Author: Holly Mae Haddock

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Modern Love Letters to the 12 Steps

Dear Powerlessness: A Modern Love Letter to the First Step

This post is part of a series of modern love letters to the 12 Steps. To start at the very beginning, read To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps. 

Dear Step One, 

You read as follows: “We admitted we were powerless over [our drug of choice], and that our lives had become unmanageable.”

The Start of A Good Life

Step One, I will always love you for one simple reason: you are the beginning of everything that’s good in my life now. 

Embracing powerlessness was the greatest relief, the starting point of freedom. The first step is a doorway into a completely different life, a life in which I am cared for, in which I matter. Step One is the kind invitation to drop an enormous burden, into the soft lap of a power so far better equipped to handle it than I am. 

Step One is clear and straight to the point. It acknowledges the plain truth. The addicted state is powerlessness. Whether it should or should not be that way, managing the situation is no longer a thing when we’re talking about addiction. 

Burdens Acknowledged

Thank you, Step One, for acknowledging the burden I have carried on my back for so long. Of not being able to force myself to be different than I am. Of things getting more and more out of hand. It seems that you understand what happened, that somehow in the course of my life I went from having things kind of together, to one day losing the balance and falling off the beam.  

Under a gun I had to admit that addiction had the upper hand. Addiction commandeered me, hijacked my life. This was the real reason for my trouble, my failures. Not for lack of trying, not for lack of wanting, nor for lack of goodness inside me. 

I now understand why this happened, why my own life force shut the path of addiction down. Addiction is not the way. If we keep trying that way, it closes up for us. Thank God.

Know Your Enemy

To understand our foe, to understand what we cannot truck with, cannot mess with, sometimes we have to find out the hard way. Addiction leads us to finding out about those spirits and energies in this world that we should not be messing around with, because we will lose our sovereignty to them. 

Addiction taught me we must always think about what kind of forces we are in consent with, who get into bed with, who we make deals with. When we make a deal with addiction, it’s a bad deal. 

Maybe we said, “Addiction, I’ll give you all of me, in exchange for feeling good, for numbing, for avoiding, for delaying.” Such deals are never worth it, because the power addiction gives us ultimately destroys the nature of what we are.  

The Paradox of Powerlessness

What does it mean to admit powerlessness over addiction, long past the deal was made? We tear up the old deal, but now what? Does it mean we’re powerless over everything?  

Maybe we are neither completely powerless in our lives, nor all-powerful. Sometimes I struggle in my head between these two poles, as though it could be finally decided once and for all, but perhaps it cannot. 

The space in the middle, where we have some influence, some power over our destinies, but not, specifically, the choice to use substances to avoid ourselves without ill effect, is an interesting space to sit in.

Choosing Life

Just because we are powerless does not mean we can abdicate our responsibilities. It actually does really matter what we do and don’t do. But all we can do is influence, choose, try, prefer, opt in or opt out, say yes or say no, do our best – but not control. 

What do we choose, knowing that we aren’t in control? What do we energetically vote for with our every breath? How do we choose to devote ourselves, what habits do we want to practice, for everyone’s sake?

It is within this curious existential place that we are confronted with Step One – to admit that we are powerless over our addictions and that life is/does become unmanageable when addiction is present. 

If I do what I must to make sure I’m not in the hands of addiction, I have some freedoms and some choices. In these parameters, we walk the beautiful path of recovery. With some freedom, but not all the freedom. Some power, but not all the power. Human life in a nutshell.  

Love, 

Me

Categories
Creativity Corner

Love your own Voice: 4 Vocal Play Exercises

Why We Stopped Singing

All children love singing. If we don’t love singing anymore now that we’re adults, it’s because we lost our ability to feel safe and loved enough to really let ourselves sing like we used to. We’ve become too wounded, too shy, or too scared of exposure. 

Our voices, whatever they are or are not, contain the unique voiceprint of our personalities. In the qualities of our voices, any loving listener can hear the true nature of what we are in the most truthful parts of ourselves. 

Our voices hold information about who we really are on the inside. That also explains why many of us keep our singing voices hidden, from ourselves and everyone else. Because we stopped believing we would be heard in a loving way, we stopped singing.

A Woman’s Voice Tells Her Story

In a woman’s voice you can hear the timeless, the eternal, and the specific, all at the same time. No voice is exactly the same as another’s.

