Impulse Control from Saturday June 17th

Lack of impulse control is evidenced by such things as impulsive spending; risky sexual behavior; combative and assaultive behaviors; substance abuse; recklessness and excessive risk-taking; gambling; and binge eating. The list could go on, with creative ways to act out on impulse.

At the root, impulse control is really about self-control. Typically not an addicts’ most powerful trait, but one you must become familiar with and learn to master. I think it is important as addicts early on to get through all the many re-lapse triggers we face, but it is equally important to the quality of our lives going forward.

Let’s cover some tips and ideas on how to increase our impulse control and discuss some areas that maybe we have not thought of. We will start with one that I found rather surprising.

Will Power can wear you down! In several research studies, psychologist have used test of will power to then measure and gauge individuals moral codes. The longer they were forced to use will-power the less likely they were to make good decision later. With that said, we need to look at the long term effects of the “white knuckles” on your recovery. Very simply put, if you cannot find a way to cope, to reign in the impulse, it will eventually wear you down. Moreover it will most certainly leak into every facet of your life. Potentially effecting all of your decisions and the outcomes.

I have used this knowledge to look at all the aspects of my decision making, I will argue that as animals, we will always have impulses. These are things we may want that rapidly become things we need or cannot live without. So exercising impulse control (self-control) in our small everyday decisions, becomes a vital practice.  This is where Tekulve’s patients and probably anyone in here can acknowledge being exposed to his overt way of teaching this principle. Believe me when I say, the more impulse control problems you have, and the practice he will give you. From the super bowl to the graduation date, I was forced to wait for every decision. I at first felt persecuted by this, I then came to understanding that it was intentional and that I needed to look at my own inner need for now, now, now.

“You want, what you want, when you want it”…. Well tough shit

The hard and fast reality is, life does not work like this. The sooner you lean into this pain and embrace it, the quicker you will find a true place in starting your journey to mastering impulse control.

Recovery is hard, life in general is hard, I am not writing this down to make you feel shitty, it is a fact. The mistake early recovering addicts make, is living the same way they did, just without the D.O.C. This often leads to feeling like mine, persecution, and anxiety.

Listen it takes what it takes, Let go and Let God. I came to hate these cliché statements very early in rehab, partially because I heard them 62 times a day, and the other reason was that I did not fully understand them or the profound impact they would have on my long term sobriety. Let me just say this, Black and white thinking (which is linked to impulse control) is a horrible place to live. It is way better for you and for your brain to live in the Gray!

My meaning in this, is to help you realize that there is a great deal of internal peace that can come from slowing down your decision making, and employing numerous different coping skills to help avoid emotional decisions.

This ideal is where you can find serenity, being able to take things in, asses them, and then react to them in a proper and timely manner is the key to moving forward with relationships, personal beliefs, ideas, and future self-care.

I still act impulsively often, but I work on it every day. My children often comment when they see the comparison to how I handle frustration. They see me stop, breathe, and think. That is my suggestion, when you feel yourself slipping into impulsive behavior. STOP, BREATHE, AND THINK!

Finally and so I don’t disappoint you, some learning from the World Wide Web.

If you don’t really believe you can achieve something—anything—you are triggering an internal feedback loop that tells your brain to not allocate resources. Bottom line: if you don’t believe you can do it, you won’t do it. Granted, simply believing that you can do something is absolutely no guarantee that you can; belief is a requisite condition for achievement, not an exhaustive one. If you want your brain to put energy in your resolve, you’d better believe that what you are doing is worthwhile.

This is so vital to hear, that you come to understand your recovery, every part of it, hangs in the balance of what you believe. Take this process one day at a time, reward your success with positive self-talk and acknowledgement. Recovery is a process and IT TAKES WHAT IT TAKES

Maintaining personal Integrity and Holding healthy boundaries.

It takes Practice, practice, practice.

Here are 4 steps you can use as thought starters from the web.

