The observer position

The observer position

by | Apr 24, 2021 | A2R, Advanced Recovery, Method

The ‘observer’ position 

I want to say something more about one of the key points in this approach. In order to understand, develop and practice my method you must first develop your understanding of what I call the ‘observer position’. Things like a raised awareness of your parts and what triggers them. How and when they were constructed. As well as being able to communicate with them in a way that is ‘age appropriate’ are all things that depend on a good understanding and working knowledge of this ‘observer’ position.  

Did you ever say to yourself “why am I doing this” as you began yet another disastrous course of action? Somehow able to see how bad this is going to be and yet seemingly unable to stop yourself? If you have always thought of yourself as one thing doesn’t this double view seem strange? Who was talking to who at these moments? These questions are very difficult to answer from a traditional perspective. Actually, what you were doing was likely to be ‘observing’ yourself in a triggered moment. So what do we mean by this? And how can it help us to develop our recovery?

Defining the observer – your ‘core’ self 

The first thing to make sure of is that you have an idea of what this ‘real’ or ‘core self’ is. Who is it that is doing the observing? The first challenging idea to get hold of is that everyone, no matter how damaged, abused, has a core or real self. No matter how much of a checkered past you have, there is a core part of you that is unaffected by circumstance. That does not carry the flaws that you may have identified yourself with. If this is the first time you have read about these ideas then this will probably come as a shock to you so just take a minute to digest this. It means that every time you said something to yourself like “I’m such a liar” or “I’m a hopeless addict” or “I’m a waste of time” you were actually talking about a part of you, not the real you. 

The filter 

Your ‘core’ or ‘real’ self is your consciousness, your mind. Because it’s the part of you that makes sense of everything, you could think of it as the filter through which everything must pass. A translating point that makes meaning from everything you experience. You are doing it now as you read this. It is your consciousness in an un-triggered state. I want to promise you that if you could find a way to maintain this state even through difficult moments, you would never drink, use drugs or act out addictively again. Just allow yourself to imagine this now, remaining in your core state and making good decisions, improving relationships, and making progress in your chosen field. Unlike traditional forms of treatment that diagnose you and attempt to make you change and be less like you, this approach is asking you to be more like you!

Parts and self

So if that is your true self then any feeling, thinking belief or attitude you experience is what we call a ‘part’ of you. That counts for anything that differs from your calm clear confident self. So how do we distinguish between you and your parts? I want you to keep this very simple. Think of the space above your eyes as ‘the front room’. This is your mind, where you live, where your consciousness resides. Imagine another room at the back of your head. This is where the part of your brain that reacts to threat lives. So we have a simple picture of two rooms that are communicating with each other. These rooms will eventually develop a better relationship as you practice. 

The front room is generally running your life, making decisions and deciding the next course of action, for the most part. The back room is watching out for threats constantly and reacts like lightning when it sees one. These times are what we call triggered moments or episodes. The best way to think of this is that your mind (front room) is running your life, it is doing so on licence from your brain! This licence can be revoked in a fraction of a second if your brain (the back room) identifies a threat.

Protection is normal

There are two issues we have to understand before we can use this idea effectively. The first one is that the idea of your brain protecting you this way is perfectly normal. You’ve probably heard of fight and flight? So it’s not a mental illness. Okay, but the second thing is that life teaches us that certain things are threatening when they never were or are no longer. Things like these are kept in the back room where there is no timeline, and so they remain fresh as the day they happened, even though you may have forgotten all about them in the front room. This can be a big problem for anyone vulnerable to addiction. So the point is that there are times when a very basic part of your brain is running your life, not you.

Taking on board the idea that at these times it was not your core self running your life but was actually your brain trying to protect you from threat is a big deal. Understanding that you have an untainted core, a part of you that is not just a bit calmer, but is pure calm. Not just a bit clearer but is pure clarity. Of course the way you have been viewing yourself in a more traditional negative view fits right into the medical model and has probably had you reading lots of books, doing lots of exercises and maybe taking some pills. Once you start to practice working on the relationship between your parts and your core self you probably won’t be needing those things any more. No need to work on ‘changing’ yourself any more, now you can learn to access what you already have. Changing yourself is a bit like asking a tiger to change to spots instead of stripes! 

The state is where we start

All your parts are consistent. This is an important idea when you consider that you will be coming up against many years of training from the medical model that told you that you were very inconsistent. Of course this is a rational conclusion when you think of yourself as one thing. I want you to think of this recovery approach as swapping one inconsistent self with a set of consistent selves. Each of your parts is extremely consistent. They tend to turn up in the same way and for the same reasons. The difference is that the core self is the ‘untriggered’ part. The ‘you’ that is present when no triggering is happening. In order to know your parts better you need to understand the core ‘state’ of your adult self. This state is described in various ways by different religions, philosophies and therapists but, many years of neuroscience research has identified eight words which characterize and encompass the qualities of the core self. These are the ‘resources’ of the adult self. The good news is that you already have them! You need to learn them and, by understanding them better, you will be able to identify when they are not present.  

 

The resources 

Here are the eight words we use to understand our adult states resources. 

Calm Clear Curious Creative Confident

Courageous Connected Compassionate.

When you are in your adult state you will be able to identify with all of these words. Try first making a list of all eight words and ask yourself if you can identify with all of them in your current state. Notice any that seem to be absent. Now write another list alongside the first. This list should be how it feels when the resources are missing, their opposite if you like. So Calm becomes ‘panicky’ etc. It might look something like this;

Panic Confused Dogmatic Flat

Unconfident Frightened Disconnected Cold

Here is a table that makes these opposites clear.

