Don't quit before the miracle happens...

It's Friday night, I'm still at the coalface, been a powerful week of growing awareness, confronting old patterns, and growing through relationship. As Pia Mellody says, sometimes  recovery  is like "Trudging the road to happy destiny"
There was some trudging this week, that's for sure. However, there was the glow of many miracles lighting the way.
Pia talks about the disconnection that happens from the soul when we experience developmental trauma, but the warming reality is, if we stay in recovery, moving from the disconnection to connection, then we get that soul re-connection through recovery at depth.', leading to a life better than we have ever known.
Not stopping before the miracle happens means to me, that I cannot stop at just abstinence, just stop at dealing with the secondary symptoms. The miracle happens when I go beyond that, dealing and healing the deeper wounds that lead to the disconnection from self, resulting in the Toxic Shame, that I then spent the rest of my time needing to medicate myself away from.
Therefore, recovery cannot just consist of an abstinence to the medication, it can go far deeper than that. It can be the deep healing of the wound, where once in the process of healing I get back into relationship , not only with myself and others, but with God as I understand God. That is the miracle on offer, that quitting before I get it would mean I was ripping myself off.
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, means once I am in this deep soul connection, then the world opens up for me. This connection gives me a message to carry to others, and a set of values and principles that when I actively live them,  leads to a deep wisdom, and the ability to be in the now, spontaneous and open, to giving and receiving in my humility and my humanity.

It's my Birthday!, no not my Belly Button, my recovery Birthday. 29 today!

Well, this morning 29 years ago, I woke up at my mother’s house, hung over, from a day before of using everything I could get my hands on, Alcohol, Pot, Biker speed, but on this morning I was once again out of all drugs due to the binge the night before. I could never save anything for the next day.

 I had just started a job, it was day three. I had left the first two days early on a lie, because I had run out of drugs and alcohol, and needed to go get more. I was in the habit of taking alcohol disguised to work in a soft drink bottle, and would use drugs in the toilet. On this morning though, I was out of drugs, and I was already late for work. Mum was at the end of the bed trying to wake me up, because she was of the belief that if I just could get a job, I would get back on my feet. I thought that once, but not anymore. I didn’t know it yet, but addiction is cunning baffling and powerful, and I broke every promise I ever made to myself to stop, cut down, control my use. 

On this morning though, I was at a special sort of rock bottom. I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but I come to understand that it was a spiritual rock bottom. I just knew I could not go to work and lie to the bosses one more time. I had lied to leave work early to get drugs. I had been lying for as long as I remember to cover up who I really was, and what I was really doing. I for some reason this morning could not lie again to these two middle aged European gents who owned this small factory, that I had been hired as a Boilermaker.

So, as I lay in bed looking up at the familiar distressed look of my mums face, I told her the truth. That I was using again, everything, that I could not stop, and that I needed help. Help to her meant our family Doctor. So as she jumped in the car and headed to the Surgery to book me in. I, jumped in my dad’s car, (as mine had been repossessed by the Sherriff!) to go and try and get on. I went to my friends (drug associates) house, to try and get a shot, but they had nothing ( meaning only enough for them) usually I would haggle till I got something, but the spiritual rock bottom had finally kicked in, and I had little fight left. So I drove home, and of course pretended like nothing had happened when mum returned.

We headed to the Doctors, and I told him the truth, for the first time, no bullshit. What I was using, how much, exactly. He gave me a letter to a place and said head straight there. As we were walking through reception, he came out, with another letter, and said to go here. I have always wondered about that. What would have happened if I went to the other place? Would I still be here?

So we picked up some cloths, and then my mother drove me there. I was angry all the way. I didn’t know it then, but I have since learnt I was just raging to keep all my fear, pain and shame pushed down. But it got me there. I remember walking into that Detox, feeling frightened of the unknown. I knew I needed to be there. I had no idea what “there” was.

 I just knew I needed to stop using Drugs and Alcohol, and that I could not. I had already tried everything I knew. When they asked me why I was there I was confused, because I thought everyone would go to detox to stop. But I soon learnt people go there for a variety of reasons. To get people of your back, husbands, wives, mums and dads, police, bosses. People go there to escape, for a warm bed and some food, to get their habit down. I am glad when I look back that I went to get well, to get help to stop.

That day is a blur in treatment. I do know we were not allowed to have contact with others outside, and those we were not allowed to talk to each other. I found that one the hardest. When I was caught talking to another client, the worker even asked me “What have you really got to offer this person trying to get well?” I must say, at the time, I was frustrated, but I did think they had a point, I felt I had nothing to offer someone that was trying to get clean.

