Series Three: Blog Eighty-Eight

“Holding you is difficult today—

“You feel sharp and jagged—

All shoulder blades and elbows.

How I would love to round your edges—

To make you smooth in my rock tumbler heart.”

—Anonymous

It doesn’t matter what the relational experience is, betrayal sabotages everyone involved. The betrayer abandons heart integrity. The betrayed loses trust and forfeits dignity. It is an awful awareness to know that you have been “had” by someone you love and have deeply trusted.  Being a victim of someone else’s selfish destructive scheme destroys confidence. It has a ripple effect that undermines safety and cripples the possibility of potential healing and reconciliation.

Partners of betrayal and infidelity are traumatized. So are the betrayers. Without therapeutic healing, partners stay stuck in their trauma. Most remain stuck for much of their lives if they do not get help to heal from the betrayal crisis.

It is common for a partner who has discovered the lies and deceit of infidelity to resist treatment. Often, their focus is getting the betrayer help. Some believe that if their betrayer is treated so that h/she will stop the hurtful behavior, then they will heal and the problem will be fixed. It is likened to someone being run over by a big mac truck and the paramedics are called.  They arrive and immediately transport the truck driver to a hospital while leaving the victim on the side of the road with tire tracks down their back!

Of course infidelity traumatizes the betrayer. This issue might be minimized in the midst of condemnation of the ugly selfish action of relationship betrayal. For many guilty of betrayal, fear, shame, disgust, guilt, and worry dominate their experience. Their only focus is ending the destructive behavior.  They tend to obsess about re-establishing proof of worthiness for trust.

On the other side of the coin, it can also be true that when betrayal behavior with a new partner is strong and powerful, the adrenaline rush of something new and exciting becomes an escape. Unwanted feelings that trigger betrayal are minimized and ignored.  The titillation of sex and emotional intensity blocks awareness of historical needs. Betrayers are blinded to reality, mistaking emotional intensity for relational intimacy. Some betrayers have described that the intensity as wanting to crawl inside their mistress’ skin.  Addressing the triggers of unmet needs, both historical and current, that ignited the illicit relationship is detoured and forgotten. The intensity contaminates perspective. The trauma created to a committed partner and their own self-inflicted trauma that occurs in the breach of trust is avoided and oppressed. Trauma is more likely to be re-enacted in the future through betrayal re-enactment. This is a reason so many relationships formed from affairs fail.

Self-inflicted trauma is always present when someone betrays another. Even, serial offenders who appear calloused and without true remorse suffer unrecognized, untreated trauma from their destructive behavior. As a therapist I have never met a betrayer who was not traumatized by h/her own deceitful acts.

Like a nurse in the emergency room, treating infidelity requires triaging to create a healing environment for relational healing. Here are some considerations about couples healing from betrayal and the pointed question “could the betrayer have ever loved me”?

Certainly, the act of betrayal is not an act of love. It is understood when betrayed partners conclude that the betrayer never loved them. This is particularly true when betrayal is chronic.

Sometimes it is true that the betrayer never loved the partner with whom they vowed fidelity.  It has been my experience that many addicts want to escape unwanted feelings. They become powerless to stop their acting out in betrayal alone. This doesn’t mean they are not responsible nor does this give them an excuse in any way. It does not suggest a rationale for tolerance towards promiscuity. Yet, it can help a betrayed partner begin their own healing by knowing that serial infidelity is not necessarily about hating or not loving you as a partner. You will need time to sift and sort where you land on the issue of did h/she ever love me? It is about selfish immaturity and it could be a line of no return that has been crossed that you cannot live with because of the impact and pockmarks of dishonesty and abuse. You will need to take time to weigh your thoughts and feelings with a therapist and a community of support.

Series Three: Blog Eighty-Six

“Two Roads diverged in a wood

And I took the one less traveled,

And that has made all the difference”

-Robert Frost

An addict contemplating recovery sees only two options. It is either use or die with craving. Addicts don’t usually die with craving but they habitually succumb to acting out. In the beginning days of recovery addicts are poor at creating options. They come from an either/or and black/white world. They either use or obsess about using until the craving has subsided.

People live with shame and pain. They live disconnected from their inner self. Most of us long for connection. Mindlessly, we listen to the radio or to a podcast when driving. Aimlessly, we scroll texts, emails and a host of social media platforms disengaged and lost in the spectacle of it all. For an addict any reason is a good reason to use. In recovery, creating options to using requires that you take the road less traveled. There are no shortcuts. There is no room for perfection. It requires a willingness to endure painful moments, relentless perseverance and a commitment to being a little better today than you were yesterday. Along the road there will be a dawning that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. This will transform your struggle into sacred meaningfulness. This awareness is hallowed throughout 12-step rooms across the world. Carl Jung once concluded that what chronic addicts needed was a spiritual experience and ongoing communal support.

Most addicts in recovery settle for sobriety. Certainly, it beats the hell out of wallowing in the pain and distortion from a life lived in the agony of addictive behavior. Yet, few engage the worn road less traveled. Once you have put the cork in the bottle, what is next? Are you willing to go deeper? Are you willing to explore what is missing? Are you curious to understand why the addiction? Why the pain? Do you want to address that feeling in your gut that you are not good enough? These questions and more represent the gateway to a worn road less traveled. To those who have committed to sobriety and who are no longer content to rotate the object of addiction, I offer the following road markers on the worn road less traveled.

• Adopt a mindset for recovery: Practice brainstorming more than one option to every challenge you face. Breakthrough the either/or mentality. Change your language about how you see yourself and the world around you. Dare to dream about creating the kind of person you want to be.  Figure out what your song is and sing it. The expedition in recovery truly begins when you earnestly are willing to truly change your mind set about addiction, yourself and the world around you.

