult habit to cultivate. However, those who experience long-term serenity, not just sobriety, engage in this practice regularly. Deprivation always fuels entitlement to act out. Practicing affirmations becomes so helpful toward shifting out of a deprivation mindset and takes what is and makes it enough. A safe place is a great place to accentuate recovery muscle through affirmative thought once you have determined your way back to center.

Some people struggle with the idea of going to a safe place to recreate centered living. This place can be a literal place or in your mind’s eye, like I do. The litmus test is if you talk to people, addict in recovery or otherwise, while they may not use the language of “safe place”, clearly you will find that these folk have learned to create a way of bringing themselves back to center that inspires living from a higher self. A safe place can take many forms, but, I don’t know of any serene people who live without it.

Footprints That Connect Spirituality

May 31, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The human body is magnificent. The more we learn about the intricacies of our bodies, the more clear it is that there is an amazing life force that creates and connects all of life on this planet and beyond. Some people believe that as phenomenal and amazing as the physical body is most of who we are is spiritual, not physical.

Volumes have been written about the spiritual world but it remains a mystery. Many who decry religion reject the concept altogether. Those who believe and talk about the intangible nature of spirituality accept that discussion about its properties can be like trying to nail jelly to a tree.

Religious practice helps many to chart a course toward the meaning of the spirit world. From a macro view of the world, the influence of spirituality is undeniable…

Today, I would like to suggest a less macro and more micro understanding of spirituality in the common experiences of everyday living.

1. Spirituality is found in the connection of you to the world around you. Addicts live disconnected. They pull the plug on connection to people and the world around them. Their addiction becomes the organizing principle in life. The affair that is created with addictive behavior has been described as a warm blanket more than once. However, spirituality is about the opposite. It is a connection to all facets of living both organic and nonorganic. Meditation is a recovery discipline that connects one to the world around you in the present moment. Being able to connect to the world around you—the birds, trees, plants, animals, rocks and human energy has been described by some recovering addicts as an explosion of meaningfulness where there was once emptiness. I like to think metaphorically that your feelings are the Voice of God.

When listened to, feelings will tell you essential needs that need to be met in a healthy way. The tendency for an addict is to disconnect from feelings of discomfort. Yet, if you sit with uncomfortableness it will tell you what needs to be addressed in your life. You will need to marshal mature actions by utilizing your wise mind to meet those needs in healthy self-fulfilling ways. This requires mentorship and endless practice. It is not magical. So you might say spirituality is about mature adult living and you don’t have to even use the word spirituality to capture this life experience. For example, you may find yourself angry. Rather than emotionally throw up in someone’s lap or stuff the experience and pretend it doesn’t exist, take time to listen to what anger is trying to say to you. Feelings are experienced in clusters. Withanger it is often tied with fear, sadness, loneliness, shame, or other feelings. If you take time to sift and sort each attached feeling they will clarify what you are experiencing and when connected to your wise mind you can better address your needs. This is why I suggest that your feelings are the voice of God! Listen to them and they will serve you well. This is a spiritual experience.

2. Spirituality is found in the experience of vulnerability. Vulnerability is the process of being exposed to possible harm. It is about embracing the fear of rejection, of being taken advantage of, and of embracing your human limits. It is not taught, it is practiced. If you do not practice it, you will not learn it. It is about becoming emotionally naked to another. It is risking rejection. It engages a willingness to remove yourself from the center of your universe for the purpose of sharing another’s energy and making space for someone else knowing that they may flatly reject your efforts.

Vulnerability is accepting this possibility and courageously exposing your heart anyway. It doesn’t make sense to always/only be vulnerable. But when it does it is pursued against all odds no matter what the price. It is a shift from intellectual reason and protection to opening your heart and sharing raw feelings that expose hypocrisy, incongruence andfailed behavior in hopes of finding connection and acceptance. This requires courage but when manifested multiplies meaningful life experiences. Vulnerability is spirituality and counterintuitively creates connection.

