healing

What to Say When the Truth is You Don’t Know

September 10, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

The discovery of relational betrayal is a shocking experience for everyone connected to the gauntlet of disclosure. The betrayer is challenged to expose hidden secrets that destroy trust. The betrayed waits for words that are daggers to the heart. The end result is a crushing carnage of hurt that cripples and at times is irreparable.

Couples who try to survive this tsunami of emotional pain experience a roller coaster of devastating feelings that rock their foundation. Stress on the relationship is extreme. Often, the betrayer doesn’t disclose all of the details, and the betrayed is left to wait for the next shoe to fall. The betrayer pulls away from further details of disclosure like someone retreating after touching a hot stove. Heartache and anger are inevitable to the betrayed in the presence of shock and disbelief. The intensity escalates each partner to polarizing positions toward each other.

Addicts often ask, “What do I say when my partner asks why I betrayed and then did it again? Were you thinking of me before you decided to violate your vows to me?” The question begs for an answer and a salve that will make the pain go away. The dilemma is that no matter what you say there is no fix because you cannot make the pain go away with words. Many addicts panic when asked why because they don’t know the answer and can’t think of a solution.

There are a few things you can do.

1. You can respond by saying it straight. Tell on yourself when you have minimized or omitted hurtful admissions. Clarify your behavior that added a crazy-making environment to your betrayed partner. Surrender to the distrust your partner felt because of your deceit. When asked “Why would you do this to me and your kids?” Be honest. Don’t evade tough questions. If you don’t know, admit it. In time, recovery and treatment will help you know why and you can express your understanding then. However, in the moment be clear and truthful and let go of trying to fix your partner’s anguish. Easier said than done but necessary.

2. Let go of trying to fix your partner’s pain. When you see your partner in agony, it is normal to want to say or do something to take away the pain. Trying to fix it by saying what you think they want to hear will backfire. Saying you’re sorry and promising to never do the behavior again will not take away the never-ending pain. Betrayers who obsessively try to fix their betrayed partner’s hurt with attempts at solution responses focus on trying to escape not only their partner’s pain but also their own self-contempt. Healing advances for both parties when the hurt from devastation is recognized. The only way to resolve the pain is to go through the heartache and the intense feelings that accompany broken trust. So, stop repeating “I’m sorry!” Don’t offer any more solutions for the betrayed partner’s pain. Sit with your own disturbed breach of personal values. Let this journey be your path to healing. Allow your partner to have their personal struggle to get through your crippling conduct.

3. You can validate! Replace empty promises and apologies with validating words and behavior. When your partner screams out in pain, simply validate that what they feel makes sense and is as awful as they feel and express. When pain is expressed by those you’ve hurt, save explanations of your behavior and simply validate. Later will be a better time to give the needed explanation. Needed apologies are appropriate after you have painstakingly validated the harm you have done when your partner expresses grief and hurt from your betrayal.

You will need to validate your own pain. Becoming busy with recovery programs, vocational work, or tending to family activities can become a way of escape and avoidance from your own emotional pain. You will need to validate your pain in order to authentically be present for the pain of your betrayed partner.

Essentially, betrayal is a traumatization of both the betrayer and the betrayed. You will need to say it straight to yourself and your partner. You will need to lean into the pain of your hurtful behavior. There are no words that fix it. Healing will require that you validate yourself and the one whose heart is broken by your betrayal behavior. These actions are more healing than the words you choose to explain or attempt to alleviate the pain in the presence of betrayal behavior.

Taking What Is and Making It Work

September 6, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

Feelings in recovery can be like a pendulum that swings from one extreme to the other. There are times that we are oversensitive and other times we are not sensitive enough. Sometimes we seem to work very hard to make something out of nothing and other times we need to take what we think is nothing and make something from it. For example, you can perceive someone’s silence as rejection in an instant, and then build what Mark Nepo describes as a cold castle on that tiny imagined brick. In this way, you make assumptions about what can turn out to be nothing. Other times you might go to a 12-step meeting that lacks the chemistry you hoped for. You don’t know anyone, there’s no coffee and you honestly feel turned off by everyone who is present. This becomes the time that recovery would require you to make something out of nothing. How many times have you walked away from a meeting empty and how many times did you shift your attitude and walked away with insights of gold? It becomes about attitude and your willingness to shift your spirit.

So much of recovery is about taking what is and spreading it around to make it enough. There are many things you don’t have to have to be successful in recovery. You don’t have to have the best addiction counselor in the field—you are not the best client, so why would you need the best counselor? It’s not imperative that you pay an exorbitant amount to the greatest guru or an arm and a leg for treatment that you really cannot afford. You don’t have to find a “kick-ass” sponsor. The list of imagined unnecessary requirements can be endless.

