Words to Recover By -- Attend

Attend  -- Be here now.  Focus. Wait. Show up.  Many things vie for our attention every day.  This can make us feel as if our lives are out of control, so it is important to identify priorities.  Priorities are value-driven:  setting them requires deciding the rank of competing demands.  Often we feel torn when forced to decide what to do first.  Each choice has consequences which we must accept if we are to find peace within ourselves, which is why it is critical to develop a clear set of values. 

At bottom, we value our lives and will act in ways to save ourselves if we feel threatened.  Absent imminent danger, we need to be clear about what to most important to us.  Examples include family, friends, work, sports, health, money, religion, spirituality, and marriage.  Attending to one of these things is often at the expense of another.  Participating in a sport takes time and money.  Supporting a family also takes time and money.  Work produces money but takes time in exchange.  There are only 24 hours in every day, eight of which should be spent sleeping, leaving 16 to split between everything else.  In the end, we must choose what to attend to first.

Clarifying priorities requires a thoughtful analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats inherent in our life situation.

·        Strengths are things that we have and want to keep, such as a spouse or life partner, a nice house, a good job, pets, hobbies; anything that gives meaning to our lives.

·       Weaknesses are things that we have and do not want to keep: an unhappy marriage, an underwater mortgage, an illness; anything that causes us distress.

·         Opportunities are life decisions aimed at increasing our strengths.  Often they involve risk:  leaving an unhappy marriage, enrolling in college, moving to a new town, trying a new medication.

·       Threats are things we do not want because they weaken our strengths and put the things we care about at risk.

EXERCISES:

1.  Perform a SWOT analysis of your current life situation.  List at least five strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.  If you are unable to complete this alone, find a counselor or life coach who can be objective.

The list of strengths should tell you what your life priorities are.  Try to rank them in order of importance. While you go through the list, ask yourself if you are doing anything that might undermine your priorities.  As discussed above, our fundamental value is self-preservation and that involves more than avoiding drive-by shootings.  It requires a focus on being a mentally and physically healthy person, so if you have high blood sugar but refuse to cut back on cookies you are putting everything you care about at risk. 

Weaknesses can be those we own, such as dietary choices, and those beyond our control.  It is important to prioritize weaknesses as well as strengths because that enables us to figure out what we have the power to change and what we must accept.  A chronic health condition is a weakness, but not necessarily disabling. 

Opportunities are found where we have power to address weaknesses:  looking for a new job is no fun but landing a good job (or leaving a nightmare boss) can have a profound effect on the quality of your life.  An unhappy marriage is an opportunity to grow, either by recommitting to the marriage and working hard to make it better, or by changing your behavior and giving your spouse an opportunity to change as a result. 

Threats are the things we fear:  death, job loss, divorce, illness, disability, misery, poverty.  It is important to face these things head on and figure out what, if anything, we can do to mitigate them.  If there is no mitigation, then it is important to develop contingency plans.  Contingency plans often lead to opportunities and reveal hidden strengths. 

2.  Read and revise your SWOT analysis across a several day period and discuss it with an objective third party. 

3.  Create your Life Priority List of seven (plus or minus two) things: 

Don't worry if you cannot rank your priorities yet, just write them down.  Keep in mind that over time, your priorities will change.  Focus only on what is important in the present because the future is unknowable. 

For each item, put an "X" under the column corresponding with survival, sustenance, and success.  A sample chart:

PRIORITIES	SURVIVAL	SUSTENANCE	SUCCESS
Marriage Problems
Losing Weight
Gaining Wealth
Career Advancement
Hobby
Avocation
Religion

Ø  Survival:  feeding, housing, and clothing yourself and your dependents is a problem; your health is at risk; you have serious legal trouble;  you abuse alcohol or drugs

Ø  Sustenance:  you meet your basic needs but you struggle and/or want more/better

Ø  Success:  you meet or exceed your goals for this life priority and want that to continue

If you have a lot of Xs under survival, this indicates a feeling of desperation about your circumstances.  Survival is about things with life or death consequences for you and your dependents.  If you are able to meet your basic needs, but struggle to meet a priority, put an X under sustenance.   Put an X under success for any priority that does not need to change. 

