leadership

Thermometer or Thermostat

September 15, 2023 by Ken Wells

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Last year, I spent several days in the cold country of Illinois and then the mountains of Idaho. I slept outdoors one night when the thermometer read minus 2 below zero. My son had given me a warm sleeping bag that he bought in Nepal. I wanted to try it out. So I did. The next morning I was warm inside my bag. Everything outside was frozen and frosty. I was happy to step into the warmth of the house where the thermostat controlled the heat at 72 degrees.

Thermometers simply reflect the temperature of the environment. In Arizona, thermometers reflect the temperature of unbearable heat in the summer while indicating deep freeze temperatures in the Idaho mountains in the winter. A thermostat has the power to regulate the temperature in both summer and winter. It is connected to both heating and cooling systems. Even though very hot or cold, the thermostat can regulate the temperature to a constant 72 degrees when set.

Each of us has the opportunity to be a thermostat and set the atmosphere in the environment of the world we live in. Leadership at every level has this responsibility. When I enter a 12-step meeting room, immediately I recognize the influence of leadership in the room. I sense who it is who has influence by the tone that is set during the meeting by those who lead the group. This is true of every organization in which I have participated.

In my world as a professional therapist I have been involved with many organizations throughout the various years of service. Leaders of organizations have demonstrated charisma, various levels of skills, and different degrees of ability in public speaking. Some people just dress and look like a leader. However, that does not make them one. Most leaders of the organizations I have participated and worked for were thermometers, reflecting the atmosphere and attitudes of the people around them. There have been few leaders who have played the role of being a thermostat. Here is what being a thermostat means to me in recovery and leadership in life.

1. Be true to your heart. Leaders who have influence and make a difference tend to follow the convictions of their heart. Easier said than done. Most cave into peer pressure. This is true whether observing a politician’s voting record, a partner wanting to please a spouse, or a business owner living by his/her convictions, ethics, and personal standards. Most designated leaders pander to please others and do not fight for principles. Long-term recovery and growth require that you exchange your thermometer for a thermostat. Be true to your heart.

2. Be willing to stand alone. True leaders don’t look like leaders, they act as leaders. They are willing to go against popular opinion to do the next right thing. Frequently people look like they are playing the role of leadership. However, statesmanship and persona are hollow unless accompanied with congruency to ethical standards and principles. Recovery teaches one to be true to the fundamentals of healing no matter what. To do otherwise sacrifices sobriety. Countless numbers of addicts have given up sobriety to please someone. Be willing to stand alone.

3. Thermostat recovery people walk the walk and don’t settle with talking the talk. Sometimes in 12-step groups I hear a lot of talking the talk. Some old timers are genuine about their recovery from addiction, but their home life is crap! They have never translated the axioms of recovery lingo into reality at home. They only know how to not act out with their addiction. Be a thermostat and walk the walk at home not just at 12-step meetings.

4. Thermostat recovery people don’t settle for sobriety but anchor themselves in serenity. When you become a thermometer in recovery you simply act on the feelings you have inside. As a thermometer your life becomes dominated by how you feel each day which can be very unpredictable. Being dominated by your feelings will set you up to medicate and escape through addictive behavior. You will stutter and get stuck in Step 4 because you have surrendered your power to your feelings of dread, despair, and discouragement. To be a thermostat means that you take yourself by the nape of the neck with determination to complete step work. You engage the 4th step regardless of fear and anxiety. You do not let those feelings dominate. In the doing you will anchor yourself in serenity.

5. Thermostat recovery people live to give the message of strength and hope to others. The mentality of being a thermometer hovers around the glow and warmth of a recovery group that is safe and reassuring. Thermostat recovery people push out to share hope and strength to others. They make an impact on the community in which they live. Living the 12-principles and working the 12-Steps in all that you do, with the people you engage, in all areas of life, is a true testament to being a thermostat in your world.