 
Calm
Panicky
Clear
Confused
Curious
Certain, Dogmatic or having a strong agenda
Creative
Flat or feeling you have no options
Confident 
Unconfident, nervous or anxious
Courageous 
Frightened, maybe a feeling you must stay safe
Connected 
Disconnected from people and life
Compassionate
Cold or having no feeling for others

.

Think of these opposites as the default position (on the left) and the way you often feel (on the right) when you are triggered by something and your brain takes over. So any time you find yourself losing any of these resources because of how someone has spoken to you or dealt with you, or even if you have had a thought yourself that has changed your state, you should assume that you are no longer in your adult state. The thought or observation that you are no longer in your ‘real state’ is made from the observer position.  

If you have found yourself saying things like “I’m hopeless and unreliable” or “I’m too angry to hold down a job” then this practice can help you massively. Since these flaws are not part of your adult self you can learn, as part of your practice, not to ‘act out’ of them but to observe them. The first thing to realise when you start practicing is that your core state is not something to achieve, it’s your default position! This is another massive shift from the traditional approaches. You have probably thought of recovery as something that is almost impossible to achieve, wrong! Something you have to fight for, wrong! Think of your core state as something that happens when the other states ‘step back’ and trust you more.

The practice

The simple way to understand the aims of the ‘observer position’ is to think of ‘re-triggering’ the adult. So when circumstances trigger your brain to protect you, your practice is to get your core self back in the driving seat. This is done not by fighting or demanding things of yourself, but by negotiating with your brain, asking it to trust you more. Think of your core state as a state of trust between the two rooms. When you decided what you wanted for breakfast this morning your brain ‘trusted’ you to make that decision. So triggering is a lack of trust, a way your brain protects you because it does not trust you to stay safe in this particular circumstance.

 Try this experiment now. Think about the last time (or the next time) you experienced this triggered state. Run it as a movie in your head or, if this is too triggering, run it as a movie on a clear space on the wall opposite you. As you watch this movie of yourself in an agitated state, notice how calm the part of you that is doing the observing! Even when you are triggered into an extreme state you can often observe from your ‘core’ state of calm confidence. It is from this position that you can start the negotiations.

 If you feel anything other than calm when you observe your parts behaviour then put the brakes on the negotiation. This is because, occasionally one part can observe (and judge) the other. These are called ‘polarised’ parts and usually take an opposite (and judgemental) position on the part that is triggered. The main thing to notice is always your ‘state’. Itis your calm confident courageous state that tells you that there is a good blend of adult. If you are feeling anything else then assume it’s a part and step back another level and observe the two of them interacting. Once you get the calm centre you can begin the negotiations.

The Family Car 

Think of yourself driving a car. In the car are several others (your parts). You could consider these parts as your ‘inner family’. Your brain is looking a long way down the road and sometimes sees a problem. Saying to itself “if we carry on down this road we are going to be in danger”. Removing you from the driving seat one of the parts takes over and turns down another road (to be safe). This road could involve activities such as drugs or alcohol, gambling or any other form of addiction or dependence. The part does not see the difficulty with this, only that it has protected you from the threat of the road you were on. This is because your parts are younger (sometimes much younger) than you are now. Think about it, if your part is eight years of age then you can only expect the kind of solution an an eight year old would come out with. Your parts do not have your experience, your maturity or your wisdom. Often they do not share your beliefs or your attitudes. Thinking about the age of your part will often give you an idea of how to engage with it. But however you try to engage, always avoid fighting!

Negotiate never demand

If you fight for possession of the steering wheel you will probably lose. Remember your brain thinks it is protecting your life! It’s not going to stop doing that. So your practice is to aim for a negotiated settlement. Always try your best to avoid any fighting or demanding when triggered. Even if you were to win the steering wheel back for a little while it is likely that your brain will eventually overpower you. Trust is the result of a negotiated settlement. Once your brain trusts you with something, it will trust you forever! So this is the best approach for two reasons, the first I have already mentioned, which is that you will probably lose. The second reason is because it is the appropriate approach when someone is trying to help you! It’s a good idea to think about the age of your part before attempting to negotiate. This is because parenting works best of its age appropriate. If you get the sense that your part is a toddler then parent in the way that seems appropriate for that age. If your part seems more like a teenage then negotiation is the way forwards.

Taking responsibility for yourself 

Western culture has for years taught us to expect that a ‘special someone’ is going to be our primary ‘caregiver’. We are encouraged that when we find them they will effectively manage our flaws and vulnerabilities. Of course this idea can also lead us to believing that we are supposed to do that for someone else. This leads to all sorts of problems with our boundaries and, like any other stored belief, will not change until we change it.

Developing the observer position, as well as the practices that follow from it, will encourage you to become your own primary caretaker. The Captain of your ship, the driver in your car. Whether you think of yourself as a Captain with a crew, or a car driver with a family, you will benefit from the practice of ‘observing’ your parts from the core position.

Building your ground floor

Building your ground floor

by | Jun 9, 2020 | A2R

From survival to flourishing

Whether you have been down and out, or what used to be called a ‘high functioning’ addict, you will have been used to employing some form of manipulation, denial or downright deceipt. Probably a mixture of all the above. These things become a lifestyle and ensure that anything you build will not last.

Because you have taken the building Recovery approach you will now have planned your recovery. Thought about where you want to live and what design is good for you. You have thought about the cost and made sure that you are willing to pay it. You have built a solid and stable foundation that your new home will stand on. Now it’s time to think about your approach to life and how that has shaped your relationships.