There are some things you must have. You will need an attitude to do whatever it takes to be sober. You will need to employ the capacity to take what is spread it around and make it enough. These two ingredients will take you to where you need to go in order to access who you need to work with and to engage in what you need to face in order to be sober and find healing. Here are some considerations to help you cultivate these characteristics:

1. Embrace grit and grind in recovery: I am not a big fan of providing plush conditions for addiction recovery. I also don’t promote the opposite, that austere conditions are required for recovery. I just believe that what is needed to do sobriety is a willing attitude to embrace grit and grind. One of the spiritual virtues of the 12 steps in recovery is courage. Recovery does not happen by way of convenience. Addicts in recovery build their lives around recovery, not the other way around. Ninety meetings in ninety days require a commitment to a whatever-it-takes mentality. Recovery requires more than merely jumping through the hoops. It demands that you tell on yourself at each meeting and that you not leave the meeting without getting one thing to help you remain sober and deepen recovery life. You then follow up with accountability by reaching out to someone to help you to incorporate in your recovery what you discovered in your last meeting. When you do these three things 90 times in 90 days, tell me you won’t get better! Yet, it requires grit and grind because these things are simple but not easy to do.

2. Practice gratitude: You will lose meaningfulness in recovery living if you do not practice gratitude. The challenges in recovery are so daily! Every day’s struggle to do the next right thing requires embracing the grit and grind. But, you won’t be able to remain consistent in this effort without practicing gratitude. Take your eyes away from the challenge and choose to be grateful for what is around you. Notice the birds around you, your kids, your pets, your neighbors, the intricacies of everything outdoors, your partner, and your job. The list of gratitude is endless. Yet, this practice will take what is and make it more. At the next meeting you attend, that doesn’t have what you are looking for, practice gratitude and see what you find in the meeting after doing so.

3. Practice being generative: Believe it or not, your recovery is not all about you! Living sober creates a foundation of living whereby you can become generative. Generativity means any activity that contributes to the development of others and to the life of the generations that come after you. It’s a way of living. Addicts practice the 12 steps to end the crazy-making experience of addictive living. The power of healing is legendary. However, healing would be short-lived without the emphasis of Step 12. Step 12 encourages addicts to pass along the hope for recovery to the next generation of addicts in need of healing. The 12-step program was never designed to be insular but inclusive. Twelve-step generativity is about the mentality of sharing hope for transformation to those without hope. Addicts with experience in recovery point to promise and healing to the generations that come after them. This is the nature of generativity spawned from the 12th Step.

The story is told of a 10-year-old boy who loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When he went to get the peanut butter jar to add to his jelly sandwich, he noticed daylight at the bottom of the peanut butter jar. Dejected, he threw away the peanut butter and walked out of the kitchen with nothing. His dad called him back to the kitchen, took the peanut butter jar from the trash, scraped the sides so that his son had 1/2” of peanut butter rather than the usual 1”, slapped it with the jelly slice and his son now had something where he otherwise would have had nothing.

Recovery requires that we take what is when resources are less than ideal and make something from nothing. This art form of recovery will require your personal grit and grind, the magic of your grateful spirit, and a commitment to generative recovery living.

Taking Time To Learn From Yesterday

September 3, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“Life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backwards.” —Soren Kierkegaard

Many times people disconnect their past from their present experience. In the addiction recovery world, there is a reference made to walking around the elephant in the living room. It highlights how denial fuels the function of addictive behavior. In order to survive, an addict learns to live a pretend life by ignoring what is real and embracing what is fictitious. This dysfunctional way of living paves a pathway toward addiction behavior. People learn to live a disconnected life.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Buddha emphasized the importance of the interconnectedness of everything. He said for us to look at a leaf. It contains the sky, the earth, and the sun in terms of what it needs to grow. He said the birth and death of any phenomenon is related to the birth and death of all other phenomena. The one contains the many and the many contain the one. Without the one, there cannot be the many and without the many there cannot be the one.

Life is interconnected. It becomes a tapestry that weaves the healthy experience with the dysfunctional. It connects bitter with sweet. It couples joy with sorrow and success with failure. It is all intersectional.

Important studies suggest that people are biopsychosocial beings. This means that we cannot isolate our physical essence from our mind and we cannot separate the individual from the environment. The history of your environmental background is significant for you to better understand the struggles that you experience around addictive behavior. Studies show that growing up in a family with a lot of stress and relational isolation impacts children’s ability to learn. A child learns to dissociate from stress and anxiety in early childhood. Later the child easily connects the numbing out with addictive behavior.

Studies show that economics matter too. People who are poor face more stress than others. They are more likely to breathe polluted air, have less access to healthcare, and be unable to address preventative health concerns, including emotional concerns because they do not have the resources to do so. They are more likely to become a victim of a system that considers material things more important than connection as human beings.