This new VELVET STEEL post was written by Ken Wells. In Dare to be Average, Ken’s new book, you can embrace healing, peace, and self-acceptance through meaningful insights to discover purpose and fulfillment in everyday life.

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The Compost of Community

June 30, 2023 by Ken Wells

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” —John Lennon

It is likely that most people are skeptical that the world will fulfill the vision that John Lennon crooned in the lyrics of “Imagine”. The world has always been in turmoil and uncertainty. Today’s world is no exception. Yet. If we are to create unity and harmony with safety, dignity, and a sense of belonging it will happen in the context of community.

We are people who need community. It is a setting that cultivates and composts ingredients for relational healing. It is a place to fertilize personal agency. It is a space to develop interdependence and to affirm individual autonomy. It is the locale to create a sense of belonging. Everyone needs to feel part of the pack. Community is the site to compost and mature personal dignity and respect.

That said, many people have been hurt and betrayed in community. The impact of trauma and oppression makes a sense of belonging very difficult for some people. Addicts classically struggle with belonging. Some experienced traumatic abandonment. Others have felt a sense of exclusion or have felt judged as unlovable.

Healing requires that these hurts and betrayals be addressed. A 12-step community is a place to unpack the trauma of addiction and cultivate an embodied sense of belonging and security.

In relation to others, it is an opportunity to develop the ability to self-regulate and form intimate connections as well as have separation from those with whom you are intimate. Cultivating community attachment underscores the importance of the concept that our bonds and connections with one another is central to personal development through the many stages of life.

As you contemplate the importance of belonging to your community, it would be helpful to reflect upon who in your immediate or extended family is considered as belonging and who is not? Who do you think of that, by our broader social and economic systems, are considered as included and who is seen as disposable or as not belonging? Safety, belonging, dignity, and respect are critical composting ingredients toward building a healthy community.

In recovery, connection through community allows you to find meaningfulness in the average spaces of life. Millions in the world live disconnected from community. Unfortunately, without community, the likelihood of discovering your own personal brilliance dims. Everyday relationship interchange is the common compost that creates the healing power of community.

Mother Teresa once said, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” Do you know someone you would describe as forgotten? When you drive to work, worship or play— do you notice the street people in your community?

Not knowing what to do with misfortune, many look away from the homeless choosing to deal with discomfort by distancing themselves. What about the person at the grocery store who shuffles by with a blank stare on their face? Do you think of them as invisible? Folks warehoused in nursing homes across our country feel disenfranchised and forgotten.

At this level of living, it really doesn’t matter what possessions you once owned, who you have known, or really anything else. Being unloved, uncared for, and forgotten is the greatest poverty among the living.

How this impacts you is that a fragmented disenfranchised world distorts and undermines the possibility of cultivating personal brilliance in everyday places of living. Whether you realize it or not, you are a communal creature who needs connection in order to understand the meaning of living. Isolation deadens connection like your cell phone when it is out of range. Community and commonality are important ingredients when composting individual brilliance.

A 12-step community is designed to be a cocoon and container. It is a container to express anger, overwhelming sadness, and all other intense feelings with total acceptance. Healing requires a nonjudgmental space to unpack unwanted feelings that dominate and handcuff addicts from becoming all they can become in recovery. Community is a cocoon that provides protection from having to perform a certain way for others. It is a container that creates a space for you to sift and sort composted feelings. This is necessary for life changing transformation.

A 12-step community provides connection. The patron saint and mystic St. John of the Cross said that “the virtuous soul alone is like a lone burning coal that grows colder not hotter outside of the fire”. So it is with those who are isolated. When people or systems look to harm or control others, isolation is a key tactic. In prisons, war, and torture, the use of isolation and solitary confinement is standard practice. It also applies to situations of domestic violence. By isolating a person from their network of support and family, the perpetrator is able to break down, hurt, and control the partner being abused. It essentially sequesters them with the person harming them. Isolation is traumatizing in every situation.

