Resilience

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.

Self Belief—Key to Long Term Sobriety

July 5, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent van Gogh

Addicts stop believing in themselves. In many cases, addicts never had anyone who ever believed in them. So they give up and succumb to mistaken beliefs about themselves that are not true. They live a life of self-sabotage and self-fulfilling prophesy. Unless they learn to believe in themselves they will die an addict without recovery.

I learned to stop believing in myself when I was a little kid. The only thing I had going for me was that I was pretty good in sports, but was never noticed for the goals I achieved. My older brothers expressed a lot of false bravado and lived a false self. When I competed with them they would rig the game so I would not win. If I still was able to figure out how to win, they would destroy the game so it would not happen again. I surrendered to believing I was not good enough and slumped to accepting ordinary results. Later in childhood, I stopped trying out for sports. I was average at best in academics at school. I was chided as not being special and buried deep in my soul that I was not good enough to go to college or be successful in life.

Even though I completed college and engaged in success in my professional life it was never enough because I learned to not believe in myself. I had this push within that I had to be more to keep from being less. In very early childhood I learned to masturbate to numb out the pain from not believing in myself. Looking back, I thank my lucky stars that at least I had something I could resort to that would anesthetize the emptiness and pain of misbelief.

I got lucky when I met and married my wife Eileen. She believed in me. When I was a pastor, I never preached a sermon she didn’t like. As a professional counselor, she always believed in who I was and what I did. As an addict, she never gave up on me. She refused to believe that my acting out was about her. She believed that I would overcome the mistaken beliefs that drove my addiction. She believed in me. In time, it became infectious. She says I taught her to believe in herself. As a codependent I probably did. In our 46 years of marriage, there has been a slow sunrise of awareness that has emerged that I could believe in myself. Of all the addiction interventions I have experienced, none is as profound as learning to believe in me.

Belief is an Anglo-Saxon word that means to live in accordance with. I am so glad it does not mean to feel in accordance with. Throughout my life, my feelings have been all over the map. If I only acted on what I felt I would be an inconsistent mess.

Feelings are paradoxical. In recovery, I learned to recognize and listen to my emotions which helped me to identify important needs and address them in healthy ways. I also learned to not allow my feelings to define who I am or how I would behave. Through conditioning, I learned to recognize my feelings and thoughts while controlling my actions to create what I wanted in my life—like early morning runs. Often, it took a mile or so for my feelings and thoughts to settle into acceptance of the action of exercise that I wanted to do. It all hinged on the action word of belief.

Recovery is the same. Addicts must learn to recognize their effect and resource themselves through healthy self-parenting skills. This takes time and hard work to achieve. They must learn that what they feel does not determine who they are or how they behave. In learning to resource themselves they must recognize that incongruent behavior is an aberration to their belief of who they are. Even though everything within tells them they have failed and will never get it right, they must bring themselves back to their center of self. This will only happen through practicing and strengthening belief in self. In the presence of lapse or relapse an addict must act on what they believe is their true self. They must condition themselves to ignore the mistaken beliefs that scream they do the opposite which always results in more self-sabotage and destructive behavior.

The secret to long-term sobriety and the creation of serenity is to believe in who you are. There is no greater gift that a parent gives a child than to believe in who they are. It is taught by the way you role model your own self-belief and not through your words. I am grateful for those in my life who believe in me. However, sobriety and long-term transformation require that I believe in myself. I think of myself as a late bloomer in self-belief. It is never too late for an addict to believe in who they are in recovery.

Safe Places

June 25, 2024 by Ken Wells

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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.

Yes You Can

June 21, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“The great thing about the horizon of infinity is that there is no limit to how amazing you can become.”

You can live sober. You can create whatever you want to be or however, you want to live. Just because something is not handed to you out of the blue does not mean it cannot be yours. Like the phoenix who rose from the ashes to live again, you can rise from the ashes of addict failure and thrive again.

How? You will need to act upon the vision of destiny that you see yourself becoming. If you brush away the dust and dirt of disappointment that comes from groveling in addictive behavior, you will see the dream of living calm, collected, and empowered. You will see yourself capable of managing the anxiety and stress of life without depending upon your addictive behavior or substance to get you through. There is always a wish or a vision of something better. When you are struggling with failure to live sober, it feels impossible to embrace anything but feelings of doom, devastation, and resignation. You feel dominated by failure. You tell yourself that sobriety is for someone else. However, it is possible to act your way into different thinking and eventually create different feelings about yourself and the world around you.