3. Spirituality is about the experience of uncertainty. No religion can prove that it is the one true way. Outside of religious experience, no philosophy or experience can prove its methodology of living as the one correct approach. There are many opinions and beliefs. Likely, they are all correct in different ways! You will need to sort out what you choose to think and believe. Ignoring this reality is a choice in itself. For sure, spirituality is a belief plunge into uncertainty. None of us like the experience of free falling. When I was young I would take junior high kids to a cliff at a lake in Wyoming to jump in for a swim. The cliffs were between 50 and 60 feet high! It was far enough to consciously experience the free fall. When free falling you experience total helplessness. There is literally nothing you can do to counter gravity but to fall. This is what it is like to plunge into the uncertainty of spiritual belief. It is having the confidence that in free-falling into your belief, your confidence is not that you will control the outcome but that your spiritual belief will bring you back up. This means that with bravery you are willing to live with the uncertainty that surrounds you every day because of your belief in the basic goodness of who you are and/or the power you choose to trust in your daily free fall.

4. Spirituality is about velvet steel. I call my blog Velvet Steel because of my deep conviction of this spiritual principle. Spirituality is about connection which engages the principle of velvet steel. This concept embraces the word “consideration” which can describe a parent who practices when to apply the strict letter of the law to a misbehaving child and when to back off and go easy. There is no formula. It’s all about cultivating sensitivity to the spirit of another. Sometimes you need to be willing to walk to hell and back to stand for conviction and principle and other times not. It’s about being velvet steel.

In recovery meetings, there is usually at least one person who sees themselves as the hammer—the steel—and gives feedback from that standpoint. It is common for others to consistently be velvet, being easy toward others hoping they too will be easy with them. It is rare that you experience velvet steel blended in feedback. This is because it is difficult. Often it takes a certain degree of steel to be velvet as well as it is important to share a certain amount of steel while being velvet in feedback. That said, spirituality is not all about rules and regs (steel) but it also includes knowing the rules well enough to know how and when to break them (velvet). Velvet steel is a dynamic applied in many different ways and requires integrity and honesty to the practice for it to be a spiritual practice that heals and transforms behavior. Spiritual practice must include a mature application of velvet steel. In truth when applied with sensitivity it reflects an art form.

There are footprints of spirituality in common everyday places that are mostly overlooked by those who are in a hurry or a frenzy of everyday living. Take time to notice the footprints of spirituality that will help right-size your everyday walk with meaningfulness and connection.

The Sweet Spot of Centered Living

September 29, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

Every day presents a new set of circumstances and issues in addict recovery. Some days go smoothly without major conflict while other days are challenged with triggers, cravings, and stress that create feelings of insecurity, impatience, and overall struggle. There is no necessary rhyme or reason. It is the common thread of issues that addicts in recovery grapple with in order to remain sober. For sure, staying sober is a battle of resistance with the forces of life that tug and pull to numb out with a cocktail of addictive processes.

Addicts in recovery learn to create a sweet spot which represents a center of balance in life to respond to life’s provocations. In racquetball, the sweet spot on the court is the space maintained that gives the best vantage to respond to the opponent’s shot. The sweet spot in recovery is the space that an addict creates that offers the best possibility to engage tests and temptations from an empowered position and with poise. Trauma professionals sometimes refer to this space as a window of tolerance. This is a place you are able to self-soothe. You are able to maintain emotional self-regulation. It’s the position that you are best able to access resilience and flexibility. In the midst of everyday fray, you are capable of being connected to your mind, body, and emotions anchored in the window of tolerance.

Some days just don’t play out in the sweet spot. You scramble to keep up with a busy schedule. People criticize you for shortcomings. Life throws you one curve ball after another. The harder you try, the “behinder” you get. It’s just one of those days or one of those seasons in life. The build-up of stress with physical and emotional fatigue triggers cravings that push you to the precipice of relapse. It’s amazing how quickly you can be right on the edge of disaster.

This experience is what trauma professionals refer to as flooding which can be hyperarousal (fight or flight) or hypo-arousal (freeze). Addicts must pay attention to the warning signs to avoid the pitfalls of relapse.