During weekend groups that I have conducted across the United States for the past 20+ years, I have witnessed men making courageous choices to be connected by being real and vulnerable. I have experienced men sharing the deepest pain with blood curdling cries of remorse, loss, and loneliness. Group therapy that becomes community is based on the mutuality of common shared brokenness. When people compete and compare themselves to others who have shared, the mutuality evaporates and group effectiveness no longer exists.

The compost of a healing community contains a shared vision, shared goals, and shared hope. There is the compost of healing power when a member courageously shares a truth that has not been told to another living soul and then receives back from the group with total love and acceptance. There is more healing compost when a member chooses to live in accountability and consultation with other group members. There is empowerment when a group member shares from his own experience, confrontation to another member who is struggling to face the truth about their behavior. This makes the group powerful like no other.

Self-empowerment comes through the embrace of authentic humility. The community becomes a safe space to confront ugly narcissism and the ongoing embrace of grief and loss. It is a place built upon cooperation, not comparison, or competition. It isn’t the common strength but the shared weaknesses that heals and promotes personal brilliance. In the context of shared weakness, men have set aside their judgment and anger toward a brother’s behavior and have extended compassion, identification, and care. The connection through the common bond of brokenness has cultivated excitement and rejoicing rather than threat regarding a brother’s strength and success. Shared weakness is the cornerstone of true community.

A 12-step community is a place to find your lost voice. Addicts lose their way and their voice to destructive addictive urges. A community of those who struggle with addiction becomes a place where an addict can find their lost voice. It is a place where you can sleuth the difference between aggression and assertion, victim and victimizer, and dependence from vulnerable interdependence in relationships. Finding your voice in community unlocks the door to going deep within your own reserve of brilliance and becoming your own guru rather than looking for one outside of yourself. Grace Lee Boggs said it right when she wrote, “You are the leader you have been looking and waiting for.”

Healthy community offers support when you are needy. It requires that you ask for what you need and face the fear of possible rejection and abandonment. This is the common compost that connects you to others with the possibility of giving birth to your own personal brilliance. There is no greater space to cultivate and realize the healing of personal brilliance than in the context of healthy community. Community contains the compost of accountability to do the work of carving consistency from everyday challenges that lead to healing and accessing your own personal brilliance.

Squeezed

April 28, 2023 by Ken Wells

“Don’t let the world squeeze you into its own mold” Bible—Romans 12:2 (Phillips translation)

It is difficult to be yourself. Family, society, and work organizations apply pressure on you to conform to expectations. You don’t get too old to no longer hurt from rejection. There are times when it can be very lonely to stand for what you believe. It is difficult to change a behavior when the influence of family attempts to pull you toward old destructive behaviors. This dynamic creates a real challenge for the addict leaving rehab to re-engage with family who operates from old patterns of behavior that are toxic to the change the addict has experienced in rehab. Many addicts in recovery fall to the pressure of family dynamics which squeeze the addict back into its own mold. It’s the reason that aftercare and halfway houses exist. It’s tough to be true to yourself when everyone else around you is doing something different.

It’s not only true for addicts but also for organizational leaders. There are many definitions of what it means to be a leader. People describe leaders as being visionary, having great organization skills, having charisma, being able to follow through and get things done, and being inspirational. Such descriptions effectively define leadership. However, for me, leadership ultimately depends upon the determination to stand for the principle of what one believes regardless of acceptance from others. Few leaders are willing to unwaveringly do so.

It is rare to experience a politician stand for the principle independent of the opinion polls or party affiliation. It has been my experience that it is also rare to experience leaders in religious organizations or workplaces standing for principle when the heat of criticism is turned up. It becomes so alluring to bend to the persuasion of the mainstream when what you believe differs from the consensus view of the many. Sometimes the popular view is right. Yet, leadership requires that you stand for the principle of being true to your heart, even when others think you are wrong. It’s not easy and requires emotional maturity. You never really know who has this emotional maturity until the heat of decision-making is turned up. It becomes formidable when the decision to confront an issue of principle might cost you a friendship, business opportunity, or romantic relationship. Many times in counseling settings I have heard relational commitments made that melted in the heat of follow-through.