When you feel so crappy about where you are in life, you believe you need something to fix the way you think about yourself. Your destiny hangs on the way you feel. People consider geographic moves, a new relationship, a new job or therapist, or medication. These moves are based on the spectacular. Out of the blue someplace, someone or something will save you from yourself. These wishes are not reality. The answer to healing from addiction is to take the first step toward acting and living the way your heart tells you. You do this one step at a time regardless of how you feel about yourself. This is true for addicts and non-addicts alike. The first step for an addict may be one of surrender to inpatient treatment, again. It could be to make an apology once again for hurting someone. It always means to ignore the voices that scream negative messages that you cannot be different.

You will need help. You will only seek this help by acting on the vision that your destiny calls you to be. Even when it seems so far away. The old adage “fake it till you make it” has value. Eventually, if you refuse to hang on to the old behavior you will act your way to a better feeling.

Support yourself with positive affirmation. This one exercise is often neglected, yet is magic for recovery. For me, after 34 years in recovery, there is no skill more powerful in becoming my destiny than the employment of affirmative thought. It will transform your life when you are dominated by failed behaviors, mediocrity, and a lack of confidence. There is no limit to how amazing you can become when you choose to act in ways that your destiny beckons regardless of how you feel. It is possible. Will you take the first step?

Keeping the Flow of Life Force Open and Clear

June 18, 2024 by Ken Wells

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Villages in the mountains of South America depend upon the snow melt and the flow of freshwater that comes from headwaters at high altitudes to flow downstream and provide life nourishment and sustenance. Annually, time is set aside for community members to hike up the mountain to clear out clutter, debris, and obstacles that have gathered and clogged the stream during the winter preventing water from flowing downstream. The entire community participates in the project.

Throughout the course of life it is important to clear out the clutter, debris, and obstacles that clog your life force. There are three dynamics that propel us through the stages of life. There is the dynamic of creation. It’s the place where life dreams come from. Many of you have created unbelievable life experiences, achievements, and inspiration. There is the dynamic that sustains. It’s where long term careers are built. It’s the dynamic that solidifies principles to live by. It’s the space that cultivates resilience. Many of you have amazing stories of bouncing back when you were down and out from business, relationship, or health failure. Then there is the part in life that breaks down and dies.

We are asked to build and create, to sustain sacred principles and resilience that bring us back again and again in the presence of defeat and to break down what no longer works, allowing the ineffective to die.

It’s not an easy pattern of living to subscribe to. For example, some of you have created an amazing successful business in which you have become a leader in your industry. You are a founder. In order for your life force to reach the next level of effectiveness, you need to recognize that the people who sacrificed and played a vital role to achieve your level of success is not the same people who can help you reach the next level of effectiveness. The present stalemate in progress tells you this. You need to bring in new people who have skills and capacities to help you reach that next level. Not only that, what if you the founder, do not have the skills to take your company to the next level that your creativity calls for. Are you willing to step aside and find the right person to lead to the next level? Most are not. See how difficult it is! The next level will require that you rebuild the dynamic that was once successful creating the first level of prosperity.

The dynamic of sustaining is also difficult to maintain. Most founders lose their “beginners’ mindset”. And why not! People have written magazine articles about your amazing success. You have surrounded yourself with people who tell you how wonderful you are. This environment undermines sustaining a hungry spirit that yields excellence.

Addicts in recovery face the same pattern toward cultivating a healthy recovery life force. In the beginning they are urged to create a lifestyle that is built around recovery and not the other way around. It worked! In the beginning, addicts make amazing efforts to make sure recovery is prioritized. Yet, sustaining recovery priorities is hard to do. For many, there is the experience of an intense flame that weakens to smoldering embers because it requires determination to sustain program priorities.

M. Scott Peck writes in his book The Road Less Traveled that life is a metaphor for taking a long journey through the desert. Many stop at the first oasis, set up camp and spend the rest of their lives hovering around the amenities of the oasis. Yet, the life force requires that you pull up stakes and continue the journey all the way through the desert! Addicts must not merely be satisfied with sobriety but dig deeper to find serenity and peace.

How many addicts do I know who are veterans of 12-step meetings with answers galore for beginning recovering addicts but who never translate the principles of the steps to their relationships at home with a partner and family. Sober for so many years but assholes to live with! They live a different type of Jekyll and Hyde life even in recovery!

