Series Three: Blog Seventy-Eight

Every blog post I have ever written addresses tools to help addicts avoid relapse, rebuild their lives and deepen intimacy with themselves and others. I have worked in the field of addiction recovery going on 28 years. There have been many inspirational success stories. There were some I thought would maintain long term sobriety for years but left the program and went dark. There were others who I swore didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to maintain sobriety, who became a source of inspiration for healing in the world they live. It’s impossible to know who will stick to a recovery program and who will not.

Today’s post is about those who didn’t make it.  If you work in the field of addiction recovery you become conditioned to know that some addicts seeking recovery will respond and others won’t. The tough part is when someone does respond and makes solid progress, then tragically goes back to old destructive behaviors. They disappear from group attendance and you don’t hear from them again.  It’s disappointing! Once you were close in communication and knew more about their life than anyone else on the planet. Then suddenly they’re gone, never to be heard from again. The situations that are most difficult are those who lost their lives in the fight against their demons.  It is difficult to let go of these tragedies. Over time there have been many in my professional life  I never forget those who I have worked with who lost their lives to their drug of choice.  I want to dedicate this blog to those who lost their battle with addiction and their lives. Part of me left this world with them when they lost the fight. I would like to share a few stories about those who tragically lost their battle against addiction. Of course, I have changed the names to protect their anonymity.

Max was a truck driver. He was tough, burly and an all-or-nothing type of thinker. He meant what he said and with determination would follow through with his recovery commitments. His weakness was gin and tonic. His wife Martha loved him and codependently tried to please him. When Max wasn’t drinking he was great. When he drank he was mean, unpredictable and volatile. He was also bipolar and when he drank gin and tonic he would stop taking his medication.  Max routinely worked a 12-step program and credited a new-found faith in God for deepening his commitment to program work. All went well for Max during the many months I worked with him to overcome his addiction. However, throughout the course of time tension grew between Max and his wife. He began to struggle with the long over-the-road hours that his job demanded. He shut down communication with his wife and pulled away from others who had  been helpful. He complained that the trucking company he worked for cheated him from his earnings.  He was resentful and angry that they reprimanded him for inaccurately documenting driving hours while on the road. His backslide was shockingly rampant. He became sporadic with his program. My contact with him became more crisis focused around fights with his wife and less focus on vulnerability toward addictive craving.  He stopped taking his meds and became more combative in our conversations. Then, one night his wife called me and said that Max had gone off the deep end. She said he holed himself up in a hotel with a couple of bottles of gin and tonic and a gun. She wanted me to call him so I did. Though Max was glad I called, he was very reactive and agitated. Someone had called the police because of erratic behavior witnessed by others at the hotel. When the police arrived they knocked on his door and he panicked.  He began screaming obscenities with irrational thoughts about his wife and the world around him. The police entered the room with a management key. Instantly Max picked up his gun pulled the trigger and shot himself in the head. I will never forget walking down the concrete corridor of the morgue at the hospital with his wife to identify his body. When they pulled the curtain back from the window in the room where his body laid, screams from his wife echoed throughout the concrete corridor of that hospital. Max was a dear man. Without the meds he lost his reasoning. Without the support community he lost his way, his self, and his life. I often wonder how many like Max remain on the bubble of self-destruction unable to tame their demons of addiction.

Steve was a medical professional, a family man and a sex addict. He struggled with perfectionism trying to please his wife Wendy. When he failed to do so, which was often, he responded by shutting down with denial, half-truths and lies by omission. Shame dogged him like a pack of wolves chasing him relentlessly through the woods. He just couldn’t handle the failure. He tried to beat himself up to a better place, and that never works.   His public persona was quiet and even keel. However, inwardly he was deeply troubled with visceral turmoil. His inner struggle began to explode at home. I worked with him and his wife for a season of time. There were many hours that I walked alongside while Steve languished in turbulence and unrest about his defensiveness and deceit. During that time he made good progress but would chronically relapse. He sought support through 12-step recovery and made a few connections. He worked hard and demonstrated hope for healing. However, over time his gains faded into failure and he wallowed in shame and guilt. He began to isolate with bitter disappointment. Slowly, he began to cut out most of his therapy and 12-step support. The relationship with his wife that he prized and hoped would heal ended in divorce. He spiraled into uncontrollable depression and defeat. Shame ate away at his core self till nothing was left to build on. He lost sight of hope and help. He made one last effort in treatment with failed results. Steve wallowed in immense emotional pain.  In desperation to escape the pain and emotional struggle, he took his life while in close proximity of others who were trying to help him fan the flame of hope and resilience.  Overwhelmed with shame, misery and mental illness that accompanied his compulsive sexual behavior, hope was snuffed out once and for all. Steve was a sensitive soul. He was not a hardened playboy with a long resume of sexual infidelity. He simply was unable to stop masturbating to porn and find a way to forgive himself. The hounds of shame had cornered him, and suicide was his only way out.

Why is it that some people face the adversity of addiction and seem to transform their lives while others are unable to get back on their feet and even perish from the same challenge?

Here are a few considerations gleaned from the stories of Max and Steve.