All of this suggests it is important to look backward in order to understand your present addictive behavior. Your addiction indicates a desire to escape stress and anxiety, not only present but historical. You will need to unpack childhood stress in order to release its destructive impact. Many parents have done their best while facing impossible circumstances. Understanding your addiction as not a result of poor choices but as a coping mechanism that evolved from unmet needs or abuse will help you integrate effective treatment so that you can look forward without being dominated by addiction.

Studies show that you are actually wired for connection, love, and compassion. A supportive 12-step community can have a huge impact on long-term sobriety. Here are some suggestions to help you reconnect your past with your present.

1. Connect with nature: Take a walk through the woods. Notice the energy of life all around you. Slow your thoughts and connect your awareness to the plant life, the birds in the air, and the ants on the ground. See yourself as a part of the greater energy of life.

2. Connect with others: Studies show that we have less contact, intimacy, and trust with others than ever before. Call a friend. Take time to listen to what’s important in their life. Take time to share what is important to you. Be willing to be vulnerable. Share what hurts and longings that are left unmet. Risk trusting that your friend cares about what matters to you. Put yourself out there and show that you care what matters to them.

3. Connect with what is meaningful in your work: Many experience their work as meaningless. There is no vision or passion. As a result, they turn to how they look, the accumulation of things, etc. But, they have no sense of value in what they do at their work. Determine to reconnect with making a difference in what you do for work. It may be something that others will not notice when you do it. You may not be rewarded financially. Yet, finding meaningfulness in your work will help you reconnect with yourself.

4. Connect with yourself: Most people have had gut feelings that they ignored and wish they hadn’t. This suggests that some people learn to separate from themselves. Two-year-olds know what they feel in their gut and express it. Gut feelings tell us what is friendly and what is dangerous. They tell us what is true and what is false. Take time to listen to your heart. Pay attention to your feelings. It will help you regain connection with yourself and integrate that connection with the world around you.

Being connected to yourself, others, and the world around you requires that you embrace the insights from the past while keeping your eyes focused on the present moment. We are biopsychosocial beings that need healthy connections with all living things.

Sabotage: Feeling Good About Feeling Bad

August 30, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

“I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

I played one year of football in high school. It was my senior year. It was memorable for all the wrong reasons. We were bad — not just bad but pathetic. If Charlie Brown were playing and Lucy was the coach, you’d want to place your bets with Charlie’s team. We had a 300-pound ex-NFL player for a coach who was not as inflated as were the expectations that year for our football team. I had never played organized football prior to that year. Other guys on the team were not much better. We printed twenty thousand “Go Go 9-0” bumper stickers — one for every person in our small town, signifying a perfect season.

We accomplished the goal—backasswards! We went 0-9. Our closest game was our first, with a school that was about half our size. From then on, we considered ourselves to have a good game if we stayed within 3 touchdowns of all the rest of the schools we played. We seldom scored. Whoever it was that crossed the goal line, stood there in a trance. There was no dance in the end zone. It was like what am I supposed to do next? Even when we did good things, we would talk ourselves out of it with a series of penalties that sabotaged all reason for hope.

Self-sabotage is a common undermining experience in recovery from addiction. Most addicts experience thoughts of recovery likened to the experience with football that was just described. Euphoric pink clouding fuels inspiration with motivating beliefs of “I got this!” only to be crushed in debilitating defeat with an addictive binge. Addicts often feel uncomfortable with sobriety. Not using seems too saintly. Leaving old patterns is like leaving old friends. Oddly, it can feel like betrayal! Successful sobriety with accompanying peace and calm begins to feel boring without the chaos of out-of-controlled living. Frequently, I listen to addicts share that it feels familiar, even good to feel bad!

There is a certain companionship and camaraderie with self-destruction. Rock bottom is a surprisingly comfortable place to lay your head. Looking up from the depths of another low often seems a lot safer than wondering when you’ll fall again. Falling feels awful. Addicts can willfully shoot themselves in the foot to protect themselves from confronting their own shortcomings. Micromanaging others, passive-aggression, chronic lateness, and perfectionism all undermine the stability of sobriety. Some addicts can even argue that these traits are strengths and not weaknesses. Yet, they prevent the addict from blooming sobriety and serenity.

Here are a few considerations that can be helpful in working through self-sabotaging behaviors.