Through my years in the workplace environment, I have witnessed different decisions made by leadership to address different issues but with no follow through, because of the hassle it would create, just plain busyness, passive acceptance of the status quo, etc. To be true to yourself requires a great commitment to follow through. When you choose to not follow through you are vulnerable to being squeezed into someone else’s mold. It’s a struggle that impacts parenting, educating children in the classroom, coaching in sports, marital relationships, religious organizations, and all types of work environments.

Addicts know this struggle. Literally, an internal war ensues in the presence of wanting to experience the approval of a family member, partner, or friend, for instance when it is necessary to make a decision to set a boundary or to say no that would create dissatisfaction and disapproval with certain others. It is difficult for addicts who need to set a boundary with a partner around certain unacceptable behaviors. There can be an intense struggle with the temptation to be squeezed into their partner’s mold. It is hard to say no to family or friends about behaviors that you were once ringleader. It is difficult to tell a close friend that if they are going to continue acting out in ways that betray their partner, then I will need to step back from the friendship because I am not willing to keep a destructive secret from their partner. It requires mature internal personal leadership to make the choice to not be squeezed into the mold of someone else’s idea of how you should live.

Here are a few reflections to consider about this matter in recovery:

Be true to yourself. You will sell yourself down the river trying to please others at all costs. It’s true in relationship recovery. Oftentimes, in treatment for betrayal, addicts will lose themselves trying to please the other by compromising their values. They choose not to be true to themselves. Being true to yourself is not a rigid, strictly self-focused decision. It requires that in the presence of trying to please your partner, there is a recognition that you cannot abandon yourself and what your heart tells you to please the significant other. It’s a truth that goes both ways in a partner relationship. Deep relational healing will occur only when both partners are true to themselves. Short of this, the partnership will tend to writhe in unsustainable back-and-forth reactivity.

Be your own Guru. Guru is a teacher. To be your own guru does not mean that you do not seek support or guidance from another. It means that truly the resource of wisdom you hope to find is within your heart. You must go find it. Good therapy and 12-step work underscore this reality. There is no outside fix. Coming to terms with your values, insight and essential self is truly an inside job. People tend to put others on a pedestal, such as old-timers, celebrities, recovery gurus, and on and on it goes. Frankly, it makes me sick. There is no magic guide. No magic guide! Whatever insights others might offer are designed by the universe for you to consider and connect with the wisdom that is within you. This is where you will find the strength and the brilliance to not be squeezed into someone else’s mold. Grace Lee Boggs is correct when she penned “We are the leaders we are looking for.”

Accept the loneliness that comes from being true to yourself. There is a cost to being authentic and genuine. Others may reject you. Not everyone will reject you but often those whose approval and acceptance you would most desire will. It is tempting to become contemptuous in overt or covert ways by becoming judgmental. One response to rejection can be egotistically flipping others the bird. If you don’t accept me then I won’t accept you. Yet, maturity in recovery requires that we quietly accept the decision of others while maintaining being true to self. In humility, letting go of those who reject you is a way of remaining open to the truth of the relationship and situation that can make you a better person. In this way we are best able to transform our loneliness into a deeper experience of solitude.

Refusing to be squeezed into the mold of others requires courage and willingness to face rejection in order to stand alone to the principles that are true to your heart. When you do this the promises of recovery become rich and rewarding. Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.

Stuck and Stargazed

April 18, 2023 by Ken Wells

When I graduated from seminary in 1977 I committed to an intern position at a large church with 24 full-time pastors on staff. I worked 85+ hours a week without compensation for three years. I would work from 7 am till 10 pm each weekday and then help the janitorial staff clean the church from 10 pm to 2 am. Many nights, Eileen and I would sleep in the parlor of the church. We lived off Eileen’s salary which was $9k per year. Why did I do that? At the time, some said because I loved God and the church. But underneath, in my desire to be the best I could be, there was a desperate need to gain the smile of approval from the senior pastor. You might say I was stuck in stargaze.