4.  Using the insight from your priorities table, you should see where your priorities rank.  Obviously, survival trumps everything else, in which case your other priorities may have to wait.  Feeding an addiction feels like a life or death priority, but in reality it is an act of self-destruction.  Starving an addiction might feel like death, but it is the only way to break free. 

Attend to your health and well-being first and foremost so that you have the strength to take care of what matters most:  family, job, friends, etc. 

Words to Recover by -- ACCEPT

Accept -- If we accept the things we cannot change, we stop fighting and when we stop fighting and face our vulnerabilities, we begin the process of healing from within. 

The word "accept" has many nuances: to receive gladly, to welcome, to believe, to absorb or bond, to make a contract, or to meet a minimum requirement.  In order to accept something, it must be available or on offer and we must be willing to receive it.  Sometimes, in order to grow, we have to accept things that we do not welcome, such as criticism or grief.

Recovering life is all about acceptance:  

• that we are powerless over our addiction; 
• that we cannot control anything or anyone outside of ourselves;
• of spiritual guidance;
• of help from others who live in recovery;
• of the beauty and mystery that surround us even on the worst days, if we open our senses.

EXERCISES:

1.  List five things about yourself that you accept gladly.

• Why do you accept these things about yourself?
• If your list is shorter than five, ask yourself why there are so few things about yourself that you accept.    Ө

2.  List five things about yourself that you wish were different.

• Why do these things bother you? 
• Can you change these things?  If so, how?  If not, why not?  
• If you are able to change these things but do not do so, what is stopping you?

3.  List five people in your life whom you accept gladly.

• Why do you accept these people?
• If your list is shorter than five, ask yourself why there are so few acceptable people in your life.  Ө

4.  List five people in your life whom you wish were different than they are.

• What is it about each of these people that you do not like?
• Do you believe these people can change?  If so, how?  If not, why not?
• Are there more than five people on this list?  Ө

5.  List five aspects of your life that you accept gladly.

• Why are you glad about these things?
• If you list is shorter than five, ask yourself if you are depressed.  Ө

6.  List five aspects of your life that you wish were different.

• What is it about each of these things that you do not like?
• What, if anything, can you do to make these things acceptable?
• Are there changes you would like to make but are afraid to do so?

7.  Putting It All Together:

Each of us has flaws, shortcomings, and disadvantages, which cannot be changed.  It is important to recognize these things, accept them as reality, and forgive ourselves for being less than perfect.  Often what we believe to be a problem is only because we make it so and we make it so by refusing to accept reality. The most important action we can take on the path to recovery is to find things about ourselves to appreciate.  We cannot all look like movie stars, in fact most of us do not:  we are too short/tall, too fat/thin, too dark/fair, too hirsute/bald, too much this, not enough that.  This tearing down of self is an act of self-destruction and only serves to feed our addictions.  Making peace with who and what you are is the first step to becoming strong enough to recover your life.

Unless you are a hermit, there are people with whom you interact on a regular basis.  First and foremost are family members, then come friends, co-workers, and neighbors.  Unfortunately, all of these people have flaws and shortcomings which can make them unpleasant to communicate with.  If you find yourself saying, "Suzie makes me so mad!", consider that Suzie cannot MAKE you do anything unless she is pointing a gun at your head, and even then you have a choice.  In fact, you are reacting to Suzie's behavior and this is something within your control.  The hard work of acceptance in recovery is separating your own emotions from the behavior and emotions of others.  Once you learn to do this, you can change how you respond when people in your life do things that trigger your upset feelings.

Finally, life has a way of frustrating the best laid plans.  Weather, health, politics, and economics shape the world in which we live.  Our task is to learn to manage our inner response to unanticipated challenges and problems.  In order to do that, we must learn to accept the storms that rain on parades and find some other way to move forward with our lives.  It is not always possible to make lemonade out of life's lemons, so it is important to accept and embrace being powerless. Recovering Life begins here.

Ө Intense, negative feelings toward oneself is a symptom of major depression.  Please seek the advice of a licensed mental health practitioner for treatment.

