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Coping With Change in Recovery

“The only thing you need to change, is everything!”

Let’s talk first about the really obvious issue here….YOU NEED TO CHANGE, the reasons may not be totally clear right now, and the truth is the change is just part of life. Anyway you better start looking at how you cope with it.

Why should we change, what makes change matter?

  • First and to me the most obvious is the growth. Imagine in a world with no change we would still be living in caves and eating raw meat.  The need for better food and better homes created enough pain in our ancestors that they changed. That is the nature of pain, in a normal (non addictive) thought cycle the solution when something hurts is to do something about it. As addicts instead of facing our pain and changing we have medicated our pain with substance, this is a cue to all of us that this part of recovery is going to be hard. We are going to have to face and learn to cope with previously “medicated or ignored” Pain!
  • As we contemplate change, new and unique ideas can come up, ways to help ourselves that maybe we never thought of before. This is important to keep in mind. We all are passionate and creative, we have all proved our passion and creative minds with the unique and inventive bullshit we have flung around in our addiction, so flip that coin over and start using that inventive, creative mind to benefit the changes you need to make in your life. Yes without the chemically enhanced allure of heroin these changes for me were harder, and I needed internal mental and spiritual motivation to make them stick.
  • Keep in mind, Life without change is boring!
  • Without change we would be stuck in the mess we created, that is the beauty of embracing change, it is the very thing that can save your life. Then by continuing to change we will find new paths for hope and Joy in life. You are not some special tortured soul, bottom line if you do this, your life will improve, but it is not magic, you have to do the work.
  • To recover just about every facet of life needs to change, the very idea of life is change, consider all that has changed from your mother’s womb to now in your life. All the vast and amazing changes you go through. Life is change.

With all this neat little tidbits we just read, why the hell are we so stubborn, why is change so hard?

  • Fear has got to be the number one reason we avoid change or don’t make our changes when we should. So many addicts I have encountered are just stuck in the mess of addiction because they are afraid of what life looks like without the DOC, they are petrified of change. From the outside it seems ridiculous to see them stuck, but we all know that fear very well. These fears should be expressed and talked about, they are often rooted in abuse, trauma, and low self-esteem. They are often exaggerated and they are rarely based in truth. They are confabulations, lies based in reality that your addiction has used to keep you sick and suffering. If you don’t think you are sick and suffering, I would start there!
  • Oblivious or stubborn or stupid is another reason we don’t change. I have already encountered numerous addicts who are convinced that they need no change. That their life is fine, they cannot figure out why everyone is pushing them to change. Others simply do not see the need. This disease is a disease of the brain and the soul, for years I used and used simply convinced that nothing was wrong and unsure why everyone was always freaking out. Telling myself the story that I would change when or if I was ever ready, convinced my kids knew nothing, and my family and friends just didn’t understand. That was my story, and it was utter bullshit.
  • Motivation. The other critical issue that keeps change from happening or makes it difficult is our motivation. Are we being pushed by someone or something else, now here is a little issue? If it is a judge or the law that is pushing you, then you really have no choice. However if you are in recovery because of someone’s ultimatum or to carry out someone else’s agenda, then you need to slow down and review your goals. This one will come back and bite you in the ass! The other more profound side of motivation, is pain, so as you get back to actually experiencing pain, then you will find motivation to either lean into it, or fail and start using again. Whichever way is up to you, but the pain will force one of the two things to happen. Get real and stay motivated.
  • Habit. Let’s not forget that most of what we do every day is habitual. It is what we have been so we just keep doing it. This is a difficult thing to oppose because it has to do with the way our brains function. It is necessary to understand it, this means we must learn to sit with some discomfort and we go through these changes. That is so easy to type and so difficult to actually do because who the hell wants to be uncomfortable. This takes grit and determination to change, but when the new habits are established it will not feel that way.

How important is change in recovery?

  • Change is going to occur whether you like it or not, embracing it will make the process far better than fighting it, at Shane’s graduation from drug court it was baffling how often I heard the same thing over and over from the other graduates, “well this process really sucked, until I embraced the change.” We have all heard the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Well it is never truer than in recovery, this will either be the most amazing thing you have ever done, or the hardest thing you ever tried. Success or failure will depend on how you view this simple principle.
  • Strength in recovery is about meeting challenges and overcoming them. Coming to understand that all great things in life are earned, that this amazing, difficult, challenging, journey can become the best and most amazing chapter in your life.
  • Not changing can lead to strong feelings of resentment, this is poison for an addict.
  • It is never as bad as you thought and never as good as you hope. Remember this, I use it every single day in recovery and in life. Nothing is ever as good as you imagine it will be, and how many times have you thought the worst case scenario only to have it work out far better than you feared. This is not just the addict brain, this is fear based thinking that traces back to the caves. Stop yourself when you are imagining the worst and walk through this process.