Our voices hold our stories, and tell the listening ear of what happened to us, good bad and ugly. Where we restrict, where we go deep or soft, where we hold ourselves back or push ourselves forward with strain – all of these qualities reveal what we have been through, how we responded to those events, where we sustained a wound and where and how we healed. 

Learning to Let Ourselves Sing Again

The following vocal play exercises can help us learn to relate to our voices in a loving, encouraging way, such that someday we may sing out into the world again.

1. Humming

When you hum with the intention of loving your voice, humming heals. In this exploration we hum with different vocalized letters, feeling where in your body the vibrations happen. 

Where do we feel the buzzing? Placing hands on our lips, noses, cheeks, we can feel the vibrations more. 

Begin with a big belly breath in, placing your hands on your belly. Then let the air slowly flow as sound, as humming. Start with any pitch that feels comfortable, but feel free to move the pitch and volume up and down, as though testing out your sound system. 

  • Mmm
  • nnnn 
  • vvvvvv
  • zzzzz
  • zhhhhhh (like the s sound in the word vision)

2. Singing Syllables

In the next step we play with vowels paired with letters, creating little syllables. 

Take one big belly breath in, and on a single out-breath, move through syllables fluidly, following what feels interesting to try out. 

You can use any of the letters of the alphabet, so these are just some examples to start with, of syllables to sing and play around with: 

Ma Me Mi Mo Mu

Va Ve Vi Vo Vu 

Nya Nye Nyi Nyo Nyu (like the n in onion)

Nga Nge Ngi Ngo Ngu (like the ng in singing)

Tha The Thi Tho Thu (both ways, like the th sound in them, and like the th sound in teeth).

3. Call and Respond to Yourself

Call and response is a great connection exercise. 

Make a sound, then make the same sound again, mimicking yourself. Experiment with gradually longer pieces of sound/song. Sometimes you’ll get it right and sometimes you won’t, that doesn’t matter, the benefit is in the trying. 

This works especially well if you sing close to a wall or other reflective surface so that you also hear your voice bounced back to you. Other fun options can be to try singing through a tube (like a paper towel roll tube) or into spaces with different acoustic properties, such as a tiled bathroom or a walk-in closet.  

4. Sing Your Truth

Try singing the truth of how you feel in short, simple lines that you repeat several times. To start, in any melody at all (doesn’t have to be pretty!), sing a line about how you feel right now. For example “I feel grumpy…” 

Sing that one, truthful line about how you feel, over and over in different ways, melodies, intensities, pitches, for as long as you want, and until it feels like maybe you have something else you want to say. Feel free to change the line at that point. 

The goal here is to make loving contact with your voice through a simple exercise, but also, while you’re at it, play with using your voice to express a simple, present truth. 

Have fun, and don’t forget to appreciate your one-of-a-kind voice while you play!

Categories
Spirituality

A Simple Truth: Life wants to Live

Sometimes we must be reminded that healing isn’t as complicated as we think it is. Yes, life is complex, adaptive, and emergent. There are many factors involved in making it what it is. 

But at the end of the day, a few simple, elegant truths underpin our world.  

One simple truth I come back to is that life wants to live. 

The Self-Healing Nature of Life

Because life wants to live, we can rely on it to do everything in its power to heal itself. Life can be counted upon to help itself, and prevailed upon for solutions to its own troubles. 

Left to its own inner directives, life will thrive – unless we make it impossible. Even then, life never gives up on living. We pave the earth, but sooner or later the earth buckles, sends up green shoots anyway. 

Isn’t that wonderful? What a loyal friend, what persistence, what tenacity. And we are made of life, so life will always try to keep living as us, for us, through us, and with us, for as long as we are meant to. On this we can rely.  

The Life Force and Recovery

Why does this truth, that life wants to live, matter for recovery? Because it means the most natural thing in the world is for us to be happy, joyous, free. The life inside of us will always be resilient, growing, creative and essentially healthy.

If we can only remove the obstacles to the self-healing force, what’s inside will take us towards an optimal expression of who we are, who we are meant to be. 

What was in the way of our vitality, that we had to find a way to adapt to? And is that rock, that obstacle, that pavement, that imbed, still there now? 

The Burden of Sameness

One big rock that squashes the vitality of most human beings is the requirement to fit into someone’s idea of “normal”. 

Though we would never think of asking a squirrel to be more like a lion, or a lion to be more like a shooting star, humans are told all the time to be different than what they are by nature. 

