Christmas Tips

Christmas tips.

This time of year means Under Stress we regress, and that means for some we run the risk of relapsing into our addictions and mental health conditions, as well as not only returning home for Christmas, but returning to Family Roles as a reaction to developmental Trauma. These Defence Mechanisms might have served as children surviving aadverse childhood experience, but as adults they keep us trapped in behavioural dynamics that do not serve us any longer, and only increase the risk of relapse. 

So here’s some tips regarding the addictions, mental health issues and the underlying trauma that drive them.

 

• Limit time spent in stress places. Set boundaries based on spontaneity and what your needs are, not some fix adapted idea of who you are supposed to be, or even worse your fantasy of what you think someone else needs you to be! Note: If you are not sure what your needs are due to stress , err on the side of caution and take a break or leave all together.

• Have a budget. Don’t buy gifts you cannot afford due to Low self-esteem and the inner critic telling you they won’t love you if you don’t. As they say in AA, Those that mind don’t matter, and those that matter don’t mind!

• Take food that’s on your food plan, that you know you can eat.

• Take non alcoholics beverages and your own glass that’s not triggering.

• Bookend your events with Phone calls, prayers, 12 step meetings , therapy sessions

• Mindfulness. In Moments of stress got to the bathroom/for a walk-use an app-Breathe , Breathe, Breathe and lower heart rate.

• Practice Affirmations and Gratitude’s every where

• Have a screen saver on phone reminding you to hand it over to your program, that you are not alone. Post it notes on your Vanity, Dash Board, beside your bed if your old school

• Keep the healthy routines that you have established in your recovery throughout this time.

• Just for Today. Keep it in the day, in the hour, for the next five minutes. 

• You cannot save your face and your ass at the same time!, so please reach out if you need to. Remember, if its big enough to bother you, its big enough to talk about.

Prepare for attacks of the Inner Critic: Pete Walker.

1. Perfectionism

2. All or Nothing , Black and white thinking 

3.Self Hate, Self-Disgust and Toxic Shame

4. Micro managing, Worrying , Obsessing, Looping, Over Furturizing

5. Unfair/De valuing Comparisons

6.Guilt

7.Shoulding

8. Over productivity, Workaholism, Busyaholism

9. Harsh Judgements of self, others-Name Calling

10. Catastrophizing, Hypochondriasizing

11. Negative Focus

12. Time Urgency

13. Disabling Performance Anxiety

14.  Perseverating

13 Steps for Managing Flashbacks

1. Say to yourself: "I am having a flashback".Flashbacks take us into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by danger as we were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now. 

2. Remind yourself: "I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present." Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far from the danger of the past. 

3. Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair behaviour.

4. Speak reassuringly to the Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her unconditionally- that she can come to you for comfort and protection when she feels lost and scared. 

5. Deconstruct eternity thinking: in childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless - a safer future was unimaginable. Remember the flashback will pass as it has many times before. 

6. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. [Feeling small and little is a sure sign of a flashback] 

7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into 'heady' worrying, or numbing and spacing out. 

  [a] Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. (Tightened musculature sends unnecessary danger signals to the brain) 

  [b] Breathe deeply and slowly. (Holding the breath also signals danger). 

  [c] Slow down: rushing presses the psyche's panic button. 

  [d] Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap. 

  [e] Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react self-destructively to it. 

8. Resist the Inner Critic's Drasticizing and Catastrophizing: [a] Use thought-stopping to halt its endless exaggeration of danger and constant planning to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame, hate or abandon yourself. Channel the anger of self-attack into saying NO to unfair self-criticism. [b] Use thought-substitution to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments 

9. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate - and then soothe - the child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion and our anger into self-protection. 

10. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't mean you are shameful. Educate your intimates about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them. 

11. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable. 

12. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to our still unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met. 

13. Be patient with a slow recovery process: it takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradually progressive process [often two steps forward, one step back], not an attained salvation fantasy. Don't beat yourself up for having a flashback.

 

 

Tips for Balancing the Functional Self.

Foundation:

Rest:  Getting adequate rest, sleeping the time you need at night, plus Nana naps in the day when needed. Physical Brain and Body repair happen when we sleep.

Healthy Food.: This time of year seems to be an excuse to putting treats out all day long. Remember were possible to eat a balanced healthy diet. Restores Deficits and supplies nutrients for Body and Brain repair

 

Light /Moderate Exercise: Benefits enormous. Light  walking, Yoga, stretching, is enough . Benefits include Neurogenisis- Hippocampus and pre-frontal Cortex Brain repair, as well as alleviating the symptoms of Acute and Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.

 

Recovery First Aid Kit for Emergencies

Psychological First aid response when we go off tap!

