Dragging Home The Invisible Bone Part One

Dragging Home The Invisible Bone

The expression of any form of creativity opens the closets and the dustbins of the mind and begins the process of airing out the cobwebs.  The process of being creative seems to be the process that as an aside brings healing. It does not seem to matter what is being created just that the process of creation seems to hold part of the secret of healing.  Perhaps it is the deeper sense of being connected to a part of you that is connected to all that is, or perhaps it is just you getting past how you think for a short space in time.

There are certain truths that apply to all situations and one important one is; that before a wound can heal it must be seen. It needs to be exposed to the light of day.  The act of exposing the wound to air and light of day is often as not a function of the inner drive of the creative soul trying to shed itself of something it never wanted nor was intended to have. 

Why, because for most of us, these deep seated inner processes are bound up by shame, a shame that was acquired early on in life when no one noticed us or our efforts or our own particular expressions of creativity.  They noticed what we did not do, not what we did.  Our parents, our peers and our teachers became our prime sense of shame.  Just think back and I am sure that you, just like me, can find a significant shaming event that slowed or stopped your creative energies. 

Know this: the soul does not want the burden of the shame, but the ego is afraid of the pain that may be involved in processing the shame.  Second: it can be counter-productive to force things into our way of doing things against these deep-seated inner processes of shame.  Third: when you are depending on just you and just your resources for guidance through all this, know this: you are in serious trouble.

Round Pegs[1]

Square Holes

Larger mallets

Simply Don’t Work

---

[1] EHTU – 175 #66

Wisdom is Dispatched

Wisdom is Dispatched in Odd Ways ... here is one

Secrets, Melodrama And Misdirection Are Our Livelihood

Secrets and Melodrama are our livelihood, they are our stock and trade. We are good at manufacturing them and we are good at keeping them and we are good at misdirecting others away from the truth so the truth won’t be noticed and so we can safeguard our own little world.  We are good at demanding that others adhere to our need for them to keep our secrets, because we know that without them keeping our secrets none of the melodrama that we believe we so desperately need would exist … really. 

Secrets, Melodrama And Misdirection Are Almost Like Substance That We Abuse.

All this need for secrecy and melodrama is fostered by our sense of low-esteem.  Secrecy and melodrama is the evidence that we are not in denial that we are, in fact, in delusion. 

Denial is said to be a place in our consciousness where we know what the truth is and we simply won’t admit it out loud to anyone.  Whereas: delusion is a place in our consciousness where we really believe our own melodrama …it’s real as far as we are concerned …thus the need for secrecy and melodrama. 

It Is A Form Of Denial We Really Believe.

We hide behind our phoniness, our social images, our bodily images and we hope against hope that we really can beguile people into believing our fantasy as real. 

It follows that the basis for most if not all of our relationships is:

I’ll believe you are who you think you are, if you believe I am who it is that I think, say and act that I am. 

Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that we only fool and trick ourselves, and the intrinsic problem seemingly lost in this is, we can only do that trick and fool thing for short periods in time before we begin to do serious damage to ourselves..  The only ones who are seemingly deceived by our antics are those who have a vested interest in not being found out for themselves; not being found out so their world maintains the impression … delusion … of being safe … for them, and they are in the role they say they are and thus feel safe.  That does not mean safe by the way, the key word phrase in that sentence is Feels Safe.

You see the problem don’t you?

They have it too!

Oh yes, it may seem to take another form, it may seem to be socially acceptable … but they have it too.  They are part of the greater whole just like you and I. This becomes problematic by its very nature, why … because they are not about to admit that they have it too, to either themselves or anyone else.  No one wants to admit to having a problem that shames him or her. Thus the best way not to have one is to simply ignore it or soldier gather with people who are willing to agree that everyone is fine within the system created by that group, or willing to agree that someone else has the problem or is causing it … but it all boils down to The Sky Is Falling as per Chicken Little. 

The Great Producers of Melodrama in my life are:

OUR FAMILY OF CREATION

All too many of us come from low functioning families.  Families who are no longer available to us or cannot provide us with what it is that we need.  It is an essential in recovery that we build a new family, a Family Of Creation.  This is a family of friends and parental figures, a group of individuals who give something back as well as take: a family of friends who actually care about us for who we are.  A Family of Creation can include members of our family of origin as well as people who are completely unrelated and possibly unknown to each other.  The important thing is that they know you. Remember this:

****Our intimacy problems are not about who we are but instead about what happened to us.

****We find our humanity again by exploring and finding new families and becoming more affirming and understanding of ourselves and others.