If we are loud and delightfully boisterous, we are taught to be quiet. If we are quiet and peaceful, we are told to talk more. It’s as though everyone has to fit into a bland, anonymous, dry template of a human being. Our natural diversity is suppressed. 

This is an enormous burden and a ridiculous endeavor. Why should we all be the same, when diversity is all over the place in the natural world? 

What destroys the balance of the world is an insistence on one-sidedness, a monoculture of psyche in which all healthy variety is wiped out in favor of an inorganic singularity. 

Giving Up on Being Normal

I’m not completely sure how we ended up thinking that everyone being the same is a good thing, but I do know it creates terrible burdens for the psyche, that we all struggle with. As we each try to meet the ideal of “normal”, all suffer. 

If we remove the burden of having to be different than we are, and instead take the attitude that we can support ourselves to be what we already are by nature, – maybe even more so, rather than less so! – we are heading in the right direction. 

If we are loud by nature, why are we? What did life want to do with us, that required this loudness of us? Are we meant to be a speaker, a singer, a writer? Do we have a lot to say? If so then we will never be happy unless we are supported to say all it is that we came here to say. 

If we are mild and soft by nature, again, why are we that way? How might we nurture, support and grow that mildness, that softness, to be its highest and best expression? Are we a mother, an artist, a gardener? Is there a reason why our quietness is just right? 

Let Life Live

If we were to take this more pro-human approach to life, then we could drop many burdens, remove many rocks from the parts of us that are always going to try, one way or another, to keep growing big and strong in this world. 

I would like to officially invite you, dear reader, to be as wonderfully unique as you actually already are. Even more so! And I will try to do the same. For all of our sakes. 

Because life wants to live. And we are life.

Categories
Spirituality

The You in Unity

The Paradox of Human Life

The paradox of human life is the fact that although we are all one, we are also unique. 

You could also say the opposite – although we are all unique, we are all one. As someone close to me used to say, “we’re all one, and we’re all alone”. 

What better way to understand the spectrum of human life than to realize that we are both completely lonely and completely unified? 

Separate and Connected at the Same Time

Here in our embodied human experiences, we are the most isolated we have ever been, alone inside our own skins. Even so, this lonely part is embedded in gradually more unified rings and circles of consciousness, until at some point we are at the heart of all creation, as one big oneness. It’s all a question of focus, of where we place our attention.

The question is, where are we focused now, and is that all right? Are we supposed to be somewhere else, or exactly right here? Sometimes spiritual practices could lead us to imagine maybe we are supposed to be less here, more somewhere else. More in our unity, less in our singleness.

I don’t know about you, but my goal is to be both as much as I can. Completely myself, and not any less of that, but also completely connected to all. Separate and connected, in the same breath. Is this possible? 

The Limits of Comparison

When we love ourselves and our experiences of the divine just as they actually are, not in opposition to what anyone else experiences, but in addition to, we are in the right mindset, of adding pieces together to get the whole. Each of us is an utterly unique puzzle piece of the whole picture, without which the oneness is not complete. 

So interestingly, the path into unity consciousness involves loving our individuality. Really leaning into the wonderful ways in which we are quite distinct, disparate and differentiated leads us straight into the oneness. 

At the heart of our difference is our sameness. From within what we share, what is universal, we express outwards our own markings, our patterns, our own special celebration of what the divine is, going back into our specificity.  

Trusting that the divine knows what it is doing with each and every one of us, we can enjoy the great diversity of expression that exists inside the one, the incredible variety and beauty to creation. We don’t have to try to be any different than what we are, what life leads us to be. Our life doesn’t have to be like anyone else’s. Comparison fades away. 

Finding Authenticity in Individuality

Loving our individuality means practicing authenticity, by siding with ourselves and the truth of what we experience in life. Instead of always wondering what we did wrong, that we feel or think or experience things so differently than another, we could drop the expectation and requirement of sameness.

It’s quite clear that life has infinite creativity and that we are one of those unique creations, of equal value to all the rest of creation, with a place in the family of life. We are not exactly the same as anyone else in this world and we don’t have to be.  

Many of us get sidetracked into inauthenticity in our spirituality, marginalizing parts of ourselves, (such as our anger, addictions, or immaturity), comparing ourselves to others favorably or unfavorably, rejecting what we experience (or don’t experience!) because it doesn’t sound as glamorous, holy or divine as someone else’s. These self-dismissals set us up for being taken over by shadow and for spiritual bypassing.