• Become a sponge: What has helped me to be successful in my world of endeavor is that I became a sponge to learn everything I could to be the best I could be. During the beginning days of ministry I worked for three years for free, with whom I thought was the very best.  I asked so many questions that the minister asked me to stop asking so many questions. Today I am proud that I learned to be a sponge in ministry and as a professional counselor. That said, it saved my life in recovery. Early in recovery, I adopted the mindset of learning everything I could about recovery. It is one of the fundamentals that has projected my personal growth during the past 33 years in recovery. Be a sponge!

• Learn to fail forward: People who embrace a healthy recovery mindset create a paradigm shift in their thinking about failed behavior. They make it exciting. They realize that in their failure are lessons to learn that will help them become a little better today than they were yesterday. Rather than wallow in mud of shame and negative thinking, they practice conditioning themselves to pursue a better way to live. They learn to transform the word excitement from a necessary feeling to a committed action of exploring what went wrong and doing something different.

• Practice Playback: This road marker is related to the previous one. When an addict relapses, it is common to admit the destructive behavior and then to get back on the horse and try again. It is often brushed off with the idea that “I’m an addict” and what needs to happen is that I just need to bear down with my recovery skills. Sometimes, they commit to going to 90 meetings in 90 days or start again doing the 12 steps. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. When addicts admit their failure to their support community, what is left out is why I relapsed and what happened. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. It is crucial to go back and unpack what happened and where was the breakdown. A golfer will learn to improve h/her swing by watching film of past swings. A basketball player will learn where they were out of position and how to correct other mistakes by watching film. A recovering addict needs to do the same. Go back and fastidiously review triggers, build up behaviors, mistaken beliefs that dominated and then practice over and again replacement behavior that corrects what broke down. We never become perfect. But playback will help you become incrementally better than before. So, practice playback and pay it forward with incremental positive change that over time will make a profound difference.

• Protect your imagination and get outside your comfort zone: It is counterintuitive for an addict to embrace discomfort. Running from emotional and physical pain is at the root of why addiction grows in the first place. Though contraindicated, in recovery an addict learns to lean into the pain and sit with it. Recovery requires that you get outside your comfort zone. Only when you do this, are you able to give birth to the person that your destiny is pulling you toward. The worn road less traveled demands that you live outside your comfort zone. This is where the problem is. Once sober from the hectic helter-skelter life of addiction and within the warm and friendly confines of a 12-step community, an addict is asked to push on outside of h/her comfort zone. It requires sensitivity to the support of community while pushing forward to dream and realize your destiny. In doing so you must protect your imagination from the negative messages of “you can’t” or “who do you think you are”.  You must protect your imagination from the impact of your personal failures or others who subtly want to pull you back into an old mindset. It is a road less traveled for those who live outside their comfort zone. Laying it on the line and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone will require a commitment to being the best person you can be one day at a time. Sometimes you will take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps backward. Everyone slips even as they soar. Overcome your setbacks by doing the next right thing regardless of how you feel. You won’t think your way into acting differently. Don’t abandon your quest to fulfill your imagination. Stop flogging yourself with negative messages. Every positive thought and action will move you closer to your desired transformation. The worn road less traveled requires that you protect your imagination and live outside your comfort zone.

• Choose your support community carefully and elevate those around you: One of the biggest challenges for an addict is to create an environment that fosters sobriety and personal growth. Most addicts who have not surrendered to recovery behavior and hang around old friends who either influence them to return to addictive behavior or who thwart their vision of fulfilling their destiny. Like the old saying “when you hang around the barbershop long enough you will get a haircut”, many addicts can testify to the reality of this powerful truth! The worn road less traveled in recovery will require that you weed out those who bring you down. You will need to distance yourself from the dream crushers around you. Don’t let them rent premium space in your mind. Foster a web of influence that will inspire you to achieve and transform yourself and hold you accountable to your imagination. Build an environment where half-assed efforts are unacceptable. Cultivate your brilliance by choosing a support community that expects greatness within. Create a support system that you can solicit counsel from those who will inspire you. Always know that on the worn road less traveled, life transformation is a team sport.

When I wrote the book, “Dare to Be Average, Cultivating Brilliance in the Commonplace,” the emphasis was the opposite of half-hearted living. Rather, it is about taking the worn road less traveled and embracing the common everyday moment—even those that provide emotional discomfort—and mining meaningfulness from each one. This pursuit of meaningfulness is required in recovery for those who choose the worn road less traveled.

Series Three: Blog Eighty-Five

Brittany Griner is a celebrated female athlete who has played basketball for the Phoenix Mercury for the past 9 years. She has won almost every award imaginable in her sport. She was freed from a Russian prison yesterday. She had been sentenced to 9 years in prison by Russian authorities who had convicted her of breaking the law for bringing less than a gram of hash oil into the country. It was prescribed to her by her doctor in the U.S. for pain.  She was in Russia to play basketball for a country she called her second home. She stated she did not know that the prescription was against Russian law.

Dawn Staley is a college basketball coach for women at the University of South Carolina and had previously coached Griner in the 2020 Olympic Games and other world tournaments where Griner led her team to victory and gold medals for her country.

In the midst of some politicians calling Griner spoiled and loaded with drugs, Staley spoke out for Griner’s posited faith in her character on many occasions. Upon hearing about Griner’s release she broke down and wept in relief and joy. She stated that she thought about Brittany each and every day of her 294 days of incarceration. She insisted that she sent positive energy to her as well as Secretary of State Blinken, President Biden and all who were working to secure Griner’s release every day. She concluded the interview emphasizing that everyone needs someone to be strong for them every day.