Copyright 2014 Serena Englander, All Rights Reserved

Moving On

Once upon a time, I was caught in a rip current while snorkeling in Mexico.  This could have been the end of me but instead it became a powerful metaphor for the way life can sometimes change direction and velocity without warning.  After easing my way back toward shore, I was two miles away from where I had entered the ocean, tired but exhilarated at having outsmarted an irresistible force of nature.

When my husband lost his job in August, which was the reason we had relocated to Florida in 2005 from the rolling hills of Virginia, it was as if another rip current had pulled me away from the known world.  My husband's first instinct was to put the house on the market immediately and sell off everything of value that we owned.  Remembering my experience in Mexico, where the stakes were much higher, I advised him to slow his thinking down and analyze the situation.  For reasons I do not fully understand, Beau has always acted as if homelessness was a missing paycheck away.  Our financial adviser explained that, while we weren't rolling in dough, we had a generous cushion and could live with no income indefinitely as long as we changed our spending habits.  It took a while for Beau to internalize this message.

Meanwhile, at age 60, Beau began pounding the pavement in search of another full-time, salaried job.  He found a number of jobs which he could do with no learning curve to surmount, but every hiring manager he spoke with explained that he was "overqualified", in other words too old. So we decided to regroup.  The Florida Bar requires every practicing attorney to take the dreaded Bar exam. That was not going to happen, so we looked north and discovered that Georgia's Bar was much more friendly:  a lawyer in good standing with no criminal history can qualify.  Atlanta was the obvious destination.

In the fall, we met with a real estate agent who gave us a to-do list for getting our house ready to sell.  We did everything except clean out the girls' bedrooms, leaving that for after the Christmas holidays.  Shortly after the children returned to their schools, we de-cluttered and cleaned their rooms, replaced unattractive wall art and bed linens and rearranged furniture.  A photographer captured the beauty of the home and landscape and after eight weeks of sweating, we found a buyer.

Florida's real estate market was slowly recovering from the crash of 2008, so instead of losing a fortune, we only lost the equivalent of a three bedroom house in an anonymous suburb.  After paying off the mortgage, we would have just enough to buy a decent house in less expensive housing market.  Friends and family in Atlanta encouraged us to move there because the market was still depressed.  They could not have been more wrong:  every house we liked received multiple offers and sold over asking price.  It occurred to me that we would feel poor in Atlanta and we would spend inordinate amounts of time stuck in traffic.  So we looked at smaller towns an hour or so away.

Finally, we settled on a town where our real estate dollar would go far, or so we thought.  It turns out that Atlanta's satellite towns suffer from an overabundance of outdated and unappealing homes and a scarcity of good real estate.  While the prices were lower, the good houses sold like high jackpot powerball tickets.  Worn out houses in popular locations sold for more than we could afford and turnkey houses in terrible locations simply would not work.  It took months of looking at endless internet postings of homes for sale and visits to homes that sounded promising until we found the perfect little house.  We made an offer, the sellers countered, we counter-countered, and the sellers decided to wait.  Two days later, after hearing that we were in competition with a cash buyer, we offered $15 thousand over the asking price and removed all of our contingencies.  The cash buyer won and we were back to looking at houses.

This period of riding a current over which we have no control could have been my undoing.  I often think about drinking, about how soothing a glass of Pinot Noir would be, about the warm feeling inside, and then I realize that the reason I am able to outsmart the rip current that is relocating us is the serene feeling that has replaced alcohol.  Somewhere in our future home town, there is a home for us, but in the interim we slowly and patiently move in the direction of solid ground. 

Copyright 2014 Serena Englander, all rights reserved

More Thoughts on Acceptance

Each of us has flaws and shortcomings, some of which cannot be changed.  It is important to recognize these things, accept them as reality, and forgive ourselves for being less than perfect.  More important, however, is finding things about ourselves to appreciate.  We cannot all look like movie stars, in fact most of us do not:  we are too short/tall, too fat/thin, too dark/fair, too hirsute/bald, too much this, not enough that.  This tearing down of self is an act of self-destruction and only serves to feed our addictions.

