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Junkie Worm Blues #4 – Grounding Skills

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“Life can only be found in the present moment. Your true home is in the here and the now.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

The greatest challenge I have ever had in addiction recovery is being present in the here and now. If this is where my true home exists, there have been many days that I have spent on the road, even though geographically I am home. I become preoccupied with yesterday’s behavior, thoughts, and other people’s actions. I have engaged my mind for hours thinking about the anticipation of tomorrow’s activities and what I need to do or what I think about what the responsibility of others should be. Some days there is a nonstop ping-pong match between past and future that preoccupies my mind and keeps me from being just where I am. This mind mesh unmanaged triggers the junkie worm blues. 

In your recovery do you know this dynamic? It short circuits the serenity of sobriety. It creates a brown out from self empowerment. It breeds an environment that is ripe for relapse. Here are some short suggestions to manage past and future distractions that pull you away from the present moment. 

1. Practice noticing nature: We live our lives as if everything is centered around our perceived wants and needs. I am in the process of deepening my awareness that when I am distracted and stuck wallowing in past thoughts and behaviors or worrying about the future nature can bring me back to the present. Nature is sacred in this manner. Thich Nhat Hanh reflected “Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Nature brings us back to the present. Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux leader, offered grounding in this description “What is Life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. The True Peace. The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.”

Eckart Tolle said, “You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are. Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life. Sometimes, letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” The practice of noticing the nature around you cultivates the awareness of being present in the here and now. 

2. Slow down and do things mindfully. Meditation brings us back to center. Some people have found grounding by doing a walking meditation, feeling their feet connected to the earth, their bodies at one with the trees and animal life around them. They experience the energy of life by inhaling the breath of fresh air in the great outdoors and taking in the warmth of the constant sun. Recovery author Melodie Beattie wrote, “At no day, no hour, no time are you required to do more than you can do in peace.” Shifting to a slower speed can help you center yourself and promote a clear perspective in recovery. 

3. Pay attention to your purchasing patterns. It is easy to lose yourself in the frenzy of consumerism. We have all compulsively purchased something we did not need. There is an amazing number of people who have bought items that they don’t even take out of the box. It is important to ask yourself what the compulsive urge to buy something is all about. What emotion am I trying to avoid? Compulsive purchases not only block awareness of emotional needs, it will set you up to feed the junkie worm in your addiction.

4. Cultivate sensitivity to ways that you presume upon the people around you. If you are an addict and an entrepreneur, you must pay attention to this subtle yet dangerous dynamic in behavior. Are there people around you that you take for granted? Do you expect others to take care of your personal needs? In what ways do you presume upon those around you, your partner, family, colleagues, and those who work for you? It is easy to create a calloused expectation about those who are hired or in a relationship with you that subtly fuels entitlement. Celebrity status is dangerous this way. Most of us think of celebrities as Hollywood, athletic, or rock star status people. But, we are all celebrities in our own world. There are people who look to you and tend to put you on a pedestal no matter who you are or the world you live. Pay attention to the way in which you might presume upon them. The presumption always accelerates an entitled attitude. Entitlement comes from deprivation. Ask yourself what legitimate need must be met that when neglected triggers me to presume upon someone else to meet that need.

Sensitivity to the present moment, nature, and personal patterns that lead to destructive behavior are necessary grounding skills in managing the junkie worm that wants to be fed one way or the other.

Recovery Conundrum When You Want What You Say You Don’t

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In 12-step meetings, I have listened to addicts reflect about times they adamantly proclaimed they never want to act out again, while secretly plotting how they would act out as soon as they got out of the meeting! Are these addicts insincere and crazy? Maybe, but for sure, they define the conundrum of cunning deceit that underlies addict behavior. It’s the double life. It’s the Jekyll and Hyde description that baffles those who love and care for the addict. 