 

white and pink petaled flowers

There is always some form of deceipt in any addictive lifestyle. It’s part of secrecy and the need to keep people out, as well as the security acheived when we know something they don’t! It’s now time to consider the nature of this strategy. I would basically describe it as a survival strategy. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. If you hadn’t survived you wouldn’t be reading this and you couldn’t build anything! But we survive in order to flourish and the ground floor is all about learning how to flourish as part of a normal lifestyle. So how do we shift from survival to flourishing? We use the right materials to build with.

What materials will you use?

When we think about a building we think about something that will last, something that will shelter us in good times and bad. This means using the best materials we can afford. Your aim is to build something that will last a lifetime. Something that you are happy to live in. A home that is fit for purpose. This can only be done with the best materials. 

Appearance over Reality

Your addicted lifestyle meant using survival techniques a lot of the time. This meant lying and trying to cover things up when your addiction got in the way of what you had promised someone you would do, or somewhere you would be or something you would pay. This is all part of a survival approach and is very short term. It does not build good relationships. It does not really build anything.

assorted metal bars

As we move from a survival strategy to a flourishing strategy we must use better building materials. I want to look at some of the most important materials now.

Honesty, Integrity, humility, vulnerability, boundaries and relationships. These are character qualities but in this approach we think of these things as building materials. The better the materials, the better the build!

But first the question, what is it that attracts us to poor quality materials? Obviously it’s the cheaper price. When you skimped on honesty, when you didn’t consider integrity. When you were too afraid to show vulnerability. When you didn’t build good relationships by managing the boundaries. All these times added up to a poor standard of building and so when the bad weather came, the whole thing would come crashing down.

These things can be grouped together in this way, appearances over reality. When we use poor quality insulation in the walls no one will see it. When we use cheap wiring, wood and other materials that are not the required strength or thickness, we are more interested in appearance over reality.  

The reasons you did this are both complex and simple. In that the psychiatrist would cite narcissistic tendency (complex) and the people who know you would say you are a liar (simple). The point is that we want to change to a flourishing strategy, so how do we need to do things differently? Number one advice, avoid extremes!

People with addictive tendencies tend to be people of extremes. More is always better, right? So your first reaction tends to be to change everything, now! Try to avoid this. Think about a dial, say to a stereo player or to the central heating. Think about turning that dial 5% more. That’s right. 5% is a good shift. And there are two reasons for it not being more. First you don’t want to over challenge yourself. Second you want to be fair to people that know you. 5% means that they wouldn’t be too shocked by the changes. 

Ask yourself, could I be 5% more honest with this person? Could I be 5% more vulnerable in this relationship? Could I be 5% more direct with this situation? All these changes help you in your aim to build well and to build substantially.

What are my challenges?

Everyone is unique! Your challenges will be subtly or majorly different to others. So there is no general fit here. I just want to make sure that you are able to discern what your particular challenges are. And that you know the reasons why you might find this difficult.In your addicted lifestyle, you developed the belief that suffering of any kind, even ordinary discomfort, was to be avoided. And worse, that it was dangerous to your health! Neither of which was true. No matter what drug you took or what behaviour you acted out with, it became a substitute for feelings. It helped you to avoid the pain of growth.

It’s time now to accept the idea that challenges are good for us. That they help us to grow. But that they are also uncomfortable and that discomfort is a part of normal life.

For some the greatest challenges are honesty. This is often because they are used to the security of knowing something others don’t.

For some the greatest challenge will be authenticity and vulnerability. This is often because they have a history of ridicule or physical abuse. They have learned not to let others have anything that they may use against them.

chess pieces on wooden chess board

Check your relationships room by room

couch near painting

The rooms you have designed offer you a way of looking at your relationships in a more focussed way. By placing each relationship in a particular room you are setting a context for the relationship and, as a result, a way of assessing the quality of the relationship.

When you place a person in a certain room that room sets certain expectations of that relationship. It helps you think about what the relationship should include and not include.

So the initial question is “is this person in the right room?”. If you have the wrong room then the relationship will always be problematic. It may surprise you to find that you have people in the wrong room, but it’s quite common.

This is often found in the rooms of friends and work for instance. Sometimes our relationships need to be divided in more subtle ways, such as mutual intrest aquantances, friends and close friends.

Once you have our rooms designed you can then make sure you have the right people in the right rooms. Only when you have the right people in the right rooms can you properly understand and then apply the idea of boundaries.

Let’s do that together now. 

Are your boundary fences in the right place?

Boundaries are a whole subject in themselves. I want to keep this idea simple and powerful for you. There are only three possibilities here. Number one – Your boundary is in the right place. Number two – Your boundary fence is too far from your house. Number three – Your boundary fence is too close to your house. Let’s assume that option one is fine and needs no further scrutiny. We’ll take the other two one at a time.

Option two – your fence is too far away from your house. This means that you are expecting someone to mow your lawn! In practice this means that you are not taking enough responsibility for your stuff, or you are not recognising what is yours and what is not yours. When you move your fence a little further from the house you may experience some reaction from your own ‘parts’ or from the other person in the relationship. Remember, there’s a lot of history here. 

pink petaled flowers blooms near fence

Option three – your fence is too close to your house. This means that you are mowing someone elses lawn. In practice this means that you are expecting yourself to take responsibility for something that is not yours. Again, when you move the fence to the right place expect some reaction from your own ‘part’, which may expect you to keep doing what you have always done. Or the other person, who may well expect the same.