How might we be feeling more unity consciousness, through fully embracing and honoring our uniqueness, including the highly personal ways we experience the divine’s love for us?

Unity with Freedom

I invite anyone of us dear recovering women, to explore the love that unity has for each and every one of us, expressed in our personal life streams, seeing also how we are ultimately connected in group consciousness. To hold both at once. 

Any woman has the right to more consciously contact and touch into the deep, unconditional love that divine source radiates to and through her, specifically. This specificity is a gift, a combination of qualities, a signature energy that no other woman has. Unrepeatable, infinitely cherishable, beautiful and exquisite. You are this, I am this, we all are this. 

Divine consciousness has the capacity to harmonize the full spectrum of radiance, embracing each woman and her frequency set to merge into a community of beautiful spirits, a unity that heals us internally and positively affects the environment around us. A unity which leaves specificity its freedom, and yet softly embraces and holds all.  

Categories
Creativity Corner

Frame Job: Art Therapy for Anger

Anger Misunderstood

Anger is frequently considered to be a bad thing. I disagree completely.

Anger can be bad in cases where it is expressed poorly, in its most raw and unprocessed form. When anger explodes suddenly and violently, it can be as savage as a volcano, laying waste to those around us. 

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Volcanic anger is only violent because we have suppressed it for so long that it has to explode dramatically to get recognized. Anger, especially women’s anger, often has to yell to be heard.

Anger is a Good Thing

At its core, anger is a positive life energy. It has a function, like all things in nature. Anger’s function is to define boundaries and say no to things that aren’t good for us. 

When something approaches us that isn’t good for us, the body generates a physiological response of anger to give us the energy to fight off the intrusion or create space between us and the bad thing.

In its simplest form, anger is simply a message from our physiology that says, “No thank you, that is not good for me.” 

Women’s Anger

How many of us, especially women, have struggles accepting the presence of anger within us?  Do we even know when we’re angry? Do we know why we’re angry? Is it ok, in our own eyes, to be angry? Or do we talk ourselves out of our anger? 

The following Art Therapy exercise is for helping those of us who want to get in touch with our anger but may need to do it in a safe and titrated way. I offer it as a way to experiment with befriending our own potency.  

May it be helpful!

Anger Frame by Frame

Supplies

Five pieces of paper, regular-sized paper or larger, and some pens or colored pencils

The Process

Step One: Create 5 Frames on 5 Separate Pieces of Paper

On each of your five papers, you will draw a single frame (sort of like a drawing of a picture frame, you make these by drawing a smaller rectangle inside a slightly larger rectangle). Leave white space in the middle of those frames for now. 

Using three sizes (small, medium, and large) of frames, you will draw two small frames, two medium frames, and one big frame. 

Start with making your two small frames (each on a separate piece of paper). These are small, post-it-sized frames. 

On another two pieces of paper, draw two medium-sized frames, each around the size of a large postcard. 

On the final piece of paper, make only one frame that is almost as large as the paper itself.

At the end of this step of the process, you have five total papers, with each paper having a frame drawn on it. Two papers have small frames, two have medium frames, and the last one has a big frame. 

Lay them out in this order: 

  1. Small frame
  2. Medium frame
  3. Large frame
  4. Medium frame
  5. Small frame

Step Two: Draw Your Anger in 5 Frames

Begin by setting the intention to work with your sacred anger energy. 

If you happen to be feeling angry about something, use that. If you are feeling peaceful, you can still do the exercise just by setting the intention that you will make positive, loving contact with your anger to help you get to know it.

Starting with one of the small frames, express the feeling of your anger energy in any color and line, allowing yourself to scribble freely, but only inside of the small post-it-sized frame you drew. When you’ve expressed as much as you care to inside that small post-it-sized frame, set it aside and move on to your first medium-sized frame. 

Inside the medium-sized frame, again express yourself in any way you feel by scribbling with color and line (or whatever feels right), but keeping to the medium-sized frame’s limits. 

Now do the largest frame, drawing as much as you care inside that largest frame, really getting as much anger energy expressed there as you can. 

Now move back down to the other medium-sized frame as you begin to modulate and make the anger smaller again. 

End with the smallest frame, allowing your anger to be contained and expressed inside a small space again. 

Journal: What was that like for you? What did you experience? What was it like to make it bigger and then smaller again? 