It’s important to take the journey upstream and clear the clutter, debris, and obstacles that have diverted your life force and prevented you from healing beyond your recovery from addiction/entrepreneurial success and to heal all aspects of living.

Here is a list of considerations:

1. Clear the clutter that blocks life force. There is a myriad of possibilities that become clutter. Here are some:

Codependency to your partner or others whereby you have lost yourself trying to please or caretake.
Resentments that block creativity and life force. You must do the necessary work to clear it out.
Procrastination: an unwillingness to embrace step 4 and stalk shame and other painful character defects and abusive experiences that clog the flow of life force.

2. Remove the debris of incongruence and inconsistency. When you don’t clean out the clutter previously mentioned, you will live an incongruent and inconsistent life that will hinder your progress and undermine your goals that lead to sobriety, serenity, and success. Everybody is inconsistent and incongruent in some way. Few people if any follow through with their stated goals all the time even with best intentions. So what is a person to do? Live in consultation with accountability! Not if, but when you are incongruent to your values, be accountable to a group of people who believe in you about your shortcomings. Consult with them about what happened that triggered your downward spiral. Listen and be coachable. Take in the insight others see that you were blind to. Inconsistency can only be addressed by getting back on the horse and progressing one step at a time in a daily fashion. It will be average and unnoticed until the day you achieve your desired goal of serenity or whatever it is you seek to achieve. Manage the debris of incongruence and inconsistency.

3. Tell on yourself about your dishonesty and hypocrisy. Everyone battles hypocrisy, not just people who go to church! In addiction recovery, it is encouraged to establish a detailed behavioral contract called a sobriety contract.

It has four sections:

Inner circle behaviors that designate acting out in addiction.
Middle circle which identifies the high risk of acting out.
Outer circle which promotes positive behaviors to replace the destructive behaviors.
A list of people for accountability to report addiction management and any relapse within 24 hours.

Addicts in recovery put dishonesty about their addiction at the top of the inner circle of their sobriety contract. Dishonesty and secrecy are breeding grounds for relapse. It’s true for any goal you have set for yourself. You must tell on yourself when you are hypocritical or dishonest. When you live in consultation in this way you will best position yourself to course correct and bring yourself back to the center of value in the goal you have established as important. The art of telling on yourself is a common point of advice that when you follow through will transform your life and secure your goals with regularity.

Following these principles and guidelines will remove the clutter and debris that block the flow of your life force whether you are seeking recovery from addiction or striving to achieve the next level of success in your entrepreneurial journey.

The Unencumbered Being

June 7, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise.” — Mark Nepo

Living in sobriety requires a willingness to make adjustments. We tend to cling to old patterns of living. We are creatures of habit. There is comfort in doing things the same way we have always done them. It’s true for us all. Yet, growth and transition create the need for change. Adaptability is an overlooked quality in recovery. There are common threads that connect all of us in recovery. When we uncover the common threads there is relief and acceptance among those who know addiction. There is safety in routine and predictability that is necessary to create calm from a life of chaos.

Leaving the addictive life behind demands great courage and humility. For many of us, it took many steps forward and backward before we finally turned the page to a new life totally separate from the old ways of addiction. Most of us recall the loneliness, awkwardness, and struggle experienced during the course of making these changes. It took a great deal of effort to leave old digs, watering holes, and other experiences in addictive behavior. Many of us wrestled with euphoric recall and endured painful user dreams about past moments of addiction. The culture of addiction felt like a warm hug, it was so familiar.

Reminiscing the first time you ever stepped across the threshold of a 12-step meeting was so scary and unraveling . . . Who will I see that knows me? What will I have to say? Can’t wait just to get back to the safety of my car after the meeting was over. It took a long time before a 12-step room became a safe place. Even longer to feel like you belonged. There were painful disclosures and humble admission of character flaws. Learning to let go was and is a painful struggle. Over time, the 12-step meeting became a refuge, a place to become emotionally naked with people you once dreaded to face.

In time the recovery culture replaced the neighborhood of addiction. Some old acting-out friends disappeared while other relationships became redefined. Gradually, recovery behavior, relationships, and lifestyle replaced the addictive culture so that today the old life of addiction would be as awkwardly experienced as once was the new life in recovery. Finally, the evolution of recovery had transpired!