It’s not all that difficult to comprehend. It is common to listen to people declare they are going to lose 10 pounds while they ask for a piece of delicious carrot cake. Do they really want to lose 10 pounds? Yes. But they also are powerless to the thought of carrot cake melting in their mouth. Take this dilemma and magnify it 10X and you gain insight about the powerful Catch-22 that exists with addictive behavior. 

How do addicts resolve the dilemma of wanting what they say they don’t want? 

1. Don’t bullshit yourself. Say it straight. When you are scheming to score, to get a hit, and plan to act out, tell on yourself. Make the disclosure raw and unedited. Put it on the table just as it is in your brain. If you made an inspirational statement about sobriety in a 12-step group and you are acting out even while in the group. Stop it with honest disclosure at that moment. I like to think of doing a 12-step MRI (Meaningful Revelation In Vivo). It’s the only way to nip in the bud what you say you don’t want.

2. Dialogue with the devil. Having a responsible conversation with your demons is a powerful way to manage addict-stinking thinking. Sit down with your sponsor or another addict in recovery. Let them be the devil or the voice of addictive craving. Tell them what your addictive rationale is saying about why it is OK to act out. Have them say it raw and rugged and argue with your sober thinking. Then practice being the mature responsible addict in recovery.  Be the assertive voice of sober reason. Each time the devil tells you why you need to act out, you respond with sober rationale and action until craving and urge dissipate and gives way to mature sober thoughts and behavior. It will move you to a more solid space and restore serenity.

3. Change the curse to a blessing. Don’t run from craving. Get out of the path of the whirlwind of illicit urge but don’t run from craving. Transform it into a blessing. Once you are out of harm’s way listen to the legitimate need that must be met in a healthy way. Be the mature adult that clarifies the need underneath the craving. Then parent yourself by reaching out to your relationship partner and others in recovery to meet the legitimate need. In this way, you transform the curse of addictive craving into the blessing of recovery intimacy.

Load up on recovery steroids. A play on words. Recovery steroids are a metaphor for affirmations. Most addicts don’t invest enough time working to change the way they think. What you think about expands. Hammering out deep belief statements is transformational. Practicing and meditating on these newly inspired beliefs will revolutionize the way you live. It infuses strength that enables you to work through powerful urges when you want what you say you don’t. Affirmations are an antibiotic to shameful mistaken beliefs. The more you steep yourself in affirmation the weaker the voice of addictive craving and mistaken belief. It requires ongoing daily conditioning.

Self Belief—Key to Long Term Sobriety

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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

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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.

    Looking For Truth in Wrong Places

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    “Tough love and brutal truth from strangers are far more valuable than Band-Aids and half-truths from invested friends, who don’t want to see you suffer any more than you have.” ― Shannon L. Alder

    We live in a time when there is significant spreading of misinformation. Each news media has its own bias. Some purposely promote false information to create chaos for the strategy of undermining what is real. It is difficult to identify what is truthful and what is a lie. It is a scary thought that I might be looking for truth in the wrong places.

    This is no less true in the world of recovery. Addicts live in a world of make-believe and lies. Facing the truth about addiction is far too painful. Addicts can be unwilling to stop the compromise, the promotion of half-truths, the blaming of others for their own unhappiness, self-sabotage, and otherwise bullshitting themselves and everyone around them. They often give themselves a pep talk about why they cannot quit, but deep down they know that it’s all bullshit. When they have to circulate around sober friends and family they don’t ask questions, not because they are fearful someone will lie to them, rather because they fear someone will tell them the truth. 

    Not unlike others, addicts guard and keep their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. They don’t want to be told any different. In uncanny fashion, people try to convince themselves that they are in total control at the very moment they are losing it. Everything that can be said about ducking and diving truth by a user, not in recovery can fit for one in recovery and to the rest of us who don’t identify as an addict. 

    People often tell themselves lies, in order to reach what they consider acceptance in difficult situations. In reality, they fool themselves into believing they are healed until that lie is corrected by time, further information, or their own personal growth. True healing comes when we learn to not avoid truth but face it. Only then will we be set free.