Categories
Recovery

Your Recovery or Your Derriere: Giving Up on Saving Face

Choose Wisely

There’s a lovely, straight-to-the-point AA saying: “You can’t save your [gluteus maximus] and your face simultaneously.” The saying uses another word for your gluteus maximus, a word that rhymes with grass, but to keep this classy-ish, I’ll say derriere. (Maybe that’s what they say in French AA meetings). 

Of course, there are many possible interpretations and layers of meaning to this slogan. But the gist is this: in any given moment, you can only serve one master, so… choose wisely. It’s like: “Everybody, this is a hold up: Your recovery or your derriere.”

What is your top priority – sobriety or your self-image? Your life itself, or what people think about you? In recovery, the plain truth is that we’re either looking out for the ego and trying to keep up appearances or prioritizing recovery. Stark, but true. 

Just the Facts, Ma’am

It’s important to remember every single day of our lives that those with the addiction pattern need to take the fact of their addiction very seriously, or else. We’re talking about life or death when we get down to it. 

We quickly forget that addiction is a parasite that kills the host sooner or later! How often did we have to prove to ourselves that our addiction always lies in wait, ready to kill us at the first chance if we don’t do the work? Do we need one more reminder, or have we shown ourselves what addiction is, who we become under its influences, beyond the shadow of a doubt?

If we feel embarrassed that we need recovery, let’s take a moment to think. How did we get into this embarrassing situation in which our bacon needs to be saved? Oh yeah, we got here because we lost all common sense and self-control and became powerless over the use of substances. Did we mean to? No. Did that happen? Yes.

We lost the ability to make reasonable decisions and behaviors in our own interest, to behave in sane and coherent ways. We became mad and foolish, someone you would shake your head in wonder at how far their behaviors veer off from their intentions. We became one of those people we didn’t think we’d ever be.

So we do need to focus on saving our derrieres first and foremost. Always and forever. That’s just the facts. 

Why Save Face?

And what is the urge to save face but to imagine that we are someone with greater morality, self-control, or abilities than what is currently the case? What does the ego give us but an imagined superiority, followed quickly by imagined inferiority, in ever-repeating cycles, ups and downs, booms and busts? Why do we try so hard to save it?

It seems to me that the desire to save face, even our false, inauthentic face, never dies completely, or maybe it lays in wait, just like our addiction, hoping we’ll return to it. 

I know, on a basic level, it is because we are all wounded in our basic human dignity. Many of us were made to feel less than others, and we’re scared to return to that place. We want to feel ok about ourselves. Admitting we have an addiction is rough on us and our idea of ourselves as being worthy. Recovery keeps reminding us, again and again, that we don’t have our stuff together. We must find ways to love ourselves even though we’re so imperfect, tragic, and heartbreaking. (In other words, we have to find Unconditional Love). 

Truth is Freedom

The desire to save face can turn a person away right at the first step, in which we are invited to admit that we’ve succumbed to the addiction pattern and need help. It could turn us from recovery again around the 4th, 5th and 9th steps, when we have to talk to people and tell them the cringeworthy truth of what we did. We might fear that our self-esteem will plummet if we admit the truth. 

But the truth, as they say, will set us free. The real effect of the twelve steps is self-compassion, self-liberation, and self-acceptance. We are loosed from the sugary attractions of fragile self-esteem based on inauthenticity and set free to explore our true nature’s real, glorious depths. 

This is kind of a red pill, blue pill situation. Recovery is the red pill. Ego is the blue pill. What do you choose? 

Categories
Therapy

DIY Parts Work Therapy: Try this at Home!

Parts Work Works!

Women recovering from addiction, and especially women who recognize that trauma is at play in their lives, benefit from a modality called Parts Work. Parts Work is also known as Internal Family Systems Therapy, or IFS. 

Parts Work is an approach to psychotherapy built on the understanding that we have many sides to us, which the method refers to as Parts. 

For example, we may have a Part of us who wants to be a good girl and please everyone. We may also have a quite different Part of us, who wants to rebel. We might not be conscious of it, but when we pay attention, we will notice that all human beings have many Parts within them.

Parts Work is effective in working with trauma and addiction. In short – Parts Work Works! That’s why Villa Kali Ma offers it in our programs.