Once settled and established, life has a way of underscoring impermanence. Back in the day, Bob Dylan was correct when he wrote and sang “The Times They Are Changin”. In community, relationships change. People move or die. Family configurations require adjustment. An environment that was once predictable experiences the threat of change. Uncertainty is part of the flow of life. The passage of life creates the need for adjustment. We have to practice letting go in new ways about relationship dynamics we mistakenly thought were permanent.

This part of recovery life is difficult. There is resistance to ongoing adjustments and adaptations during life transition. Once you have stretched and strained from the life of an addict and settled in recovery, now considering continual life adjustments can feel overwhelming and too much to ask of yourself. The late M. Scott Peck in his book, The Road Less Traveled, likened life journey to the metaphor of traveling through the desert. Many come to the first oasis in the desert and settle there, deciding to camp for the rest of life and never completing the journey through the desert. The oasis is comfortable, so why continue?

Recovery life beckons to press on toward continued growth with its accompanying need for adjustment and willingness to embrace change. The temptation is to hover around old recovery times and digs that can no longer be sustained because of the impermanence of life. Essentially, nothing remains the same. There is a need to change and move forward. However, change generates fear and anxiety.

Typically, when facing the need for change we want to hold on to what has always been. When there is fear of the unknown, we grip tightly to what we know and have experienced, even if it no longer applies to times we live and might be hurtful. In a parable in the New Testament, Jesus referred to the need for change as being like putting old wine into new wineskins. This metaphor for change emphasizes the idea that the new cloth had not yet shrunk so using a new cloth to patch older clothing would result in a tear as it began to shrink. Similarly, old wineskins had been “stretched to the limit” or become brittle as wine had fermented inside them; using them again therefore risked bursting them. There comes a time for change when what used to be true and applicable needs to be adjusted. When we refuse to adjust we become inflexible and more likely to tear or break. Transitions in life though hard suggest that it is time to move on to new truths, relationships, and understandings about life. Yet we tend to clutch and hold on to what we know when we are fearful ofchanges that usher us into the unknown.

Growth in recovery requires that you let go of preconceptions and expectations that have accumulated from past relationships and experiences. Recovery is a life of continual recreating yourself in spirit. Some have said that life in recovery is about becoming an unencumbered being. It demands that you release and let die the mentality of the past. Do you know the mentality that you need to let die within you? Is it the drive that you have always lived for? Is it your need to control things, people, possessions, power, position, environments, or money? Sobriety brings us to spaces in our lives where we need to change our entire way of life. Dropping the way we have done life will mean that you do this one drop at a time. The drastic changes that occur at the inception of recovery underscore the way we are to live our lives moving forward… whether beginner or old-timer. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. Living forward and looking backward are both difficult. Understanding can be sleuthed through past reflection but will require rigorous openness and honesty. Fear can be an obstacle to living forward. Letting go of what we know and embracing the unknown is a faith proposition that scares the hell out of most of us. Yet, for those who press forward, what emerges is the peace of becoming an unencumbered being.

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.

How to Embrace the Change That is Before You

May 7, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’

And you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’

—Bob Dylan

Dylan’s reflection visits every day. Times are changing. Wisps of nostalgia and recollection of times past do not slow the Change Train. I just watched my home team lose in the first round to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Phoenix Suns used to beat up on the Timberwolves year after year. But, no more. I used to be able to run twice a day every day of the week without struggle. But, no more. Father Time has influenced my capacity to bounce back and keep going. I enjoyed close to 30 years working with Psychological Counseling Services in Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s been three years since it all ended. The times have changed.

And so it is for you too! What worked yesterday is not what works today. People say that raising children today is a lot different than 20 years ago. They say that the family unit is more under attack now than before. Perhaps, but it just underscores that times change. The world economy, society, and culture simply keep evolving. Nostalgia is nice but it doesn’t prepare for the present moment. We learn by reflecting on the past but we bring forth what lessons we have gained and let go of the past. This is what it means to embrace the change that is before you.

Nothing remains the same.