    Here are some observations about seeking truth in recovery:

    1. Hiding from the truth will prevent you from experiencing vitality and serenity in your recovery program. Facing the truth will lead you back to the pulse of what is sacred in your recovery journey. 

    2. Many in recovery ask program buddies questions they already know the answer in their hearts. They put the question out to the group because they don’t want to face changing their system of reality.

    3. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. (James Baldwin) Seeking truth is this way. If you are seeking new truth via a new therapist, new treatment modality, new sponsor, psychedelics, etc. but you are not willing to face the truth that you already know, it is like hiking around the entire base of a mountain looking for a shortcut to the top and ending up where you began. 

    4. When all the dust settles, the most difficult truth for an addict to face is to let go of what you cannot control. Letting go and surrendering what you cannot control is the common thread that weaves addicts together and creates a tapestry of serenity. 

    5. When I won’t let go and surrender, I say I want compassion when I really want others to feel sorry for me. Indicators that I am stuck in this place are resentment and feeling stuck. This space is a common watering hole for addicts who seek control. Other common traits are whining, complaining, and bitching about other people. 

    6. Unwillingness to grieve what you cannot control blocks truth from restoring freedom. Grieving is painful. No one wants to sign up for pain. Maybe you would, if you could, know how long you have to hurt. Grieving takes as long as it takes. You want more clarity about how long it takes. The universe refuses to tell you. So you remain stuck and willfully hang on to trying to control what you cannot. The truth about this is that you have put yourself in an emotional prison. 

    7. When you are stuck in unwillingness to let go, find someone else who is also stuck in their unwillingness to let go of control and look for yourself in them. Together you will find a way out. Bill W and Dr. Bob (Alcoholics Anonymous) famously told the story that once when they were under siege of craving for a drink. They decided that what they needed was to find another alcoholic and listen to their story. In doing so, they saw themselves in the other alcoholic and found the answer to their craving that satisfied their craving to drink. 

    8. In the end, the Tibetan monks have it right. There are three things that matter: (1.) How well did you love; (2.) How fully did you live; (3.) How deeply did you let go? 

    To that end, it resonates that the truth will set you free but most likely it will hurt before you experience release. 

    Black and White choices in the Gray Zone of Recovery Living

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    I have practiced recovery from addiction through the 12-steps for 34 years. I have worked through each step 10 different times. I utilize the steps every day of my life. That said, I know that recovery is not uniform. Some people I know who began recovery about the same time I did, no longer struggle with the cravings I do. I have listened to many who have testified about transforming their life in other ways than following the 12-steps. Some who met with me 30 years ago in 12-step groups disappeared and returned to acting out. I have had conversations with others who attended 12-step groups for a while and then stopped. They tell me that they got to a place where they no longer needed the steps to remain sober. They say they have not acted out in years. 

    At times I wish that I was one of them. Yet, I am grateful for the serenity I have experienced through the diligent work I have done through the 12-steps. To be sure, recovery is a challenge for all, regardless of the path chosen. It is helpful to recognize that people choose different pathways to experience recovery. 

    Through the years of my recovery, I have noticed that there is a certain gray zone about recovery. Every addict does the steps in different ways. Also, there are specific things that I can do and remain sober but you cannot. For example, some alcoholics could never have lunch in a bar without the overwhelming temptation to drink. Others report not experiencing overwhelming temptation while friends drink alcohol in their presence while they sip on a soft drink. Some porn addicts report they can watch a racy sex scene with their partner without acting out sexually while others advise that watching would constitute relapse. There would be no way the scene would be compatible with their sobriety. 

    Many alcoholics in recovery remain dependent upon nicotine and smoke like a chimney. Nicotine kills more people in America than alcohol each year. Some sex addicts put the use of pornography in high-risk middle circle behavior, but not designated acting out. Some sex addicts in a committed relationship think of flirting with another person as high risk but not acting out. Sometimes addicts honestly have made these conclusions while at other times addicts are humoring addictive rationale. Often, seasoned therapists and veteran addicts in recovery can detect compromise and flirting with disaster that is presented by another addict. In 12-step meeting rooms there is a saying “If everywhere you go smells like shit, maybe it’s time to check your shoes”. There’s a lot of wisdom in phrases like this to guide addict behavior. 