Unless you are a hermit, there are people with whom you interact on a regular basis, including family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors.  Unfortunately, all of these people have flaws and shortcomings which can stir up uncomfortable feelings inside.  If you find yourself saying, "Suzie makes me so mad!", consider that Suzie cannot MAKE you do anything unless she is pointing a gun at your head, and even then you have a choice: to be or not to be.  In reality, you are reacting to Suzie's behavior and this is something within your ambit.  The hard work of acceptance in recovery is separating your own emotions from the behavior and emotions of others.  Once you learn to do this, you can change how you respond when people in your life do things that trigger upsetting feelings.

Finally, life has a way of frustrating the best laid plans.  Weather, health, politics, and economics shape the world in which we live.  Our task is to learn to manage our inner response to unanticipated challenges and problems.  In order to do that, we must learn to accept the storms that rain on parades and find some other way to move forward with our lives.  It is not always possible to make lemonade out of life's lemons, so it is important to accept and embrace how powerless we truly are. 

Recovering Life begins here.

Copyright 2014 Serena Englander, all rights reserved

Words to Recover By: Accept

Accept -- If we accept the things we cannot change, we stop fighting and when we stop fighting and face our vulnerabilities, we begin the process of healing from within. 

The word "accept" has many nuances: to receive gladly, to welcome, to believe, to absorb or bond, to make a contract, or to meet a minimum requirement.  In order to accept something, it must be available or on offer and we must be willing to receive it.  Sometimes, in order to grow, we have to accept things that we do not welcome, such as criticism or grief.

Recovering life is all about acceptance: 

• that we are powerless over our addiction, among other things;
• that we cannot control anything or anyone outside of ourselves; 
• of spiritual guidance; 
• of help from others who live in recovery;
• of the beauty and mystery that surround us even on the worst days, if we open our senses.

 Copyright 2014 by Serena Englander, all rights reserved

Getting Better and Better

My husband and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary by inviting some friends over for dinner.  One couple brought a bottle of Dom Perignon because they were celebrating their anniversary as well.  "You can have a little, it's your anniversary," said the little voice inside my head that constantly speaks to me.  "You can have a little, it's a celebration," said my friend who knows how hard it has been not to drink.  I thought about it all during dinner while everyone enjoyed a cabernet sauvignon and aged Chianti and had decided, "what the heck, it's been six months."

We set out six champagne flutes and my friend declined to open the bottle.  I volunteered because it is something I am quite good at:  slowly twisting the cork and resisting the increasing pressure as the vacuum inside the bottle begins sucking air molecules inside with increasing velocity.  I had to exert quite a bit of energy to keep the cork from flying off and the result was an ecstatic gasp as the cork met the palm of my hand.  "It's flat," my friend said.  "Oh no," I reassured her, "there is plenty of life in this bottle."  She was doubly impressed at my skill in uncorking the champagne as I poured the first glass which threatened to explode out of the delicate crystal flute.  I poured four more glasses with the finesse of a seasoned sommelier and hesitated before deciding not to fill the sixth.  "You do that very well," my friend said.  "I've had a lot of practice," I said.

I have never enjoyed a bottle of champagne more than I did that one.  

Gullible

Luca is a young man of my acquaintance whom I met while he was -- unbeknownst to me -- on house arrest.  He had crashed his car, injuring several people, while intoxicated.  During his year of house arrest, he attended mandatory AA meetings and eventually earned permission to leave his house in order to work at the horse farm where his girlfriend was employed as assistant manager.  Jenni is a sweet and beautiful young woman whose passion is horses.  She is an accomplished equestrian but has never achieved her potential.  When she met Luca, he was already in trouble:  he was selling and using drugs, getting in fights, and generally wasting his life.  The only person he was nice to was Jenni and eventually, after his accident and house arrest, the two became a couple.

When Luca first appeared at the barn, I didn't know what to think.  With tattoos from the neck down, he looked like a drugged-out thug, but was as sweet and polite as well brought up child.  He absolutely loved my horse and seemed like a peaceful and happy young man and soon I stopped noticing the "body art".  Fast forward three months to when the ankle bracelets came off.  The first thing he did was reconnect with his homies who were also newly off house arrest.  They went to AA meetings together not because they had to, he said, but because they wanted to.  Luca seemed sincere in his desire to live a good life, free of substances.  It made me happy to hear him speak of the happy place he found himself in. Around Christmas, Luca moved in with Jenni and the two made quick work of the stalls and other horsekeeping chores and seemed head over heals in love.