Finally let’s talk about a formula for success.

  • Look to truly understand the need for change, many of you face huge changes in your clean life, look at what they are and why they matter, work through the tough ones with a counselor. Remember you matter, your life matters, your future in all its amazing diversity matters.
  • Make sure that you are not resisting out of habit, so many times in my recovery I have found myself all worked up and pissed off because that was my default, not because I didn’t want to change, but because it was a habit not to.
  • Work on becoming one who embraces the change. Yes simply start adjusting your attitude. If a counselor says something that pisses you off or sets you on edge, than it is probably true. Pay attention to it!
  • Stop focusing on the past, nostalgia and romanticizing memories will create walls you have to climb over. Leave your past in your past….. You must embrace this cold hard fact. You can’t get it back, bring it back, will it back, and it is done. You can only make a better right now in hope of a better future.
  • Journaling is the one thing I wish I was better at, but I suck. Just find the time to write it down, watching yourself change in the pages of a journal will not only empower your success but it will take the harsh edge off some of those changes, it will help put power and purpose behind the efforts you make. You will see moment after moment when life seemed so dramatically bad or challenging, but here you are reading about it, wondering what the big deal was.
  • Last but not least…. Just do the next right thing, don’t think about it or worry about just get up and go do it. You brain and body will follow you wherever you go, so take them to a good place and things will improve.

I have come to a place of great depth in my recovery, I have so much to learn and I love it. However I freaking hate change, I am an complete control freak and I will wall myself into a corner and rely on my mouth and my brain to justify, fix, explain, and even lie to keep myself in my little safe corner, the last few months have brought one change after another, even going through the topic was hard to look at my life and think of the things I still need to do. This is a key to recovery, embracing and moving through the hard shit will not only keep you alive, and it will add a measure of meaning and fulfillment to your life that makes every change so worth it. This has all sounded hard and it is tough sometimes to sit in this idea. It is so worth it, I would not trade one day of my recovery, every single part of my life is better because I did this, and I know if I keep doing this it will keep getting better. Take the time in recovery to look at the walls that surround you, if they are not healthy, if they are not inspiring, if they are not challenging, then embrace the suck and make the change. Keep a positive and hopeful attitude, and then get busy living. You are worth it!

 “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” 
― Albert Einstein

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” 
― Jalaluddin Rumi

The Voices of Recovery #45 Anna & Mitch

The Voices of Recovery #45 Mitch & Anna show up to get really real. This is a great podcast of hope in family support. Anna drove 2000 miles to do podcast with us, and she invited her husband. This one is a seriously good podcast. #staywoke #stayawake #pppp #pounditwithkindness #getinspired

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Staying in the moment

One of the cliche things that I have heard over and over in my recovery is the saying “If you have a foot in yesterday and a foot in tomorrow then you are shitting on today”. Like many of the cliche things I heard in my early recovery I was always excited to be able to recite these things back to addicts, like they were pillars of my own understanding, as if I had come up with these catchy phrases all by myself. Also the case with many of these sayings I was good at saying them, and a little less well practiced at living them. With that confession made I will tell you that living in the present is a common and very specific practice of mine now, and I have benefited from it greatly. It is admittedly quite difficult and I felt like sharing some of my journey on this topic might help others better understand the benefits.

Let’s talk first about dwelling in the past and explore the sometimes harmful feeling that come along with being “stuck”.

As I came through the doors of recovery I was hit within the first few days with the guilt and shame of all of the wreckage I had caused. Centered around my children and my ex wife I saw a pathway of destruction that I did not know how I could ever forgive myself or move forward. I spent hour after hour self deprecating and beating myself up about the choices I had made. This became a month of embattled internal behavior that nearly ran me straight out of rehab and right back to the street. I was not ready to deal with these demons and worse still I did not know how to deal with them. This was a core component of my addiction and for years instead of facing this pain I continued to use and get high rather than face the hurt I had caused myself and others. In rehab I was forced to see it face to face and really this was the first true decision I had to make was to move forward or give up, I am grateful I pressed on and I hope something I write will help someone else press forward in the face of adversity. Because really life is full of these kinds of hardships, living well and joyous is not about avoiding or even running from your past, it is about turning and facing the reality, accepting that it is in the past and moving forward the best we can. So yes as you can see accepting the reality of the pain I caused was the first step. This is the best way to reconcile any part of the past is to turn and face it head on, now I will say in the event of trauma and abuse or serious loss that process will be a huge and overwhelming process that in most cases should be under the supervision or trained therapists and or counselors. So I have no license and the message is not simply “get over it”. The message is before you can ever be present with yourself, you will need to get out of the past.  For me this looked like meeting all of my kids where they were at, sitting with and hearing about the pain I caused them, trying to understand and not defend. I then had to go out in my first weeks out of in patient treatment and meet with and reconcile with other family, friends, and employers. This was the same practice. I did not seek to justify, I sought to listen and to understand. This was a powerful exercise and it gave me deep empathy for those who had suffered through my addiction. This was a short paragraph, but this was not an overnight process, in a few small cases the issues are still unresolved, not because I am not ready but it is because they are not ready. I cannot control that, I have to move forward. One of the greatest sayings I live by now is this, “You cannot trip over stones you have already stepped over.” In my meditative mind I picture my life as a journey, yes we can talk about where I have been, but I cannot go back to that spot, I have moved from there to here, we must acknowledge that no thing we ever do can change what has already happened. In order to be present we must reconcile the past and live today in this moment, it is all we have.