I came into my adulthood with a hole in my soul. My dad worked hard at three different jobs to meet the needs of our family of 12 kids. I believed that if I worked really hard then I would get the attention and acclaim that I missed from my dad because of his absence. I wanted this pastor to notice my hard work. Looking back I was stuck in desperation for approval. Yet, I could never get enough. After many years of workaholic ministry, the pastor promised that I would become his replacement. However, I later learned that he made the same promise to five other guys. I felt like a fool.

In recovery, I was challenged to examine my tendency to reach out to destructive people and believe in their false promises. While demonstrating relationship savvy in most friendship connections, I had a pattern of unwarranted loyalty and allegiance to authority figures in my life. Repeated and unresolved childhood trauma created a pattern of trauma repetition that undermined my emotional health and had to be addressed.

Do you ever wonder why you tend to bond with people who hurt you in your life? Addicts have the propensity to bond with people who are emotionally unavailable. Blindly, they lose themselves in unhealthy relationships that trigger desires to meet their unmet needs. They lose themselves in the intensity of the relationship in hopes that this one special connection will replace what has been missing. It can be a strong affiliation with a person of power at work, an intense alliance with an organization leader, or becoming hooked on a romantic relationship. Individuals frequently marry with a deep-seated desire to work out with their marital partner what was unaddressed in their family of origin. It can be an inward repressed longing that must be recognized before authentic contact can occur in an intimate relationship.

Trauma occurs during vulnerable and early developmental stages in life and is often unrecognized and invalidated. People become fastened to this nexus of early trauma. There is a tendency to repeat the trauma in later years of life.

Every child has developmental needs to be addressed. Touch, mirroring value, predictability, knowing that you matter, etc. are just a few developmental needs that must be met in a healthy way. When these needs are satisfactorily met safe attachment is formed. There is an embodied sense of security and acceptance. There is an ability to self-regulate with the capacity to form close connections as well as have separation from those with whom you are most personal.

However, when these needs are not met then developmentally you resemble a chunk of Swiss cheese with holes. There is an intense desire to fill the needs (holes) from the outside by achieving power, position, and control with accomplishment and relational approval. This need is overwhelmingly intense but can only be addressed with healthy attachment on the inside. In the attempt to fill these needs from the outside, you can become like a child who cannot get enough sugar. There is never enough achievement or approval from others.

As an adult, the process of addressing this destructive dilemma is to grieve the losses of deficits suffered way back in childhood. Embracing sadness, anger, resentment, shame, hate, and other feelings associated with loss is both unpopular and uncomfortable. Recognizing these painful feelings as energy streams is important. Moving the energy of unwanted feelings from the original source person to the issue (lack of attachment) and then creating what you want in your life through boundaries and personal empowerment requires accessing the maturity of adult self-parenting. Most times, people need therapy to develop this skill set.

Fritz Perls, who is credited as the father of Gestalt therapy, once said that “nothing ever changes until it is real”. You must come to a place where you recognize that the relationship with a toxic person is an attempt to fulfill a psychological need that was never addressed as a child or grieved as an adult. This is the reason that you never get enough of what you really don’t want in a relationship with a toxic abusive person. The crazy-making experience is that you keep creating the same toxic relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable and abusive.

When these hurtful trauma-bonding experiences are not addressed, people become stuck in their own stargazing experience whether it be name-dropping, preferential treatment toward those perceived as important, or pedestalizing a partner subconsciously hoping they will meet a need within.

Addicts struggle with looking outside to others to find answers for approval that can only be discovered within. There are no gurus to lead you. The late activist Grace Lee Boggs was right when she declared that “We are the leaders we are looking for”. Trauma bonding is a way of repeating an abusive relationship hoping for safety. Those who are willing to take the courageous steps toward addressing the pain of past trauma

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