    However, there is also gray zone behavior that addicts must take personal responsibility to sift and sort to determine what makes sense in individual recovery. It’s true one size does not fit all. There is a myriad of questions that addicts must embrace with responsibility. Your answer may not be the same response as someone else. What constitutes acting out must be your own definition, not your sponsor’s, your wife’s, or anyone else. That said, how you define bottom-line behaviors is not the only behavioral list you will need to be accountable to. Your partner will have expectations that you will need to consider in order to preserve integrity in the relationship. The two lists will need to be considered as separate stand-alone lists. 

    You will need to determine what you are willing to disclose to your partner and other accountability people about your history of acting out in your addiction. I am an advocate for full disclosure to partners. That said, where the rubber meets the road, it is seldom that a complete exhaustive disclosure is ever given. This sounds contradictory. Yet, many addicts don’t remember the thousands of behaviors they have committed, even though each is egregious and heartbreaking. 

    How much you share or what your partner wants to hear lies in a gray zone. This means that disclosure is a dynamic and not a static share. Details that are important in disclosure for one partner may vary from what is important to be shared to another. Some addicts are incapable of telling the whole complete truth because they have damaged their brains with chemical abuse or other hurtful behavior. Sometimes addicts don’t share the whole truth because they are not ready to take recovery seriously. The same can be true for a partner. However, what must be considered in partner assessment is the overwhelming trauma triggered by addict behavior. Partner behavior is often a reaction to the trauma inflicted by addict behavior. These concerns lie in a gray zone and must be individually evaluated before making assumptions about what must be done for healing.

    Here are a few considerations that can be helpful in determining your black-and-white response to gray zone recovery living.

    1. When you are early in recovery, decide to do whatever your sponsor suggests. Your best thinking got you stuck where you are at in addiction. It’s time to practice humility and surrender your ego to recovery. In time, all of your decision-making will be handed back to you. But first, practice listening and doing what your sponsor and others who have more sobriety that you suggest.

    2. Live in consultation. Addicts are self-absorbed and take up too much space. A first step toward long-term recovery is humbly admitting that you need help in all aspects of living. Develop the habit of consulting with other addicts in recovery. There is a saying in 12-step work that “If 8 people tell you that you have a tail, the least check your ass in the mirror!” The emphasis is don’t make important recovery or life decisions on your own without checking in with those who have been through what you are experiencing. The interchange will help you make black-and-white choices and establish your own limits in recovery.

    3. Be accountable. People struggle with accountability. It’s one thing to ask for help and quite another to be accountable for the decision you made about the consult you sought. Manage uncertain gray zone recovery experience with accountability for your behavior. Your decision about recovery may be different than what I would do, but accountability brings black and whiteness to what you say is an important value to you. 

      People have black-and-white convictions about diet, exercise, and many other aspects of living. Life is complicated and the pathways to recovery are many. The gray zones in recovery require personalized black-and-white decisions. To live an empowered life in recovery you will need to make black and white decisions that express your values and remain true to your heart in the presence of gray zone experiences. This journey always depends upon consultation from others and accountability for the behaviors that you commit to in your heart.

      Feeling Like a Fraud — No One Wants to be an Imposter 

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      “All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that’s how I acted- like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn’t all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another way, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I’ve always felt like a fake human being.” ― Benjamin Alire Saenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster. 

      One of the common disclosures that I hear from addicts is the experience of feeling like a fraud. Living a fraudulent life is exhausting. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde experience of addiction leaves an addict painfully lonely and hollow inside, feeling like an imposter. Of course, this would be true of anyone, not just addicts. The longing to be authentic to oneself is a common thirst and hunger among all. As Richard Rohr puts it, “We all would like to find the true shape of our own self.” Being who you are is healing and creates a sense of calm and empowerment within.