1. A zero-sum mentality fuels self-sabotage. Life perspective is damaged when we reduce our vision of people in the world to winners and losers. Mohammad Javad Zarif observed “If you look to the international scene over the past many years, we haven’t been able to resolve many problems and many crises, because we have approached them from a zero-sum perspective. My gain has always been defined as somebody else’s loss, and through that, we never resolve problems.” Self-sabotage is empowered when I adopt this mentality which reduces life to winners and losers. When you define the essence of life as either winning or losing, you set yourself up for self sabotage. When being a winner makes someone else a loser, life becomes “us” versus “them”. We become like crabs in a bucket, any of which could easily climb out, except that others will claw the one climbing out over and again, securing that none escape. A zero sum mentality will reduce the self-confidence of others who succeed with envy, resentment, and conspiracy. It will sabotage the success of the other. Sobriety is not about comparison or competition. There is enough sobriety for everyone to experience and the depths of serenity have yet to be mined to exhaustion. Only a short-sighted perspective sabotages the reality that each person is an unrepeatable miracle of the universe.

2. Overcoming self-sabotage will require that you love yourself. Shame undermines self-love. When you go against your values and hurt others you sabotage loving yourself. You set in motion the operation of self-sabotage. Hating yourself for hurting others only activates the self-sabotage of continuing the same hurtful behavior toward self and others. It forms a wicked vortex that cripples with self-destruction. This contributes to the reason addicts struggle to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage. They don’t love themselves. Addicts become wired to the attitude that any reason is a good reason to hate yourself. Addictive ruin seals the deal. This is the most difficult challenge for every addict—to LOVE YOURSELF NO MATTER WHAT the outcome or behavior. You don’t beat yourself up to a better place. But, you can love yourself into a new reality about life. The sole factor that determines long-term sobriety and deepening serenity is when an addict learns to love him/herself unconditionally. This is not a black-or-white experience. You practice moving from hating yourself to hating and loving yourself, to loving yourself predominantly by learning to transform self-hatred into self-love. It happens when you give yourself some time, stop wallowing in the mud of misbelief, embrace affirmation and ignore the critical voice that sabotages your destiny. This will require ongoing conditioning. There is no shortcut.

3. Mistaken beliefs will fuel self sabotage. Your shaky sense of self sits on a foundation of mistaken beliefs. You cannot be intimate with yourself when your head is full of crap. You have to stalk your mistaken beliefs. Know them like the back of your hand. Make friends with them. If you learn to respect them, they will teach you how and where to love yourself. Don’t bullshit yourself. When a mistaken belief is activated, listen to what hurts that makes the mistaken belief operational. Then address it with gentleness and affirmative belief about yourself and the situation at hand. Practice reframing the negative cognition into inspirational insight and positive affirmation. The art of reframing the negative into something positive is often overlooked by those in recovery. It helps to take what is and make it work, simply by the way you choose to think about yourself. Most mistaken beliefs do not go away but they can be managed and transformed into empowered belief that overcomes self sabotage.

4. Give up the story line of Victimization. The truth is that we have all been victimized in the world we live. It is not helpful to minimize and ignore this reality nor does it create a resolution to wallow in the throes of resentment, disappointment and holding a grudge toward those who have the power or have persecuted with their agency. Sometimes the victimization is complex and requires an ongoing clarion call toward action and systemic change for healing and transformation. Yet ultimately, overcoming personal/collective injury will require that you give up the storyline of victimization in order to address self sabotage. Giving up the storyline does not mean you pretend that the violation never occurred. Giving up the storyline is accomplished when the injury is recognized, and then you grasp self empowerment to address those who have been injured and demand negotiating wants, needs, and expectations for healing and respect. When this healing is enacted, you are able to take what is and create meaningfulness in living. It does not mean that I accept domination and control from another. Rather, it suggests that I refuse to give my power away to another’s insensitivity, as I power my way into a new reconstruction of reality and transformation with confidence and equanimity. The hegemony of another is overcome by the embrace of your own power changes the storyline from one of victimization to one of recognized empowerment and efficacy. We are bound to feel anxious as we leave behind old notions of our unworthiness. The challenge is not to be fearless but to develop strategies for acknowledging our fears and finding out how we can allay them.

Sabotage is a common thread experience that ties us all together- People who want to lose weight, get a degree, exercise, run a marathon, make peace with relatives, drain the pain of childhood trauma often wallow in self sabotage. Many people stop short of attainment because they listen to the voice of self-sabotage that tells them they do not deserve the results of successful completion. It can be more familiar and comfortable to sit with victimization than it is to give up the storyline and live life free of addictive demand, resentment, grudge and victimization. Self sabotage can be like going to the candy store to pick out any candy that you would like and walking away with a sack of Horehound candy. It’s bitter and hard but it’s what I am used to. Inner peace will be achieved when you stop looking for something to change on the outside and you create a change in perspective on the inside.