4 Steps for Creating Healthy Boundaries

When you set your boundaries, it’s important to realize your needs are just as important as the other person’s needs. Working together to reach a compromise will help you set healthy boundaries and a healthy relationship. The steps listed below can help you establish this foundation.

  • Create a personal bill of rights: The first thing you need to do is to define your feelings, values and beliefs and let the other person know how you want to be treated. This will empower you and will help you get used to being assertive in your communication.
  • Set limits: Stating your limits is helpful in letting the other person know how far they can go. An example of a limit is stating that you want to be spoken to respectfully and do not want to be put down or screamed at.
  • Be assertive: If you feel that someone is ignoring the set boundaries, you must speak up. Being assertive is walking a fine line between being aggressive and being too passive. It’s important to know the difference. You don’t want to blame others, lash out or be rude, but you also don’t want to be walking on eggshells and be a pushover. Being assertive is being polite yet firm about your stance. Be clear about what isn’t working for you and keep communication open.
  • Respect other people’s boundaries: Don’t forget that you’re not the only one in a relationship. The other person’s boundaries are just as important as yours, even if they are different than yours.

Now let’s get specific about what bad boundaries look like.

  • Sacrifice of personal values, plans or goals to please others
  • Allow others to define who we are and make decisions for us
  • Expect others to fulfill all our needs
  • Feel guilty when we say no
  • Hesitate to share our opinions or assert ourselves if they are being treated unfairly
  • Frequently feel used, threatened, victimized or mistreated by others
  • Frequently offer unsolicited advice, or feel pressured to follow someone else’s advice
  • Take responsibility for other people’s feelings
  • Tell others how to think, feel or act.

A real easy rule that I live by.

“If it comes down to a happy you, or a healthy me, I take a healthy me every time.”

How about

If it comes down to keeping your secret to keep you happy, or a healthy me, I take healthy me everytime.”

You have no idea how ass backwards this sounded to me the first time I heard it, I was floored, I felt like living that way would be completely compassion less. I could not have been more wrong, and I am not afraid to tell you between my friends, and 4 grown kids, I use the mantra on almost a daily basis. The most important times I use it, are when I am feeling unsure, like I let someone down. This is a chance to evaluate that my life is still lining up with my goals, values, and aspirations. There have been many times where listening to one of my kids lash out in anger or my ex wife goes off about something. My first knee jerk reaction is to jump in the pit and start fighting, but these are ways I simply refuse to be treated, I am happy to listen, but the minute it becomes personal or abusive, I end it. I let them know that I will not tolerate it, that if they want to further communicate with me then it has to change. This method carries over into all of my interactions. Plain and simple, I am an emotionally charged individual, I am very self-aware, I cannot afford to wear thoughts or emotions that someone else has tried to pawn off on me.

How does integrity fit into this idea?

For me the answer is simple but warrants conversation, I will give you a very simple example without a lot of detail “names changed to protect the innocent” etc.

Basically during my time in rehab some rules were being broken that could and did have a negative impact on people I cared about very much. Keeping this secret worked against my own judgement and personal values, this is where my integrity came in, or in this case my lack of integrity. Now years later I am only left to ask myself how it could have worked out if I had stayed true to my integrity. The decision not to live in line with my integrity, nearly cost someone their life, and a potential prison sentence. I cannot live others’ lives for them, but we have the power within us to uphold our boundaries, and the integrity to refuse to work outside our moral compass. Very simply we can stay true to these things and stay safe, straying from these things leads to pits of growing darkness, self-doubt, and a well of sorrow that leads right back to drugs and alcohol.

Find your Happiness

Wikipedia definition of Happiness.

Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Happy mental states may also reflect judgements by a person about their overall well-being.

Let’s go a step further. Let’s look at the range between contentment and Joy since our faithful internet has given us this range as the potential definition of happiness.