      There is always a struggle to separate your True Self from your False Self. The True Self is who you really are, that unrepeatable miracle of the universe. It is the divine DNA about you, your organic wholeness, which is manifested in your destiny. Whereas, the False Self is the image we put forward in impression management. It can be promoted by way of your vocation, what you wear, where you live, who you know, and/or how you live. It falls short of being the real genuine you. Yet, once you are connected with who you are on the inside, how you express yourself on the outside begins to reflect your True Self. It is in our False Self that we identify with the imposters of the world because when we are not our True Self, inside we feel fake. 

      It has been my experience that when you are genuine, you feel and even fit better in your skin. Like the velveteen rabbit—the “real” never rubs off. A False Self is never truly satisfying. It triggers addiction and the need to keep trying to be more to keep from being less. The False Self makes a person hyper-vigilant from a fear of not measuring up. It triggers the practice of impression management. When you ground yourself in your authentic True Self, you find your true identity.

      The greatest challenge to the True Self is living an incongruent life. When what you feel is different from what you say and what you do, you can get stuck with incongruent living. The truth is everyone is incongruent sometimes. But, when it happens over and again this spells trouble as you begin living a double life. An addict must unravel this dilemma in order to establish consistent long-term sobriety. When what an addict thinks and values is in tune with what he feels, this begins to harmonize with what he says and does resulting in sobriety and serenity. 

      To accomplish this mindset, you will need to manage paradox. While congruent living is the goal, the reality is that everyone is inconsistent, incongruent, and hypocritical in some ways. I have not known an addict in recovery who has always been consistent with every recovery task. The footprint of hypocrisy treads through everyone’s life. Sometimes the impact is major or at times less so. It underscores the human condition.

      Coming to terms with our limits, embracing brokenness, and shortcomings is the recipe for cultivating humility. Without humility, it is impossible to go deep into personal brilliance. People can find personal brilliance in the presence of arrogance, but they won’t go deep enough. Embracing the human condition with humility is the key to going deep so you’ll want to enlist some help.

      Managing incongruence, inconsistency and hypocritical behavior requires accountability. The strength of accountability keeps human weakness in check and cultivates humility. So, rather than impersonate sobriety or serenity, addicts are encouraged to humbly confess their shortcomings knowing that the power of accountability will call them back to a centered, congruent life. To preserve your True Self, it is necessary to practice telling on yourself.

      At a 12-Step meeting, once you tell everyone your deepest dark shameful secret which is received with support and acceptance from those attending. It is difficult to return and tell the same people that the behavior you committed to not doing— you did again. There is a fear of rejection and embarrassment even though you are in a room full of addicts. Then, if you have had weeks or years of sobriety, become a sponsor or a trusted servant in the meetings— there is even greater fear of rejection if you need to honestly disclose that you have been acting out against your values. It is difficult to tell on yourself. Yet, it is necessary to establish congruency. Not just the confession, but what is required is a commitment to self and to the group that you will do whatever it takes to get re-centered and live a sober life. This must be done to find your true authentic self. 

      Although being your True Self takes hard work, it is the only way to establish confidence toward building an authentic foundation for long-term recovery. When you are trying to be centered and sober, many distractions pull you away from focused living and back to your addiction.

      Here are a few suggestions to help address becoming stuck in your false self and how to anchor yourself in your authentic true self.

      1. Commit to loving yourself without the conditions of having to measure up to someone else’s standard. This is difficult for an addict who grew up in a family system that emphasized conditional love. Having to meet the standards of someone else will keep you stuck in your false self. You won’t know how to love and accept who you are while addressing hurtful, destructive behaviors. You will feel pressure to fake it in the presence of others who you surmise have learned to make it. Maya Angelou once said “I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: “Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Practice cocooning yourself with acceptance and love even when you feel valueless. It is especially important to treat yourself as valuable and to do the next right thing even when you do not meet the standard. It is not about making it ok to act out or to fail a desired standard, rather it is about finding your significance other than from performance. It is about embracing your sense of being and truly loving that. This will bring you back to your true authentic self.