1. Shame dominated both men.  A rigid embrace of sobriety is not sustainable. Both men were clear about their bottom line behaviors that indicated acting out. Neither knew how to bring themselves back to center when lapse or relapse behavior occurred. They struggled with being stuck in the mud of shame and self-criticism. Staying stuck in shame without knowing how to crawl out of the muck and mire of failure distorts perspective and increases the mistaken belief that you can never do recovery right. Both men were perfectionists which is like throwing gasoline onto a fire of dry tinder. Many addicts in recovery never learn to stalk their shame in order to separate their behavior from their sense of self. So, if they do shitty behavior it means they are a piece of shit. Ultimately, if an addict stays stuck in a mistaken belief, h/she will produce results to support the distorted belief. Max alway contended that he was not normal and would not be able to measure up to others. Steve was mired in perfectionism from day one. The harder they tried to get out of their own way, the deeper the hole they dug striving to do recovery perfectly. It was a major force that influenced their demise.
2. Both ignored developing self-parenting skills.  Recovery is about successfully learning to do self-care. The term “self-parenting” fits because subconsciously addicts try to fulfill parental needs, that were not met in childhood, through significant relationships in the present. Yet, what happens is that when you try to fulfill individual wholeness from a partner, the opposite occurs. It’s the old adage that 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 when you thought it would make a whole. To fulfill your quest for happiness and safety, it is required that you take responsibility to make yourself whole by addressing your own childhood neediness. The only way to become whole is to practice being your own parent. When Max came home physically and mentally exhausted because of his cross country truck run, he expected Martha to fill his empty cup with attention and care. Martha ran around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to make Max comfortable and glad to be home. But, Max was a perfectionist and when he was needy no one this side of heaven would possibly be able to fulfill his needs in the way he wanted. Steve was determined to do things just right to get the smile of approval from his wife. But in his mind he always screwed up. To cover his shortcoming, he thought he needed to minimize hurt or lie about what seemed unsatisfactory. Both men’s attempt to rely on their partners for approval and self-care had a short shelf life. They were destined to fail and they did.
3. Both men wanted their partners to be emotionally close and then pulled away in isolation. Both Max and Steve were intimacy-disabled which is the essence of addiction. Each had plans to approach their partner with open hearts. We talk about different strategies to make it happen. Yet, mired in perfectionism, each was stymied. when the results did not turn out exactly as they had hoped. Max was disappointed after surprising Martha with dinner at a favorite restaurant. Martha was exhausted from cleaning and preparing the house for his return home from the road  She was too tired to be sexual after dinner. Max pouted and thought he screwed up and withdrew. The next day they fought about something small and silly cementing isolation between the two. Steve was under pressure the entire week with numerous surgeries in succession every day. His wife engaged a ladies night out on Thursday. By then Steve was totally exhausted, functioning on fumes. He decided to go to bed early. While checking his email, he gave into the urge to look at porn and ended up masturbating. The next day when his wife asked how he did with his sobriety he lied and denied any challenges. Locked with shame he left for work isolated and lonely. He began to think he could not stop the porn, the masturbation and the lies. Both shrunk from open-hearted confession with their 12-step groups. In the end both were alone, isolated from themselves, their partners, their support and their world. It drove both men to the edge and over.

It is uncommon for most addicts who relapse to become so profoundly stuck that their only choice is to take themselves out. That said, it occurs more frequently than most realize. For sure, every addict who is stuck in the muck and mire of shame, who fails to practice healthy self care and isolates from support is destined to relapse. Without addressing these key areas of recovery you will not create long-term sobriety. It is important to learn from the pitfalls and failures of those who have hurt themselves and did not make it.

Series Three: Blog Seventy-Seven

Every day presents a new set of circumstances and issues in addict recovery. Some days go smooth without major conflict while other days are challenged with triggers, cravings and stress that create feelings of insecurity, impatience and overall struggle. There is no necessary rhyme or reason. It is the common thread of issues that addicts in recovery grapple with in order to remain sober. For sure, staying sober is a battle of resistance with the forces of life that tug and pull to numb out with a cocktail of addictive processes.

Addicts in recovery learn to create a sweet spot which represents a center of balance in life to respond to life’s provocations. In racquetball the sweet spot on the court is the space maintained that gives the best vantage to respond to the opponent’s shot. The sweet spot in recovery is the space that an addict creates that offers the best possibility to engage tests and temptations from an empowered position and with poise. Trauma professionals sometimes refer to this space as a window of tolerance. This is a place you are able to self-soothe. You are able to maintain emotional self-regulation. It’s the position that you are best able to access resilience and flexibility. In the midst of everyday fray, you are capable of being connected to your mind, body and emotions anchored in the window of tolerance.

Some days just don’t play out in the sweet spot. You scramble to keep up with a busy schedule. People criticize you for shortcomings. Life throws you one curve ball after another. The harder you try, the “behinder” you get. It’s just one of those days or one of those seasons in life. The buildup of stress with physical and emotional fatigue triggers cravings that push you to the precipice of relapse. It’s amazing how quickly you can be right on the edge of disaster.

This experience is what trauma professionals refer to as flooding which can be hyper-arousal (fight or flight) or hypo-arousal (freeze). Addicts must pay attention to the warning signs to avoid the pitfalls of relapse.

Triggers are the memories, core beliefs, feelings and body sensations which are connected to past traumatic experience that have the potential to move you out of your sweet spot in recovery. Addicts benefit when they do the homework of identifying mistaken beliefs that block intimacy and monitor those beliefs daily. Rather than going all out to eliminate the belief, simply paying attention with a skillset to shift out of the mistaken belief that enervates and empowers addictive response, and shift into an intimacy-abling belief is all that is needed. It is important to become aware of life situations, relationship challenges and mental states that fuel mistaken beliefs and address them daily.

Flashback memories of old experiences are just that! They are not reality in the present moment no matter how powerful they seem. They trigger maladaptive response and require the grounding skill of “acting as if”, meaning that in spite of the felt struggle, you commit to act doing the next right thing regardless of feeling. It may require ritual breathing, keeping your eyes open and grounded conversation. It doesn’t mean I must act out in old destructive behaviors.

Triggers can activate hyper arousal response including building anxiety, impulsivity, reactivity, anger and rage, nightmare, rigidness and hyper-vigilance. You may notice difficulty in concentrating, obsessive-compulsive thoughts or behaviors or panic, and becoming easily irritated.  Many addicts do program work without ever paying attention to these critical signs of hyper arousal that take them out of their sweet spot.

A hypo arousal response is also a sign of flooding which pulls you from your window of tolerance. This response includes depression, fatigue, not being present, dissociation, feeling numb, going on auto pilot and disconnecting from feelings. You may experience increased aches and pains and not be able to think very clearly.

It will be important for you to evaluate your typical response to the trials and tribulations of recovery living that pull you from your sweet spot. Managing your ability to return to the sweet spot in recovery requires that you discipline your awareness to recognize the warning signs of flooding.

Do you most likely respond with freeze or fight/flight given the description of both responses? Many clients have told me that their body experiences periodic aches and pains without ever considering that the source of this discomfort might trace back to a hypo aroused response to the stressors of life that pull them away from their window of tolerance. Others think a medication is needed to quell the anxiety and panic that dominates them every day. Still others are stupefied wondering why they are having nightmares, being so reactive with anger and rage. One reason you may find yourself emotionally eating is because of the fight or flight response to the stress and tension that exists within your life. You may need a prescription to alleviate the intense edge of anxiety that triggers rageful response. It can be helpful to attend an Overeaters Anonymous group to stop destructive out of control eating. Yet, for sure, it will be critical to recognize the warning sign that triggers the emotional flooding. You will need to address the stressful situation and recognize the flood in your life which pulls you out of your sweet spot in recovery. Consider these steps:

• What expectations do you have in your life and your recovery? Be clear and specific. Are your expectations realistic? We all begin with enthusiasm and a lot of fire in recovery. It will flame out if your recovery goals are not realistic. Be clear and accountable for your bottom lines. A contract without accountability has no bite to it.
• Examine the Data. Project out a few weeks. When you get to a certain point in your recovery journey, evaluate if the results are what you intended. Like plays drawn up on the chalkboard at halftime in a football game, the way it works out on the field of recovery may be quite different than what you planned. Look at what you intended when you made your commitment to improve your behavior with your sponsor or in a recovery room. Are your results what you meant to be reality? Be honest, practical and realistic in your assessment.
• Make adjustments. This is key. Returning to your sweet spot will require that you work out of your rigidity and become flexible. Things never work out just the way you plan. What you thought would be easy will sometimes be hard. This is the way it is in life not just recovery. Your working recovery from the sweet spot will require that you be flexible and make adjustments.  Embrace a sweet reasonableness about your expectations. Know when to apply the strict letter of the law to your recovery life and when to be gentle with what you expect from yourself and others. This is a practiced art form.

The sweet spot for recovery growth requires gardening. Utilize your quiet time each day to re-center your focus. Know your tools for regulation and how to use them. I encourage addicts to create a plethora of recovery tools that are placed on the shelf for resource like a wood worker puts her tools on the shelf of her garage. Practice what you know. It will help you to return your window of tolerance. It is the sweet spot that propels long term growth and serenity.

Series Three: Blog Seventy-Six

Recovery is never a static proposition. Once you decide that you have had enough chaos, heartache and hangover, it doesn’t all go away by attending a 12-step meeting. Rather than being “born again” once and for all, there is need for rebirth each and every day.

I like to establish goals for the next day before I retire each night. When I awake very early each day, I look at my goals and I question “why?” or wonder “what was I thinking?” I begin to build excuses for why it can’t be done. Every day in the early morning hours I must make a daily adjustment in attitude before I begin.

Long term sobriety requires the flexibility of making daily adjustments with attitude, thoughts and awareness of feelings. The way to serenity is often a circuitous journey. A rigid black and white outlook must give way to a malleable reality of life as it is. The world will not cooperate and pave the way for you to create the serenity you hope for and deserve. You must create it, be it and live it by directing the energies of your life toward harmony within, without controlling the environment outside. There are many things you can control—your schedule, daily actions, attitude, thoughts and mindsets. However, you cannot control other people in the world around you. The world is imbalanced, chaotic, unjust and unfair. Every day tragedies occur and lives are snuffed out with no more regard than a swatted mosquito. Someday your life will be a fatality statistic read by others.

Transforming this dour reality into a meaningful destiny demands a strategy that I refer to as a daily adjustment strategy (DAS). It starts with the Serenity Prayer in accepting the things you cannot change. You cannot change people, most circumstances or the problematic conditions that plague society and the world around you. However, when you do accept the things you cannot change, you position yourself to influence others with positive energy and empowered action. Step by step you can impact with positive force the energy and behavior of others around you.

Courageously, you change the things you can. When your attitude sucks, you can transform it with humility. By choice, you do not surrender to the forces of depression, darkness and defeat. When you are down, you lean into it and accept that ups and downs are part of recovery and you accept the downs as being human. Even when down you can still do the next right thing.

Depression is a life experience that can dominate. I remember being shut down by depression. I had no emotional energy and was overwhelmed with darkness. Yet, even then I changed the things I could. At the time, though unconscious of it, I did reach out to two friends and my wife who enrolled me in a psychiatric hospital. Even though I stared at a piece of fuzz on the window for hours, I did make the choice to be in a healing space that eventually saved my life. While gazing at a window, I decided to eat, to sleep and join the living again. I began making daily adjustments that transformed my life. I had lost 40 plus pounds in six weeks. I tried to end my life more than once. I learned to make a daily adjustment just to breathe each day. I was knocked down but not knocked out. I learned to fight—more for me and less for others. At first, I just fought—anyone and everything. I fought a guy who threw a chair into a TV while I was watching a Cubs game just to see it explode. Today I am not even a Cubs fan. I beat the hell out of my Bible until my knuckles were bloody in a padded cell. I needed to do those things to come back from the dead into the land of the living. It was a part of my daily adjustment at that time. From there I learned to be resilient and committed to positive reason. I became open to correction. I learned to champion doing what was right for me.

Recovery requires that you learn the difference between what you can and cannot change. People get lost trying to change others behavior, outlook and poor habits. It can become extreme to the point that you lose your own identity. Daily, you must clarify your expectations about what you want to change. Learn to realistically examine what’s going on. What is sensible in what is happening where the rubber meets the road in your life. Learn to trim away unrealistic expectations and employ a sweet reasonableness to what can and cannot be done. Bring yourself back relentlessly to the change you can control within you. Let go of others and quietly observe the transformation that happens in your world because of your daily adjustment and never-ending pursuit of shaping the destiny that exists within you. It all begins with your daily adjustment strategy. Are you ready to sift and sort the adjustments that are necessary today?

Series Three: Blog Seventy-Five

Addicts have many anxieties and fears. They grew up with holes in their souls with unmet childhood developmental needs from parents who failed to provide the fundamental emotional needs necessary. Some addicts suffered woeful negligence from physical, emotional and sexual abuse. For many their parents failed to provide necessary support because they didn’t know how. Their parents loved them but were unable to give their children which wasn’t given to them. Those addicts knew their parents loved them because they provided clothing, food, shelter, even education. However, children know they matter through parents spending sufficient amounts of time with them on the child’s terms, not the parents. When this doesn’t happen, kids figure they don’t matter rather than something is wrong with mom and dad and their priorities. Developmentally they become like a chunk of Swiss cheese with the holes. Each hole represents an unmet childhood need. Kids learn to compensate by trying to fill the hole from the outside through a cocktail of relational experience. It never works because the depth of emotional need can only be filled from within. They become like the little kid who can’t get enough sugar. Their emotional neediness becomes insatiable. Eventually they organize a dependency upon an addictive substance or process that delivers what it promises. For many, it involves a collection of addictions to assuage their fears and anxieties and to numb out what hurts.

One of the greatest fears that an addict faces is that of abandonment, physically, emotionally or both. Abandonment is like the metaphor of a pack of wolves that chases you through the woods. The pack pursues you relentlessly even though you create diversionary tactics of avoidance. Eventually, the pack corners you. Either the pack wins and consumes you with addictive behavior or you choose to face the gnashing teeth of abandonment to only realize that it is not the terrorizing force that its growl suggests.

Addicts become pleasers, workaholics, and deniers to avoid conflict. Behind their behavior is the pernicious fear of abandonment. They will do anything to avoid feeling deserted. Addiction becomes a lifelong affair to avoid abandonment. Some addicts have described their relationship to their drug of choice as a snuggly blanket that offers consistent warmth from fear and anxiety. What lurks behind every addictive high is the fear of abandonment. How to address abandonment is critical to the long term sobriety from addiction. Here are a few steps to consider:

• Embrace that the fear of abandonment is universal. Abandonment is not just a fear that afflicts addicts. It impacts the world at large. It is a common thread of life experience. Recognizing that everyone experiences this fear helps to avoid isolation or concluding that you are particularly flawed and different from those around you. You are not! We all must face our fears of abandonment.
• Others may dessert you but the key is to learn not to dessert yourself. This may seem obvious. Yet, simple things are not easy. It’s an automatic response for a child to subconsciously attempt to capture a parents’ attention when neglected. When a child lacks recognition for who they are they try to compensate by what they do. If the inattentiveness is chronic the child will learn to do something they hope will get their parent’s recognition to avoid abandonment. Over time they learn that who they are matters less than how they act or what they do. Essentially, they learn to abandon themselves. Overcoming the fear of abandonment requires that you learn to reclaim the importance of being and parent yourself in healthy ways. You must learn to pay attention to your genuine needs and not abandon yourself through pleasing others.
• Listen to your triggers, don’t just run from them. Triggered with fear or lust for your drug of choice can be a gift! Put yourself out of harm’s way and take time to let the trigger talk to you about unmet needs that must be met in a healthy way. Some addicts spend much of their recovery reporting about triggers and chronic high risk behaviors, thinking that telling another addict when they have been tempted is enough. However, it is a beginning. When tempted think about the legitimate need that is represented in the trigger and endeavor to self parent by meeting the need through adult choice and interaction. Rather than abandon yourself by running from the trigger, allow the trigger to speak its truth and transform the trigger from a curse to a blessing. Practicing this skill set is a major step that avoids abandonment of self.
• Take the people with you who abandon you. People hurt each other and abandon one another. People die. Relationships end through the passage of time, betrayal and a myriad of other reasons. It sucks to feel abandoned. Yet, it is a broken experience that is common to all. It requires skills to grieve the loss of what once was. Some people live life longing for yesterday’s experiences in order to avoid feeling abandoned. I suggest that you take the lost person or experience with you. Keep it with you in your heart. It is not necessary to live in the past. Yet, you can bring those experiences with others with you in the here and now through treasured memory. Even in the face of betrayal, you can embrace your truth and the closeness that once was and the intent you generated when others had ulterior motives. Precious memories need not be abandoned. Loved ones who are now deceased can be alive in your heart. We all live in a nanosecond of present time and then it too becomes historical. So we hold precious experience by treasuring its memory in our hearts. Learn to address abandonment by taking your precious personal intents and initiatives with you in your heart. The good in all the relationships you have ever experienced can dwell inside of you no matter what others choose to do. Take the experience of relationship with you. When you consider the power and potential that exists within, you never need be dominated by abandonment again.

Series Three: Blog Seventy-Four

Clients who are addicts in recovery and in a relationship often tell me that it is very difficult to physically be at home and emotionally connected with their partner. Like Carole King wrote in the song “So Far Away”— “Holding you again could only do me good—How I wish I could—-But you’re so far away” —-. These lyrics are true for those who are emotionally distant but physically present.

Without emotional connection a couples relationship is reduced to mere roommates who become like ships passing in the night. There are many relationships stuck in this dynamic. Resentment, fear, emptiness, shame and loneliness dominate. For addicts who have eliminated the drug of choice from their life, filling the black hole inside through cultivating emotional intimacy is practically impossible because they have never known how to connect to and express their own feelings. Left with their own inadequacy, difficult topics that need to be engaged are avoided and the distance grows.

Here are a few suggestions to help create emotional closeness:

• Cultivate an intimate relationship with yourself. The core addiction for every addict is codependency. You try to regulate yourself by regulating your environment and others. You lose your own identity in this way. There is no way to create an intimate connection with someone else if you do not have a sense of connection with yourself. Addicts learn to define themselves through controlling others. They become enmeshed not knowing where they stop and others begin. Life becomes a mishmash of what other people think of them and rebellious attempt to do what you want when you want it. Addicts live life with the dread that they are a fraud. Intimacy with others first requires that you create a sense of who you are, what you feel and how to meet the needs that are revealed to you through your affect. Without this skill set you will be stuck with being physically together but emotionally apart.
• Become more tolerant of others through listening. Without listening to each other, people objectify others. By that I mean, we presume how others think, what they want or will do based on our own data collection gathered without due process of checking things out with the other person. To do this, you must listen to others with your heart. Put yourself in the shoes of others. Attempt to think as they do. Endeavor to see the world through their eyes. You don’t have to surrender your view. Rather, you expand options by considering how the other person sees the world. Sit with their awareness by hearing them out. Summarize what they think, feel and want. You may never agree but you will deepen connection simply because you have increased understanding and tolerance by listening with your heart. When you listen with your heart you bring the other person closer to you. You will take down barriers of defense and bias. You will increase consideration of the other person’s point of view.
• Balance personal power with shared decision-making. It doesn’t always have to be about you. Practice taking up less space. You do have social power which is influence and clout by who you are and the privilege you carry. Use it wisely. Be reverent about your influence. You don’t have to brandish your position of power with every decision just because you are the bread winner. Practice letting go and sharing decision-making with your capable partner. When it is all about you, distance will intensify even though your partner will go along to get along. You may think all is well and good when your partner is feeling distance and disconnected from the ideas and relationship you cherish. Set your personal power aside and share the decision-making.
• Eliminate “power over” dynamics by cultivating “power with” experiences with your partner. Bond together in solidarity. Power over is coercive and controlling. It creates distance in relationships and disrupts connection. Practice making collective decisions. Empowerment comes from “power-within”. It’s the power that comes from speaking an uncomfortable truth and standing up for a value you believe in. It creates the force we feel flowing through us in the moments of deep connection with the compassionate energies that exist between two people. Harnessed in a coupleship it creates an unstoppable “power-with” dynamic that forms a solidarity that helps a couple get through difficult times. It creates a willingness to set aside your own individual interests in favor of your collective interests in the relationship.

It builds a foundation for being physically together and emotionally connected.

Series Three: Blog Seventy-Three

Community is a place to grow and a sanctuary to be safe. It’s a place to build accountability and to seek guidance from mentors. Healthy community gives birth to individual and collective identity. It’s a place to learn rituals and to experience leadership. Most importantly it a place to find and foster dignity and respect.

Healthy community does not just happen. There are many components that go into making a dynamic commonwealth. Listed here are a few to consider:

• There is a beginner’s desire to grow:  A vital community believes that growth is sacred. This dynamic protects it from becoming insular. New additions are welcome because they provide the adventure and the new vitality that a beginner brings to the community. There is a sense of desperation so much needed to create transformational change. There is a determination to make things work rather than waiting on someone to provide growth for them. There is an intense desire to create connection rather than taking place at the periphery and expecting someone to reach out. There is a profound willingness to apply suggestions made by those in the community who are growing. A deep respect and recognition for those who have paid the price to create prosperity permeates the atmosphere.
• A healthy community is marked with a number of givers and not just takers. This characteristic is developed by the elders role-playing sacrificial giving and generous celebration—Not one without the other. There is value and respect for those who harness themselves like an ox to the cart. There is admiration for those who are not parlor generals and field deserters. The work of the community is common as mud. Valued are those who move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. There are more givers than takers in a healthy community.
• No ducking and diving. Healthy spaces are “care-frontational” meaning members confront conflict directly from the inside out. This approach underscores open frankness by first identifying one’s own inner struggle that is experienced by a peer. There is the practice of velvet steel, being gentle and considerate when needed and being firm and uncompromising about principles of truth when needed.
• There is follow through—doing what you say you will do. Members of the community don’t just talk about commitments; they live the commitments. Emphasis is not on what you are going to do but on what you are going to be. Commitment words without follow through is empty.
• Healthy community cultivates collective power. Be your own guru. No room for celebrity worship. Plenty of room for appreciation of special skills. There is recognition that everyone is a celebrity in their own world. It is characterized by humility which cultivates collaboration. Power-over and domination of others gives way to power-within that fosters solidarity and empowerment within the community. Gurus tend to create power over dynamics. Leaders in a group role model the sacrifice and soul of community. There is no special privilege. No double standards.
• Dynamic communities treasure story-telling. The greatest healing power within a community is found in the power of individual story. Growth is most likely to occur when individuals within the community relentlessly dig into the deeper content of their history and tell the stories of personal healing.
• Healing communities develop elders. In many indigenous cultures, elders are accorded great respect. To be an elder is more than being old. It means to be a person who has learned wisdom from life experience including failures and mistakes. An elder may be one who has lived a life of complete integrity or it could be the recovering town drunk who knows personally what it means to struggle with an addiction. It is more than being old. Not everyone old is wise. Some elders may be young, blessed with good judgment, compassion and sound sense. Elders gain social power and help keep the balance in a healthy community.

There are many parts to a healthy community. Take time to consider your thoughts and add to the list. Creating a growing and healthy community is up to you and me. Examine your mindset and adjust your attitude to create a healthy community in your world.

Series Three: Blog Seventy-Three

Alex has never been able to establish more than 30 days of sobriety. It’s not for a lack of effort. He goes to meetings, has a sponsor, completed the Steps, does service work and just got out of rehab for the second time. Still he is stuck with chronic relapse. He’s confused wondering what other steps must he consider to stop his use of cocaine.

John’s not much different. Just a different vice. Johnny Walker Red has been his constant companion through thick and thin . . . lots of pressure as a commodity stock broker. Adrenaline flows every day at work which creates a ton of volatility. Over time his only constant friend has been his Johnny Walker Red. After losing his family, he entered rehab wondering what will it take to stop the crazy making.  He feels the junkie worm crawling up his spine for just one more drink after completing a Step 4 with his sponsor. He’s wondering what more can he do?

Kerry got caught ogling and flirting with another waitress by his beleaguered wife, who is going insane from his disrespect. Even though he attends 12-step meetings, has a sponsor, and does therapy, he secretly returned to old destructive behaviors, after being sober for a long period of time. He began accessing porn on a secret burner phone. He has been strongly entertaining engaging a hooker.  He wonders why he abandoned his established sobriety and doesn’t come clean to his recovery support and wife.

Recovery requires an understanding of lapse and relapse behaviors. Relapse occurs when an addict re-engages the old lifestyle of destructive addictive behaviors. Some think of a single act out with a drug of choice as a “slip”. The difference between a “slip” and relapse is that relapse involves a consistent pursuit of old behaviors and not a mere single use. The vernacular is controversial. However, you choose to reference a return to old destructive behavior it is against bottom lines and must be addressed.

A lapse in behavior is not a relapse. Lapses involved high risk situations with people and places. They include mind states, powerful emotions and behaviors that lead up to a relapse with a drug of choice if ignored.

Addicts in recovery often refer to their behavioral contract around their drug of choice as a sobriety contract. During 12-step meetings they will talk about inner, middle and outer circles. Sometimes it is referred to as red, yellow and green circles. Inner/red circles focus on behaviors that define acting out addictive behaviors. Middle/yellow circles define high risk zones and outer/green circles identify positive, healthy behaviors designed to replace old destructive behaviors.

Lapse behavior is focused around middle circle and imbalanced outer circle behaviors. Frequently, when an addict relapses, there is significant focus on recovery tasks that were neglected and an emphasis on getting back to the basics that establish sobriety. Usually this includes consistent attendance to 12-step meetings, regular contact with your sponsor, working the Steps and picking up the phone and reaching out to other addicts during craving for your drug of choice.

In general, these are important first steps to “getting back on the horse” and addressing your addiction when you engage either lapse or relapse behaviors. That said, if you primarily focus on outside program intervention, you are likely to overlook what is critically missing on the inside.

During addiction recovery, when relapse occurs most addicts look to outside interventions that trigger an inside collapse of values and commitment to sobriety.  But many addicts fail to look inside.  Generally, it makes sense to examine tools for inside that were either not used or misused that opened the door to backsliding.

Here are some examples.

• Alex: While Alex was sincere in prioritizing therapy, meetings, step, and service work, he failed to address self-sabotage inside. Enmeshed with mother as a teenager he felt responsible to be her emotional support when dad abandoned the family for another woman. Overwhelmed and depressed, Alex learned to depend on speedballs to get thru the rigors of academia in college. He likely won’t experience consistent sobriety without addressing his enmeshment with mom no matter how many meetings or rehab stints he engages. Unpacking destructive enmeshment and discovering his own self-identity (inside work) will be necessary for him to establish distance from his drug of choice and provide inner healthy resource.
• John– While 12-step work is critical for John’s healing, he likely will not put a cork in the bottle until he addresses unresolved issues with his family of origin. Mom and dad were both alcoholic. Dad was a successful high volume gastroenterologist who worked long hours during the week and drank and fought with his wife during the weekend. John learned to pretend his family was All American and that what was really important was to figure out how to be productive in his professional life. Without addressing the trauma of neglect and abandonment inside, it is unlikely that John will find a better friend than his Johnny Walker Red. He might learn to switch to another addiction but the craving that dominates within will remain until he addresses his trauma.
• Kerry– While he knows what to do to bring himself in balance with his recovery program, he hesitates because he is fearful to face the anger of his wife and the accountability from his recovery group. So he deepens isolation. He minimizes his behavior when discovered by his wife and paints a biased picture to his recovery support about his wife being over-controlling and making him the identified patient. The truth is that Kerry, who had been the face of a well-known corporation, was pushed out the door because of his high salary.  Experts assessed that they can do better by repurposing his job and paying Kerry to retire. Well-compensated with a healthy retirement income, Kerry struggles with resentment of being forced into retirement, a loss of identity and what to do to find significance. He turns to porn and flirtation to salve his wounded ego and soul. Until he learns to deeply grieve his transition, he probably will not stabilize his recovery program.

Recovery is about grieving. Most of us don’t want to practice grieving. Doing recovery is more an inside than outside job. It is one thing to do outer program work- meetings/calls/written step work, etc and another to go deep and heal inside wounds. Confidence in recovery is not dependent upon controlling outside results but knowing that you can go deep inside to embrace painful reality and rise again.

Craving for your drug of choice is like sitting in the middle of a busy intersection in a major city. You must remove yourself to avoid getting run over by the bus barreling toward you (your addiction). This is the outer program intervention. Yet, inwardly, it is important to recognize the legitimate emotional need that must be met in a healthy way. This requires recognizing affect and deepening self-parenting skills.

Series 3: Blog 71

Addicts in recovery often struggle with knowing how to meet their needs in healthy ways. As a child, many developmental needs were left unmet because parents who never had their needs met fail to meet the child’s needs when they were young and vulnerable. They pass along to the addict the same dysfunctional patterns they learned from their parents. This is one way dysfunctional patterns of behavior are intergenerationally transferred.

As a child, they learn to compensate in order to survive. They become very good at improvising—doing what pleases their parents and gets their attention. They learn to do and perform because the value of being is de-emphasized. Children learn to do anything to avoid neglect and abandonment which are terrifying experiences. This is when a child loses a sense of identity. Children mistakenly believe that whatever they do to get noticed is who they are. So they lose themselves in family roles (hero, scapegoat, lost child, etc) or in taking care of others. Sometimes they act out with negative behavior or through personal accomplishments to get attention. They hope to be noticed by caregivers. The result is that they are never able to do enough outside behavior to fill the empty space inside. That is when they create a cocktail of life experience to avoid the feelings of neglect and abandonment.

The mistaken beliefs that come with abandonment are, I am not worthy, not enough, or don’t measure up to matter to those you most want to be noticed by. So they learn to numb out and avoid the extreme emotional pain and fear associated with neglect and abandonment. Addiction doesn’t take away the pain but it does give what it promises. It is like a warm blanket on a cold night that offers temporary relief and escape from the harsh reality of a world full of winter experiences.

Every addict must stop the run-away train going down the track in order to get at the root cause of their destructive behavior. They learn to identify and express their feelings, which they were disconnected from in addiction. They have to be taught how to recognize needs represented in personal affect. They must learn how to assert meeting the needs housed within the emotions expressed.  This journey requires education and a lot of practice. Ultimately, they must face their fears of neglect and abandonment. Most people are afraid to express what they feel or need because they fear they will be abandoned.  As children, they have been abandoned emotionally, physically or both. They learn to avoid this fear by the thoughts they embrace and the things they do. They compartmentalize what happened or did not happen as children. They protect those who have abandoned them with staunch family loyalty. They forgive prematurely, minimize results and deny the impact of abandonment. They do everything possible to avoid facing the fear of abandonment. They learn to regulate themselves emotionally by trying to regulate everyone around them.

In my book, Dare to Be Average—Finding Your Brilliance in the Commonplace, I told the story about a little boy who loved PBJ (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches). He would go to the pantry, take the jar of peanut butter and spread it on his bread. Then he would slap the jelly and peanut butter together and enjoy his PBJ. When there was daylight at the bottom of the jar of peanut butter, he would pitch it in the trash and reach for a new jar. All was good until one day there was daylight and the bottom of the jar but no backup jar in the pantry. So with disappointment he resigned to do without. As he walked away, his father noticed and asked him to come back to the kitchen. He took the jar of peanut butter that was thrown in the trash, made sure there was no gunk on it, and then scraped the sides of the jar which provided for 1/2” thick of peanut butter rather than the normal 1” thickness. He then noted to his son that he was willing to go without when he could take what is and spread it around and make it enough.

This story points to a skillset that many addicts fail to incorporate in their recovery program. When faced with the fear of abandonment in a relationship, they panic. Some insist that their partner fix the fear.  They focus on their partner’s shortcomings. This is a subtle way to make the partner the identified problem. Others run from the relationship through an approved replacement addiction like work etc. Many refuse to face their fear of abandonment and resolve the pain. They look outside themselves to medicate their fear. If not through acting out with their drug of choice, they utilize schemes of manipulation and over control, impression management or a myriad of caretaking strategies to avoid facing their fear of abandonment. They perceive their relationships through the view of a terrorized disempowered child. Consequently, they look for others to fix what they can only fix from within themselves. It renders them ineffective to take what is in a relationship and do their part to make it enough. Paralyzed in neediness, addicts look to others outside to fix their fear of abandonment.

Managing the fear of abandonment requires empowering an adult perspective in the following areas:

• Recognizing your fear. In reactivity we can cover our fear of abandonment by focusing on the injustice behavior of a partner. Since we cannot fix out partner when h/she complains or is unhappy, we become defensive and become embroiled in a circular argument trying to fix the blame. What gets lost in the skirmish around who is at fault, is the reality that you fear abandonment from your partner at some level.
• Address the childhood fear of abandonment. This requires taking time to identify ways that you were abandoned in childhood. You will need to dismantle family loyalty by taking your parents off the pedestal in order to perceive the ways you were abandoned. You will know you have your parents on a pedestal by the feelings of guilt you experience when you speak to the times they abandoned you physically, emotionally or both. You will need to grieve for the young impressionable part of you that was abandoned. In your grief work, you will need to move the energy of what you feared from your parents to the issue of abandonment. You will then need to transfer this energy to the empowered adult self to provide the safety you need in the here and now. This is not a one and done life experience. Rather, it is an adult skill set that must be honed and practice throughout life.
• Make amends when you fail to empower the adult. Insight does not create perfection. You will backslide into giving the reins to the child within to negotiate decisions that require an adult mindset with your partner. When you recognize this to be true, take a deep breath, step back, gather yourself and make amends. Then request a do over. Practice will not make perfect. Yet, the combination of practice and a willingness to make amends will provide the incremental progress necessary to grow intimacy and to reduce the fear of abandonment.

Don’t forget the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Always remember that as the adult in charge, you will have the power to take what is in a relationship and spread it around and make it enough. You do not have to be dominated by the fear of abandonment.

Series Three: Blog Seventy-One

“Dear God, my spiritual awakening continues to unfold. The help I have received I shall pass on and give to others, both in and out of the Fellowship”— a 12th step prayer

The 12th step is “having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” If not an alcoholic, you replace the correct addictive behavior that has been your challenge. This step springs an addict forward in recovery toward a life of service.

It is necessary to engage the 12 steps daily in order to practice these principles in all our affairs. A life of service includes sharing hope and strength for recovery to another addict. You carry the message of hope and strength to individuals with whom you have influence. Everyone has impact. We are all celebrities in our own small world. When you are tempted to return to a life of addiction it is critical to consider those who are counting on you to be true to who you are before imbibing destructive behavior. There is a partner or spouse, kids, friends and colleagues who are counting on your influence to help them be true to their principles in life calling. The 12th step is a clarion call to remind every addict of their influence with others in the program and in the community at large.

Becoming a sponsor is an act of service that every addict in recovery should consider at some time. The primary role of a sponsor is to help a sponsee complete the 12 steps. The influence of a sponsor guides a sponsee in living a sober life in all their affairs. Sponsors become mentors who assist sponsees to solve everyday challenges in recovery life. Through my many years of recovery and counsel, here are a few observations to consider toward becoming a transformative sponsor.

• Recognize your privilege. Sponsorship is a privilege in recovery. You have grown and completed necessary steps in recovery to guide and influence others who are struggling. You have worked hard in your program and are qualified to be an agent for change in the life of another. This privilege carries great responsibility to remain true and sober to your own program. You build trust and establish social power and influence when you humbly walk your talk. The privilege of sponsorship requires credibility. If you are a sponsor and chronically act out against your values, step away from sponsorship and address your continuous backsliding.  Establish accountability and then return to sponsorship.  Recently an addict shared that his sponsor regularly acts out against his values. Receiving guidance from someone who can’t stop acting out is like being lost in the woods and following someone who doesn’t know how to read a compass.
• Know your own addiction history. Keep an eye on your own limits, shortcomings and historical background in addiction. Pay attention to your roots of addiction. Many addicts in recovery stop the train of compulsive behavior running out of control down the tracks without understanding the root causes of the compulsive behavior. Be sure to treat the roots of your addiction, else you become vulnerable to exchange one addiction for another. Some sponsors load up with too many sponsees. They learn to regulate their lives by regulating others. Know your history and be sure to treat root causation.
• Service as a sponsor means to listen to the spondee’s heart. Being comfortable with who you are will help you listen. You will be less urgent to share cold rapped out counsel. Listening will help you tune in to the spirit of your sponsee and gain understanding of the challenges that exist in their heart.
• Share your failures. Many times as a mentor or elder in recovery, sponsors think they cannot admit to their own shortcomings to a sponsee. This is a mistake. The common thread that brings addicts together is common-shared brokenness. The free flow exchange of this truth is the energy that maintains a healing dynamic between sponsor and sponsee. Being willing to face and admit shortcomings and mistakes with a sponsee establishes a credential to be heard. It strengthens trust and influence.
• Practice compassion and forgiveness toward self and others. As a sponsor, you will blow it sometimes. Poor suggestions, a breakdown in follow through, judgmentalism are all likely mistakes in sponsorships. It would be a mistake to try to role model perfection! Simply, forgive yourself, apologize, correct the mistake or failed behavior and move forward. Doing the same when a sponsee blows it is equally important.
• Foster growth by being intentional, through example, and by empowering a sponsee to run with the ball in their own life. There must be regularity with connection between sponsor and sponsee. When you fail to consistently connect you lose your influence as a sponsor. Your sponsee will do what they see in you. Care enough to be honest with your sponsor even when it hurts or you risk conflict. Help your sponsor evaluate h/her failures. Focus on the value of learning from failures more than successes. You only grow yourself when you know yourself.

Hold a spondee’s power in trust. You walk by their side for a season of time. They turn their power of choice over to you for a short period of time because their poor choice making got them into the predicament they are in. However, this time period is short.  The goal is to empower the sponsee. A format for assisting sponsees to incorporate recovery tasks can be: (1) You demonstrate the task while the sponsee is with you; (2) They do the task while you walk alongside; (3) They do the task alone; (4) they do it while modeling it for someone else.

Everyone is hypocritical, incongruent and inconsistent. The role of a sponsor requires accountability and consultation. Embracing this lifestyle is necessary toward becoming a transformational influence in your community.

Series Three: Blog Seventy

I watched a National Geographic program once that presented the nurture and development of wolves. In this program, the mother died unexpectedly. The four pups were not quite ready to strike out on their own. So they hovered next to the dead carcass, sucking on the tits of the dead mother. The program filmed the pups hovering, hoping for life sustenance. The filmmaker flash forwarded to snow falling and beginning to cover the carcass of the mother. Each of the four pups drifted off in separate directions. The narrator stated that the pups now will never return to the mother or to each other. It was their time to move forward in life or die with the mother.

This portrayal is a picture of recovery growth. Life is dynamic. Bob Dylan crooned “Times are A-Changin’”. There have always been arguments to refute biological evolution. However, what is irrefutable is that who we are tomorrow will not be the same as who we are today.

Many addicts grew up in unpredictable environments. Those who sought refuge from the chaos and turmoil created by addiction pandemonium found safety in recovery rooms. The acceptance and closeness from other addicts gave to us what we never received growing up in our family-of-origin. The 12-step community created a much needed safe haven for those of us who were driven by the demons of addiction.

I love the Old Testament story about the children of Israel crossing the wilderness headed for the promise land. The story goes that God provided manna from heaven while the people of Israel wondered through the wilderness. It was great. Wake up, go out and pick breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was all provided by the generous Yahweh! Most wanted to settle and hang out for good. Why move forward. Let the promise land remain distant. We’re good right where we are! There were many problems and conflicts that ensued for those who settled and refused to move forward.

It’s that way where the rubber meets the road in recovery, too. The cocoon of support provided through a 12-step community is only as safe as you are willing to commit to personal growth. Growth means that you will not remain the same. Neither will the environment you first entered for recovery. The very nature of a 12-step community will intensify the need for change.

Most of us don’t want change. Yet, without change you stagnate. At some point, you can plateau in your recovery and build a fortress within a 12-step group that helps you not act out, which is good. Some people hover around the fortress and refuse to dig deeper for new recovery growth.

It is not to say that we outgrow our need for a 12-step group. Growth will require that our recovery move past our 12-step group into the lives of our family, community and occupation. It is not that we evangelize others to do 12-step work. It is that we promote acceptance, principled living, tolerance and a transformative lifestyle in all aspects of living.

Here are a few considerations:

1. Defensiveness and complaint are signals for needed growth. When someone touches an area of pain in your life and you bristle and push back with defensiveness, this is a signal that you need to grow in this area. For example, someone pushes you to stop being so codependent, to look at your payoff toward self-harm and sabotage and you scream back at them that either they don’t know what they are talking about or that you have got this! If you scream loud enough people will leave you alone to address your dilemma. You can justify your pain and lack of growth because of your misfortune. Like a little kid who skinned his knee you can go through 12-step living hollering “don’t touch it” and no one will and you will seek someone to commiserate in your misery. Recovery is a river that moves forward with or without you. If 8 or 9 people say you’ve got a tail, at least look at your rear in the mirror. Pay attention to the signals that tell you to grow!
2. Simply adjust. The dynamic of life presents the need for continual adjustment. Your rituals are interrupted with a sick child. You have a flat tire on the way to a 12-step meeting that you were scheduled to present and that you stayed up late working very hard to get just right. Your sponsor stands you up and you sit at a coffee shop twiddling your thumbs and pissed. People let you down and some days everything just goes wrong. The solution to all of these every day experiences is to simply adjust. Be flexible. Be adventurous. Take a deep breath and look for the nugget of wisdom in everything that you deem has gone wrong. None of us are perfect with this skillset. Perfection is not required. What is required is that you know where the tool of “adjustment” is on the recovery shelf and you know when to reach for it and how to use it. This only requires practice. Adjustment isn’t fancy. It just works.
3. Shift your focus away from the goal of day-count and zero in on how much you can grow. Goals are important. A commitment to lifetime growth is more meaningful. Your commitment to growth will take you to new unknown territory in your life that will stretch and develop you beyond the safety zones that you found in early recovery. Take the risk and go with it. It doesn’t mean that you have to give up 12-step community and work. It means that it will take you way beyond to help you fulfill your destiny. Be willing to throw everything up for grabs for the sake of personal growth and depth. You don’t need to ignore your personal limitations, but you will need to go deep within. There is no limit to going deep inside. Go for it.

There are times in life that you find that the well you have gone to is dry. It’s time to dig a new well. Time to launch into the deep. Like the wolf pups who recognized it is time to move on to something new, it’s time for you to move ahead and grow. Whether you are just beginning your recovery journey or you are an old geezer like me, today is the day to remove the excuses and go deep.