• Symbols of recovery-30 day chips, key tags medallions

• Pictures and mementos of loved ones

• Spiritual items

• Copies of quotes/inspirational sayings

• Letters from friends/family/letter to self

• Phone numbers of peers/sponsor/lifeline/Mensline

• Items of personal meaning

• Recordings of meetings/special music/meditations.

Have a Daily Plan:

Morning reading

Meditation

3rd step prayer: Hand your day over

Healthy Break fast

Exercise

Morning 12 step meeting

Read literature

Outreach call.

Healthy Lunch

Lunch time 12 Meeting

Healthy Dinner

Evening Meeting

Exercise/yoga

Nightime-Journal-Gratitude’s-meditation-step 10 and 11.

Good deep peaceful rest.

 

Work steps throughout day to ease life on life terms

Call sponsor and mentors to be coached

 

 

 

 

Practice Acceptance:

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes."

Slogans: (Good when head is spinning)

• Easy does it 

• First things first 

• Live and let live 

• But for the grace of god 

• Think......think.......think 

• One day at time 

•  let go and let god! ( Good Orderly Directionfor you atheists and agnostics!!!)

 

So please get the support that you deserve and need, be mindful, especially that in early recovery if feels normal to be in our defence mechanisms and awful and shameful to act in our own best interests.

So be gentle with yourself, take good care of your heart

 

 

 

 

Unity

Awesome Unity Day. South Coast Beautiful coastline ride, deep friendship and soulful fellow shipping. Everyone welcome. The Doors will never get thinner. Make the decision. Get on the recovery road. Rain hail or shine. Clean or using . Connect to the love, to the Hope, to the Spirit of recovery. Externally grateful. Keep what you have by giving it away.  Central Coast next stop. Those who get around stay around. Movember Day 18❤️🚀🏅🙏

Spiritual Ramblings of a Troubadour. Movember Day 16

MOvember Day 16. Spiritual song for those that are struggling.

Spiritual Ramblings of a Troubadour.

I have found the spiritual side of recovery a challenge the more I have travelled down its road. In the early days the choice was simple. I don't trust people, I certainly could not trust myself ( my best thinking had got me to a Crazy hospital!) so I actually thought there has to be a God, cause I knew I needed a miracle

So I just started praying. I didn't really know what to. In my desperation I was told to keep it simple, that spirituality had to be practical to a recovery addict , so I would read a reading on waking, journal, then after breakfast read the first three steps in the Basic Text to remind myself of the H.O.W. of recovery.

Honest to Self

Honest To Others ( who can help you)

Honest to GOD

Open Minded to self

Open Minded to others(who can help you)

Open Minded to GOD

Willingness to self

Willingness to Others ( who can help you)

Willingness to God

It was a challenge , but I had to practice not being in charge and that I had to hand my will and my life, My problems (Life) and my way of wanting it all fixed (my will).

I have always like the acronym G. (good) O. (orderly) D. (direction). When ever I was not sure what Gods will for me was I headed in what seemed the most Good Orderly Direction, which was always away from Drugs, and the people , places and things associated with them, and towards Recovery, and the the People- Places and Things associated with that.

The road at times has been confusing, sometimes rough, sometimes dark and sometimes delightful.

I have been baptised twice in recovery, the second time by Greg Hirst from the Brotherhood MC, in the ocean at Stanwell Park in the middle of winter. I will never forget it. I then went wide after a few years, tried Shamanism and we smoked Pipe and sweated and prayed and sang, here and in the USA.

Chanting and drumming at Sedona at sunrise with Annie Whitefeather who taught me as a student for years will always stay with me.

Then there was the Sai Baba years. Going to Puttaparthi, touching his feet, darshan every day form 3am, its like a dream now. I have left Baba behind but met my beautiful friends and Mavericks God parents Gary Poulton and Suzy Corcoran at a Sai Baba center in the Blue Mountains and we have been friends for Life, It was a wonderful time sunday mornings singing Bhajans with them.

Narcotics Anonymous though has always been the foundation fr my spirituality. I have never left its rooms i 30 years. It's openess for it's memebers to have a God of your own understanding has been a God Send ( pardon the pun) . Even though my understanding has changed at times, the way I used the power in fueling the 12 steps has not.

It was helpful for me though to learn Pia Mellody's Developmental Trauma model as I have been in many a spiritual Crisis. At times losing my sense of self, my sense of direction in life. Experienced mainly as indecisiveness and confusion. Pia states that when we experience trauma, we feel bad and flawed ( Implicit memory-timeless sense of dread that things will to be ok) and we cover it up with defense mechanisms and cognitive distortion and to try and act better than, Good and Perfect, or Rebellious like it doesn't matter. These two extremes lived out lead to spiritual crisis , and this spiritual crisis leads to Dishonesty , to self, others, and disconnects us from our center, the source of our intuition, which Neville Goddard states is the voice of and the doorway to God. It is no wonder then , folks like myself have found ourselves in spiritual crisis often and struggling to connect with the God stuff.

