Blog Archives

Recovery is the ability to tolerate feelings without needing to medicate them.

3/21/2017

Nick Nolte spoke the following words int he movie,
"Prince of Tides."

"I don't know when my parents began their war against each other, but I do know the only prisoners they took were their children. When (we) needed to escape, we developed a ritual --- we found a silent soothing world where there was no pain, a world without mothers and fathers. But that was a long time ago, before I chose not to have a memory."

That silent, soothing world is what a addictive disorder may represent to many of us.

Often, the attraction to addictive behaviors was that they served to mediate our inner pain. For so many in recovery, abstaining from our addiction(s) results in experiencing something we have strived for and in much of our life, to stay away from --- our feelings.

In early recovery, it is the fear of feeling that will send many of us back to our addictive behaviors.

The ability to express and feel safe with feelings is something that is most often impeded at an early age. Many addicts grew up in dysfunctional or abusive homes where it was not safe to express feelings. As a result, we live with much fear, disappointment, sadness, and embarrassment. We may have witnessed anger, rage, and pain. It was a lonely time. If we showed any feelings at all, we often were rejected. We were given shame based messages as, "Big boys or girls don't cry." "Don't be a sissy." How about this one, "I will really give you something to cry about."

A show of feeling was frequently met with disapproval, rejection, or even punishment.
The message, whether delivered overly or covertly was very clear...

"It is not okay to be your own person with individual feelings, desires or needs.
Feelings need to be avoided at all costs."

Taken from "A Hole in the Sidewalk" Claudia Black

0 Comments

Action is About Living Fully

3/17/2017

0 Comments

Don Miquel Ruiz writes such wisdom in his book The Four Agreements.

He writes, "Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely. You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything. But it is the action that is going to make you feel intensely happy. When you always do your best you take action. Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you are expecting a reward. Most people do exactly the opposite: They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don't enjoy the action. And that's the reason why they don't do their best.

Action is about living life fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of experiencing what you are. Expressing what you are in taking action. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestations, no results and no reward."

0 Comments

Defenses Bring Which They Were Meant to Guard Against.

3/16/2017

0 Comments

Through practicing "no resistance" we recognize and become sensitive to the intimate connectedness of all of life.

When we become aware of the subtle aspects of energy we can learn to yield rather than force.
Force met with force creates very few choices.

We simply lower our heads and plow through life.
This approach to life leads inevitable to our becoming injured.
Each time we become wounded our feelings of being unsafe increase. In turn, we build larger defenses.
Contrary to the ego's thinking, defenses always bring which they were meant to guard against.
Thus, when we meet force with force the following happens.

Becoming wounded = building defenses = becoming wounded = building defenses.

To create more options and choices in life, learn the art of No Resistance. Once you yield to aggressive energy, then you may redirect that energy. You then have the ability to truly direct the exchange to a positive outcome.

In Hakko-Ryu and Seibukan Jujutsu there is a practice referred to as "henka."
In henka, we are utilizing our intuition, or "dan" instead of our intellect. The intellect always pauses to asses and analyze the situation. though the intellect has its place, responding to energy coming our way is not one of them.
The intellect tends to respond in rigid, preconditioned ways.

Intuition responds in fluid and creative ways through trusting our response to energy. Thinking and analyzing are absent. The result is a "dance" in which force is never meeting force.

This practice of henka helps to overcome resistance. It takes us beyond the intellect and opens up our intuition. If you truly allow intuition to respond, there will be no resistance.

To the degree that we do not trust our intuition is to the degree that we meet force with force.

"Fear creates a lack of trust in ourselves, others, and the universe." At a certain point in my own therapy I was forced to see the effects of this fear.

I had been dealing with the same issues, in the same intellectual place, for what seemed like years. I was trying to resolve issues with my parents. I wanted to sort out my feelings about them and my feelings about myself. The problem was that I wasn't feeling anything. I could talk endlessly "about" things, but I had great resistance to feeling.

Then one day, with out any forethought, I trusted myself and my therapist enough to step aside and yield energy of my feelings. I laid back and began to cry. The sounds that began to leave my body were ones that I had never heard before. They came from deep within, from the center of my being. Sounds of pain filled the room, my whole universe. Time changed dimensions. I could have been there for a day or a minute; I wasn't sure. All of my hidden pain began to pour out in every sound. Tears finally found their way out of me in a genuine way.

As long as I was afraid of my pain I kept it hidden. It weighted me down in everything that I did. In my day-to-day activities, I was unaware of the energy I expended in order to keep my pain repressed. It was a process that drained me of vitality. Moving through my resistance opened up choices for me. Once I began to experience the pain I could then work through it. Forgiveness was then fully open to me.

The love that had always been available to me "filled my heart."

The Art of Trust ~ Lee Jampolsky

0 Comments

Outrunning Our Childhood Grief.