Here are some considerations regarding managing the change that is before you today:

1. With success or failure, adjust your attitude to be hungry and curious about the change that tomorrow’s challenge will bring. In his book, The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck likens the journey through life to traveling through the desert. He said many people, desperate to quench their thirst, rejoice and celebrate when arriving at the first oasis in the desert. In fact, they are so happy that they decide to build an encampment and live there for the rest of their lives. He writes most people never adjust their sites to venture through the entire desert. There is nothing immoral or wrong about choosing to become an oasis-dweller. However, the flow of life brings the need for evaluation and change. What worked yesterday is unlikely to be as effective today. Some people say well I have been doing what I do for quite some time, why make significant change now. Recovery success lulls an addict to sleep. It will do the same to you with whatever pursuits are important to you. Yesterday is a word that reflects on the historical past. In order to thrive you must be willing to adjust to tomorrow’s change. I am not suggesting immediate wholesale change but I am suggesting always tweaking the edges and challenging the center toward becoming the best version of who you are. You don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater but you will need new refreshing bathwater for tomorrow. When you have miserably failed it is not difficult to yearn for something more. When you know much past success, that is when change is difficult to embrace. Evaluate the times around you. It might be business, recovery, or your significant relationship. The passing of time is the shadow of change. If your attitude does not include a desire to embrace new pathways, you will not be hungry or curious to adapt to what is needed in your recovery or your business tomorrow.

2. Come to terms with your limits: I am aware that there is an emphasis on reaching beyond your limits. In many applications to life I agree. Another important consideration is that when you know your limits well you can pivot and focus on doing something very different which you failed at before. Some people think that “no limits” means you just beat your head against the same wall time and again. After you take medication for your headache, consider the term limit as a metaphor. When you know your shortcomings you can access the brilliance that lies deep within you. your limits are only a suggestion to do something different that can be resourced deeper within you. You can go as deep within as you choose. You are less likely to be open to creative change as long as you only focus on the limit that you think you should be able to overcome. Why not work with it and go deep? Active acceptance of what is opens your heart to the creative genius—your brilliance that is limitless within.

3. Lean into the experiences that life brings you to: If you fail in your pursuits and cannot comprehend what the results of your efforts are trying to tell you, don’t be too quick to run to the next application for the possibility of success. Even if you are cornered by great financial pressure to figure out how to get some dough right now, take time to sit with your failure—all your feelings, your thoughts and process what brought you to this point. Be real! Sift and sort for meaningfulness in the presence of your daily experience (recovery, business, or both). Counterintuitively, leaning into your experience of struggle, emotional pain, loss, and failure will help you move forward. Allowing dust to settle helps to establish a clear pathway. Life’s purpose in time and space is revealed through your willingness to be vulnerable.

4. Trust the process of transformation. If you could just have a blueprint that shows you where you are and reminds you that on the other side of your struggle and trouble, it will all look like this! But, transformation in life does not work this way. You must know that you cannot know what is happening in the moment of your transformation. It doesn’t occur in an instant. Like the rising sun, it happens in its time! It is impossible to see what is emerging in your life when opportunities, health, and people are taken from your life. It is hard to believe in transformation when the feeling of deprivation is in every corner of your life. Transformation brings you to a place where you cannot go back. You can no more go back and create what you hoped for than you can wear the same pair of blue jeans when you were in junior high! Those experiences have been scoured from your life.

When you do embrace the change that is real in your life, you will be given the invitation and the power to welcome the experience of something new that will transform the limits that you thought were insurmountable in your past endeavors. It is from the place of embracing change that the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau was inspired to write “I have learned this at least by my experience: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”.

Embrace the change that is before you and experience the transformation that is to be a part of your destiny.

The Importance of Grieving—Being Able to Bounce Back

May 3, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

“Grief and Resilience Live Together.” – Michelle Obama

Like some of you, I grew up in a chaotic household. There were a total of 12 kids by the time I left home for college. There were my 4 sisters and 4 brothers plus my oldest sister’s 3 children. My parents raised them for much of their lives. Chaos became normal. I learned to stuff the impact of trauma and act like it never impacted me. This included the fist fights between my brothers, my dad’s rage-full outbursts, physical violence, sexual abuse, religious abuse, and abandonment.

I hid the trauma by playing sports and having a lot of friends. The only way you might see a crack in my armor was that I did not thrive academically and was very shy around girls. However, these two issues were considered normal and other kids had these challenges as well. The warning signs for concern were well hidden.

I remember one time watching one of my brothers fight a neighbor when he was a teenager. The neighbor wrapped a chain around my brother’s head and blood spurted everywhere. I watched my brother throw the neighbor to the ground and pummel him into submission and unconsciousness. I thought my brother had killed the neighbor. I ran home and did not say anything because my mom told me I would get into trouble if I went to watch the fight. I learned to stuff my fear and anxiety and pretended to be calm and casual the rest of the evening.