Learning to regualte, working through the trauma at a sub cortical level, has made it possible to mediatae more( some trauma survivors get to triggered doing seated mIndfulness and meditation-triggers trauma), be in my body, journal, hear that inner voice and get direction.

This post is for Movember. The song connected to it I wrote and recorded in Hendersonville Texas, just outside of San Antonio. It will always be my second home. It will always be a second home to me. Tommy Detamore engineered and produced. Texas Christian man. I rang him from Colorado, after we had finished our tour, to say we are on our way to record the album, and to check if everything was ok. He told me no it wasn't. The night before, his studio had burnt to the ground. The only thing he had left was a banjo, and he didn't play banjo!.I said I was so sorry to hear this, and that if he could find us somewhere else to record I wanted him to get the money at least for recording the album. He said leave it with me. The next day Christian country singer Bobby Flores, kindly let us use his studio, for the same fee, and they though in another engineer to boot ( I asked him what his highlights were as an engineer, and he said he had worked on We are The World). It was truly a miracle and something I will always be eternally grateful for..

I bought myself a triumph Speedmaster a year ago, and stated after 20 years heading back to the Brotherhood MC, for spiritual counsel. The men and women there have continued their tireless good works for others.I am and always have been inspired by people who live the spiritual principles that they say that they believe in. That's what I love about NA.

Recently I had the intuition to ask Pastor at the Brotherhood Grant Howard to be a spiritual advisor.I have been thinking about it, but doing nothing about it for a month. Then as God would have it , I came across him walking down a lane near my work, and the synchronicity and serendipity of it all was to much of a sign. I said what I had been thinking and he told me that he had been praying for me for a while , and that he had felt I was lost and needed grounding,that he had been speaking to Hirsty (President and Minister at the Brotherhood MC) and his prayers were for how to help me.

I felt I had fallen into a common spiritual trap. Putting God down the food chain. I had work at the top, then family, then myself, and friends and others behind that. It led me to another spiritual crisis. He reminded me that its crucial that God ( recovery) needs to be first, then Family, then work, and then friends and other commitments.

I am know in the process and re arranging the priorities. Thank God or the Angles that are placed in our life at just the right time when we need them.

GOD,

Grant me the serenity,

to accept the things I cannot Change,

The Courage to change the things I can,

and the Wisdom to know the difference.

https://youtu.be/6123WNGGGQE

June Lake. Listen to the Music. Group Process Facilitation and Leadership

Well I just spent a week with one of Australia master Psychotherapists, Supervisors and unashamed Yalom devotee’s , June Lake, whom facilitated a 5 day intensive on Group Psychotherapy-Leadership and Facilitation. I had attended this course 12 years ago, and June has been a mentor to me for over 20 years now. Some relationships in your professional life stand alone, and this one does for me. Many an hour has been spent either in group, or in supervision and on the phone seeking advice to my latest existential dilemma. Always, once I am done, clarity and a brighter direction are the result.
 To have a mentor champion you, is a gift that keeps giving, and this last week was like Christmas.

June is passionate about the work, believing wholeheartedly in the premises ; That we are , who we are, wherever we are, and therefore Group Therapy, focusing on Process and Relationship gives us a unique opportunity to work relationally in a group setting, were all we need to know is available to us in the room, in the here and now. Therefore any intervention, develops a new skill, will reveal a growing edge, and give us access to feedback about how others experience us. All of these things can  be difficult to embrace, especially when we have come from shame based families with Developmental Trauma histories. On top of that some of us have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or as Bessel  van Der Kolk would have it called, Development Trauma Disorder. 

One day the regulatory Psychiatric community will catch up (they just included Gambling as a disorder!) but until then, we will stand at the edge of the treatment field and keep offering support and trauma informed care. If our Fight Flight Freeze is easily activated, or we have developed personality disorders were disassociation is present at a high level, making it impossible to filter out others realities, and allowing us to have a clear sense of our own, then Yalom style process groups might not be for you immediately, but even those clients can spend some time working to develop Affect regulation skills and boundaries that allow this form of therapeutic support to be of benefit.

The week includes 5 days of Morning Didactic down loads on the philosophies, tools and skills necessary to facilitate group. Afternoons start with watching the Godfather of Group Therapy Work, Irving Yalom on film, then for the last two hours, you ARE the group. That’s right. You become a member of a group, only stepping out of the group to facilitate the group of your peers for an hour, and then receive feedback from June who supervises the group.There is simply nowhere to hide.