      2. When you think of yourself on the outside of the bubble looking in you will need to blow a new bubble and put yourself in it – You will not be able to transform yourself from your false self to your true self without reframing your life experience regarding meeting other’s expectations. The power of reframing will help you to accept the reality of disappointing behavior while anchoring your reality to your true authentic self. There is no fraud in separating results, success, or failure from your true self. 

      3. Allow yourself to grieve disappointing behavior and failed results. Circularity is a part of the grieving process—languishing/lingering/going back to the dead carcass of what used to be—is all a part of grieving. There is a time to walk away and never turn back. Yet, many entertain an approach of out of sight out of mind and fail to embrace effective grieving. It is important to grieve the loss of your false self (your addictive behavior) to move forward in the development of your true authentic self.

      4. Remember the oyster: Value can be reclaimed from disappointment and irritating, devastating experiences. When a grain of sand penetrates an oyster’s shell, it irritates the oyster, making it distressed and annoyed. The oyster relieves the discomfort by coating the sand with a moist fluid. When the fluid hardens, a pearl is formed. The very process that healed the oyster creates a precious jewel of great value. Your frustration and failed experience do not need to end by remaining stuck in your false self. You can transform your false self into the pearl of being genuinely who you are by practicing telling on yourself and anchoring yourself to your authentic true self. This is the crucible experience which creates gold from failed attempts.

      Caged

      by

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      “The saddest feeling is knowing you deserve freedom and still feeling caged.” – Janelle Gray

      It is common for people to feel like they live in a cage. Worldwide some people feel caged by repressive governmental regimes. Sometimes, moms feel caged trying to do the heroic task of raising children. Addicts feel caged as do entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs remarked, “Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

      That said, many of us still do. We become enmeshed and stuck comparing our insides to other people’s outsides, wishing we were something other than who we are. People get stuck on the hamster wheel, not getting off even when they recognize the endless futility of it all. Like the hamster, they feel caged!

      There’s a famous Rumi story repeated by many over the centuries of time. “Once upon a time, there was an Indian trader who went to Africa to acquire some local products and animals. In the jungle, he saw many colorful talking parrots. He decided to capture a talking parrot and take him back as a pet.

      At home in India, he kept his parrot in a cage, fed him honey and seeds, and treated him very well. When it was time for the man to return to Africa, two years later, he asked his parrot if there was any message he could deliver to his friends in the jungle. The parrot told him to convey to his friends that he was very happy in his cage and to pass on his love.

      When the man arrived in Africa, he delivered the message to the other parrots in the jungle. Just as he finished his story, a parrot with tears welling in his eyes fell over dead. The man was very alarmed but he thought the parrot must have been very close to the parrot in the cage and this was probably the reason for his sadness and death.

      When the man returned home to India, he told his pet parrot what happened. As he finished his story, the pet parrot’s eyes welled up with tears and he kneeled over dead in his cage. The man was astounded but he figured that his pet died from the grief of hearing the death of his close friend in the jungle. He opened up the cage and tossed the dead bird onto the trash heap.

      Immediately, the pet parrot flew up to a branch on the tree outside. The trader said to him “So you are not dead after all, why did you do that? You tricked me.” The parrot responded, “The bird back in Africa sent me a very important message.” “What was the message?” the man asked. He told me, “If you want to escape from your cage, you must die while you are still alive.”

      This idea of dying while you are alive is a paradox reflected on by spiritual leaders around the world. Jesus once said “You have to die to self daily, and by dying you actually live (Luke 9:23) and the Apostle Paul referenced that he must “die daily.” What does this metaphor mean? How do you die while you are still alive? 