Who are you being strong for today? As an addict in recovery, it is human to want to slack on recovery follow through. Recovery is so daily! Inner voices tell you no one is looking and no one really cares. If you don’t go to meetings, contact your sponsor, work the steps, no one will notice and it won’t matter! There is truth in the voices without context and perspective. Of course, the greatest impact of recovery breakdown is on you. Yet, addictive rationale can quickly cover this reality with the idea that you can always go back and pick up your recovery program, make amends, move forward while enjoying the rush of acting out.

What gets overlooked in the mental exchange is the impact upon those who are counting on you to remain true to your values and recovery. If you were to abandon your recovery, even for a day, how would that impact those who depend upon you to remain sober? What kind of pain would your relapse create for your partner? Your kids?  Colleagues?  Those who have been counting on you to be strong?

I have been practicing recovery for the past 34 years. There have been times I have wondered what it would be like to give it all up and surrender to the everyday struggles that come with sobriety and responding to life as an adult. Who would even notice?  Then my wise mind contemplates the sacrifice and undying support of my wife and what relapse would mean to her. From a distance,  my adult sons observe what is going on in my life and count on me to be true to my values. They would undoubtedly be affected.  There are professional colleagues, some close and many I don’t even know who through the years have been inspired to remain true to their values because of principles of recovery I have stood for. Their commitment to their own values would be hurt if I gave up on mine. Then, there are countless numbers of clients who I have impacted therapeutically. Without any words spoken, they would be hurt, some devastated, if I decided to surrender my values or choose to return to addictive behavior.

It is easy to overlook and underestimate the impact of your choices. It comes with living life as an adult. We all impact others.

Consider the following:

1. The impact of your recovery is an accumulation of everyday choices you make. The conduct of recovery illuminates choices to build character and conviction while surrendering recovery to vice and addictive choice darkens the possibility of consistent inner peace.
2. How you treat yourself when no one is looking will be the way you impact others in the light of everyday living.
3. Influence quietly builds by being true to your values amidst the noisy clamor of empty words and contradictory behavior.
4. When you think about giving up, visualize the child inside that never mattered. Be to h/her now what never was then and let the smile of self-love propel you to move forward one more day.
5. The courage to be strong is determined by the choice to do the next right thing regardless of opposition, feeling or physical weakness. It is the choice to say “Yes I can” when you inner voice is screaming “No, you can’t”.

Collectively, recovery is a courageous voice of poise and peace that quietly transforms the world you are in by the way you live.

Series Three: Blog Eighty-Four

Addicts in recovery get better . . . they aren’t cured. There is a spectrum of what constitutes better. Many addicts in recovery stop acting out with their drug of choice as a result of working a diligent program that involves peer support, therapy and family reconstruction. However, it’s not 100%. Some never stop using and at best learn to reduce the harm of their addictive behavior. There are national coalitions that help develop strategies of overdose prevention and harm reduction education that is helpful in all forms of addictive behavior.

Even when an alcoholic puts the cork in the bottle, many migrate to other more acceptable destructive behaviors like obsessive work, rage or pleasing others. Addicts become obsessive in their attempts to craft a cocktail of addictive behaviors to fill in the hole that exists in their soul.

Enmeshment is a common underlying issue in the treatment of addictive behavior. It is a result of boundary violations in relationships.  It is the absence of differentiation and autonomy. Children in dysfunctional families become enmeshed in the pathology and are unable to individuate. Enmeshment becomes the bond that holds the family together. It is the personalization of another’s reality, problems, feelings, beliefs and so on. Enmeshment grows from storied belief systems, family rules and premises that provide protection and loyalty through denial and sometimes threats in a family system. It is the result of poor role modeling, abandonment and neglect as well as other forms of abuse that exists in a family. Addicts repeat symptoms of enmeshment as an underlying attempt to resolve childhood dilemmas. It is repeated throughout life without conscious awareness. It becomes a significant obstacle in recovery that stymies an addict’s journey toward establishing self-esteem and intimacy.

Enmeshment is intergenerational.  In other words, the family problems that existed in your family-of-origin are most likely to appear in your nuclear family and relationships. You may do the opposite from some problematic behaviors but essentially the dysfunctional behaviors are passed from one generation to another through denial and minimization. Here is an example, my grandfather (on dad’s side) died from alcoholism. He was a raging, mean alcoholic. My dad got religion and was a teetotaler. My brother David, died from alcoholism and cocaine abuse secretive to members of his family-of-origin. It was fueled by the denial of his nuclear family. Through denial it is likely that the dysfunctional strategy of embracing the improbable and denying the obvious will be passed on to future generations. The thread that keeps the dysfunction alive is enmeshment. It is the primary basis for codependency, isolation, spiritual bankruptcy and addictive behavior.

Enmeshment runs deep and is unlikely to be curable. My father learned to deal with his fear of abandonment from his father by protecting his mother. My grandfather would get drunk, come home and try to kill my grandmother. My dad would try to protect his mother but was inevitably helpless. When his father finally left the household my dad quit school in the 8th grade to work to provide for his mother and siblings. All of my lifetime my dad had two to three jobs. He lived his life with the scarcity of never having enough. This became the intergenerational connection to my own workaholism.

My mother tragically was involved in an accident at age 9. While playing with candles with her little sister who was 6, wind blew the flames onto the dress her sister was wearing and before help could be found her sister was badly burned and later died from her injuries. My mother believed she killed her sister. She became a very good baseball player in an attempt to seek her parents approval. Later she gave her life for service to the poor in an attempt to seek the approval of God. Both behaviors were pursued with extreme intensity. It’s the serious magnitude of pursuit that marks enmeshment. She needed to be more to keep from being less. She never learned where she stopped and others began. Though impacted by dementia in her dying days, one of her last statements of confusion related to being on time for a baseball game and a reference to having killed her sister. My mother’s compulsive care toward others became a root trigger to my own codependent behavior as a partner, parent and professional. These roots are deep and most likely will take a lifetime to address.