As a caveat, this is not the first time I have done this, as I did the course over a decade ago, but I had also spent years in a group, that June facilitated of peers in the field. We hired June to come and run the group, and in doing so teach us the finer art of running the group. It was some of the most enlightening and challenging hours I have spent in recovery. Every time I would look forward to going to group, that would be the week that my growing edges revealed themselves, I  often went home heavy carrying the gift I received, usually wrapped in sandpaper. I never regretted a moment, but there was many a time I had wished learning about yourself , and learning to communicate better, was easier. But relationships take relationship, being in contact, reality to reality. The internal spiritual crisis that Pia Mellody writes about, cannot be resolved by defences and roles, but only through being honest , where we would usually be dishonest, especially through omission.

Therefore, whether it being a training group, or one for your own recovery, you quickly learn there is where to hide your true nature. You are going to be revealed. Even if you chose to sit there, and contribute at a surface level, through niceness or humour, the group will quickly see that this is how you keep yourself safe, and with your consent give you the feedback of what that is like for them to experience. What fosters member participation is that this feedback is usually not your first rodeo. Because we are who we are wherever we are, it will ring in your ears, reminding you of the key relationships of your life, and how you have heard it before. We certainly can remain in denial, or be dishonest about its familiarity. But you will know it’s the truth.

A group well run, is very safe, and participates at the level the member is in consent of working at, respectful of individual boundaries. Just experiencing this level of safety to experience self and others is a revelation for some, whom have come from families where it was based on the old adage; Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust and Don’t Feel.

It will come as no surprise that the benefits of the group, as identified by Yalom himself are

1.       Instillation of Hope.

2.       Universality.

3.       Imparting Information.

4.       Altruism.

5.       The corrective recapitulation of the primary family group.

6.       Development of Socializing Techniques.

7.       Imitative Behaviour.

8.       Interpersonal Learning.

9.       Group Cohesiveness.

10.   Catharsis.

11.   Existential Factors.

As you can see this list is exhaustive in its opportunities, if you are willing to consent to take risks and share yourself in the here and now you can  grow in amazing ways personally.

After years Yalom researched the benefits from groups members themselves and they came up with the following benefits:

1. Discovering and accepting previously unknown or unacceptable parts of myself.
2. Being able to say what was bothering me instead of holding it in.
3.  Other members telling me honestly what they think of me.
4. Learning how to express my feelings.
5. The groups teaching me about the type of impression i make on others
6.  Expressing negative and/or positive feelings towards another member.
7.  Learning that I must take responsibility for the way I live my life, no matter how much      guidance and support I get from others
8. Learning how I come across to others.
9. Seeing that others could reveal embarrassing information and take other risks and benefit from it helped me to do the same.
10. Feeling more trustful of groups and other people.

For many years I have had the opportunity to run group. In treatment centres, and in private practice. As I have said , I have been part of groups. Self help, 12 step, weekend retreats, Men’s groups, Process Groups . All have met for different lengths of time, some peer driven, some didactically based and task driven. All have taught me something.

As I head towards my 30^th year of practicing Psychotherapy, I have started again to facilitate Process groups again, true to the nature of Yalom’s vision and protocols. Men’s groups and mixed groups. The opportunity is accelerated learning. Life is short, especially if you are dealing with the impact of developmental trauma. Years wasted in stressful relationships, where it felt like you were given the rules for scrabble and you were looking at the game of monopoly.

Process Groups take courage that is for sure. But we get that in recovery, when you surrender in the first step and work your way through the steps towards spiritual awakening. This awakening provides us with courage, as the serenity prayer challenges us to reflect on.

God, Grant me the Serenity

To accent the things I can not change

Courage to change the things I can

And the Wisdom to know the difference.

This courage, if exercised in a process group, with the support of a good facilitator and in the company of others travellers Trudging their road to Happy Destiny, can be a game changer. To not accept the pathology that we inherited, but to have the Courage to reveal ourselves, so we can get the feedback and support and opportunity to make the changes necessary to Thrive and not just Survive.

If you work in this field and you work with groups,  I could not recommend this course more highly. In the afternoon, we would watch Irving Yalom facilitate a group, and we would then discuss and then be in group. One thing becomes very clear when you are in the company of June Lake. You realise she is now a master in her own right. June  might have been a student of Yalom once, but her breadth of knowledge , experience and the ability to work with students at what ever level they are at, to hold them in deep regard and respect and illuminate their growing edges with clarity and compassion I think is her greatest skill.Dont miss an opportunity to learn from a world class practitioner. 

When June facilitates group, she regularly implores you to listen for the music, not just the words.
 When you watch June in action, it is music. Beautiful Music

Please contact June Lake for all training course. Details on the flyer. Contact me if interested in joining a Process Group.