In this context we are thinking of the people in your life in terms of developing relationships. This involves some risk. When you put your boundary in the right place it could mean the end of that particular relationship. When you put your fences in the right places you will be changing the structure of your social life. It could mean difficulties at work. This is one of the main challenges of moving home.

Which rooms am I neglecting?

Remember when you designed your floor plan for your recovery building? Well don’t neglect this idea. You have a plan, now stick to it. Check your plan against your lived experience. Are you spending the right amount of time in the right rooms? Or are you tending towards the old building floor plan? Constant scrutiny on this will serve you well over time.

Am I building too fast or too slow?

black and white wooden board

I’ve touched on this in the ‘NORMALITY‘ Blog but just to underline it’s importance let me go over the main points. This is all about maintaining the level of challenge to yourself. In order to keep growing and developing you must keep the challenges to yourself at the right level. Not too easy but not overwhelming. In our metaphor we think of this as building too fast or too slow.

If you are in your second year of recovery but have not yet developed relationships with your close family or have not yet applied for that job etc etc. Then you are building too slowly. If you are in your first year of recovery and have started your own Company and hired dozens of people to work for you, then you are probably building too quickly.

Of course this is a general assessment and cannot take into account your personal abilities and history.

 

pink petaled flowers blooms near fence
black and white wooden board
couch near painting
chess pieces on wooden chess board
Normality!

Normality!

by | May 19, 2020 | A2R

The Ground Floor – Normal life

At this point I will assume that you have a solid and stable foundation. If you do not, don’t worry. Try to concentrate on the relationships inside any room that is unstable or weak and allow yourself to know what it is about that relationship that gives them that level of power over your life. As much as real life will allow you to avoid any substantial ‘building’ in this room. When you can say that it’s solid and stable, come back to this chapter and start the next stage.

The ground floor is all about ‘normal’ functioning and so can include all of the following:

 

  •         Some form of employment or attendance at school
  •         Paying bills or not ‘lending’ money that does not get paid back.
  •         Personal hygiene
  •         Getting your own place and looking after it
  •         Maintaining good relationships with work colleagues
  •         Shopping and nutrition
  •         Budgeting and saving
  •         Developing better communication skills
  •         Developing personal integrity

 

We define this floor as finished when we can say that we can;

 

“Function in society with family friends and colleagues

in a way that can be maintained and developed”

Normality

Before we go any further we need to take a look at possibly the most contentious word in this Chapter ‘normality’. What is it? Is it achievable? Is it even desirable? Well it is important that you know my answers to these questions. Normality is functioning in society without falling apart or spinning off into chaos. Your recovered self is going to live there! Yes and yes are my answers to the next two questions.

“But who can know what normality is”? I hear you say. As someone who has struggled with addiction I say you already know what normality is. You have spent so long being ‘abnormal’ you are actually an expert on normality! You may have spent years looking at ‘normal’ people. Maybe you rejected them as “too boring”. I know I did. The last thing I wanted to be was ‘normal’. But I was kidding myself. Secretly I wanted to be able to do all the things they were doing, but I couldn’t do them and when I tried I could not keep them up. Your ‘addicted self’ is always going to tell you that ‘normality is boring’ but your recovered self will know that normality does not hold back your creativity or your individuality.

The first thing we need to do is make a useful distinction between what is normal and what is conformity (I advise you to do this ‘distinction’ exercise a lot (ref)). You see what is average is not normal. It is simply a gauge to use. 

 

My favourite story about conformity comes from the Second World War. The American Air Force put a tremendous amount of work into measuring all their pilots to find the average size height and weight of everyone that was going to fly the jets. They did this to help them to design the perfect seat cockpit and controls. After many accidents and problems a young scientist named Daniels realised that no one was actually ‘average’. These seats that should suit everyone because they were the average of everyone but were suitable for no one! They could not find one average person!

So normality is not conformity to the average. Rather it is your ability to flourish when you engage with, react and respond to society’s rules and guidelines. This ground floor is all about developing your ability to manage yourself in a ‘normal’ environment. 

So average is just a useful term to compare yourself to. Not so you can be it (which no one is), just so that you can know yourself a little better and see that you are within certain parameters. Finally if you are still not sure about this ‘normal’ word, let me try one final question to see if I can tip you towards acceptance. As an ‘addicted self’ did you lead an abnormal life? Of course you did! Okay, I cheated, it’s two questions. How did you know it was abnormal? Good. Looks like we finally convinced you!

This is not easy. Everyone struggles with this at times. But the effort and commitment you put into this acceptance will pay dividends. It will promote better relationships and it will provide a platform for the next floor which is about pursuing your dreams. Most importantly it will develop your recovered self into maturity. It will help you grow up!

Building at the right speed

Your ground floor is built upon the foundation and conforms to the design of the rooms etc. It is at this point that one of our strongest ‘checks’ comes into play which is the idea of building speed. The reflective question is “are you building too fast or too slow”? Again this is part of developing your ‘recovered self’ and makes you responsible for your own thinking. Clearly building on an infirm foundation is going too fast but you are just as likely to be tempted to go too slow. 

What does too slow look like?

There are lots of ways that you may be building too slow. I will look at two very typical ones now. Being too safe and being too small. 

Being too safe

As an ‘addicted self’ you may have a history of chronic failure and this can often lead to ‘over building’. Ask yourself now “what size do you want your house”? If your ‘recovery house’ is going to be ‘normal sized’ and your aim is to live a normal life with a family and a job then there is no need to dig foundations for a skyscraper! When I see someone doing this I would be looking for someone who has not changed in a long time. I would look for ‘safe’ behaviour that is becoming ritualised. I would look for someone who was not challenging themselves to grow.