      The third step of the Twelve Steps in Recovery gives insight. It says “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” The implication is to surrender and to let go of what you cannot control. What you cannot control is other people and the world around you. Letting go to a God as we understood Him is problematic. What if you don’t believe in conventional perceptions of God and reject the very word “God”, let alone feeling offended that someone might reference all of what God might mean to “Him”? It all seems so problematic! Yet the oft repeated Serenity Prayer proclaims “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Accepting what I cannot change requires a certain metaphorical death while you are still alive. Acceptance of what you cannot change means to let go of what you want different!

      A Christian woman the late Corrie Ten Boom used to talk about letting go with palms down and fingers spread wide so that she could not hold on to anything! The concept of God is what you can control. Do the Step 2 work in digging within and figuring out what you understand about God. Perhaps it is very different from all conventional ideas. Perhaps you will reject the name God and all accompanying ideas of its meaning. Perhaps, you will conclude that you are atheist and want nothing to do with the word spirituality. Your conclusions are helpful and you can be clear for you. That said, there still lies the dilemma of dying daily while you are still alive. There remains things you cannot change. You must let go and you can by going within your existence and summoning the necessary help from self and others to let go! It seldom is one and done—thus, those who speak of dying daily! 

      The prayer pleads for “The courage to change the things I can” which always are many! Dr. Angela Davis declared that she is “No longer accepting the things she cannot change.” She is changing the things she cannot accept. This is where courage to change comes into play. It always costs to embrace courage to change what you can. As an adult when you die to what you cannot control, there is a demand to courageously change what you can! The prayer suggests this two-fold process— let go (die to) and embrace responsibility for you. The energy and wisdom of a group community and the anchoring of private practice is necessary to fulfill this adult assignment. The prayer is tough to actualize but necessary. Dying while you are still alive will manufacture humility. When you don’t embrace Step 3, you will manifest a certain degree of arrogance— that is, I will rely upon my willfulness in a situation rather than surrender. Don’t be surprised if you don’t have another parrot in the cage you created. 

      Questions:

      1. What life experience has become a cage that you feel trapped?
      2. What would it look like to die while you are still alive in this experience?
      3. What is it that you clearly cannot change and what is it that you must courageously do to experience the promise of peace about your caged experience? 

      Curse or Blessing: The Transformative Metaphor Every Addict Encounters

      by

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

      Meaningful insights in recovery addiction often surface in paradoxical metaphors. “To be in control you must let go”; “in order to win you must lose”; “To know God you must be willing to embrace what you don’t know”— are common anomalies that contain significant wisdom and understanding. Sleuthing wisdom from the intensity of addictive craving requires the capacity to sit with addiction and not run from its claws of control. In order to transform addiction into sobriety and serenity, an addict must cultivate the capacity to sit with the struggle. In this manner, he/she can know how to manage the intensity of impulsive desire. It sounds so nonsensical. Many times addiction management suggests that you do the opposite of what seems compelling. Recovery is often counterintuitive.

      Addiction recovery can be like bushwhacking when hiking. The term “bushwhacking” is when you go hiking off the trail and make your own way. My son Sam will do this at times. Once, he worked with one of my colleagues and a family in the wilderness. My colleague described that Sam took them on a long hike off the trail. They made their way through briar patches, hiked over boulders, down creek banks, and up over brush piles. It seemed that the entire hike was experienced as one big obstacle. As they made their way, irritation, uncertainty, and growing insecurity began to mount in my colleague and members of the family who followed. However, Sam appeared to meander casually without much consternation as he made his way seemingly aimless through the brush. What seemed acceptable to him was one big obstacle course for those who followed behind! Finally, they reached a place of clearing where there was a break from the brush, even a nice little stream that provided beauty and a breather from the tension of bushwhacking. Family members began to chuckle about the journey and engage in the profound subtle experience of peace in an outdoor space that they would not have known had they not bushwacked with Sam on that day. Suddenly, arriving at a desired destination wasn’t so important anymore. In the moment, the boulders and brush that had been such an obstacle were now experienced as a terrain that set free the pent-up emotions in exasperated relationships and opened each family member’s heart to new experiences of bonding to each other. The obstacles that were challenges on the course of bushwhacking became opportunities for closeness and family connection.