The Road to Recovery is Paved With Good Intentions

One tenet of Parts Work is the idea that all Parts of us have good intentions, no matter how destructive they seem on the surface. Because of this essential goodness, all Parts can be redeemed and transformed into higher octaves of their original nature. Nothing inside of us or anyone else ever has to be thrown away, marginalized, or rejected.  

With time, Parts Work teaches us to recognize the positive intentions behind all human behavior. When we see how our Parts have positive, life-affirming intentions, we are freed from the trap of fighting them. When we stop all the fighting of Parts, internally and externally, we naturally have inner peace. 

The Part that Turns to Substances

The Addict within is also a Part. The Addict intends to help us modulate overwhelming experiences and get a break from inner pain. 

Although the Addict’s behavior is extremely problematic, the original intention is positive. When we can understand the (often not immediately visible) higher positive intention of this difficult Part, we can work together with it to find a better way to get the same job done. 

Once we realize and validate to our own Selves that there is a perfectly legitimate need for help managing our emotional pain, for finding a way to have pleasure and joy and life, to have a break from feeling bad all the time, we can look for other ways that don’t extract such a high cost of us. 

The Higher Octave of Addiction

If we have the intention of helping a Part become its best nature, it can. With this attitude, the Addict Part is gradually transformed into a Part that looks more like a Self-Soother, a Part who works well to help us tolerate the pressures and potential pains of living our human lives.  

In short, we can make allies out of any aspect of our own nature, and as we do, we move from a state of inner conflict and into harmony. 

The key to the shift from conflict to peace is to first recognize, then befriend, the many facets of our nature, the characters inside of us. This way, we reach the higher octave of the same aspect of us.

The following exercise may be a nice introduction to try Parts Work at home.

DIY Parts Work Exploration

  1. Identify any sensation in you that you are curious to get to know (such as a feeling of pressure above your heart, or a pain in your ankle). It doesn’t need to be something big and dramatic, maybe it’s just the first thing you notice when you check in with your body.
  2. Whichever sensation you choose, stay with that sensation, and place your focus there. Pay attention to what that Part feels like in your body. Stop and write down anything you notice about how the Part feels when you pay closer attention to it. 
  3. See if you can make the sensation even bigger, give it a little more space. You may want to place your hands on the place where you are feeling this sensation, and imagine sending it your love and friendliness.
  4. In this way and also in your intentions, befriend your Part. Invite it to speak about its job in your life. What is it doing for you and why is that necessary?
  5. Frame that job as a positive intention. Recognize your own Protector energies already inside you – your allies! Through recognition, you help free your Part to take on its higher, nobler form. 

Write for as long as you like about what this exploration brings up for you. 

May it be helpful!

Categories
Wellness

Changing the Program: 4 Practices for Thinking Better Thoughts

Thoughts in the Background

Women with addiction tend to struggle with negative thoughts. It’s part of why we’re prone to reaching for substances to help us feel better. 

If we pay close attention, we may notice that we are saturated with self-talk, so familiar and chronic that we barely stop to object to it. This talk might be like a drippy faucet on some days and a firehose on others, but chances are high that negativity in some form is a near-constant presence. It’s part of the inner environment of our psyche.   

Whether we notice the thoughts or not, the evidence of their existence is visible in our lives. Our behaviors, choices, relationships, and bodies all reflect the fact that deep in the background, negative thoughts are running the show. 

Inner Thoughts Pollute the Psyche

These negative thoughts, with their ominous voice-overs, interpretations, and vibes, vastly affect what it feels like inside our own skin. Just as the same video clip seems very different depending on the music you set it to, our lives feel completely different based on the quality and tone of the thoughts running in our heads. 

Negative thoughts are like environmental toxins, polluting our inner world. That which is natural, sweet, and kind within us can’t live or feel safe in such an environment. The pain these thoughts create will reinforce the addiction habit because we need to get away from it all. 

Changing the Program

We can change the program. We can say, “Enough of these voices! Let’s listen to some different ones. Let’s choose something that feels good to listen to.”

It’s some work, but not nearly as much as it sounds. Thoughts can be shifted and changed much more easily than we think once we decide to do that. 

Some follow-through, persistence, optimism, and faith will help. Start with believing that it can be done. 

The following four practices for thinking better thoughts may help you on your way.

4 Practices for Thinking Better Thoughts

1. Notice Your Inner Weather

Begin to notice when your negative thoughts are especially strong. A clue is that you will feel bad, triggered to use, or in some other way uncomfortable. If you are not feeling happy and relaxed, some negative thoughts are at play. 