That night though, I was taken to my first N.A meeting, McKinnon Monday night. I still remember it. The meeting was big. We walked down from the detox. There were Harleys out the front and anybody who I had ever been was there. Bikers, punks, new romantics, westie’s, Inner city all in black types ( Pre Hipsters!) even those normal looking folks, I even tried that. It felt strange when I did, but I tried it all the same.

 In the meeting, as people stood up and shared, it was great to hear people talk out loud, what I always kept locked inside. From the meeting though, the moment I remember the most was the countdown. When I think back I would have stood up and said I was one day clean. I know now the big deal that gets made when that happens, and maybe it happened that night. I do not remember is the truth. But I do remember two people coming up to me and saying things like hang in there. That they had been through the same detox, and that they are now going to meetings, and staying clean, working the Narcotics Anonymous Program.

When I walked back to the detox that night I know I felt hope, that just maybe I can make it. Just maybe, I had found my tribe.I described it to my mother months latter that I felt like I had found the place that I could talk, and that people could understand me. As I tried to get some sleep I knew I wanted to go to another meeting, even though it freaked me out. I am grateful on that day, when I reached out for help, firstly there was a detox, and secondly there was NA.

Now, 29 years later, I drove off towards a Detox and treatment centre, one I have been working at on and off for many years. Today I facilitated a Staff and Community meeting, that was all about connection, communication, being real, and change and hope through genuine connection to self and others. I have fought working here at different times in my life. I do not anymore. I belong here, holding out my hand, as so many people held there’s out for me to hold, in those moments, that even though you are afraid, you trust and reach out.

Recently, I finally got to meet Pia Mellody, at the Meadows. The Treatment Centre that South Pacific Private is based on. It was everything I could have hoped for. Over two days, I spent 2 1/2 hours that I will never forget. I have taught Pia’s Model, and lived my recovery by it for over 25 years now. It gave me back my connection with my soul. Hearing her talk about this model, in answering questions I have harbored for many years, was like nectar from the Gods. I have always been impressed with this model, by its salvation at depth that it offers the suffering Codependant, with all our secondary symptoms. I will be going back for training with Pia latter this year. This will be a week that will last a lifetime.

I have thought for a while that stopping using is hard, but it’s the easiest part of recovery. It’s the staying stopped that is the hardest. Doing whatever it takes in your recovery to not pick up, and work the program instead. I am grateful for all those early recovering addicts that answered the phone, spoke to me after meetings, and invited me to coffee shops. I am grateful to Peter G and Michael B and Steve for being my early sponsors, and for Mark A for being my Co-sponsor for over 20 years. Grateful to friends like Alan H , Croc, who has been ringing me for support for 25 years. Bonds that now can never be broken.

I am grateful to all my friends that have sat in Men’s groups with me, Dave R, Roger B ,  Peter J. Parramatta Coda Meeting. Brookvale Men’s NA, Trevor, Simon, Black Phil, Vanilla Phil, Kev, Hookey, Pete G and H, Marco, Simon, Tom C and Lance. All who have sat in those chairs, all that are not still with us.

 Also, I am grateful for the Dinosaurs, past and present, Wayne H, Aeroplane Bob (RIP) , Derek, Mario, Greg H, Carol, Anna , Warragamba Pete, Paul and Gary and Lucinda. Kevin from Heaven, Tony W, Mark and Kay S. Big Lindsay, Damien, Tim B. My partner in Crime Morry! Piano Tony and Tony G to name a few, that keep walking that ground up ahead, showing me that true recovery is for life.

I know I will have forgotten people, forgive me please.

Next its mentors, met and unmet. John Falcon, Shaman, June Lake, Spiritual Grandmother, Lorraine Wood, Visionary and Steward of Recovery for many, Wes Taylor, teacher and friend, Rex McCann and Vivian Hutchinson, Magicians. Gary Williams, spiritual Father. Earl Cass, Group work master. Michael Le Page, Supervisor extraordinaire.

Pia Mellody-Saviour, Patrick Carnes, Robert Bly, John Bradshaw, and my friend John Lee. Bob Earl, Terry Gorski, Michael Meade, James Hillman, Dan Millman, Deepak Chopra, the list is long .

Bessel Van Der Kolk, Stephen Porges, Dan Siegel, Dr Alan Shore, Alex Katehakis, Claudia Black, Peter Levine , Pat Odgen and Ed Tronick. Masters one and all.