Being too small

Largely this type of thinking comes from a lack of distinction between your addicted self and your recovered self. I always ask my groups to put all ‘negative talk’ in past tense. This helps us to understand that things that were beyond us may not be beyond us now. Ask yourself now, if you have been living in a small tent and then move into a large house, would you still huddle down in a corner as if you were still in the tent?

When I see this type of thing it usually involves some level of shame or bullying in the parenting or the schoolyard. The addicted self is often carrying a legacy of ‘not believing in themselves’ that needs processing in some form of therapy.

What does too fast look like?

Again, for the sake of brevity I will look at two very typical ways of going too fast. There may be many others. Two very common ways I see this are ‘Building in the wrong order’ and ‘building badly’. 

 

Building in the wrong order

This idea of ‘order’ is so obvious when we place our recovery back in the metaphor of a building. Imagine turning up at the building site when they are still in a muddy field pouring concrete and trying to put up curtains! There is a natural order to building your recovery in the same way as a natural order to building a house. 

So the real purpose and function of the ground floor turns out to be a support for the first floor. It’s important that we look ahead and when we do, we see a first floor that is built upon this ground floor. As we start to look at the ‘higher’ level it will become clear that we cannot be up there without the support of the ground floor. So we might say that the function of the ground floor is to support the first floor. Let’s place that back into the context of recovery. The ability to live normally amongst others is the main support when we push forwards to higher goals. I can put it even simpler. There isn’t much point trying to open your own restaurant when you can’t hold down an assistant’s job at McDonalds!

Building badly

This is another way of saying “I’m frustrated because I should already have all this”. Or put another way “I’m not where I should be in life”. If this is your attitude and you have not fully accepted your condition and past you will probably go too fast and build badly.

If this is you then I advise you to stop building and consider talking more about your feelings of frustration at not being where you ‘should’ be. Let me use another example here to make this clear.

Adam

Adam is a typical addict and has been using for fifteen years. He has been ‘clean’ for six months. He is 30 years old. Before he got overwhelmed by his addiction to certain drugs he developed his own business and owned two homes, one of which he allowed his daughter to live in on a reduced rent. He drove an expensive new car and was heading to a very successful future. When I met him he was bitterly frustrated and resentful. He had lost his homes and his business. He was ‘clean’ but not recovered. He was in grave danger of attempting to build a ‘first floor’ before his ‘ground floor’. Picture now what a ‘first floor’ would look like built on a flimsy ground floor. Or worse still, levitating on nothing! 

Adam had some amazing skills and professional ability. He had built a good Company but he lacked basic skills and did not have the humility to develop them because he was not willing to ‘process’ his frustrations, but was intent in ‘acting out’ of them. He wanted to skip this step and go straight back to where he had been. What he needed to understand was that the fifteen years of his addiction were fifteen years when everyone else was learning from their mistakes and growing from their pain and disappointment, he wasn’t. 

That learning comes to a person over the next two to five years in a compressed form. 

So, imagine coping with fifteen years of learning in two years. One of the main reasons why it is so hard to recover and why you need to talk, talk, talk, and then talk some more! I often say that if a person in the first two years of their recovery is not talking regularly about their ‘stuff’ (at least twice a week) they are definitely not keeping up with their changes.

 

Building materials 

Building a house takes several different skills, such as brick laying, surveying, carpentry, plumbing and electrical, plastering and decorating as well as design skills and several different materials. Now is a good time to talk a bit more about resources.

Resources

When you try to do anything you need to think about resources. If you are building a house then you will need cement and bricks. Windows and doors. When it’s about your personal growth the resources are yours, not something you can go and buy. 

When I tried to recover they told me I had to change. Great! But how do I do that? When I looked into my ‘bag of resources’ I saw nothing but defects! They said I need to get ‘more honest’. But the closest thing to that I had in my bag was ‘dishonesty’. So my early efforts at being more honest were me just trying to ‘lie better’. They said I need to be more ‘giving’ and I redoubled my efforts at controlling people better. They said I needed to communicate better but in my bag there was only bullying, shouting, manipulation, hostage taking and running away. 

It is important to acknowledge the time it will take to develop these resources and that these are the things we build with. Again, these are ground floor skills and so must be developed before attempting first floor building.

Materials

One of the group sessions I enjoy the most is when we look at the idea of ‘materials’. This is what we will be using to build with and opening up this subject is one of the most fruitful and fascinating aspects of the groups work. I start by asking the group about ‘materials’. I often ask what materials they will use and typical responses are things like honesty, humility courage determination and education. In order to convince people they need to take these materials seriously I help them to make a connection between the quality of the materials and the overall quality of the build. I start talking about authenticity! Once you realise that your commitment to good principles will build somewhere that will not only stand the test of time but will be somewhere you want to live you will be on the right track. 

It is useful to ask yourself about how you may have skimped on these materials in the past and how you are going to build with better materials in the future. When asking about materials I often find how rich the building  metaphor is and the way it offers a clear picture of what is needed.

We can see that if the foundation is not solid and well planned the whole house will be shaky. Likewise we can easily see that poor quality materials in any aspect of the build will leave us with a poor construction. Knowing yourself and your past experience what materials do you feel are necessary and which have been the most expensive or rare. Cost is always a factor. When you are building your recovery, the materials you will use need to be of the best quality you can afford.