I also learned to stuff the pain and fear of sexual abuse perpetrated on me and other family members by a pastor and leader in our church. The offending pastor would tell me how mature I was for my age in that I never showed my feelings of hurt in the presence of trauma and crisis. I wore that affirmation like a badge and in the presence of many traumas that happened to me and my family. I thought the way I stayed cool and stuffed my feelings made me very resilient.

This worked very well for me later when I was a minister and I listened to listen to one horrible story after another. There was grief from death and loss from suicide. One person even shot and killed himself over the phone while I was trying to talk him out of it and get him some help. I had learned to stuff that tragic experience and so much more for so long and thought this was what it meant to be resilient.

But then came a day when I could no longer stuff things down. It was triggered by a college student in my college ministry who committed suicide. I met the family at the hospital where she was pronounced dead. The family in their grief lashed out at me and blamed me for their daughter’s death because I had not prevented her from checking out from a mental hospital. It was an illogical accusation. I walked away from that conversation numb and disoriented. I had been in these situations many times before. But, this time I could tell I was unravelling inside.

I went into a deep funk of depression, became non-functional, and lost 40 pounds over the next 6 weeks because I ate very little. It felt like trying to push down one more crisis and stuff it in my memory. But, there was no room for any more. In turn, when I tried to push one crisis down another memory would spring forth. It was like a game of whack-a-mole—like old springs that could no longer be held down. all the past memories of trauma that I previously stuffed sprang up all at once. What I once thought was being resilient turned out to be dysfunctionally stuffing pain and never grieving any of the past trauma.

Resilience requires grieving. You cannot simply recognize the reality of deep hurt and figure that you can go forward acting as if it never happened. You may think you are OK and act as if you are fine, but it does catch up with you. Trauma researcher Bessel Van der Kolk is correct in saying your body will keep the score! The trauma is kept in the tissues of your body. Eventually, I stumbled into a treatment process that helped me work out what had been stuffed deep inside.

You will need to do the same. Here are a few considerations to create true resilience.

1. Scrub the wound. This is what I had to do. I went through the Rolodex of memory and grieved every memory of abuse that came up. It included all the sexual abuse, physical domination, and abandonment from my childhood to the present. I beat pillows/broke my therapist’s tennis racquet— not one but many of them. I had more rage than I ever thought could exist inside. There was a lot of energy expressed and tears shed. There were many ambivalent feelings about God, relationships, and my work. I sat with all the feelings and let them come to the surface. I learned that the only way to address them is to go through them. It wasn’t pretty but it was necessary. I learned to fall apart and put myself back together. I didn’t need to be mollycoddled, I needed to face the reality of what is.

2. Practice regulating your emotions. At some point in your recovery, you must sit with those feelings that you avoided through addiction and a cocktail of other experiences. When I went through a crisis, there was no somatic experience, EMDR, brain spotting, etc that is available today. However, I did engage in extensive experiential work including regressive processing. I practiced sitting with emotional discomfort and learned to go down and come back up. I practiced living with uncertainty. It is connected to the freedom of release from the bondage of past trauma. It felt like free falling into emptiness at times. It was all part of the process of learning to sit with discomfort. I am glad I did. Sitting with the discomfort, sharing what it was like, and expressing my emotions helped to regulate my feelings.

3. Grieve the accumulated losses. If you stuffed the pain as I did, there are so many losses to unpack and grieve. Deaths, opportunities, relationships of both family and friends and the lack of presence in the moment all need to be grieved. For me, it was the emptiness that was particularly difficult to sit with. Also, it was the loss of relationships from those who left but remained among the living that has been the most difficult. Those who died I was somehow able to ease into letting go and giving them back to the universe. But, those who remain who I felt was part of my blood and bone, family members and friends who cut off relationships, have been the most difficult losses to grieve. Some losses will hurt the rest of my life. You will probably experience the same.

4. Use your imagination to create the inspiration for a positive and sustaining future. In recovery, I learned to take advantage of the power of gratitude and to resource inspiration for fulfillment in the present moment. Gratitude combined with my imagination has transformed pain into purpose and empowered purpose from grief and loss. Affirmations, connecting with people who have similar experiences but refuse to remain a victim, and using the “as if” tool have all deepened belief in myself to create the destiny that I am here to fulfill. You will need to do the same. The possibilities of healing are all around you but you must activate your intentions.

In the end, Michelle Obama has it right “Grief and resilience” go together.

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