      Addiction recovery invites us to reframe our experience with obstacles as something that flows in the universal stream of life. When we see our addiction as only an irritation or obstacle—like a boulder in the way that must be climbed over—we miss the insight and wisdom that the obstacle or addiction would share.

      The curse of addiction is an obstacle in life that is designed to be transformed into a blessing. Most addicts are at first dumbfounded by this thought. How can intense addictive craving ever be a blessing? It seems so antithetical. Many curse the addiction and hate themselves for being an addict.

      I like to think that addictive craving is the voice of God trying to communicate legitimate needs that must be met in a healthy way. When an addict craves for a drug of choice, it is important to listen to what is going on underneath the addictive urge. In other words, there are legitimate needs and feelings that must be addressed. For these needs to be met, an addict must tune into his/her feelings. Typically an addict will disconnect from unwanted feelings like shame, anger, disappointment, resentment, etc. Most likely an addict would rather numb out with a drug of choice than to sit with the intensity of discomfort of an unwanted feeling. Immediately triggered, an addict will move in the direction of acting out or curse the addiction while asking for help in some way. Either way, the addict will be unfriendly to self and the addiction in particular.

      We talk about “the addict” within. Many times I hear guys say how much they hate their addiction but are glad for their recovery friends. They live in an adversarial relationship with their addiction. It makes sense. You want to live free of destructive behavior so why not hate your addiction. My concern is that I don’t see that working toward long-term serenity. Treating your addiction as a curse has proven helpful for short-term sobriety for some. However, it is my experience that addicts rob themselves from long-term serenity by hating themselves for being addicts. It leads to more of a “white-knuckling” mentality.

      Buddhists speak of cultivating unconditional friendliness toward oneself. Serenity requires self acceptance of all of yourself, warts and all. Addicts who learn to work with their addiction through deeper acceptance become more aware and acute to listening to their addiction with effective dialogue. Running from addictive urge fuels ignoring needs that must be met in healthy measures. It’s not like saying “I’m fine with my addiction, no big deal” or “I just love being an addict!”. None of us who know addiction would ever sign up for that torment. Yet, working with addictive urge and listening to decode what need is left unmet is critical toward emotionally growing yourself up by using that which would be destructive and transforming it into something constructive. Addiction recovery is another form of growing yourself up to the adult that you are destined to be. Everyone, not just addicts, have the assignment of emotional maturity.

      Growing yourself up sounds sophomoric. Befriending addictive urge is not about giving yourself a pass or rationalizing addictive behavior as “OK”. It is about deepening Step 3—“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him”. The goal is that through surrender and acceptance, you work to transform addictive response to a healthy self-parenting response. Hating and despising yourself is always counterproductive. Addicts who stay stuck in this mindset agonize over every temptation and destructive behavior and usually don’t change in the long term. They usually settle for painful cyclical lapsing behavior.

      Rather than hate yourself for having the urge, practice listening to the craving, accept it, and choose responsible self-care. This involves removing yourself from a high-risk situation and asking your “wise mind” what need must be met in a mature way. Build strength through consulting your outside support for clarity of immediate intervention. Figure out what is going on underneath the addictive urge. Once you identify what you are feeling and what need must be addressed, surround yourself with encouragement to cultivate intimacy rather than isolate through addiction behavior. When you do this effectively you become a mature adult meeting your needs through healthy self-parenting. This strategy is simple but not easy. It takes a lifetime of conditioning and training yourself. You never reach perfection but throughout life, you just get better and better. Essentially, addiction is an intimacy disability. By listening to your addictive urge you become capable of transforming an intimacy disability into intimacy ability when you parent yourself and meet the need with intervention and self-care. It comes back to the reality of a paradoxical metaphor of being able to take what is experienced as a curse and transforming it into a blessing. This is the way of mature recovery.

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