Enmeshment is manageable. While I seriously doubt that the depths of enmeshment will be cured, I do experience dramatic improvement toward self-management. I think management of enmeshment is a proper focus and not a cure. I have been able to stop sexually acting out and curb my workaholism. I have not cured my enmeshment that is expressed through codependent behavior. I have been influenced by over one hundred years of codependent behavior from parents and my own practice. It is unlikely that I will have a “born again” experience around enmeshment. That said, I do not give license to allowing enmeshment to run hopelessly amok.

Here are some considerations that have been helpful in my recovery.

1. Practice setting internal boundaries around issues and areas of life where you are prone to lose yourself. In consultation clarify the Achilles heel life experiences that trigger enmeshment. It could be your partner’s behavior, your kids safety, other people’s problems, etc. Internal boundaries focus on your recognition of limits. Verbalize those limits and your defined boundaries to others so they can hold you accountable as you manage your tendency to enmeshment. You will need their support to remain clear and remind you when you have crossed an internal boundary. Visualizing internal boundaries is like adjusting the focus on binoculars. You must pay attention to the pull of enmeshment or you will quickly lose focus. Recovery from enmeshment is a practice not a peak for perfection.
2. Make Step 3 an everyday lifestyle practice. In the Big Book, Step 3 is “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” Whether you identify with God or another energy source, managing enmeshment requires surrendering what you cannot control. It is a struggle simply to recognize your enmeshed behavior. You might be convinced that you are compassionately caring or standing for principle. However, upon reflection you realize that you have got out of your lane and need to surrender your care or your insistence of being right because it is not about you. This will not be a one and done humbling experience. Some days it happens with multiple issues. It can be discouraging but it does require “turning it over” and getting back in your lane.
3. Practice humility: When your kids tell you they experience you as disconnected and absent when you spent your time worrying about money, profession and the like—believe them! Don’t get defensive and try to help them understand. Just accept your shortcoming. You don’t want to hurt your kids but you did. It’s not always black or white. It doesn’t mean you are a schmuck even if you didn’t prioritize them when you were enmeshed with your work, seeking approval or trying to fix something. I have learned that the best response to children’s experience is to validate and ask “How can I be supportive now”. Validation is not a brush over. It involves a genuine honest acceptance of your son or daughter’s experience of you. 
4. Accept that you are not perfect while being accountable. Mentally you can accept that you are not perfect in your recovery. However, translating this reality to your heart is no small chore. Recovery is about the journey and not about arriving. Your enmeshment behavior will teach you to embrace your real self if you will allow yourself to be accountable and coachable.
5. Poise and perspective is the result of recovery practice. There is a tendency to look to wise old sages in recovery rooms with the perception that they have arrived. Yet, perspective that cultivates poise is gifted to the addict who understands that recovery from enmeshment is a journey not a place to arrive.  Recovery creates your own identity separate from what you do for others. The antidote for enmeshment is identity. Recovery is a journey of recognizing that you are an unrepeatable miracle of God as you separate your being from  healthy and unhealthy behaviors. The more you identify being separate from your behaviors the less you will be stuck in the muck and mire of enmeshment.

Series Three: Blog Eighty-Three

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Holidays trigger many things. For many, it’s a time to connect with family and friends. It’s a time to engage traditions.  For others, it’s a time to reflect and contemplate where you have been and where you are headed. Holidays always involve stress and strain.

When people who have history with each other intermingle during a holiday, inevitably some kind of conflict arises. Old wounds get re-opened. New wounds trigger old responses and before long feelings get hurt. Folks revert back to old destructive behaviors they engaged when they were a kid. There is a tug and pull for family members to engage roles they played when they were kids. The pressure is strong and the perception is real every time a family gathers for a holiday event.

My family was big, 9 original kids plus 3 more.  My parents raised my oldest sister’s 3 children. My dad was always given a turkey from the AFL/CIO union he belonged to. It was big, about 25 – 30 lbs. It never lasted beyond Thanksgiving. There were no leftovers for the weekend or to make sandwiches for school or work. There were 5 boys. I was the youngest. Thanksgiving always meant  celebrating God, country, turkey and football in our family.

We would always have a touch football game before dinner to help work up an appetite. There were 5 Wells boys and then we would recruit 5 neighborhood kids to round out a game of 5 on 5. It was a pass and catch flag football game. We played in the street on our block. The driveways served as first down markers. On one Thanksgiving day one of my brothers went out for a pass. He caught the ball on the run and pivoted to run down the street to the goal line.  He ran smack into a parked car full speed. He was out for the rest of the game.

Two of my oldest brothers always took the game way too serious. They were always pitted against each other. The older they got, the fatter and the slower they got. One would try to trip the other or cheat in some other way and soon they would be in each other’s face and fighting, even after they were grown men. Kind of put a damper on the game. Then there was dinner. Both were angry sweating and cussing beneath their breath. I don’t think they ever bowed their head for a thanksgiving prayer for the food we were about to devour.

After stuffing ourselves with all the food my mom made, my dad would go for a nap and the brothers would settle in to watch the Detroit Lions play. That was when they had Milt Plum as quarterback and Alex Karras, Lem Barney and Dick LeBeau on defense. They were all good players but as a team the Lions always sucked and seem to always lose.