Communication – Direct and Indirect

Your ground floor is the part of the building where we learn how to engage with society in a ‘normal’ way. So that relationships such as those with work colleagues can be maintained without spinning off into chaos or degenerating into breakdown. This usually calls for better communication and so when looking at the quality of our building materials this is a big one and deserves some attention. 

My general approach is to encourage a shift from ‘indirect’ to ‘direct’ communication. Direct communication is defined as looking the other person in the eye and telling them the truth. Indirect communication is everything else. This idea follows the principle from communication theory that says that ‘everything is communication’.

I want you to try an exercise now that I often use with my groups. Once you understand the nature of this exercise you can apply it in all your relationships. This can be work colleagues partners or family. It can be something really simple like a tone of voice you often have or a ‘body language’ component. It could be a behavioural element like ‘shutting the cupboard door a little too loudly’, ‘rolling your eyes’, or ‘tutting’. It could be a facial expression or the phone call you didn’t make. The question I want you to think about is “if this thing you do could speak, what would it be saying to them”? When you see what you are trying to say, first of all accept that you have been ‘saying something without facing the consequences of saying it’. Now take what you have found and follow the process below.

1 Tell yourself what you really wanted to say when you communicated indirectly (even including the swearing).

2 Take the communication through the three filters of politeness, assertiveness and authenticity. 

3 Decide whether to communicate directly.

So let’s take this process one step at a time.

Step 1 We ‘translate’ our act of communication into a simple sentence. Now because we are never going to say this to anyone else we can start to be honest with ourselves but because we are new to this we need to realise that this is not easy, we need to concentrate and practice to make sure that we have got to the real meaning.

Step 2 is where we take our translation and filter out the things that make it difficult for us to say. We take out the offensiveness, next we take out the aggression, and finally we take out the falseness that can come in as part of the first two filters. So firstly we simply make it a polite message, by removing this we make our communication easier to hear. Next we make it assertive, it is important to understand that in communication terms telling someone to do something is ‘aggressive’, so this filter makes us the agent of change not the other. I will give examples of this at the end. The last filter is to really make sure that in using the first two filters we have not lost the main idea in the communication, in other words we keep it real.

Step 3 is about choosing whether to tell the person directly or not. Remember telling them is not always the best idea. We should take time to practice and get better at translation. Just understanding ourselves better  and learning what we are saying indirectly will be a huge health promoting activity.

Let me finish now with a couple of examples that should make this process more clear. You might have something like “stop BLEEP bothering me! You are always BLEEP going on at me”. So we have been honest and let ourselves know what it is we wanted them to know. Next we filter it. First we make it more polite and get something like “leave me alone, you never stop criticising me”. Next we make it assertive which takes it back to the ‘I’ position and we get something like “when you go on at me like that I feel got at and not good enough”. Finally we make sure it is authentic and we end up with “When you go on at me like that I don’t feel good enough and I want to ask you to leave me alone but I don’t know how to say it”.

Finally you need to decide if it is time to say this directly to the person in question, or if you should just reflect on this disclosure ourselves.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope it helped you to improve your self-knowledge. If you practice you will get better and it will tell you a lot about yourself and your relationships. This is the principle that we are taking into account at this stage

‘Psychological processes always work their way out’

As you build this floor you need to reflect on your changes in motivation and meaning. Does the room have the same aims and meaning for you at this stage as it did when planning or in the foundation stage?

Some ground floor questions to meditate on

DESIGN

Are you using every room as you designed it? (How you are spending your time and who with)?

Are you still happy with your original design? (Are you changing your ideas)?

RELATIONSHIPS

Which relationships are in need of some attention (how do you need to change)?

Which boundaries have slipped (what do you need to change)?

Are you checking your foundation in each room (Is this pace safe for you)?

COMMUNICATION

How are you changing your communication style?

What is the biggest block to your communicating well?

Are you developing a more direct communication style?

Which rooms am I communicating best in?

RESPONSIBILITY

In which way do you need to develop your sense of responsibility in relationships?

How well are you using your most valuable asset (your past) to develop your communication and relationships?

3             Materials – Recovery building materials are things like honesty, humility, courage. It is important to check the quality of these materials.

4             Structure – As part of design and build we should also check that all the rooms needed in this recovery are included in the structure, including relationship, family, career and hobbies etc. Always remembering the room for the self!

 Also included at this level are two important features, the garden (boundaries) and the gate/front door. The fence is used to look at boundaries and we remind participants that every boundary is particular to a relationship, and every boundary is movable. The gate and the fence represent very important parts of our metaphor and it is worth taking a short detour to explain the way we use these further.

Exits – the gate

In order to explain this I am going to have to mention brain chemistry! There, I said it. But don’t worry, I am not going into any detail, just to say that addicts have a particular form of brain chemistry that allows them to have ‘exits’. It is important when you work with addicts that you understand this and that you help the addict understand that they are open to all kinds of shame and low self worth because they expect to react like other people. I explain that they have a different brain which allows you to ‘exit’. Even if someone drank like you or take drugs like you they would not get the same effect that you get as an addict.

If you think of your (internal) life as a room then an ‘exit’ is just that, it is a door with a lit sign above it marked ‘EXIT’. Normal brains do not have an exit door, people with normal brains remain themselves even when drunk or high. Of course they can still be harmed by these things and will show effects of drugs etc but will effectively become a more drunken version of themselves. The addict however appears to metamorphose into a completely different person when drunk or high. As an addict you have an option of not being you for a while if your ‘room’ becomes too uncomfortable with resentment or fear piling up in the corner. This is taken to extremes when you ‘black out’. This can be a calm decision based on something like boredom or it can be a panicky decision based on fear.