No Magic Bullet

August 13, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“There’s no magic bullet. There’s no pill that you take that makes everything great and makes you happy all the time. I’m letting go of those expectations, and that’s opening me up to moments of transcendent bliss. But I still feel the stress over ‘Am I thin enough? Am I too thin? Is my body the right shape?” — Anne Hathaway

Isn’t life a bitch, sometimes? Even when you experience breakthrough insights of wisdom that calm your frenetic racing mind, Like a boomerang that circles back and smacks you in the back of the head — fear and obsessive thought return with the least provocation.

Healing from addiction is a war of inner turmoil. Like a super speed disclaimer at the end of a radio ad, the inner chatterbox in my head blitzes me with a dump of ragging thoughts of misbelief that can literally drive me insane. The only difference between my chatterbox and the hyperspeed radio disclaimer is that I hear very clearly what my chatterbox is telling me and it ain’t peaceful! It’s full of distress and discomfort.

Addicts will do anything to escape from physical pain, emotional discomfort, and personal struggle. We tell ourselves that life would be better if we could just find an instant fix. But, there is no lightning in a bottle. Billions of dollars are spent every year on painkillers in an attempt to break free from physical and emotional pain derived from mental stress and malady. “If I could just find the right drug—the right quick fix therapy to numb the pain, even if it’s temporary — I’ll do it.”

But when I realize there is no magic cure — the desire for therapy wanes and my monkey brain takes over in search of addictive escape. Even though it is temporary and fleeting, it always delivers what it promises. There is a momentary escape — even though it might be deadly. It is common for addicts to look for the sensational fix — the spectacular!

An alternative to a magic bullet is when we embrace life’s struggles, lean into painful experiences big and small, and become open to the significance of uninspired moments—the hours of our everyday existence that are ordinary and simple.

Transformation and healing occur not in the spectacular moment under a spotlight of attention but rather in nondescript places where no one is watching or paying attention. I often hear stories of recovery that are fought and won in the private portals of one’s mind and heart. It’s a place that no one but you can possibly appreciate because no one is there but you. This counterintuitive approach paradoxically creates fulfillment in life and clarifies meaning and purpose in the presence of pain and discomfort in ways that are missed by those in search of a magic bullet.

Recovery from addiction is carved out in common routine everyday experiences. These places are so prevalent in the human condition. Recovery from addiction demands that we “dare to be average” — that we dare to embrace the struggle and discomfort of commonplace experiences and learn to calm the super speed voice of addictive urge. — K.W.

You can read more insights about the importance of embracing everyday experience in recovery from Ken’s book “Dare to Be Average — Finding Brilliance in the Commonplace” – published by Daily House Publishing and currently on sale through Amazon.com.

I’ve Already Done My Work

August 6, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

When I was a 9th-grade boy I got a summer job detasseling corn. Detasseling corn is removing the immature pollen—the tassel—from the tops of the corn and placing it on the ground. It is a form of pollination control, employed to cross-breed two varieties of corn. Every corn plant has both male and female parts. Removing the tassels from all the plants of one variety leaves the grain that is growing on those plants to be fertilized by the tassels of the other, resulting in a hybrid.

Today most of the tassels are removed by machine. However, when I was a kid it was done manually. Kids from my hometown would be hired and bussed to farms north of town. We worked all day detasseling and then bussed back home. If you were lucky you were able to ride on a detasseling machine which allowed you to pull the tassels off corn plants without having to walk through the rows of corn. It was much easier to ride than walk. When you walked the rows it was hot. Early in the morning corn plants gathered dew from the night before. If it rained the night before you would get soaking wet and the rows were a muddy mess. The sunshine increased the humidity and it was suffocating.

I never got a job on the machine. I always had to work with a crew of walkers. One guy on our crew named Chuck would always end his day by 9 am. Everyone else worked until 5 pm. Chuck would say “I’ve done my work, now it’s your turn.” He figured he had enough of detasseling and simply waited in the bus for everyone else to do their work. There were thousands of acres of corn that needed to be detasseled, but Chuck thought he had done his work. He was just waiting for the rest of us to do our work so he could go home. Sometimes he would impatiently prod us to hurry up so he could go home. Chuck believed that he had done his work!

As a therapist treating addiction, I hear this refrain all too often. I hear it from addicts who tell me they don’t need to do counseling or go to a 12-step group because they have “done all their work” even though they are mystified as to why they relapsed. I hear it from partners of addicts who don’t want to go to therapy or join a support group. They tell me they previously went to therapy and have done their work. Now their addict partner is the identified patient. It’s like they are waiting for Bozo Bill or Screwed Up Sally to get their act together and everything will be just fine! I wonder if they ever met Chuck from my detasseling days.

As a therapist, I approach treatment from a systemic point of view. Like the mobile over the baby’s crib, when you strike one butterfly, all the butterflies respond in movement. So it is in treating family dysfunction and addictive behavior. When one acts out there is a response by everyone in the family system and all need to be treated.