The Journey of Discovery into finding our family of creation involves:

·        Looking at helplessness to find our learned powerlessness - the very thing that phantom control tries to cover up.

·        Becoming fluid not rigid - feeling our feelings and responding to them instead of reacting to them.

·        Making meaning and purpose out of what happened to us then and now.

·        Making boundaries that eliminates those individuals who use cynicism and critical shame to control and manipulate us.

·        Stopping the "Art of  the Fine Whine" as a method of Bonding and making friends

·        Using 12 Steps as a tool for the journey of self discovery and not making them the journey itself.

·        Coming to understand that most of our adult behaviours and actions are simply reflections from our past and as such give us the opportunity to look back into our childhood and see the abuse and neglect.  Knowing that if there is unfinished business from childhood then it is nature's way to escalate the situation and feelings so they can be resolved. Healing can take place only when we know what happened and how we felt at the time of the incidents, and when we have a good working appreciation of the legacy those incidents have left us with:

i.e.

·        Phobia's And Terror are windows to the frightened child

·        Depression And Isolation are windows to the hurting child

·        Self Hate And Self Hurt are windows to the shame-filled child

·        Intimacy Disorders are windows to the abandoned child

Einstein's Riddle the answer

house	1	2	3	4	5
color	yellow	blue	red	green	white
nationality	norweigian	dane	brit	german	swede
drink	water	tea	milk	coffee	beer
smoke	dunhill	blend	pall mall	prince	bluemaster
pet	cats	horse	birds	fish	dogs

Journey of Addiction

This Is The Journey Of Addiction.

The Hallmark Of Addiction is Loss Of Control

and

Its Sustaining Force Is Denial.

Denial isn't necessarily of the addiction, but of the expanded impact of the addiction in our lives.

Addiction Involves a set of compulsions, highs, habits, fantasies, and rituals, settings and beliefs that become repetitive, designed to produce a desired goal.  If we can't do the addiction, we can do the ritual or we can seek the setting or fantasy.

Discussion

The mind set ALSO creates the high.  An addict needs the settings, intensity, to find the high.  The addict can experience what is referred to as a contact high, that is they just have to be near to people they believe to be high and they will get off on the proximity to the drug of choice. 

Addiction is a set of urges that creates obsession and preoccupa­tion. 

Rituals contribute to the obsession and the high.  The settings become important parts of the high.

Adolescents, especially those who lack identity and socialization skills, tend to find that the rituals of addictive behavior help them socialize.  The drug-using groups often provide a place for the adolescents to socialize when they lack socialization skills.  When an adolescent has enough consequences, they end up in treatment.  Since adolescents are good at rituals, they go through the rituals of treatment quite well.  They learn treatment talk, group talk and the rituals of recovery talk. 

When people leave treatment and head back into their old familiar settings, there is something that happens that most are not ready for. Nothing has changed. It’s all still the same. The old gang is there. The families are still doing what they always did. The places where the pain, the abuse, the neglect are generated are still operating.  People still have the problems of how to socialize, Do I Fit In Here? and if they are not ready for their reality then they tend to lose their sobriety very rapidly and lean heavily on old habits learned in childhood. 

What they discover quickly is that the rituals of treatment don't work as well in the real world as they did on the therapist’s couch. So somewhere in the time frame from 6 days to 3 years the individual goes back to what he or she knows they can depend on ... drugging, drinking, lint ball picking, food addictions ... again.  Why do they go back? This answer is so simple.  It works. The no trust rule is invoked ... Don’t Trust Anyone and you won’t be hurt they withdraw back into themselves and do what they have always done ... do it on their own. 

For the addict it is a requirement that they need to deal with the settings and the rituals of their addiction, not adapt those rituals from their addiction to their next supposed new way of life. They need to deal with the context of their lives, their social conditions, their emotional conditions and the dynamics of the social setting where home is. This is not the same for everyone, but the necessity of doing is the same for all.  They need to deal with their family and learn coping mechanisms and survival skills that suit their lives today. The Adult Child needs to learn how to socialize with others as a key part of recovery.

The preoccupation and fantasies of the addiction may be the high.  But when they are not the high, they, the preoccupation and fantasies, will enhance the need for the high and set the individual up to act out with the substance of his or her addiction; because after all, I Know. Not really ... but!

Solution, we have to change what we think about.  Our beliefs, our mind set ... those things that create, enables and enhances the high.