So what happens? It seems like you have the perfect answer! Just take a holiday from being you every time difficulties come! Unfortunately this does not work long term and eventually the cure becomes worse than the disease. Like any medication there are always side effects. By the time addicts get into this state they are usually so addicted that it seems impossible to stop. There is so much habituated behaviour going on.

Boundaries – the fence

One of the strongest and most important parts of our model is the idea of boundaries. A boundary is described exactly the same as a property fence and as we all know it is an important part of everyone’s lives. As part of this course I use boundaries in their most basic form, incorporating only two ideas

1                     That every boundary is particular to another person

2                     That every boundary is either too close to the house or too far away

If the boundary is too close we say that we are ‘mowing someone else’s lawn’. If it is too far away we say that “they are mowing our lawn”! In other words we are taking responsibility for something that is not ours or we are expecting someone else to be responsible for something that we should be attending to. Either way these are

Some foundation level questions to use in group

DESIGN

Is this design truly yours or has someone else designed your building?

Are you building in the right area?

MATERIALS

Which materials do you value most?

Which materials have you tried to skimp on?

SOLIDITY

Have you included all the rooms you will need in your plan?

Which rooms are you most threatened in?

Have you planned your rooms correctly?

Are my boundaries in place?

BOUNDARIES

Do you have a history of building your fence too close or too far away from the house?

In which relationships do the boundaries need to be adjusted?

 

1                     Is this the best place to build?

2                     Are you building too fast, or too slow?

3                     What rooms will you have in your house?

4                     Are you designing your house or someone else?

5                     What building materials will you use?

6                     Do you know your boundary lines?

7                     How solid is your foundation?

8                     Which rooms are not solid?

9                     How secure is your gate?

 

by | May 19, 2020 | A2R

Normality!

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Building Recovery – Solidity and stability

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Building Recovery – Location

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Building Recovery – Cost

by | Jan 8, 2020 |

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Building Recovery – Your design

Building Recovery – Your design

by | Dec 27, 2019 |

Of the three most impotrtant factors when thinking about building your recovery - Design, cost and location. We could say that design is the one I see most often misunderstood, or left out altogether. Remember, if you do not design your recovery, someone else will!...

Building your ground floor

Building Recovery – Solidity and stability

by | May 1, 2020 | A2R

Okay. So you have looked at the challenges involved in your recovery. You have now considered the most important questions such as cost, location and design. We now need to think about starting the work of recovery. That means building a good foundation. Once we are sure that this building is your design, it’s in the right location and you are aware of and are willing to pay the cost of it, you are ready to start building.

There are further questions regarding this connected to boundaries, materials and rooms. But we’ll get to them later. The first and most important aspects of your foundation are solidity and stability and now is the time to understand them and construct them properly. Let me define what we are going to look at in this message.

Solidity is defined as an ability of your foundation to carry the weight of the building. So when you build on it it does not crumble! Stability is defined as the ability of your foundation to withstand unusual conditions such as storms and flooding. How well your foundation supports the building when the wind blows!

The importance of a good foundation

Let’s first acknowledge the most important thing about a building, every building. It rests or stands and relies upon a good foundation. If the foundation is not strong enough, the wrong size or not solid enough, the building will not stand! It does not matter how well you build the rest of the house. It will not matter how good the balcony looks or how stylish the curtains are. The whole thing is going to come down. So here is principle number One

Your whole recovery is going to rely on your foundation.

Build well don’t limit your recovery!

Now, there are two ways to make your foundation strong enough to support your recovery. Either you must make a thorough and solid foundation, or you must limit the size of your recovery! I want you to recognise this and choose the first option! Ask yourself this question, “do I want an authentic recovery, or do I want a limited recovery”? Authentic recovery brings the possibility of growth, success and fulfilment, a recovery limited by a weak foundation cannot grow!

Picture a large concrete foundation badly built with a small tent in one corner and you get the picture! Don’t limit your growth!

Before we go on to the details of how to build a proper foundation we should first define what we mean by this, what would a good foundation look like? Let me tell you how I define this. When you have built a good foundation you will be able to say this;

Nothing anyone can do or say can make me use or act out

And of course the reverse is also true. Nothing anyone does or says can stop you from recovering! It is so important that you start to own this project. At the planning stage you were thinking about doing something.

 At the foundation stage you are now making something! It is important that you now make it your own! It does not depend on others it depends on you. It is not owned by others it is owned by you. It is not maintained by others it is maintained by you. It is not designed by others it is designed by you! It’s yours!

That sense of ownership must now accompany you throughout the rest of your journey. Your foundation will be as good as your planning. Simply put your foundation is your abstinence, your clean self. It is on this abstinence that authentic recovery is built.

Abstinence is not recovery

So you can see from this that the foundation is hugely important! It is no small thing to achieve a good foundation! It is so great an achievement that there are some people that actually consider this foundation to be recovery! They would tell you that they have recovered because they have achieved this (usually accompanied by how long they have been ‘clean’), but I am defining it as only the beginning of an authentic recovery. If we stop there we have no house to live in, just something to stand on! I want to encourage you to build an authentic recovery. A recovery that includes the solid base to stand on, the house to live in and the possibility of growth towards the person you were always meant to be!

Let’s look at the challenge of constructing our foundation now and how it works. We will look at two big ideas, namely solidity and stability. We will also look at some of the peripheral issues of owning and building on our land, such as our boundary fence and our ‘gate’ or entrance/exit from our recovery.