Holidays are often tough for addicts. They trigger a lot of unresolved relationship pain. Here is a list of considerations to help you get through the holidays and avoid skirmishes when you gather with your family and friends.

1. Pay attention to who is in the driver seat. Family of origin gatherings during holidays trigger family members to resort back to childish ways. When someone behaves or responds in a way that triggers hurt and anger, make sure that your wise-minded adult is behind the wheel of your thoughts, spoken word and physical actions. There will be millions of fights driven by adults who lost their sense of self and turned the wheel over to their angry rebellious child. More relationship harm will occur within a few minutes because of hurtful words and destructive behavior than can ever be repaired in a life time.  The crash and carnage is the result of your inner child being placed in the driver’s seat. Drive safe and keep your inner child properly secured within the confines of the seat belt.
2. Picture the kind of relationship life you would like to experience and act as if it were already in existence. For sure, you are unable to control the response of any other family member or friend. The breakdown of connection and communication may be so broken that you may not be able to even be physically present with your loved one. For many, there is that much animosity between family members. Yet, that does not limit you envisioning the relationship you would like that will help you project the positive energy you would like to with family members who may be estranged. Send positive energy from the picture of love and closeness you have created within your mind. It’s a way of you being in the driver seat.
3. Base your thoughts and actions regarding family of origin relationships on the empowered person you are today and not from the rules that governed your childhood. Relationship decisions and behavior around family of origin is often made unconsciously based on the erratic and unrealistic rules you learned as a child. Break away from the bizarre pull to a surreal past and empower your wise mind adult to demonstrate courageous open hearted words and actions to create the adult relationships you would like in your family of origin. Not everyone will make the same choice but you will be relating from a position of strength and avoid the weeds and entanglement of old rules, immature remarks and and judgments that can linger as a nightmare for months to come.
4. When family members feel hurt by you from past or present behaviors, you can always validate. Your adult children don’t need from you nearly as much as you think. In family gatherings, if your children want to speak to you about a criticism they have regarding the way you raised them, listen and validate. Validation is not agreeing with someone else’s view. It is recognizing their experience of you. With your children and family, when someone points out an experience with your weakness, validate them and ask them how can you support them now. It has been my experience that adult children only want to experience that your wall of defense is down, feel heard and validated. They can take care of the rest!
5. Don’t jump to conclusions. Family members or others act the way they do because of what they have going on in their lives. It is easy to personalize and jump to conclusions. Your inner growth about your family of origin will require patience,  tolerance and self-acceptance as you navigate through grief about what could have been with your family of origin but never was. It will demand that you carefully put the wise experienced adult mind in the driver’s seat to remain true to yourself and not get lost in the woods of family dysfunction during this holiday.

Series Three: Blog Eighty-Two

 When Someone Deeply Listens to You

by John Fox

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

This beautiful poem expresses so much of what most people long and yearn for. It is a gift simply to feel heard by another. Feeling heard is more than hearing the sounds and syllables pronounced by another to you. It is engaging the presence of another and comprehending the meaning of the spoken word. Listening is so powerful, yet such an elusive skill. Some experts have said that 85% of all learning is acquired through listening, yet they suggest that 75% of the time we are distracted from what we hear. It is believed by some that only 20% of a lecture is remembered less than one hour afterward. Some believe that human beings attain only 25% efficiency of the capacity of our listening possibilities and that our current span of attention is but only 8 seconds. All this said there remains great potential in the resource of listening to self and another.

Our society fosters a poor listening environment.  We are blitzed every day with massive doses of technology to our brain. We are constantly triggered to shift our attention from one thing to another. Algorithms are designed to influence what you listen to determined by what triggered your interest in past sites visited on the internet. There is constant competition for your attention which lessens your capability to listen to yourself and others around you. Some studies suggest that spending more time in front of a computer screen lessens your ability to concentrate because of the influence of distractions to your brain. The challenge to listen is not new. Over 100 years ago William James wrote that there is  “a ceaseless frenzy always thinking we should always be doing something else”. There is the urge to do, to declare, to sleep or do anything other than the work of listening to another. The airwaves are full of talking heads. Seldom do warring countries sit down for peace listens. It is always for peace talks.

In today’s world, media often distort what has been spoken.. There’s  the little boy who thought he was repeating a well known prayer translated by what he heard grown ups share numerous times. He began “Our Father who does art in heaven. Harold is his name.” I recall as a young boy listening to public prayers in church. My dad would verbally declare “Grant it Lord” indicating his support of another’s verbal request. As a young boy I always thought that my dad was comparing God to a piece of granite rock. It is easy to carelessly distort what others say.

Without developing listening skills you will lose sight of the sacred in life. Addicts must cultivate heart listening. This requires quieting the soul to uncover true yearnings of mind and spirit. There is constant clamor of distractions that addicts must learn to sort and sift in order to listen to the heart and discover true aspirations. Addicts approach recovery not knowing how to listen to their heart. Rather than seek understanding, an addict is driven to numb pain and avoid discomfort. Yet, the sacred is uncovered when you listen to your truth. Some people like to think that written texts provide a way to know truth without listening to their heart. Through religion they seek truth packed in sacred texts like the Bible, the Koran or Bhagavad Gita.  But truth is discovered in your heart with assistance from sacred texts like a Big Book in 12-step recovery, etc. There is no understanding without listening to your heart. Addicts must cultivate the capacity to recognize needs that must be met in healthy ways through the identification of their feelings. Breath work helps to slow inner distraction and to notice feelings.  Being able to recognize feelings provides a vehicle to meet legitimate needs in mature and healthy ways. Addicts transform the curse of feeling addictive craving into the blessing of intimacy through meeting needs in a healthy manner by listening to their heart.