Contentment is a mental or emotional state of satisfaction maybe drawn from being at ease in one’s situation, body and mind. Colloquially speaking, contentment could be a state of having accepted one’s situation and is a milder and more tentative form of happiness.

Joy is an emotion in response to a pleasant observation or a remembrance thereof. The reason for a joyful reaction is usually that some expectation or need has been satisfied. Joy is usually expressed as a smile, a laughter or exclamation of joy.

Joy differs from happiness in that it is an emotion. Happiness, on the other hand, is what we might think of as a feeling, which is more fleeting. Joy may be thought of as “the emotional dimension of the good life, of a life that is both going well and is being lived well.

 I feel like I took on the challenge of sharing this with you because of the deep impact that the pursuit of happiness has had on me throughout my life. See based on these definitions one detail cannot be argued. Happiness is derivative, it comes from inside us, it is the landscape we see through our window, my happiness cannot be someone else’s, of course you can share it, you can be the instigator, but that is fleeting, someone’s happiness is as you can see directly related to their own feelings of contentment.

With this said we need only look as far as the end of our own nose to determine the reason for both happiness and conversely unhappiness as well. This of course relates to each of us in a subjective way, as addicts we have ill-defined both the cause and effect of happiness in our own lives sometimes the very thought of it is like a foreign language. Now this is not to say that we just wake up tomorrow, choose to be happy, and all our problems melt away.  Knowing that becomes key to our both finding our way to and maintaining true happiness. What we need to understand, and this is important, we are one hundred percent responsible for it!

Heroin, Meth, Weed, Alcohol, self-abuse, pills, ect (fill in your blank)

None of these things have worked in the past, because I am guessing no one is in rehab or recvovery because they were suffering from terminal happiness, we have a disease of the mind, happiness in all of its subjective beauty is the method by which our mind can heal, the sooner you grip that and accept it, the sooner the afore mentioned methods will lose their allure and your life can begin again.

The 12 steps are a guide that will lead you to a foundation of happiness, one true and sad detail of happiness is it cannot co-exist with poor choices, bad feelings, fear, self-loathing, hatred, anger, (fill in the blank). Happiness must be at your core, who you are and who you strive to be. What I am here to share with you, is it can begin again, you’re not lost, you’re not forgotten. You matter and you are worth it.

You have already begun the journey, being in recovery, doing this seemingly impossible task of restarting, it doesn’t matter how many times you have tried, make this the time that matters for YOU and for no one else. Make this the last time you trade your amazing life for getting high.

Look at several things that have led to your Joy in the past.

Here are my thought starters.

My favorite pathway to happiness began shortly after I left Alpine Recovery Lodge and went to my storage unit, there I saw dusty fishing poles, tackle, and gear I had not seen in close to a decade. A thought struck me, instead of going home after work, I would take advantage of time I had to myself, I would utilize the amazing place I live and start fishing again. The first day I did this I felt like a 15 year old again, surrounded by God’s beauty, in the mountains alone, I rediscovered and became somewhat entranced by the feelings and emotions that I left behind so long ago, what was this feeling,  yes I can truly say that I was full of Joy, the happiness was beginning.

Another instance occurred right inside this place that was rediscovering the Joy I had for cooking, and I have expanded on that as I have left, taking classes, and preparing things for and with my kids.

Finally one I had when I came into recovery but had to adjust. I loved to draw, Art has been a common expression point for me through my entire life, and I was certain after finding recovery and feeling no inspiration that I may never do it again. I had used my pencil as an outlet for a lot of ugly emotions over the years and could not find that groove. I guess I had less darkness (not really a bad thing), but I missed it, the drawing I mean. Now over the last two years I have started to paint, and this has given back the same feelings of Joy without all the ugliness of my addiction. I love to paint now.

Okay seriously I am not self-promoting, I am actually and amateur at all of these things, but I love them! The reason I shared them, is to help open your eyes and your mind to the idea that everyone is good at something, everyone has a hobby or a skill they love, that they are known for. It is time to relight that flame.