Last week, after the owner of the farm commented to Jenni that her work ethic had recently deteriorated, Jenni announced that she and Luca were moving out of the farm residence and into a place of their own and the two walked off the job to go house hunting.  In anticipation of a vacancy, the owner let herself inside the little house in order to measure for new kitchen cabinets and appliances.  The inside of the house, which had been mostly renovated just five months before, was a horror.  There were holes punched in the walls and garbage and dog feces covering the floors. It looked like a crack house.

One of Jenni's friends told the owner that Luca was back to selling and using drugs and was also becoming violent towards Jenni.  Later when the owner confronted Luca with her suspicions, he threatened to beat her too, but the owner reminded him that she had his parole officer's number on speed dial.  He backed off but Jenni stood paralyzed in a corner, sobbing.  The owner offered sanctuary to Jenni, but she declined without a word.

The two left the next day, but not before Luca greeted me in his usual sweet and innocent way and fussed over my horse.  I wanted to say something, to ask him why, to offer to take him to a meeting, but pretended that I knew nothing about his fall from grace.  It should not have surprised me, but it did because I wanted so badly to believe in the miracle that was his recovery.  How did I not see this coming? 

The owner of the farm, herself, is engaged to a man who is finishing his sentence for felony DUI.  The two started dating while he was on house arrest and she stuck with him during those long and lonely months because she believes in him, despite his being less than completely honest about what actually happened before the accident that nearly killed a nine-year-old child.  He seems like a sweet and good person who wants to live a good life.  He appears to have learned to live in a state of gratitude and to surrender completely in the face of addiction.  My heart will break for both of them if he throws away the God-given love of a good woman, the forgiving heart of his precious son, and the support of a whole community with a stake in his recovery.

Addiction is so powerful it blinds and numbs us to the divine light of eternal love that surrounds each and every one of us.  Living in a state of grace is a constant decision to move toward this light and to ignore the seduction of addiction's false promises.  Some days I feel like a child's soap bubble riding a gentle breeze, and on others,  like a leaf floating gently down a stream.  Fragile and beautiful and temporary. 

An Epiphany

In a recent "Dear Abby" column, a man in his 30s wrote to say that he had a lifelong problem controlling his anger and he was afraid that his outbursts were hurting his children.  Abby's response stated that "[w]hen a bigger person yells at a smaller person, the message is often lost because the smaller person (in your case, your children) simply shuts down out of fear that physical violence might follow."  I fought back an urge to vomit because of the powerful memories this statement evoked.

My whole life from the time I became aware of myself as a person, until I started taking Prozac and doing the hard work of psychotherapy, had been a time of terror.  My father routinely exploded with rage at my mother over her shortcomings as a wife, mother, homemaker, and person, and at his growing children for being "ungrateful little bastards," among other sins.  By the time I reached school age, I was completely cowed into submission, a victim ripe for picking.  All anyone had to do was raise his or her voice and I would collapse into a quivering, gelatinous mess on the floor.  Whatever beliefs or opinions I might have had disappeared before I could become aware of them.  The only thing I knew for certain about myself was that I loved horses.  Otherwise, I tried to be a chameleon and blend in but it never worked.

After college, I married a man who, like my father, had a violent temper but unlike him experienced and expressed great love and affection for me.  The angry outbursts felt very familiar as did my emotional collapse, but when the storm clouds parted, there was always love and tenderness and I found a way to pretend to be fully human, until I could figure out how to stop making my husband angry.  In my family of origin, there was never any demonstration of love and I grew up starved for it which is why during my young adult years I had sex with a handful of strangers, but avoided anyone that appeared romantically interested in or attracted to me.  It took a brush with my own mortality to shock me into caring enough about myself to allow someone else into my life.

If my father had been capable of loving me, my mother, and my siblings in a way that felt safe and happy perhaps I might have been better equipped for friendships and romantic relationships.  Instead, I trusted no one with my heart or my inner life, not even my husband.  I loved him deeply, and even more today, but was convinced that if he knew what was in my heart of darkness, he would be frightened away.   To a degree, that is still true which is why I will not let him read what I write.   Yet.