Less talk and more listening cultivates understanding that relieves frustration and suffering in others who feel injustice and misunderstanding. Compassionate listening helps to calm reactivity in others. Fear is born from a wrong perception. Trying to correct misperceptions before carefully listening and understanding only fuels debate. As you listen think about what is behind the words. What does the person want you to know and what meaning is behind the words? It takes courage to listen to someone who is espousing a belief that you do not believe in. Lean into the possibility that you might be changed by what you hear.

Become aware of your “wanting” agenda. Be conscious of you wanting the person’s approval, wanting the conversation to go a certain direction, your desire to fix the person etc. All of these impact your listening skills. Can you recognize your agenda and let it go? Can you simply seek to understand? Can you stop planning your response while listening to another? Can you wait to express your thoughts and feelings and focus on another? Maybe, not even address the misperception until later. It is difficult to listen without speaking when you feel threatened or offended. It is difficult to attend to the spirit of another when aversion arises. We want to control the conversation.

Practice becoming a receptive open presence. Conditioning your mind to listen began with inner listening to yourself without judgment. This requires ongoing training. You then extend your receptive open presence to another. It takes meditation and practice to listen to another without judgment and to attune to their spirit. You will need to anchor with your breath and give yourself care while attempting to do the work of listening to another. Telling another that you have not understood their suffering and that it is not your intent to make them suffer more relieves suffering and struggle. Telling them you are eager to hear more about their suffering heals the greatest divides the world knows. It impacts your significant relationships and offers healing to those who hate you and despise what you stand for.

In a world of divergent interests, pejorative perceptions and unfriendly resistance toward others who are unlike you, practice becoming a receptive open presence. As you sit with your family and friends during this Thanksgiving holiday, courageously listen to another’s passion and frustration. Practice extreme listening. Find a common ground. Always know that when the other person feels heard it is the beginning of trust which heals hate and hurt perpetrated throughout the world by those who choose not to deeply listen.

Series Three: Blog Eighty-One

“When you’re lost in the woods, it sometimes takes you awhile to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.”- Elizabeth Gilbert

Have you ever been lost in the woods? It’s scary. Do I go this direction or the other? Is there hope that I will be found or am I getting more and more lost?  It feels helpless. It’s overwhelming. You want to panic. Depression feels this way. It is like being wrapped in a heavy wet blanket that never dries out. It is claustrophobic to the max!

It’s been awhile. I was 38 years old, a pastor in Cherry Hills, Colorado. I was sitting in the family room at Denver General Hospital with the family of Laura who had just taken her life with an overdose. She was triggered by a poor interaction with her brother who had earlier in life molested her. The family was distraught. Her father pointed his quivering finger at me and said “You are responsible for this. You carelessly supported her leaving the treatment hospital that took her life!” Of course, I wasn’t responsible. The grieving father was suffering indescribable pain. I was not a newbie to the experience of suicide as a pastor. There were others.  During the past 3 years there were ten suicides whose funerals I presided over. Each was a tragedy. Yet, somehow, this one was different for me. I walked away from the hospital numb. I recognized that I had begun to emotionally shut down. I couldn’t think or talk. I was emotionally paralyzed. I sat in a chair throughout the night. I had fallen into a major clinical depression. The death of Laura triggered my own memories of childhood sexual abuse. I wallowed in the nightmare of vagueness of what happened to me. I agonized about times in early life that I crossed boundaries with siblings.

I didn’t function. Inside my brain it felt I would go from being numb to anger to helplessness. At times it felt like an old washing machine had been turned on inside my brain as my mind churned back and forth. I stopped functioning. I didn’t want to leave the house even though I didn’t feel safe inside it. I ended up going to a friend’s basement and laid there for days on end. Emotionally, I was gone, unable to function as a husband, father of three small boys or as a minister. I stopped eating. In six weeks I lost 48 pounds. At times, I became very angry. I was suicidal. I attempted to walk through a door leading to the runway at Stapleton International Airport in an attempt to walk in front of a taxiing jet. This was before the TSA era, but still very difficult to accomplish. Two dear friends rescued me from my suicide attempt, saving me from hurting myself, humiliation and possible incarceration. I was very destructive. I began cruising in my car for hours, seething with anger while marinating in depression. I drove to an area of Denver known as “5-points”. At the time it was an area known to be a territory for the “Bloods” and “Crips” gangs. I aimed my vehicle at a group of kids I thought were likely gang members. I thought if I drove into them they would shoot me. So I tried. The kids scattered from the street and pointed their fingers. It was dusk and I figured their fingers were guns and I waited to be shot but was not. So, I kept driving.

I was out of control, obviously mentally ill. I began seeing a shrink who prescribed Xanax for anxiety. I wasn’t sleeping and was given Haldol which is an antipsychotic to help calm my suicidal ideation and bizarre thinking. I clearly became confused. I would forget when or how much Xanax I took. I remember wanting to get better. I thought the drug would help me. In confusion, I took 7 Xanax in a very short period of time. I was dangerous and needed hospitalization.

My wife and two friends convinced me to enter Columbine Psychiatric Hospital. I wasn’t there long. It was only three weeks. The first day I stared at a piece of fuzz on a big picture window for eight hours and was not high on anything, just emotionally lost. The staff left me alone during that time. Later a matronly type nurse tended to me. She was gentle and warm. Later, I connected her warmth to the lack of connection and warmth  from my mom. This was helpful in later stages of recovery.

They let me go to a physical rehab room that had a punching bag. I would punch the bag for a long time until my clothes were totally wet and I would collapse with exhaustion. I didn’t even know what I was pissed about at the time. Another guy who was struggling with his own delusion threw a chair into the community TV causing it to explode. I lunged for him and would have attempted to beat him to death if two orderlies had not intervened and pulled me away. I remember thinking “why am I so angry? I don’t even really care about the TV or the ballgame I was watching.”