For example, if you notice you feel anxious, empty, agitated, or depressed, that means strong negative thoughts are going on.

Next time you catch this, say to yourself,  “Aha! There must be some negative thoughts going on. I wonder what they are?”

2. Observe and Distance: Thoughts are Just Thoughts

Begin to identify what, precisely, your negative thoughts are saying. Listen closely to observe exactly what interpretation of your life is being offered.

Practice the following mantra: “I am not my thoughts. Thoughts can be positive, and thoughts can be negative, but either way, they are only thoughts. If I listen to negative thoughts, I will feel bad. If I listen to positive thoughts, I will feel good. Either way, thoughts are just thoughts, and I am not my thoughts.” 

3. Use Logic to Defeat Negative Thoughts

Negative thoughts can feel insanely convincing, even though they are nothing more than opinions or expectations, and would be easily defeated in a logical debate. 

For example, the depressing thought, “Things will always be like this,” is disprovable in a matter of seconds because your life has never once stayed the same. Hasn’t it always changed, evolved, shifted, and grown? Isn’t it true that nothing, not even you, has once stayed the same?

Practice countering the logic of negative thoughts, and you will get better and better at it over time. You’ll find that negative thoughts go poof in the light of logic.

4. Find Better-Feeling Thoughts

Finally, practice adopting and creating new thoughts that feel better. Using the criteria, “How does this thought feel to my body?”, find interpretations that you, personally, choose to have of your own life. 

It’s all in the framing! Using your own personal life philosophy, your unique creativity, and your way of relating to this world, what do you think is the best way to think about this situation? Get in the habit of asking yourself which way of looking at it feels the nicest to your body. 

Gradually, your new, better-feeling thoughts will become the default program, and you won’t have to work so hard to be happy. Won’t that be nice?

Categories
Therapy

Art Therapy for Centering: Twenty-Four Circles

The Multidimensional Nature of Art Therapy

Art Therapy knows symbols are multidimensional, just as we human beings are. 

Art accesses the vertical dimension of any given image, figure, gesture, or notion. Through Art Therapy we are taken beyond the surface our lives and into the guts, roots and heavens of any symbol that shows up to be worked with.

The Circle: A Potent Symbol for Coming Home

The symbol of the circle, and the related idea of center, is enormously healing to play with through the arts. 

When we center ourselves we are choosing a point from which we would like our energies to radiate. Everything comes back to its point of origin, and all that we send out into the world does so, too. To know our center, to visit our center, is restoration pure.

The following very simple, zen-like Art Therapy exercise is dedicated to the idea of centering, and it is designed to take you into the mysteries of your own core. Enjoy! 

Art Therapy for Centering: Twenty-Four Circles

Materials you will need: 

  • 24 large pieces of sketch paper, best taken from a large pad of newsprint. It is also fine to use brown butcher paper, found paper, or pages from an actual newspaper. Important is to have 24 large, separate pieces of paper.  
  • A large brush, the biggest one you have.
  • Drippy poster paint or ink. Most paint can be made extra drippy by adding a little bit of water, just enough to make it very fluid but not enough that you break apart the paint’s cohesiveness. Acrylics work well for this, watercolors a little less, but I’m a fan of using what you have on hand so feel free to experiment with whatever’s around. 

The Process: 

If possible set yourself up to paint vertically, by propping your newsprint pad on an easel or by fixing your papers to a wall. This is nice for taking advantage of the drippiness. If you need to work on a flat surface, like a desk or the floor, just make sure you stand and keep your arm as straight as possible while you do this.

Step One: Practice the Circular Movement

With the brush still dry, hold it in your hand and practice making large circular movements with your arm, intending to rotate from the shoulder joint rather than from the elbow or wrist. It can help to imagine that you do not have an elbow or wrist, and the only place you can bend or rotate is at the shoulder. 

Practice the movement that will be required for painting a big circle with your brush on your big pieces of paper. Notice how your arm is made for circular motion, as though your shoulder is the center of a compass, made for drawing circles. 

Step Two: Twenty-Four Circles

Now get ready to move through your twenty-four sheets of paper one by one. Each sheet of paper will receive only one large circle, delivered in a single fluid stroke. 

Dip your paintbrush in your drippy paint, take a deep breath in, and on the out-breath, attempt to create a “perfect” (it won’t be perfect!) circle with a single circular motion, one brushstroke. Whatever it looks like, move on to the next page to do the next one. 