3/10/2017

0 Comments

An old Chinese proverb talks about a man that was so disturbed by the sound of his footsteps and so bothered by his shadow that he tried to outrun both. No matter how fast he ran, his shadow effortlessly kept up with him and when he put one foot down there was always the sound of another step. He believed his failure was because he wasn't running fast enough, so he ran faster still. Finally exhausted, he became very sick and finally died. He never realized that if he had just sat down and rested in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared and there would have been a quiet time without the disturbing sound of the footsteps.
From Chuang Tzu, Taoist Philosopher 400 .C.

Much like the man in the proverb, children from addicted or dysfunctional family systems often try to outrun their grief. They are rarely satisfied with their footsteps and do not seem to feel good enough, most often trying to be better and better. Perfection never arrives.

As we attempt to run away from our grief, the past of our 'less than normal childhood', we actually intensify our pain and deaden a part of ourselves in the process, to remain emotionally safe. Delayed grief narrows our options in life, cause us to continue to survive (as in our childhoods) rather than live.

We must complete our psychological business with the past before we are ready to move on and form new and healthy attachments. There are four tasks that help us move through our old childhood grief.

The first task of this type of grief work is naming the loss and accepting it has taken place.
The second task is feeling the emotions associated with the loss, this includes sadness and anger.
The third task is to adjust to an environment that the loss is missing. Owning the behaviors which were developed to compensate for the loss. The behaviors of management of the delayed grief.

The fourth task is to withdraw emotional energy from which is lost and reinvest in other relationships.

Most often grief work of this type is done with the care and guidance of an experienced therapist. Relief can be discovered, our life options are more realized, and we begin to live rather that just survive.

Taken from After the Tears, Middelton-Moz & Dwinell

0 Comments

Self Compassion, Humanity, Mindfulness.

3/8/2017

0 Comments

Perfectionism never happens in a vacuum.
It touches everyone around us.
We pass it down to our children,
we infect our workplace with impossible expectations,
and it's suffocating for our friends and families.

Thankfully, compassion also spreads quickly.
When we are kind to ourselves, we create a reservoir of compassion that we can extend to others. Our children learn how to be self-compassionate by watching us, and the people around us feel free to be authentic and connected.

Self compassion can change your entire day.

Self compassion has three elements:
self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

Self kindness is being warm towards ourselves when we suffer, fail or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.

Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feelings of personal inadequacy
are part of the shared human experience--
something we all go through rather than something that happens to 'me' alone.

Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated we use mindfulness.
We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.

Mindfulness requires that we are not "over-identifying" with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.

Most of us are trying to live an authentic life.
Deep down, we want to take off our game face and be real and imperfect.

There is a line from Leonard Cohen's song "Anthem" that serves as a reminder to me when I get into that place where I am trying to control everything and make it perfect.
The line is,
"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

So many of us run around spackling all of the cracks, making everything look just right,
we forget the beauty in the cracks.

It reminds me that our imperfections are not inadequacies;
they are reminders that we are all in this together.
Imperfectly, but together.

0 Comments

Self Esteem Building, Notice You.

3/5/2017

0 Comments

Crisis in self-esteem is a part of the human experience.
Finding your way up, authentically identifying who you are,
and honoring that person, who is you...
Improves sense of self and self esteem.
Be patient with yourself, change takes time and steadfast works.
Choose to do any of the suggestions below,
keeping in mind that a little bit is movement towards your esteem building
works much better than all or nothing attempts.
Choose goals, experiences, tasks, that allow you to be successful.
As you begin to build these aspects of yourself,
your esteem will rise. Each evening before you fall asleep,
review the successes of your day.

Free yourself from the "shoulds" of the world
and choose life as you want it to be for yourself,
not based on others expectations or ideas of success.
Remember, this is your life.
Not anyone's elses experience.

Identify and respect your own needs.
Ask for what you want.
Set achievable and reasonable goals.
Talk to yourself positively.
Lean into your strengths, test your abilities.
Experience success and notice success.

Take Chances.
Solve problems.
Make Decisions.

Develop your skills a little at a time.
Rely on your own opinion of yourself.
Eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive!
Three degrees of change, once a day, equals a lot of change in a short time.
Be easy on yourself.
Identify your success, no matter how small.
Stay out of all or nothing thinking.
Ease into a happy life.
Make a plan for your self-esteem!
Follow the road to better health for yourself!

0 Comments

﻿Recovery is the ability to tolerate feelings without needing to medicate them.

Action is About Living Fully

Defenses Bring Which They Were Meant to Guard Against.

Outrunning Our Childhood Grief.

Self Compassion, Humanity, Mindfulness.

Self Esteem Building, Notice You.

Author: Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

Archives

Recovery is the ability to tolerate feelings without needing to medicate them.

Author:
Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist