Breaking Free. A Christmas message.

Breaking Free.  A Christmas message.

Last week, a week before Christmas, I finished with the first ever Breaking Free Group here at SPP, known as the Lifeskills 2 group. The group ran for 12 weeks and was based on Pia Mellody’s Breaking Free Workbook, using Facing Co-dependence as its text. A temporary close, as most of the group has become excited to keep the group going in the New Year. The enthusiasm of "Trudging the Road of Happy Destiny" (Pia Mellody) is alive and well.

My life had been changed by Pia’s work many years ago. After getting clean myself on 14/4/86 and dedicating myself to the recovery road, about 2 ½ years clean relational issues sent me desperately into therapy, and from their into my own Family of Origin recovery, and adding to my recovery claims and attendance at another fellowship, Co-dependents Anonymous.

When Bill Woods shook my hand and offered me a job at South Pacific, many years ago now, it gave me the chance to immerse myself in Pia Mellody’s  work, from the assessment of a client right through to recovery planning and relapse prevention. Facing Co-dependence and Facing Love Addiction became two working tombs of information. If I received a royalty each time I recommended one of her books, it would have made for a tidy cheque over the years, I am sure.

Breaking Free though, became under used and even drifted out of our bookstore here. When I returned for this tour of duty here at SPP and noticed it wasn’t here, I got it back in, and we pillaged it from time to time for exercises for clients. However it sat in the bookstore primarily unused, until Breaking Free, I mean Lifeskills 2 came to fruition.

Even the process of gaining interest in it was more difficult than I expected. Because it deals with the Primary Symptoms as outlined in the Developmental Model of Immaturity and not the secondary symptoms, when the question came, “What diagnosis is the group for?” I said, all of them! Our Model states that untreated Primary Symptoms lead to Secondary Symptoms, so therefore we are dealing with the underlying impact from our childhood trauma. Eventually I was able to get the group across the line linking it to Lifeskills 1, and the green light was given.

The group that came together was some Alumni that had started trudging the recovery road, and there was an excitement of what lied ahead. Recovery has that sort of irony. Pia Mellody calls it Joy/Pain or Pain/Joy. This is what comes up when we start to identify with the Model at depth and no longer feel the loneliness and desperation of being trapped unaware in the symptoms, and yet the awareness, as one of my group members coined the phrases, is in itself “a booby prize “ It’s  been long said that the “examined life is not picnic,” Robert Fulghum, but the depths we get to go to in Breaking Free are enormous.

Starting with a Trauma log, and in most cases, this is the Changes 1 work, we look at the Physical, Sexual, Intellectual, Emotional and Spiritual Abuse issues, as well as the Abandonment and Enmeshment issues from childhood. This is the where we get the information for the heart of the book. Working through our Developmental issues using the 12 Steps. For the purpose of the exercise, Pia goes one step further than Co-dependants Anonymous which states “We are powerless over others,”  and suggests we look at the powerlessness we have over the Core Issues of Value, Vulnerability, Reality, Needs/Wants and Moderation. The focus is twofold. How are we powerless over this core issues?, and when we are trying to be powerful over that we are powerless, what’s the

evidence of the resulting unmanageability? When we try and be powerful over these symptoms of co-dependency,  the resulting unmanageability makes itself know in the areas of Negative Control, Resentment issues, distorted and non-existent spirituality, avoiding reality through Addiction and mental health issues and impaired intimacy.

This is where the Steps become the solution to the symptoms which are the problem.

So we admitted we are powerless over ourselves, that our lives have become unmanageable. Powerless over the Self Esteem Issues, the inability to set healthy boundaries,  this difficulty owning your Reality ( Body, Thinking , Feeling and Behaviour),difficulty acknowledging and meeting your need and wants and difficulty experiencing and expressing your reality moderately.

 Defining the first step is important. Currently the Interpersonal Neurobiologists and drawing on the attachment research and seeing the impact developmental trauma has on the development of a child, and all of a sudden this work which was initially inspired experientially working with folks in treatment, is now having a sound scientific basis, goes to show just how insightful Pia Mellody’s perception was of this dis-ease, all those years ago.

This year I attended the Australian Childhood Foundations Trauma Conference in Melbourne. It was an exceptional gathering of the giants of modern trauma treatment.  The Attachment work of Ed Tronick and Allan Schore to name two of the field’s leaders has certainly informed us better as therapists on how to work more scientifically with the effects of Trauma. Dan Hughes Attachment Focused approach to Family Therapy inspired me that our Family Program based on Pia’s belief that Untreated Primary Symptoms lead to Secondary symptoms resulting in Unmanageability, Crisis and Relational issues is right on track . The exceptional insight Stephen Porges has given us with his life’s work on the Polyvagal Theory has guided us to help inform clients and work with clients more specifically in how to understand what happens in dysregulation in the body as a result of the trauma. Pat Ogden’s Somatic approach to working deeply with clients topped off by the Mindsight Interpersonal Neurobiological approach of Dan Siegel helped me to feel confident that SPP and Pia Mellody’s Model has been way ahead of its time.  Adding to this the  Trauma specialists such as Peter Levine and Bessel Van The ground breaking work encapsulated in their releases of In an Unspoken Voice and The Body Keeps the Score respectively highlighted  better  ways to understand and work with PTSD and in particular Developmental Trauma Disorder ( it will be added eventually to the DSM!).

With all of this floating through my head, inspiring me in ways that haven’t happened for a long time in recovery, it had me approaching the Breaking Free Group with a mission in mind, to make sure that client s knew what was out there in best practice treatment of trauma and recovery.  In Pia Mellody’s Mapping your Recovery lecture she points out that she wanted her model to be a Map , not just for the Therapist, but specifically for the client. So they could identify where they were at at any given time in their recovery. It always felt therefore it was my mandate as a therapist, and now as the Program Director to make sure a client leaves SPP knowing about the Model, and where they are in it t any given time. Breaking Free just gave me an opportunity to do that at depth.

Each week the focus was on how that Developmental Trauma and its relating Primary Symptoms could be addressed with the power of the 12 steps. The focus being internal. The admittance of the Powerless over ourselves, our beliefs, the defence mechanisms, the limbic reactions and the feelings that got triggered all started to be highlighted when the steps were applied.   One paragraph which I returned to time and again for reflection was

“I believe that this step is third in the order of steps because if we truly do step one and become aware of our disease, we have a tendency to feel overwhelmed with how sick we are. In Step Two we see that our behaviour is self-defeating to the point of insanity. At this point, Step Three keeps us from being overwhelmed by what we have learned in Steps One and Two. We say in effect Higher Power, I turn my skewed reality and my co-dependent life over to you. I can hardly stand to even acknowledge my codependence right now.”

When I first started my recovery from addiction, I felt the hole that admitting step one leaves, and how desperately I sought out the other steps to fill that hole. At 2 ½ years clean, when relationship issues lead me to a therapists office, and then to Co-dependants Anonymous, that hole became so much bigger for the steps to fill. However, when the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than the fear of moving on into the unknown, we stop bargaining, we hand our will and life over and recovery can begin.

Step Four asks us courageously to review when we had been offensive to others realities and journal it, then sharing it in front of our Higher Power and another in Step Five. Resulting from this enquiry we have beginnings of the Step Six defect list, combined with the mammoth task of reviewing just how these symptoms of codependence untreated have resulted in patterns of defence mechanisms that if we remain unconscious about have been offensive to others. Out of all the Steps, in Breaking Free, Step 6 was intense, yet as the title of the book would suggest, we are in the process of Breaking Free, as Ken Keyes famously quoted “to see your Drama clearly is to be liberated from it” , more aptly put by Pia as “ If you don’t hug your defects, they will bite you in the Bum!”

Step 7 once again, gets us to involve God in the mammoth challenge of recovery, as this job is bigger than I alone can handle, and I humbly ask God to remove these defects of Character.

Steps 8 and 9 help us become aware of and then move away from the isolation of this disease towards intimacy, making amends from a space that does not harm ourselves or others.

The maintenance Steps of 10, 11 and 12 keep us taking inventory, promptly dealing with what we need to own, keeping in relationship with our Higher Power, now praying only for the knowledge of its will for us and the power to carry it out, and as a result of this Spiritual Awakening as a result of this process of working the steps, we carry the principles in all our affairs.

In Narcotics anonymous, they say It sounds Like a big order. Breaking Free certainly does not hide this fact. It is a big order, but an order that we need only tackle One day at a time. Most importantly though, a big order that we do not need to  tackle alone. In the Breaking Free Group, I saw the healthy Functional Adult Relationships drive enormous support of each group member. The empathy, of one co-dependent helping another, was without parallel!

So much so, that when we had our last group, I had noticed that there was a third section to the book titled Beyond Denial About your Recovery. As I pointed out at the beginning of this article, the group will continue as  Lifeskills 3, Breaking Free after Christmas. A great gift for our inner children.

I have been grateful over the years in my own recovery to have the company of other committed souls as I trudge the road to my happy Destiny. I still get given so much by giving away what I have been so freely given, even as a professional.

I have always joked that I would love to get a job as the cleaner at The Meadows. I just want to sit in the lunch room, and hear Pia Mellody, John Bradshaw, Claudia Black, Peter Levine and Patrick Carnes just chew the fat; just hear them share about their work, their recovery. What a gift they have given us all. Receiving this week Patrick Carnes brand new book, Recovery Zone, at over 70 years of age, he still remains an inspiration and ground breaker. For my 28 years of recovery I have been deeply changed by the gifts their work has offered the recovery community.

 South Pacific Private, through the courage and vision of Bill and Lorraine, bought that gift down under. In Testimonial Ceremony we state that “Today another recovery ripple goes out into this great nation of ours.” It sounds grandiose, but it’s a fact. Every time a client starts on the pathway of recovery, we are a ripple at a time changing the Family legacy, Healing Families and Changing Lives.

Breaking Free, is just another powerful group a client can continue their ego deflation at depth.  A group were they can be with people that are Trudging that road to their happy Destiny.

We also say in testimonial ceremony, “Thankyou for trusting us with your story, as you cannot help someone get halfway up a hill, without getting a little further to the top yourself.”

I have been working with Pia’s material for over 20 years, and once again, in Breaking Free, each Thursday night, and via all the supportive emails from the group through the week, I have learnt so much. I have from my first 12 step meeting over 28 years ago been overwhelmed by the Honesty, Openness and Willingness I have experienced from deeply distressed people, when they have had enough of fear ruling their life, and they want to change.

 I look forward to continuing with the Breaking Free group on their Journey, and also there is 14 more people lined up, excited and nervous to start another group January 6^th.

For now though, as I finish this, it’s Christmas Eve, I am now going to pack up my desk, head home, grab my wife and boys and head with Gran to Nana’s house, my mums. This is the second Christmas without Dad, so when I get there I will mow the lawns, tidy the yard, just how mum likes it. Just how Dad did it. I am grateful that one of the great gifts of my recovery is that I can finally have the intimacy that this program promises.

I wish all of you in recovery a safe and emotional Christmas, with people that care about you. Remember we can’t save our face and our ass at the same time, so reach out for the support. The universe will provide.

All my love.

Steve

Review of the Australian Childhood foundations Trauma Conference 2014.

This was still the best conference I have ever attended!

Movember and Men's Health.

Men’s Work.'

There was a time that if you went into a book store, and looked up the women’s section there would be a whole book shelf, and then when you asked for the Men’s Section, you were lucky if you could find half a dozen books. This has changed. As I write this, I am midway through another Movember Campaign. An international month of awareness raising around Men’s health that started in 2003 with 30 men in Melbourne and now having involved 4,027,688 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas, raising $580 million and funding 770 men’s health projects in 21 countries.

This is not about Men’s love of the Mo, they are itchy and in some cases plain unsightly! I believe initiatives like this have been built on the raised awareness of men’s health issues that  emerged in the 60’s and 70’s and talking hold in the 80’ and 90’s, that has woven itself into the fabric modern masculinity.

Men were becoming disillusioned about the roles and expectations of being a Man. In a reaction to the Women’s liberation movement, with women challenging from the roles of the previous generations, men were left with a space to look at their own challenges. Like most movements, it was groups of men breaking away, trying different approaches to fill this void. It has been described in regards to Men that you can get halfway through your life and realize you have the ladder up against the right wall. It was this that led men to look outside themselves, their roles, and start a search. Christian Men formed the Promise keepers, Men became more active in Fathers/Men’s rights and Men within the self-help/12 step movement started to organize men’s group so they could speak more comfortably about their roles in family, their fathers, being a father, about feelings, about matters of the heart. All unfamiliar in the traditional roles so far for men. Another stream of the movement was the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement. A force of energy was created by Men coming together to look back to old fairy stories and poems, at to get a clearer understanding of the inner world. It had open doors, so other men’s streams were welcome. It was an easy target for the modern media that likes sensational reporting, but our sisters in the women’s movement went through the same ridicule. Just as you cannot reduce the women’s movement to a burning bra outside of parliament house, the men’s movement cannot be reduced to naked men banging drums in the bush.

Men started to meet in coffee shops, church basements, starting reading, and more importantly writing. Powerful books emerged. Roberts Bly’s Iron John is a center piece of the movement. Robert himself became quite a voice. A Poet, Translator and intoxicating performer, captivated men through this medium, a medium that was very foreign to the modern corporate man, but in Robert’s own journey, he talks about how the poems and stories and company of men got him looking within, at his feelings, initially identifying them as hooded grey figures walking in a deep fog within. Slowly over time they started to take on different hues, eventually leading to the bright red of anger, the blues of depression, the yellows of joy etc.

Sam Keens, Fire in the Belly, gave voice to the “Fierceness” of men and women, and our need to create space, have relationship with that fierceness within.

John Lee delivered The Flying Boy, Healing the wounded man. A wonderful and confronting story of the way men do relationships, Flying from intimacy and exploring the causes for our deep difficulty to be in heart space, with ourselves first, and then with the women in our life.

Robert Moore’s King, Warrior, Magician, Lover looks at male development through the lens of Jungian archetypes. James Hillman’s the Souls Code looked at Character and calling through the Jungian archetypes.

What was more important was the fever that men were looking outside of themselves for information, and more importantly experiences that got them in touch with what was inside themselves.

With modern Neuroscience we understand more clearly than ever that Trauma work is done best through working with the body. That just  talk Therapy will not achieve the results we need for healing and freedom. With this in mind I look back at the men’s work I started over 20 years ago, initially through the 12 step men’s groups leading into many weekend and evenings spent in the company of men. Initially grieving. Grieving the inheritance from fathers that could not feel, that could not therefore follow their bliss, and if they did happen to find their calling, in became an addiction, a pursuit that then scarified their family, their children and their community.

The work of men, as with women should have some mystery around it, it will appear as non-sense, as it makes no sense initially. However now with the Trauma focused therapy of this modern era, and the enormous success in healing men and women, it seems to shed a new light on those naked men, drumming around camp fires with other men, grieving, telling their stories through tear-filled eyes, Dancing, getting in touch with their bodies, stirring up dust and ashes, and driving home to their families more alive, more connected to themselves, therefore freeing the way to be more connected to the ones they loves, the world in which we inhabit. Has this movement effected the world of men as much as was needed? No. Is there enough men in our community now that are in touch with their feelings, their passions to stand up and make a difference? Yes.

Moving forward there are several generations of men that have been raising sons, taking responsibility for themselves and living with heart. Our challenge now is to change the paradigm of men’s roles more widely in the community, in the workplace, to allow us to be off the career ladder and more available for our Children, our Partners, our families, the community and the earth. To do this we have to work in community with women. We cannot do this on our own.

As I hold my sons when they cry, and I sit patiently and with wonder as they share themselves with me, and I experience their vulnerability, and I have the ability to sit with them, encourage them, mirror back to them their enormous value, I am grateful for every night, every weekend I spent in the company of courageous men, that went where no man before them. They walked boldly through the wound and found themselves.

By Steve Stokes

Breaking Free Pia Mellody

Last night in the wonderful Life Skills 2 group, Based on Pia Mellodys Breaking Free group, we walked back in time and watched Pia revealing what has gone on to be pioneering work with the effects of childhood trauma. The courageous honesty and powerful skills of connection this women's work is inspiring in us all in the group, reminds me how grateful I am that at 2 1/2 years clean I found co-dependents anonymous and Facing Co dependence. Don't let the Big 80's hair, pastel colors and glasses that reflect the fashion of the time put you off. Pia was on fire, and if you have Codependency, have experienced childhood trauma, then what your about to her will change your life.
. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrLaaar02e4

Poem for John Lee on his birthday.

For John Lee on his Birthday.

John's book "At My Fathers Wedding",  "The Flying Boy", "Facing the Fire", "Half Lived Life", to name a few, have changed my life over the years. The Men's Gatherings, and the permission Johns presence gave men to be vulnerable and yet still be strong, was a beautiful experience to be part of. His ground breaking work with Robert Bly, and for John in particular, the bridge he built for recovering men to be a solid part of the Mythopoetic part of the Men's Movement mad e it so much easier, and yet still safe in our recovery. 

I remember running men's retreat based on Johns "Healing the Father-Son Wound" The re-empowerment I saw in the Men who had the courage to grieve the loss of the Fathers they wished their fathers could be, and the emerging love for themselves as they excepted themselves, and their fathers the way they were. 

The Anger I needed to get out, that Facing the Fire Helped me with, and many other men and women, through simple but incredibly healing processes that I still use and recommend to others to this day.

Giants walk amongst us as ordinary men, and John Herald Lee is on of those Giants.

Thank you John from Men Downunder, that will never be the same for knowing and experiencing you.

All my Love.

Steve Stokes

Poems

Poems won’t pay the rent

They paint the sky yellow

Pave pathways to sacred places

Cut the toenails of giants

Steal nose hairs

From hags hidden in dark forest

They make cloths for little people

Stich wounds in broken things

Colour in 100’s and 1000’s

With little brushes

Tickle you awake from sleep

With scary stories

And chuckle at your bed sweats

Keep all your ugly photos

Exhibiting them when you out of town

Keep you naive with constant praise

Poems don’t change the world

They make food rot in fridges

Wrap dreams in plastic

Disturb the comfortable

Put dust on trophies, under beds

Use your tooth brush

Poems won’t change your life

They change bugs into butterflies

Breathe for eagle soars

Light candles for the dead

Make young people old

Poems won’t find you God

They will take you under the earth

Saw through your shoelace

Leaving just a thread                                        

Poems won’t pay your debts

But they will make you a blanket out of leaves

Introduce you to the moon

Paint your face with mud

Teach you to dance

With Dragon flies

Poems won’t pay your wages

They will change your money into buttons

And bury you in gold

Stephen J. Stokes

Unique International Trauma Conference Melbourne August 2014 Australian Childhood Foundation

Unique International Trauma Conference

Melbourne August 2014

Australian Childhood Foundation

We live in an exciting time when it comes to treating trauma. For those if us that have been working with development trauma as a Primary Symptom to the Secondary Symptoms of then it is magnificent.

This was certainly how I was feeling heading towards Melbourne in August, and I was not the only one. Peers had been sharing their excitement online and in discussions at SPP leading up to it. The title of the conference says it all, Unique and International, and that it was. The array of speakers that were gathering was inspirational.

 Dr Dan Siegel, Interpersonal Neurobiologist, Mindsight founder. Inspiration to the modern Psychotherapist. Dan explanation of the Brain, Mind and Relational Triangle of the Human experience, his passion to map the working of the mind, and his ability to explain its intricacies to all and sundry in ways that make sense, is exhilarating, and that is not the misuse of an adjective.

There was Daniel Hughes, a Clinical Psychologist that developed an attachment-focused treatment based on the theories and research of attachment and intersubjectivity to guide his model of treatment and parenting. His gentle but amazingly effective process is poetry in motion.

Dr Allan Schore :The American Psychoanalytic Association has described Dr. Schore as "a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies." It’s worth re-reading the last sentence, just to let it sink in. Allan’s Masterclass was a slow, methodical building of theory and practice that by the end of it leaves you wondering and wandering, simply wanting to be part of the Art that is Psychotherapy.

Dr Stephen W Porges presented his Polyvagal Theory that is based on the phylogeny of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system. The theory led to discovery of three phylogenetically ordered neural circuits regulating autonomic nervous system. The newest circuit reflects unique face-heart connections which forms a functional “social engagement system” involving an integrated regulation in the brainstem of the striated muscles of the face and head with a mammalian myelinated vagas. The theory also proposes that the older vagal circuit is involved in death feigning and the shutdown behaviors often observed in response to life-threat.

The depth of biological information here takes working with the Body to a whole new level. As a Psychotherapist working within the SPP model, we have had clients come for treatment were the physical symptoms, this information sheds a light into the realm of the body, and how best to integrate at a whole new level.

Then there was Pat Ogden, crowd favorite, and a seasoned campaigner, for the move from the talk therapies to “going to the Body”, and Peter A Levine points out, Pat’s work is described as

"Pat Ogden's outstanding work in sensorimotor psychotherapy focuses not just on the devastating effects of trauma-induced alterations on mind, but also on body and brain. Asserting that the body has been left out of the "talking cure," she offers a scholarly review of very recent advances in the trauma, neurobiology, developmental, and psychodynamic literatures that strongly suggests that bodily-based behaviors, affects, and cognitions must be brought to the forefront of the    clinical encounter.”

In Ed Tronick’s Masterclass he spoke about his book, Neurobehavioral and Social Emotional Development of Infants and Children. In his biography, about his work is written:

 “In one of the most sobering findings, the report highlighted that in brain research now show that child abuse and neglect damages not only in the way a developing child’s brain functions, but changes the actual structure of the brain itself, in such a way that makes clear thinking, controlling emotions and impulses and forming healthy social relationships more difficult.”

When you watch the Still face experiment videos and you have been working with Disassociation as a practitioner, it’s like a light goes on, especially when the brain science is explained.

Then there was Cindy Blackstock.  In a conference where the Right Brain was the focus, and being in the body, being mindful, as we then meet to challenge of our work, then her presence was captivating. Cindy Blackstock is a Canadian-born Gitxsan activist for child welfare and Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. The message she had about the effects of Childhood trauma on indigenous cultures was very close to home for Australians, and this theme was picked up on in a wonderful address on the Thursday by a heartwarming and inspiring plenary session by the wonderful Australian Muriel Bamblett AM.

It was more how Cindy spoke that conveyed the power of her message, her conviction and the light that she brings to a dark subject.

There was some stand out Australian papers presented, but Sydney local and Brazil born Trauma specialist Salene Souza’s presentation of the MATES program, a regulation technique for parents and children, making very practical the skills necessary to regulate our internal worlds, was a delight, and with Dan Siegel himself giving this program the thumbs up, we will here many more good things about this in the near future.

The winner though was the Australian Childhood Foundation. With daily leadership by CEO Dr Joe Tucci, the conference buzzed along flawlessly, in fact I have not been to a conference that was as well run. In an era were Technology can be distracting in conference and lecture settings, (always being told to turn phones etc. off) and yet they are part of how folks make sense of themselves and their connection to the world, and can certainly be used as a tool for learning, then this was used to the advantage of all the patrons through the development of one of the best” APPS” I have ever seen.

From registration it was encouraged that you signed up online to the conference app, and then as you attended any session, you could log in, tweet any “AHA” moments, download the PowerPoint presentations, as well as stay in touch with all the tweets from other workshops. Now as a 50 year old bloke, I consider myself fairly tech adept, yet miles behind my younger more tech savvy colleagues, but even I flourished in this environment. I was excited to read what people were posting, and then in the evening I was delighted and inspired to read peoples reflections of the day. I even felt some grief when the 5 days were over knowing I would not be part of those ongoing cyber community conversations. When all was said and done I had contributed over 1500 post into the conversation, and was grateful for all who shared their insights and reflections.

When I first started this work, I was a young therapist, looking to the wiser minds hungry for knowledge, to heal myself first, and then my Clients. I have felt for a long time I have learned what I needed to know the most. I have been grateful for all those Supervisors that put the hours into me, as I struggled through. Now I find myself in a delightful and wonderful role, a role that I went to when I needed help. Now it’s my turn. I think of all the folks that taught me to work at the coal face of Trauma, Mental Health and Addiction issues. To understand and embraced recovery at depth has led me into a life better than I have ever known, and I am a long way from finished yet. My goal is to serve others, and to keep learning.

At the conference I was like a sponge, I still had the enthusiasm of that young man that knew he had a lot to learn. It’s a clique, but now 25 years later, I am amazed that it is still the case. As the new research comes through and guides us, it’s a challenge to surrender old ways for the new and research driven best practice ways of the future. Yet, I as I finish this piece, and currently am facilitating a group based on the work of Pia Melody, I am humbled to be standing on her shoulders, the shoulders of a giant in the recovery field.

You see , she saw this right from the beginning, the underlying Primary Symptoms, and how they lead to Secondary symptoms, creating unmanageability, Crisis and Intimacy issues, and that to deal with the latter with any real success , we have to deal with the trauma, in a gentle re-parenting body focused fashion. This re-parenting started a long time ago now for me, 28 and half years to be exact, and I am still growing, still learning, and the conference was an amazing page in that book, that I sat and read in the company of some wonderfully trained amazing folks.

I suppose like in real life, the inner children, might be living at “HOME” longer than I thought.

Father’s Day.

Father’s Day means a lot more to me now I have children. Life means more to me now that I have children, in ways that are hard to describe, because it’s simply hard to make sense of the changes. My wife said to me before our first child was born, that she was looking forward to becoming a Family, and not just a couple anymore. It was a profound but obvious statement. I liked the way it sounded, the way it felt to hear it.

 I never thought I would have children. I imagined I was too selfish. I have always related to Pia Melody’s Developmental Immaturity Model. As a result seeing my self-centeredness as the spiritual part  of my addiction and as the core of developmental trauma, I must say I always worried if I would be capable of the differentiation necessary to be present enough to be a parent. 

Of course I have made a lot of progress with this over 28 years of recovery. As a therapist, I have done the work necessary to be present for my clients and not be that first child hero enmeshed with my mentally ill mother, trying to make her better through them. But kids are a lot tougher than clients. Kids don’t go home, they are home. It can be a marathon, and trying to self-care, differentiate and regulate your state so you don’t go nuts inside yourself, and then act out nuts outside yourself, well that’s the challenge these days. It humbles me now lecturing about Developmental Trauma, and healthy parenting and being a parent to two wonderful energetic boys full of life. It helped me appreciate the roles my parents played, and the way they played them. The actually did do the best with what they had, and now it’s my turn. 

But my best is a different frontier than my parents. I have as Jung stated, made the unconscious conscious, and it is my awareness therefore that directs my life, my new fate is where I choose to focus my attention, not where my attention ends up as a result of my inability to manage my state. This has been a revelation, an internal revolution. I am by no means out of the forest, but I am ducking more branches than are hitting me in the face.

It’s been a long road to get here. I had to do a lot of work. Get Clean and Sober, deal with other Addictions as they raised their ugly head. The relational issues have been an enormous battle. To be in a relationship, means you have to be inside your own skin, and be comfortable, before I could be in my own skin and be comfortable around another. I had plenty of practice with some truly awesome people. I have hurt people along the way, some relationships never recovered. Some even unwilling to hear the amends. I just had to keep moving forward.

I think of my father’s illness last year, over the last few years. I had patience, to visit him a lot, just be present,   take the boys, he loved the boys. He was gentler, softer, more cuddly with his grandchildren than with me. I don’t think he thought I had it in me to settle down, be a Dad, and yet I think he knew I would be pretty good at it.

We had changed our relationship over the course of my recovery. The first few years he could see I was getting better, went to University, worked, got married the first time, all the things that life offers to say things are moving forward, but we were no closer really, he just felt safer. As I started to hit my first marriage relational issues, I started to get therapy, and from here it opened that Developmental can of worms. Life and relationships would never be the same. My marriage didn't last, but the therapy has remained, and I attended Co dependant Anonymous, and from there started my first 12 men’s group, with some guys from CODA after we had a mixed retreat and we had the idea to have a men’s and women’s group. The women met for the 90 minutes allotted, there was about 20 of them, and he six guys talked all the way through lunch, and we didn't stop for four and half hours. We then started our first closed Men’s Group, so we didn't have official traditions, and made our own group rules.

We read fairy stories, listened to Robert Bly, read Iron john and Roberts Poetry, read John Lee’s Flying Boy and Sam Keens Fire in the Belly. It opened up a whole world, never even imagined by me. I met my first indigenous mentor, John Falcon, who taught me the pipe ceremony and the Sweat lodge traditions of the Hopi Indians. I walked that path for some time in awe and respect for the Great Mystery. My father never joined me on that journey ever. The closest I came to ever talking to him about it was when he was about to have his first heart surgery at 64, I gave him Gerald Jamplosky’s autobiography that he wrote at the same age. He never read it. But the way I was around him changed. There was some sticky moments in the beginning, were I went against the family message of , “Don’t upset your mother “ and I talked about my reality growing up with mums mental illness, and I talked about my adoption. He never really understood that part of my recovery. 

But the main thing that changed is that we stopped shaking hands when we met, and we started to hug.

It was very unnatural at first, and neither of us fell into it comfortably, but we did find our rhythm as time went along. In the last decade of his life especially the last few years, when we hugged, he snuggled his neck into to mine, I always liked that. You see, as an Englishman’s son, a coalminers son, his father never hugged him, said that he loved him, cuddled him as a boy or man, my Dad never did it to me, cause he never felt comfortable in his own skin. Never felt comfortable to be vulnerable. I have come up against this myself. The vulnerability I had to deal with living in my skin was one thing, but as a father, seeing their vulnerability, as I held their newborn bodies, and daily as they grow into beautiful boys, my heart stops at the thought of them going through this life, but my heart is also full of love too.

I am grateful I have the privilege to raise children, especially with a beautiful loving mother.

So on this Father’s Day, the first with my Father, and with my beautiful boys all tucked up in bed, I will leave you with a poem I wrote about the first time me and my Dad hugged. I dedicate it to my father, Alan Stokes, and all he Fathers out there, that did the best with what they could, and may we always strive to be better…..

Older Now.

We’re older now

My lines are beginning to match his

We've talked about old mates and prostates

Like it was not possible before

He hugged me at Christmas

We had talked about it, and although

It was not requested, just gestured

I felt it melt something in my heart

It was uncomfortable for two though

As we did not know what to do

For both our Fathers

had not done this before

Since then, when we meet

It is still with uncertainty

My one hand will go out

To meet his two spread wide

We quickly reverse our positions

Only to fumble into each other’s arms

Friendly strangers who share the same history

Although mine is much shorter than his.

He asked me to go bush soon

Just me and him, I'm so excited

I don’t know where to begin

So many questions

Yet I have been fed silence for so long

I am scared of the consequences of the truth.

We are older now. His hairs gone grey

Some fallen away,

And to his surprise

I got mine cut the other day

Look more like a man my mum did say

Everything changes to our dismay

 I know I share mistakes I have made

From plans a wreckless youth outlaid

He understood, he made the same

He only tried to shield my pain

So here we are older now

Each facing off a sacred cow

His life is coming to an end

And mine is taking another bend

So we are going bush, to find some Gold

And he is going to teach me the things he knows

And I am finally willing to learn instead

Of thinking I know it all.

Mens Business

Mindfull this morning of the powerful change great men bought into our world through the good works of Robert Bly, John Herald Lee and many more. They were the "older men that held the ground for us younger men to make their glorious mistakes." Here is the festival that bought most of the change for men like myself, I never got there, but these conferences created the spark, and here in Australia we started our own groups and conferences, flying by the seat of our pants. Its was reading  Iron John: A Book About Men, and more importantly listening to it over and over as Robert played his Bouzouki and said "We are leaving this time now......" I will never forget the world it opened up for me. It got me hugging my father, and being a father these days, it taught me to hug my kids, my male friends, and never to forget the vulnerability inside a man, and the importance of supporting each other to feel it, and find strength from it.
It was from opening for John Lee when South Pacific Recovery bought him out from Texas that got me into a pivotal mens group. Bill Woods was there, and he invited me to the first meeting of men at South Pacific, it was dark, we met in the foyer sitting in a circle, with the clients upstairs, Earl Cass,Wes Taylor, Bill Woods, Myself and Rick Lucknell. We all just spoke from the heart, I had been on the recovery road I think about 8 years, and at the end of the meeting, when the rest left, Bill shook my hand, and said "Son, we need to get you a job here". It started something, thats all Im going to say, something big.
Been seen by older men is so important, to be acknowledged, the seeing, it was powerful for me to receive, and no as I sit at 50, I need to be mindful to do some seeing myself. Thank you Bill, John , and Robert for the seeing.
http://www.minnesotamensconference.com/

Road to Recovery...

28 years ago today , about this time, I was arguing with my mother on the way to detox . I was afraid, I know that now , anger was just easier to feel. I was afraid of the unknown, I was afraid of who I would become without drugs, I was afraid if I would ever be able to stop what I was doing, even though it was killing me. I learnt that when the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than the fear of change, you can move . On that first night in detox I went to my first meeting, everyone I had ever been was there. Westies , bikers, punks, Gucci clan, normal folks, hippies . I was so trying to be me, that I completely got lost. People approached me cause I stood up an identified I was at the detox, I don't remember it but I was probably made a big deal of clapping wise , cause I was one day clean. They said keep coming back. Well 28 years of daily reprieve from something that I could not control for one day, has lead me through an amazing life. In this moment as I pause to be grateful, thinking of my beautiful wife, adorable boys, best friends a man can have, and opportunities I could never have created on my own, I say thank you to all that have answered a phone to me, listened to me when I was mad, especially when I thought I was not! Gone for coffee after a meeting, and supported me through listening when I share, my heart is filled by you. And thank you to those who came before me that have stayed clean, constantly inspiring me to love more, trust more and give more. Every time I go to a convention, a local meeting and you are still there sharing your experience strength and hope, I know that I am not alone, and that just for today, I am an addict, and I will not pick up a drug .