Do not stop until you have done the twenty-four circles, one after the other. Work fluently and without pause, completing the cycle and trusting all will be just what it’s supposed to be.

There is no goal other than to do it. The circles themselves are only side effects, ripples in the pond, residue of your breath, movement, and presence in this world.

Step Three: Reflect on Your Center

When the twenty-four circles have been completed, lay them out in whatever way allows you to see the most of them at once. Without analyzing, take in these perfectly imperfect circles. 

You may sense how these circles are only the outermost ring of something palpable within the invisible center, something which precedes and lives on after the start and end of these circles. You may be struck with a sense of your own impermanence or fragility. 

But there’s no right or wrong here – whatever does occur to you as you look at your circles, is exactly the right thing to reflect on for this moment.

Thanks for engaging! May you feel your center as the power that it is.   

Categories
Addiction Treatment

To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps

Freedom is the Gift of the Twelve Steps

Think what you want about the Twelve Steps, millions of people around the globe are successfully living “happy, joyous, and free” lives because of them. 

When someone experiencing addiction earnestly applies her sincerest dedication to working the 12 Steps, and stays involved in a 12 Step community over time, she has a fighting chance at a remarkable and meaningful life. 

As anyone who has ever been enslaved, incarcerated or otherwise bound knows: freedom is everything. The greatest gift of all.

Remember the Miraculous

Depending how bad our addiction was, this fact of restored freedom can seem more or less miraculous. 

People once thought lost to the straits of hell can turn their ships around and return to to the land of the living. Like heroes from a fairy tale, such people often sail on with such a spiritual wind at their backs that they far exceed what might be called the expectations of ordinary living. 

Life as an addict is a grotesque distortion of a human life, but life as a recovering addict is a heightened, more poignant and spiritually productive life than is generally available to those who don’t know what addiction is like.

Addiction is a Hero-Maker

Addiction either kills you or it forces you to awaken to your true nature. If your struggle with the kraken of your drug of choice doesn’t result in taking you under forever, your victory over it will be the same reason you are able to bring the latent beauty and elegance of your true intended life pattern into physicalized expression. 

Addiction is the best foe imaginable – one which will force you to either embody your greatest heroic potential, or will take your life in forfeit. 

The Ego and the Addict

Naturally, the addict within us doesn’t like 12 Step. She senses the threat. She might try it on to tell us that the 12 steps are lame or embarrassing. 

Well, that’s pot calling the kettle black. Being an addict is even more lame and embarrassing, when we get past the glamor, drama and romance and look at the brass tacks of wasting our lives in service to endless gluttony, craving, and inability to be satisfied. 

It’s amazing how the ego and the addict can work together, to construct a narrative in which recovery isn’t cool. 

In some ways, of course, they’re correct, because cool is about distance, and appearances, and who we imagine we are in the eyes of others. Cool is keeping the cards close to our vest and staying detached from it all.

Recovery isn’t something to brag about – and thank God it’s not. Because if it were something we could reasonably brag about, or have a viable ego trip about, that would be the beginning of the end of our recovery. 

Ego tries to replace the role of Source, the mystery from whom we receive our life and that beauty we are never, ever going to be able to control, whether we crave to or don’t.

The vanity of the Ego is infinite, and its ability to find a reason to resist the Twelve Steps is also infinite. So we keep an eye on ego and its pal, the addict.

To Whom Do We Owe our Recovery?

Even as an admirer of the Twelve Steps, if I’m not in a spiritual frame of mind, my ego might want me to de-emphasize the degree to which the Twelve Steps matter to me, how much I owe my life to them. 

As though the Twelve Steps are my mother and my father, and they embarrass me. How can I be embarrassed of them, for raising me, for giving me life? 

The Twelve Steps are not the only way to a loving relationship with Spirit, but they represent a systematized, structured, reliable path that works, especially given to those of us with the addict pattern woven into our destinies.  

Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps

In honor of the Twelve Steps, hallowed ancestors of recovery, I will explore them one by one in a series of posts over the following months. 

I will unpack each Step with a modern love letter that weaves in insights from the many holistic modalities that Villa Kali Ma uses to help heal each woman who comes through our doors. 

My hope is that these letters will help you feel more love in your own heart, for each Step on this very special, very human, very tender path to happiness. 

Thank you for reading!

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