The heavy wet blanket of depression continued to suffocate me. A breakthrough experience occurred for me in the proverbial padded cell. They put me there because I was a bit rowdy on the floor one night. As I sat alone in the middle of the cell with the same Bible I still have. I turned to the first verse of the 91st Psalm “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty”. I thought to myself, “Here I am crazy, clearly suffering from mental illness”. I had sacrificed my life to do the work of the Lord. The dysfunction of cult-like upbringing in an abusive church had finally caught up with me! I wanted to scream out one long F***ck!! I remember hitting my Bible open to the 91st Psalm until my knuckles began to bleed and I gave way to fatigue. I just wailed alone for the longest time. Later the nurses came and got me and I slept deeply for the first time in a long while. It was the first time I remember expressing anger about the concept of God that had been ingrained and the hurtful relationship to the institution of church.

I began a long journey of putting my life back together. It was not a spectacular visible change. Thirty three years later I have been “born-again” many times. Healing has been an evolution of internal wisdom and behavioral change. The essence of who I have ever been still resides within my soul. The scars of past experience will always be. All of the things I have ever done, both the hurtful and helpful, comprise who I am in the present. I have the potential for harm and health. My future mental health depends upon my daily choices. I have been on a journey of making peace with my past, addiction and struggle for several decades now. While I have never “arrived”, I continue to transform myself. I have learned to be proud of where I have been and who I am in the present. Depression remains a daily struggle.

I have revisited the 91st Psalm many times. My understanding of God has evolved and changed many times. Now, I do take refuge in the God of life force. I also recognize that God takes refuge in me. I need God and God needs me. It’s a merger of life force.  In order for awakening, understanding and love to be real in an everyday world, it requires God to take refuge in me. It is not a one-way street. Awareness is necessary for connection.

During the journey of healing throughout my life I have learned to make depression, addiction and struggles in life the voice of God. Each experience brings a message signaling emotional needs that must be addressed through healthy alternative measures. While it is not helpful to be paralyzed with mental illness, depression does bring awareness to life imbalance. When you listen to the message that depression brings, it does help you find your way back to your center of truth. Though for many it takes time. Deep listening to depression with your heart can help you to find your way out of the woods.

Series Three: Blog Eighty

“Peace

Is an inner awakening,

And this inner awakening

We must share

With the rest of the world.”

― Sri Chinmoy

Finding the way of peace is a journey addicts in recovery long for. Turmoil and chaos is created by the junkie worm every day an addict lives. In desperation addicts search for escape from the insanity that rules their life. Even in recovery many continue to struggle in search for peace in the midst of sobriety. Stopping the runaway train going down the track is a relief but not necessarily peaceful. The question remains “How do I create calm out of chaos?” “Is it possible to have peace when there is a storm that rages all around me?” Of course, addicts are not the only ones who want to know the answer to this quandary.

In 1975 thousands of Vietnamese fled their country by sea following the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Crowded into small boats, they were prey to pirates, and many suffered dehydration, starvation, and death by drowning. When challenged with rough seas, many in the boats panicked causing the boat to sink and many to drown. Thich Nhat Hanh remarked in his book Being Peace that even when one person remained calm and lucid knowing what to do, he or she would help others to avoid capsizing the boat. When their voice and facial expression communicated clarity and calmness, others trusted, listened and avoided capsizing. (Page 12)

Addicts in recovery are boat people trying to survive the currents that pull and tug them back to the sea of addictive behavior. There is panic and an onslaught of craving that crashes against the recovery program of every addict who desires to escape the domination of addiction. Recovery requires that you become a peaceful person who sits in the midst of the storm around you with perspective and poise. Where does this panorama of equanimity come from in recovery?

Consider the following:

• In the midst of addictive chaos, return to being true to yourself. The demands of recovery are intimidating. It is tempting to compare your recovery journey with someone else’s recovery journey. Some people are talented presenters. At a speakers’ meeting some tell wonderful compelling stories about recovery and you wish that your recovery life looked like theirs. But it doesn’t. It simply looks like yours. This is a time that is important to maintain perspective and return to being true to yourself. That is all you must do. Remember an oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do. If there was a demand that it grow and look like a palm tree, it would be in trouble. When you think you and your recovery must be something you are not, you will get into trouble. Just be you. It is your only requirement. Being true to yourself is where you will discover poise and perspective.

• Seek Understanding. It will provide compassion toward yourself and others. Addicts in recovery come from a lifestyle of self-absorption. Addicts want what they want when they want it. Their life is about taking up too much space. There is no perspective or understanding that makes sense except that which leads to achieving a desired fix with their drug of choice. It’s a very narrow view of understanding. This distorted thinking does not change overnight in recovery. An addict must seek understanding in order to cultivate compassion for others. Understanding transforms addict behavior. Understanding why you do what you do accelerates self-compassion and love for others. It is common for an addict to compartmentalize their thinking to only seeing the world from their viewpoint. Yet, when you expand your understanding with deep listening, it provides a depth of compassion for self and others. For example, I recently celebrated a birthday. However, my three sons failed to recognize my birthday. I was disappointed. Yet, when I explored the situation that each was experiencing, it provided understanding. One was traveling out of state. Distracted with covering responsibilities for a small child and engaging pomp and circumstance of a special event, he became distracted and overwhelmed with his own agenda. Another was distracted with the adjustment of a newborn and suffered from a lack of sleep and the responsibilities of being a new father. A third did call me, belated, while snow skiing. He was huffing and puffing while boot packing his way up the mountain for his first ski rendezvous of the season. His thoughts were about climbing to the top of a mountain, not my birthday. When you put yourself in other’s shoes you awaken to deeper understanding which creates room for compassion for the conditions you encounter in your world. Practice understanding.