Triggers are the memories, core beliefs, feelings, and body sensations which are connected to past traumatic experiences that have the potential to move you out of your sweet spot in recovery. Addicts benefit when they do the homework of identifying mistaken beliefs that block intimacy and monitor those beliefs daily. Rather than going all out to eliminate the belief, simply paying attention with a skillset to shift out of the mistaken belief that enervates and empowers addictive response, and shift into an intimacy-abling belief is all that is needed. It is important to become aware of life situations, relationship challenges, and mental states that fuel mistaken beliefs and address them daily.

Flashback memories of old experiences are just that! They are not reality in the present moment no matter how powerful they seem. They trigger maladaptive responses and require the grounding skill of “acting as if”, meaning that in spite of the felt struggle, you commit to act doing the next right thing regardless of feeling. It may require ritual breathing, keeping your eyes open, and grounded conversation. It doesn’t mean I must act out in old destructive behaviors.

Triggers can activate hyper arousal response including building anxiety, impulsivity, reactivity, anger, rage, nightmare, rigidity, and hyper-vigilance. You may notice difficulty in concentrating, obsessive-compulsive thoughts or behaviors or panic, and becoming easily irritated. Many addicts do program work without ever paying attention to these critical signs of hyper arousal that take them out of their sweet spot.

A hypo arousal response is also a sign of flooding which pulls you from your window of tolerance. This response includes depression, fatigue, not being present, dissociation, feeling numb, going on autopilot, and disconnecting from feelings. You may experience increased aches and pains and not be able to think very clearly.

It will be important for you to evaluate your typical response to the trials and tribulations of recovery living that pull you from your sweet spot. Managing your ability to return to the sweet spot in recovery requires that you discipline your awareness to recognize the warning signs of flooding.

Do you most likely respond with freeze or fight/flight given the description of both responses? Many clients have told me that their body experiences periodic aches and pains without ever considering that the source of this discomfort might trace back to a hypo-aroused response to the stressors of life that pull them away from their window of tolerance. Others think medication is needed to quell the anxiety and panic that dominates them every day. Still others are stupefied wondering why they are having nightmares, being so reactive with anger and rage. One reason you may find yourself emotionally eating is because of the fight or flight response to the stress and tension that exists within your life. You may need a prescription to alleviate the intense edge of anxiety that triggers a rageful response. It can be helpful to attend an Overeaters Anonymous group to stop destructive out-of-control eating. Yet, for sure, it will be critical to recognize the warning sign that triggers the emotional flooding. You will need to address the stressful situation and recognize the flood in your life which pulls you out of your sweet spot in recovery. Consider these steps:

1. What expectations do you have in your life and your recovery? Be clear and specific. Are your expectations realistic? We all begin with enthusiasm and a lot of fire in recovery. It will flame out if your recovery goals are not realistic. Be clear and accountable for your bottom lines. A contract without accountability has no bite to it.

2. Examine the Data. Project out a few weeks. When you get to a certain point in your recovery journey, evaluate if the results are what you intended. Like plays drawn up on the chalkboard at halftime in a football game, the way it works out on the field of recovery may be quite different than what you planned. Look at what you intended when you made your commitment to improve your behavior with your sponsor or in a recovery room. Are your results what you meant to be reality? Be honest, practical, and realistic in your assessment.

3. Make adjustments. This is key. Returning to your sweet spot will require that you work out of your rigidity and become flexible. Things never work out just the way you plan. What you thought would be easy will sometimes be hard. This is the way it is in life, not just recovery. Your working recovery from the sweet spot will require that you be flexible and make adjustments. Embrace a sweet reasonableness about your expectations. Know when to apply the strict letter of the law to your recovery life and when to be gentle with what you expect from yourself and others. This is a practiced art form.

The sweet spot for recovery growth requires gardening. Utilize your quiet time each day to recenter your focus. Know your tools for regulation and how to use them. I encourage addicts to create a plethora of recovery tools that are placed on the shelf for resources like a woodworker puts her tools on the shelf of her garage. Practice what you know. It will help you to return to your window of tolerance. It is the sweet spot that propels long-term growth and serenity.

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