Addictive families want to ignore the obvious and embrace the improbable. If Bozo Bill will just stop acting out, the rest of us in this family will be just fine! Even though his wife is depressed and acting out by binging on food and the kids are enmeshed with mom, getting high on drugs with their friends.

A partner to a sex addict often thinks that the addict is the problem. The idea is to send the addict away and get him or her fixed with therapy. The partner is devastated by betrayal but doesn’t want to do therapy because the addict is the problem. Really? It’s sort of like a pedestrian being run over by a car while crossing the street. Paramedics are rushed to the scene and pick up the driver and rush him to the emergency room because he doesn’t know how to drive and needs help! The partner has a broken heart and needs therapeutic care for healing, but argues they are fine. It is common to hear a partner say “Just fix Bozo Bill. I already did my work in the past!”

Don’t get caught becoming like my detasseling buddy Chuck. Here are some considerations for healing.

1. The work of building healthy relationships never ends. There never is a time that addressing issues on your side of the street is over. That said, the work you will need to do is not about taking responsibility for your partner’s addiction or actions. That’s not about you. However, there is a need to gain support toward healing the painful aftermath and carnage created by your partner’s acting out. There is work to be done in addressing your contribution to intimacy problems in the relationship. You didn’t cause the addictive behavior, but you do make a contribution to intimacy distance. Focus on your self-care and your responses in the relationship. There’s always work to be done.

2. Don’t assign or become the “Identified Patient.” The relationship work that needs to be done requires work by both parties. There is no “Identified Patient.” It is like the analogy of the three legs to a stool. Two legs represent the two individuals’ issues and the third leg represents the couple’s issues. Without each issue being seriously addressed, the relationship will remain hobbled.

3. Sometimes when a partner in a relationship says they have done all their work, it is a way to avoid having to face the question of whether they want to be in the relationship at all. Many times partners focus on fixing the addict with recovery and therapy to avoid facing the decision to leave the relationship. When all the attention is placed on the addict in recovery, a partner sidesteps their own unhappiness and the fear of disrupting family dynamics with a separation or divorce.

4. It requires work to face painful decisions. Taking care of yourself in addiction and partnership requires making painful choices. Setting boundaries requires following through with consequences when a boundary is not honored. In order to have a secure relationship, you will need to let go of what you cannot control. This is always difficult. It engages recovery work. Surrender is never one and done. When your relationship is stuck in a painful, destructive place, there is always work to be done by both parties. When you truly have done all of your relational work, you will be at the end of your life. You will be dead. Don’t allow yourself to be disillusioned by my childhood buddy, Chuck. There’s always work for you to do in building a healthy relationship.

Fourth Step Inventory

July 30, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin

I recently completed a 4th step inventory with a good friend. As best I recall it was the tenth 4th step I have done in 34 years of recovery. I wanted to do a 4th step around the self-destructive behavior of martyrdom. Those familiar with the 4th step know that the step can be exhausting, emotional, and difficult. For me in recovery, frequently a theme of self-sabotage will surface that triggers me to go back and do another 4th step. My tenth 4th step will probably not be my last. In one sense as a therapist, I do a 4th step constantly. I help people work through trauma every week. My experience with clients challenges me to reflect on my own trauma.

The fallout from doing 4th step inventory is predictable. It hurts. It is totally exhausting. You sit in vulnerability. You might swear a lot! The 4th step ignites feelings of overwhelm, exasperation, and anger. It affects your sleep. Shame is kicked up. You wonder why the guy who is listening is sitting there looking at you. There is so much to unload that it is tempting to categorize and minimize all the behaviors. It seems like the more you share the more you feel screwed. As you unpack your character flaws, it feels like you are on display (more shame).

During the inventory, you struggle to verbalize the meaning of each flawed experience. There’s an overwhelming sensation that what you just shared makes no sense whatsoever. As you soldier on and throw it all up on the table, there’s no sense of relief. It feels like the experience of going through emotional dry heaves. When you’re done you feel wasted. You feel numb. Your brain feels unplugged. You think you are in a daze. It feels like you were hit by a big Mack truck. You might even feel a little crazy. You are depressed and maybe even a little suicidal (extreme). This doesn’t mean everyone feels this way after doing a 4th step. It does mean I felt all of those things- not just when I did a recent 4th step but some of these strong feeling experiences have been part of the encounter every time I have ever done a 4th step.

So, why would anyone ever do a 4th step inventory? Who wants to sign up for this degree of intense feeling? Here are a few considerations as to why it makes sense.