       

To all my colleagues past and present at SPP and beyond, that work at the coalface with grace of the human spirit . What a privilege it has been to be beside you. I have learnt so much. Thankyou to Dr Teoh, Dr Gutkin and Bill and Lorraine Wood for the opportunity to serve at such a wonderful place of healing.

  Lastly, my family. My mother, Joan, and my beautiful wife Jen and sons Marshall and Maverick. I am grateful that my father passed on , seeing me in long term recovery. Without the gift of recovery, these gifts I would never have received.

Now I am certain I have forgotten more and more people, and will feel awful after I press send, but I am perfectly imperfect, and have at my centre the 12 steps, and can keep taking inventory, and make amends when I need to.

I have been grateful to have been around long enough, and had accessed great sponsors who led me through the steps, and to have then experienced the Spiritual Awakening which Step 12 talks about, that we get as a Result of working the steps.

I understand that awakening better now. To me it simply means I am alive, aware, conscious and in my reality, having access to my Body, My thinking , beliefs and values, to be able to feel, and be aware of my actions.

 Not killing myself anymore, not  numbing myself, distracting myself into submission. Recovery and the 12 Steps lead us into relationship with a God of our own choosing, of our own Understanding. In talking with Pia, one of the beautiful messages she shared with me was her belief around the results of growing yourself up in recovery, and developing a Functional Adult, that it is actually connecting yourself with your own soul, and therefore the God within.

It has been my experience in recovery, that as I worked the Steps in this program, that I got the sanity needed to pray only for the knowledge of Gods will and the power to carry that out. The sanity to know that just running on your own will might get you what you want, but sometimes getting what you want, means having to now deal with the consequences of something that we did not really need. Growing up, maturing in recovery, gives us access to that mature understanding of delaying gratification as M. Scott Peck talks about, and choosing our needs over just our wants. I cannot say I live by this all the time, but I am grateful that I am not ignorant of this anymore. Carl Jung’s quote, “”We have to make the unconscious conscious, otherwise it will direct our life and we will call it fate” has stayed with me for a long time.

It’s the becoming aware, therefore being conscious , that Pia tells us in the Developmental Immaturity Model is so essential for our success.

The program itself has given me the tools to on a daily basis bring what’s in the shadows in my life, out into the light. Sometimes it has taken me a lot longer than I have thought. Sometimes I have prayed, even though I feel as though I am an atheist or agnostic. There is a lot to be said for “faking it till you make it , and acting as if!”

So , today, 29 years clean, I have work to do, programs to write, staff to speak to, and more importantly, new people to meet, who have just walked into treatment today, reaching their hand out for the first time. Out of desperation. The pain of remaining the same, finally getting more unbearable than the fear of change.  I remember that feeling well. I am so grateful that we addicts and codependants do not have to suffer alone anymore.

The first tape I ever heard in recovery was by a fellow called Dean G. I have never met him, but I will never forget him. That tape got me through many a hard night. He said when he first got to recovery he felt as though he was being dragged behind a bus, and now years later, he feels as though he has learnt to smile while he is being dragged.

I must say in 29 years, I have been dragged some, but I have done a lot more smiling, even in hard times, than I did when I was lost in the Darkness of active addiction.

Webinar on South Pacific Privates website available now.

Here's the Webinar I presented for SPP last Wednesday, it was on Boundaries, and Reality sharing. It was an odd experience at the time, as the slides I practiced on, were not the slides that came up when I did it. So as each slide came up, it was an opportunity to practice spontaneity ! I hope the message still shines through.

These Functional Adult Skills have changed the way I experienced myself, and have made healthy relationships a real possibility. I grew up in a Family that had Mental Illness as it's organizing principle. As a 1st child I was emeshed with my mother, the source of the illness, and I tried my best to make her OK, so I would be OK. But that placed me close to her, and as a perfectionist, narcissist and Rager. It led to alot of trauma. My self Esteem, ability to set functional Boundaries, and my experience of my reality, were all experienced in the extremes. These skills finally start to bring Moderation into the experience of self. Recovery is a life long Journey, and I have been brateful to learn hopw important it is to address not only the addictions, but the underlying Developmental Trauma that led to them. I hope this information Boundaries and Reality Sharing is helpful and interesting. Pia Mellody's Facing Co-depencey and her workbook Breaking Free will be the next step.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ohxyZSpv20&feature=youtu.b

http://youtu.be/9ohxyZSpv20e

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