Solidity – Where is your foundation weak?

Until we can say that ‘Nothing anyone can do or say can make me use or act out’ we are not ready to build anything on this foundation. It is the solidity question and it is always related to particular rooms (which you have named such as the ‘family’ room, career room etc.). We cannot build the ground floor until the foundation is completed and we cannot build the first floor until the ground floor is completed. I am risking repeating myself here but it is so important that you grasp the idea that there is simply no point in building further until you have a solid foundation. When using a metaphor like this these things are manifestly obvious but when applied to your ‘real life’ recovery the revelation can be shocking and powerful.

Stability – Building for the future

So how do we use this idea to reflect on our building? I want you to check out the definition of a completed foundation now. Relax and close your eyes once again. Picture your foundation. The concrete is poured the rooms have been defined by the foundation walls. Use your imagination now and allow yourself to walk around your foundation. Ask yourself honestly, is there anything anyone in this room could do or say that could convince me that using or acting out on my addiction would be a good idea? Is there anyone I meet in these rooms that has the power over me to make me use again? Is there anyone in these rooms that can hurt me enough to make me feel that I cannot cope with the pain? Is there anyone in these rooms that could remove their affection or themselves in a way that would have me using again?

I know that thinking about these things can be brutal and so I want to assure you that you do not need a perfect score at this point. It is not necessary for you to be invulnerable! But you must know where you are weak! Let me simplify this for you. Each time you realised that you are vulnerable to a certain person or a certain relationship it will have been in a particular room. So all we are saying is that you should not build on that part of the foundation yet. 

As usual a case example will help to clarify.

Steve – A typical case example

Steve is nearly a year ‘clean’ and is attending one of my groups. He is at the foundation stage. He goes through the exercise and discovers that he has no weakness in the family room. He has no weakness in the relationship room. But wait! He walks into the workroom’ and bang! He meets a couple of characters that can have him ‘using’ in a heartbeat. They have done it before. Steve has had attempts at recovery in the past although he admits that they were just attempts to ‘clear his head’

These two characters have both played their part in getting him back on the ‘stuff’. The first character makes him feel terrible about himself. He bullies and ‘takes the mick’ (aways in the name of fun but aggression is often justified this way). The second character is another typical ‘friend’ in an addict’s life. This is the guy that ‘uses a lot but does not seem to get worse. He can get you anything and always wants to score and ‘go for a few’. Steve has not been able to say no to this character in the past. 

So how do we proceed? Steve was advised not to build on this foundation. The other rooms are fine and we can progress to ‘first floor’ building but the work room is too shaky at the moment. In practice this means that it is not time for Steve to return to work yet (if he has a choice about that (in this case he did)). Steve was ‘signed off’ from work because of the addiction issues and this model helped him to understand and make sense of his journey, to construct it in a coherent way and to voice it in positive language. He could now choose not to build in this room. This brings in the function of ‘self determination’ (ref) which we will look at later.

How should Steve now proceed in this part of his foundation. He began some serious counselling work around his boundaries (ref) and his communication patterns (ref). Most of all he understood that his foundation was not completed and that solidity and stability must come before substantial building. Sometimes we will not have a choice about things like work and so in these situations I employ a principle that would certainly apply in something as difficult as building a house! The principle is this:

Difficulties are our best Teacher

As usual this can be easier to understand with an example I shall call Billy.

Billy – The sports professional

I have worked with many top professionals in sports, footballers and rugby players. As sports men and women it is easy for me to explain this idea using their experience of winning and losing. I asked Billy “which games do you learn the most from”? He answers without a pause “The ones we lose”! It’s very obvious isn’t it, but I continue to question because I want to establish the idea in Billy’s thinking. “Why is that, do you think”? “Because your weakness is exposed, you want to get better”. I could not have said it better myself. 

Billy understands that you learn almost nothing from the games you win. But the games you lose can be the most instructive. As long as you are willing to learn from them.

What have you learned about building

the foundation of your recovery?

So we can start to see how we can use the things that hurt us to grow. In the past you have naturally avoided the very things that can help you the most! Let’s remind ourselves now about the main features to consider when building your foundation.

1 S0lidity – There is simply no point building a foundation that will give way as soon as you start to build on it! Do not be tempted to rush into building too fast. Everything you build from now on will depend on the quality of this foundation.

2 Stability – The foundation must be stable in order to offer a place where you can live permenantly. Conditions will change! It will not always be sunny and calm. Storms will come and test the stability of your foundation severely at times. Don’t just build for the good times!

3 Materials – Building materials are important. The quality of the building is not just about your efforts. You also need good quality materials. Things like honesty, humility, courage, resilience and discipline. Commitment and sacrifice. It is important to check the quality of the materials you are using. Skimping on the quality of your materials is the fastest way to produce an unstable foundation.

4 Design – A good foundation is not just a random slab of concrete! Your design is ‘built into’ your foundation. Check that all the rooms needed in your recovery are included in the structural walls of the foundation, Including rooms for your relationship, family, career, hobbies etc. Always remembering the room for the self! Designing the rooms of your recovery building will help you identify where any weaknesses in your foundation are. 

Also included at this level are two important features, the garden (boundaries) and the gate/front door. The fence is used to look at boundaries and we remind participants that every boundary is particular to a relationship, and every boundary is movable. The gate and the fence represent ‘EXITS‘ in our metaphor and it is worth checking them out as part of your foundation building.