• Practice cultivating community. Most addicts struggle with creating harmony and awareness in meaningful community. Addicts tend to isolate. If they do create community it is with those in the group that they can “relate” to. Everyone in a 12-step group is an addict. We all can relate to each other. Addicts tend to be rigid and unable to adjust or become flexible with who they connect to. A 12-step community is a good place to learn how to create connection with people you would normally not relate to. This exercise is a secret to long-term sobriety. It is important that an addict take with them the ability to create community wherever they go outside a 12-step room. While easier said than done, mature recovery goes beyond a 12-step room and includes vulnerable sharing with others engaged throughout the course of life. Developing community must become a priority for addicts in recovery.

Peace in the presence of turmoil can be achieved when addicts practice community in the highways and byways of their lives. It is anchored when addicts are true to themselves and deepened through understanding.

Series Two; Blog Seventy-Nine

Polarization is a problem in the world. Us versus them is a mentality that has always existed.  The criteria for who is in and who is out are determined by those who have the power.  Historically, the criteria for acceptance has been tragic. Jewish people were rejected by the Third Reich in Germany, who determined that the entire race should be exterminated. African Americans were once considered only 3/5th human in America simply because of the color of their skin. Racism, sexism, patriarchy, ageism, etc exclude some and include others because of someone’s definition about who is acceptable and who is not.

When I was a kid I tried to hang out with only Cub fans. If you liked the St. Louis Cardinals, there was something wrong with you. My dad was a blue-collar worker and we were Democrats. We prayed for those who were Republicans and wondered why! We thought that the Pope was the antichrist. There were 3 areas of our town: Elm Ridge, where the rich people lived; Grant Park, where the poorest lived, and then the rest of us. We learned to categorize people by their address. We looked up to the folk in Elm Ridge as successful. They were the “haves”. We fought to keep our address out of Grant Park where the “have nots” lived.

Judgmentalism has separated people throughout my life. There was the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the 1950’s. Famous people like Paul Robeson, who was a great black athlete and actor, was ostracized and accused of being Communist because he refused to bend to popular opinion. There were Christians who thought the world was going to end in a ball of fire in the early 1960’s. They were scoffed at by scientists and ostracized as Holy Rollers. Now, scientists push the alarm of a catastrophic global warming, and many of those same Christians scoff and ostracize the scientists.

Polarization is a challenge to recovery. Healing requires integrating both the best and the beast within each person. In community, us versus them undermines the healing process. Judging others’ social status or recovery progress paralyzes the potential for transformation. It requires each person to recognize their own dark behavior in order to have compassion for other people’s struggle. It is by recognizing compassion and identification that transformation occurs.

No one escapes childhood unscathed. I have learned that working through abuse requires the acceptance of a victim/victimizer dynamic that exists in those who have suffered abuse. When you have been victimized it is important to face ways that you have victimized others, perhaps not in like kind but in like principle.

You face behavior where you selfishly wanted what you wanted when you wanted it. It is important to face the impact of feelings and consequences that your behavior created for others and experience the gravity of their plight rendered because of your actions. Then, you focus on forgiving yourself which simply means to let go and not hold the behavior against yourself. It also means to stop the hurtful behavior. When you do this, you become less polarized from those who have victimized you. By accepting your own dark behavior you can create compassion for the dark behavior of others who hurt you by perpetrating abuse. Through common shared brokenness you can experience healing and forgiveness which can produce freedom from the abuse.

Essentially, this controversial process can be framed as a way of getting out of an emotional prison that an abuser’s behavior created. Some have described it as a healthy selfish way of forgiving the son of a bitch who perpetrated pain and devastation in your life. You don’t have to be friends with someone who has hurt you. However, polarization is less likely because you have addressed in principle the victimizer dynamic in yourself that also exists in the perpetrator who has hurt you.

When this does not occur, communities remain fractured and polarized. Perpetrators, like sex offenders are excluded from their communities. Some people think that if we segregate, isolate or polarize people, then somehow we become a safer community. I don’t see evidence that this is true.

Through my work at Psychological Counseling Services, we have witnessed transformation and healing by bringing victims and victimizers together. When sexual abuse is the issue, careful consideration of healing factors are assessed for both victim and victimizer before such integration takes place. Through 25+ years of engaging this process, I have observed and facilitated healing and transformation for both victim and victimizer. Regarding betrayed partners, we have integrated them with addict betrayers for many years. I have listened to partners who have shared that listening to the heart of an addict who is not their partner has been helpful to cultivate compassion and healing toward their own addict partner. On the other side of the coin, I have listened to addicts state that hearing the heartache of a different betrayed partner helped them to deepen empathy toward their own betrayed partner. 

When we face each other’s pain we promote healing and transformation and eliminate polarization. This makes far more sense to me.

I do not think there is just one way to heal trauma from abuse. There are many alternatives. I do believe that polarization has splintered communities throughout our country. Judgmentalism through categorizing and labeling people has been detrimental to healing in our country. I suggest that we overcome judgmentalism and polarization toward others through identification of common shared brokenness with shared accountability and consequences. 

Take time to be curious of someone who is unlike you or represents a position you vehemently disagree.  Notice how judgment comes up and simply sit with gaining an understanding of another person’s plight and position about life. You don’t have to change your mind about how you think. But, you can find a way to connect with someone who sees things different than you do. A way to overcome polarization is to integrate common shared brokenness through listening to a different perspective.