Each time we use a skill or exercise a strength of character we receive a boost in positive emotions.  If you are not sure what your personal strengths are I found a great survey.

www.viasurvey.org  take the survey. It will tell you your 20+ strengths, more than a lifetime of Joy can be found in pursuing the things you love and are good at.

The more you use your personnel strengths the more positive you will feel.

“The is no path to happiness, happiness is the path”

“Happiness does not depend on what you have, or who you are, it solely relies on what you think”

Buddah

You matter

Forgiving yourself, letting go of the past.

Wikipedia defines Forgiveness;

Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which a victim undergoes a change in feelings and attitude regarding an offense, lets go of negative emotions such as vengefulness, with an increased ability to wish the offender well.[1][2] Forgiveness is different from condoning (failing to see the action as wrong and in need of forgiveness), excusing (not holding the offender as responsible for the action), forgetting (removing awareness of the offense from consciousness), pardoning (granted for an acknowledged offense by a representative of society, such as a judge), and reconciliation (restoration of a relationship).

 Keeping in mind the definition actually uses the word voluntary and the word change. This was a daunting task for me in recovery, I don’t like to fail, and forgiving myself started with acknowledging my failings. I have reference many of the 12-steps in my blog, this may seem intentional, however it is a simple pragmatic reality that the steps line up with the true nature of the recovery process, none more so than forgiving ourselves.

  • Take moral inventory.

This requires self-examination that can be uncomfortable, but honesty is essential in this process. The key is to identify any areas of past regret, embarrassment, guilt or anger.

  • Own it with yourself, with God and with someone else.
  • This involves admitting to past poor behavior. Often, members of 12 step will share what they wrote down during the previous step with their sponsor.

Every person has character defects, whether they come in the form of impatience, anger, apathy, criticism or negativity. The recovering addict is not strong enough to eliminate these defects on their own, so they ask their higher power to do so.

As we move through the process then forgiving ourselves can really begin, as we take the moral inventory often times we can feel overwhelmed as we move forward with the process, it becomes critical that we complete this, complete it fully, and we should whenever possible work it with counselor, clergy, or sponsor.

Consider the idea that forgiving yourself is the most critical part of a sustained recovery. Believe it or not I have a story.

I am lucky enough to work in the high line auto industry with Lexus, some of the finest motors ever built. In my first year as a Lexus service manager, we had a customer come in wanting the engine replaced at Lexus expense. The customer lived out in Rural Utah and as we began looking at the vehicle we removed the oil filter and found that in the 80,000 miles he had never changed the filter, he had changed the oil but not the filter. This makes me think of the nature of forgiving ourselves. I am certain the customer believed that changing the oil was all that was required, but by leaving the filter and only changing the oil, he allowed a huge amount of contamination back into his clean oil, this did not hurt the vehicle at first, but over time the filter overfull became the source of sludge that eventually seized the motor. If we only do most of the work, and leave this for later or bury it, we may get away with it for a little while, but we cannot outrun our past. We cannot hide from, change, or ignore the damage we have done to ourselves and others, but coming to a place where we acknowledge, work through, and then forgive ourselves is the key to feeling fulfillment in life.

Forgiving ourselves will help us in more ways than we can imagine right now, strengthening our relationship with our higher power, losing and no longer longing for a sense of isolation, by receiving our own forgiveness we learn to forgive others, we learn humility, gain honesty, and finally we put ourselves in a position to complete the steps and move our lives to new ground.

This is so easy to talk about and so ridiculously hard to do, but this was my process, the difference between life and death, and when I say life, I mean a life worth living, loving and enjoying, because on many levels anything else will sell you so short and it is a death.

The Voices of Recovery #9 Time to change!

This podcast is a look into the lives of Chris and Shane in their addiction, hoping to inspire even one addict to make the change today! Life does not get easier, but it get infinitely better when you get clean and sober. If you want it, you can get it. NOW GO GET IT!

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