The next component of living in the present is the need to eliminate “future tripping” this is one of my favorite pastimes and moving forward from it has taken monumental effort. The concept is easy to explain but understanding it is not the hard part. In future tripping scenarios we are allowing our brain and more specifically our imagination to run away with thoughts and notions about what might be happening in the future. Here is a great example of how future tripping will hijack your right now and leave you with nothing to show for your wasted time. I am laying in bed on a Saturday night and realize I need to address a concern with my boss on Monday morning. The issue has to do with something that could be serious and I am struggling with how to talk with him. This so far seems normal and makes sense to worry about things once in a while, however this becomes toxic thinking when I begin to run through all the possible outcomes with my boss. At first they are simple and they are not really upsetting, however as the night rolls on the scenarios get darker and the outcomes get worse. I am picturing confrontations, I am picturing scenarios where my job is in jeopardy. This goes on for most of the night, interrupting my sleep and  ruining my outlook on Sunday. Sunday proceeds in much the same fashion and Sunday night is worse. My mind races from one outcome to the next, I lose sleep, it impacts all of weekend. So now Monday morning comes along and armed with my one thousand scenarios, the truth is I have no idea what the morning is going to look like. None! Zero! So I get to work and get all ready, I am early as good anxiety would dictate and at eight in the morning I am sitting in his office awaiting his arrival. I wait….. 8:15 I am still waiting, finally at 8:25 I step into the front office and ask if anyone has seen him, I am told he is out of state in meetings until Wednesday, furthermore I am told that the issue I was worried about is no longer an issue, as a matter of fact it was cleared up shortly after I left Friday and that the boss was really happy with what I had said prior to leaving it had made his weeked. I am of course excited at first, then this overwhelming sense of frustration comes over me as I realize the amount of time I spent on this weekend with an imaginary problem that ultimately needed no solution. Before I even started using my energy to “imagine” the outcome, there had already been an outcome. On countless occasions in our life we do this. I have worked so hard to stop this in the process of getting started, my mantra is simple. “It is never as good as you hope, and it is never as bad as you imagine”. Those are vital words to live by and they serve as a constant reminder to me that we have zero control of the future, we can only control how we respond to it. The other ultimate truth is we can worry and worry on the largest scale, worry never did anything to solve a problem. Our mind loves to worry because it feels like action, but that is a lie! Worrying is not an action word!

We come to the point where we can look back and look forward and hopefully we can be a little more cautious and mindful about how we engage in those thoughts. Now we can focus more clearly on the present moment, what does that feel like? For me that was a seemingly impossible question and the more I thought about being present the further from present I got. Being present when we spend so much time in the past and worrying about the future is going to be so hard and uncomfortable at first. It is just hard. The strongest idea I can give you is to find your place in the world of meditation. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, just find a program and do it. Youtube and other media is loaded with free meditation. I use an app on my phone called headspace.  The point of meditation is designed to help you see what the present looks like from your own perspective. The next strongest exercise I do has to do with the five senses. What is close that I can see, what is close that I can touch, what is close that I can smell, what is close that I can hear, and finally what can I taste. This seems like a funny practice, but the truth is we will be quicker to dismiss it than try it, and it is very simple. As you start doing this you will find a sense of calm coming over you and a sense of presence entering your mind and body. This is great to expand on the practice during meals, during conversations with others, and just driving in the car. When I eat I try to take a deep breath in and out before each bite, this helps me actually taste and enjoy my food. I found myself at lunch during work, worrying about phone calls and upcoming appointments and I would get back to my desk and be like… wait…. Did I even eat? So I purposely slow down. This works when I drive in a similar fashion. Previously when I would drive my car I would get all in my head about where I was going and what was next, this led to bad emotional states when traffic got bad, or things unexpectedly delayed me.  Life is going to happen no matter what, may as well enjoy it. This is easy for me to say now after several years of practice, so just lean into the idea that it is going to feel different and a little challenging at first, but it is so amazing what happens when this clicks. Bottom line is, slow down, live in this present moment, because if you are not where you are, then you are nowhere. Be present and live each moment, they are the only ones you have.

Chris Alder

The Voices of Recovery