1. It triggers a shift from the left brain to the right brain experience. Addicts resort to figuring things out on their own. They compute and interpret the terrain of life through the distorted eyes of addiction. Their left-brain approach is efficient in satisfying cravings. It is amazing to listen to 1st step stories that detail the left brain calculation and planning involved in addressing addictive urges. They conceptualize and analyze a given situation and determine a strategy to feed the junkie worm. Addicts are really great at it until they are not. On the other hand, recovery requires a right-brain approach. It depends upon letting go of left brain distortions that fuel addictive behavior and opening the heart of your right brain that shares your emotional experiences in life. This is what Step 4 is all about. Addicts disconnect from their emotions around distressful events and lose themselves in left-brain logic. This leads to using, numbing out, and avoiding painful feelings. Embracing 4th step work is a right brain exercise that later helps the addict utilize his logical left brain toward effective recovery care.

2. Fourth Step work is an exercise that teaches how suffering cultivates healing. James Baldwin, American writer and activist, once said that you cannot grow yourself up unless you learn to suffer. For sure, life teaches that the only way to manage emotional pain is to go through it. You cannot avoid it with attempts to go around it as if there were some kind of detour. Maturity requires that you know and experience grief. Grief is suffering. While there is no need to be masochistic, life always unfolds suffering in many forms. Growing up demands that you learn to embrace suffering and learn the lessons that life reveals within its context. The fourth step work beckons the addict to make meaningfulness from the character flaws that have triggered immense suffering and pain.

3. The design of 4th step work is to transform behavior not just to express emotional flatulence. Baldwin spoke to the New York Times in 1977 that “people can cry much easier than they can change.” For sure 4th step work triggers tears. I have listened to colleagues, clients and addicts alike shed tears about their behavior. You can grieve and shed tears about destructive addictive behavior, gender domination from patriarchy, racial equality, etc, and remain unwilling to do what it takes to transform behavior. The goal of 4th step work is not to provide emotional catharsis alone. It is to establish a solid foundation for behavioral change.

4. Procrastination paralyzes progress. People put off what is dreaded. Doing taxes, exercising, or facing a relational conflict is like doing a 4th step. You put it off because it’s painful. Procrastinating will stunt your improvement. It is critical to move through the pain for the next experience of personal growth. Historically, addicts move through the first 3 steps in recovery with enthusiasm. They put off the possibility of maturation that comes from embracing Step 4. Overcome 4th step fear by “chunking”. Rather than sitting down to embrace the 4th step “whole enchilada”, work with it in bits and chunks. Write down one or two character flaws and their impact on your destructive behavior at a time. Eventually, you will have your first or next 4th step completed.

The fourth step of work is a way to engage in powerful transformation in recovery from addiction and behaviors of self-sabotage.

The Betrayal Predicament

July 9, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” — Charles Dubois

There are many complex consequences that come with traumatic experiences in life. When an addict chooses to act out he or she is oblivious to the whirlwind of repercussions the destructive behavior manifests. The fallout from broken trust creates a ripple effect that exists for a long time.

Relationship betrayal is like a shoulder separation. Any movement or action triggers tremendous pain. With shoulder separation, the pain remains the same until the shoulder is back in place. With relationship betrayal, the pain remains as long as one partner stays in the “basement” and the other condescends toward the one who has betrayed. There is a long journey toward healing the breach in betrayal behavior. In the end, healing betrayal requires an acceptance of common shared brokenness between the betrayer and the betrayed.

The journey toward healing is long and arduous. It makes sense that the partner offended would writhe in emotional pain and rail about the behavior of the betrayer. The role of the betrayer is one of honesty and validation of the behaviors committed. Support requires that within reason a betrayer take it on the chin regarding a painful partner response. In addition, there is the expectation to stop the destructive behavior while validating the partner betrayed who is groveling with emotional pain. For the betrayer, there is this sense that you have no moral capital to stand to set boundaries after betrayal. It is common experience for a betrayer to not be trusted, to face a firestorm of anger and fury, to be called names, and to be treated with a collection of hurtful responses from a betrayed partner. After all, betrayal breaks the heart of the one betrayed.

That being said, actually getting emotionally naked and facing the fallout of emotions that occur when betrayal is discovered has a designated shelf life. What I have noticed is that a couple can engage in a dynamic that becomes a “pain game”. The one betrayed lashes out and the betrayer deflects. The deflection can evolve into various strategies such as all-out verbal war, hunkering down and becoming silent, or passive-aggressive behaviors that likely fuel more acting-out behaviors that might destroy the relationship.

Relational healing requires boundaries for both partners. The partner offended by betrayal feels entitled to tongue-lash and berate. It makes sense, but it just doesn’t work toward healing. In anger, a partner betrayed can respond “I don’t care, the S.O.B deserves it all”. In many cases, for sure. In all cases, remaining stuck in this attitude will ultimately kill the possibility of healing intimacy. Partners betrayed who make the betrayer a pin cushion to be stuck at will with nasty comments of resentment will over time only have a pin cushion and not an intimate partner. This usually results in becoming stuck with bitterness. Healing requires ongoing forgiveness and the practice of letting go and surrendering which Step 3 in a 12-step program promotes.

Betrayers complain about the penalty box. This embraces the mentality that the betrayer says “You screwed up so the privileges of relationship trust are suspended and you need to stay in the penalty box until I, the betrayed, say you can come out”. Some partners who have betrayed put a chip on their shoulder and walk the corridors of their relationship seething that the betrayed hasn’t gotten over it. This obvious sign of narcissism usually plays into a relational explosion. It is a contributing reason why so many relationships wrecked by betrayal dissolve.

Others, go along with the penalty box mentality, hoping to endure to see the light of the day of emancipation. This approach requires perseverance. It engages the idea that the betrayer deserves to be mistrusted and he or she must earn their way back with impeccable behavior while demonstrating acceptance that they are not worthy of trust. Some betrayers get stuck in the misbelief that they simply are not trustworthy at any level of the relationship. They even argue that they belong in the penalty box. Their perception of themselves becomes one and the same as that of the partner who was betrayed. This mistaken belief blocks emotional healing from betrayal in a relationship.

Here are a few considerations toward healing broken trust:

1. Empower your adult self. Don’t give your power away to the little boy or girl within you. Recovery requires the powerful resources of an adult. Often, in recovery, we surrender and give the power to the little boy or girl within. Setting a boundary with a partner who has betrayed you or the partner who has been betrayed is an adult action and should not be made from the perspective of a child in control. Take back your power. You can and must say “no more”. You don’t have to throw a temper tantrum. A direct and simple “no more” in behavioral action is enough. When you are overwhelmed and reactionary, ask yourself the question “Who has the reins of your thoughts and actions?” If it is the little boy or girl, take the reins and put them in the hands of your adult self and follow through with the action that your adult says makes sense. Addicts tend to lose themselves trying to please their offended partner. The child mentality takes over, thinking that if somehow I do whatever my partner wishes then we will be happy again. It seldom works. When you honor yourself by maintaining your boundaries, you will create the best opportunity to restore trust and harmony in the relationship.

2. Strive to be impeccable with your word: (The Four Agreements, Ruiz) Misusing your word by not following through may have created hell for you in the past, and when you are impeccable with follow through you create beauty and heaven on earth. Honesty is crucial to healing betrayal. Disclosure is the most difficult task in betrayal recovery. Impeccability of your word is destroyed when you piecemeal and dribble out the truth. The power of honesty heals. Make up your mind that regardless of cost you will say it straight, whether you are disclosing betrayal or responding to what has broken your heart.

3. Embrace “white water thinking.” When you go rafting or kayaking, white water requires you to focus and be present in the here and now. To successfully navigate you must pay attention to where you are and what you must do presently. When you are going through the tumult and chaos of betrayal, it is easy to get lost in awfulizing the past and catastrophizing the future. You want to tell yourself that all is lost past, present, and future. To successfully navigate the white water of betrayal, you must focus on the here and now and be determined to do the next right thing. It is critical that you not give in to the temptation to believe it will never be better. White water thinking requires that you trust a process that if you remain present in the moment it will take me to where I need to be.

4. Manage the shame of the behavior by affirming your sense of self while putting the shame on the destructive behavior. No matter what you have done or has been done to you, you are not a piece of shit. You can feel shitty and not be one. All parties of betrayal feel shitty, unless you are sociopathic. Yet, even sociopathic people who heal must embrace this discomfort at some point in their healing. It will require disciplined training to hold your feet to the fire of keeping the shame off your sense of self and onto the behavior. This demands community support and management whether you are the betrayer or the betrayed.

5. Embrace the person, behavior, and relationship you believe is meant to be part of your destiny, and step by step walk in that direction. Betrayal triggers people to think it is over. The relationship may be over, but you don’t have to be done with yourself. In your deepest despair focus on the vision of what you believe is your destiny and act it into being in the here and now. Betrayal does not mean the relationship must be done. You may want it that way and this is your right to conclude. Yet, if you are not done, you have the right to move toward the relationship healing you desire. What you think about will expand. If you believe that you are flawed and that your flaws have produced the results that you suffer in betrayed behavior, you will take what is and make it less. However, if you focus on the power of healing and forgiveness, then this is what you will give yourself and others. You can send love in response to hate. This doesn’t mean you must stay in a hurtful relationship. You can cultivate forgiveness as an act of self-love and send love toward others. No amount of guilt will change anything. Embrace guilt and let it go. You can make a personal commitment to be what you love. You do not have to allow betrayal to dominate who you are or what you think. You can find meaningfulness in your painful experience if you are willing to do whatever it takes.

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.

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