A blog by Dr. Harry Henshaw
Recovery: Drugs & Alcohol
What are you committed to in life, structure or chaos?
Sep 1st
This is a simple question to asks anyone whether they are in recovery or practicing transformation. What are you committed to in life? Are you committed to structure or are you committed to chaos? Your answer to this question is important. Regardless of what you say, the truth of your commitment will show up in your behavior.
If you are committed to chaos you will find life very difficult. You will also find doing recovery difficult, if not impossible. To be committed to chaos means that you will not do what you say you would do, you will be late for appointments, if you show up at all, will not complete on much of the work that you need to do to change or transform your life. Living life from the perspective of chaos will also allow you to take no absolutely no responsibility for your life, giving you the ability to blame others.
To be structured is to put order into your life. To be structured means that I will set up goals and take on accomplishing them through doing what I need to do. I will show up for my appointments and do what I say I will do. I will create a plan for my week, for my month, and then will go about making what I want happen. Structure lets me predict what will happen to me, as I am the one actively creating life, not being the effect of life. Creating the habit of structure will allow you to transform your life.
Positive Affirmations for Creating Healthy Relationships in your life.
Sep 1st
Positive Affirmations can be utilized for helping you to create healthy relationships in your life. What and how you think is that from which you source into your life. Practicing the positive affirmations listed below will help you to source positive relationships into your life.
1. I am loving, lovable and loved.
2. I accept others for who they are and who they are not.
3. I joyously forgive others and myself and I set myself free from the past. I am at peace.
4. I love and accept myself exactly as I am now.
5. I love. I am love.
6. I respect and care about others.
7. I am grateful for the people in my life.
8. I deserve love in my life.
9. I love everything about myself.
10. I attract loving relationships into my life.
Two ways to deal with Breakdowns in Recovery.
Sep 1st
One way to effectively deal with a breakdown or upset, especially if it is creating the urge to drink or do drugs, is to talk with another human being. Keeping an upset to yourself or keeping it up in your head is a receipt for disaster. Something negative will probably happen to your if you do not share what is going on with you. This is why it is important to create a support network of people you can call, sponsor, therapist or friends in recovery.
The second way to begin to effectively deal with an upset or breakdown is to take a look at what you are not accepting about the situation, people, places or things. Most if not all upsets and breakdowns are about having something happen that we believe should not have happened even though it did. Our work, and it is work, is to accept what happened, to eventually get it that everything happens in the way it is supposed to happen. Our work is to take that on as a possibility and in the work to accept fully what we did not once accept.
Positive Affirmations for helping with effects of surgery.
Sep 1st
Positive affirmations can help a person to deal with the consequences of surgery. Positive affirmations can assist a person is healing. Our thinking can help us to heal.
1. I am healthy and filled with energy.
2. My body restores itself now to its natural state of good health.
3. I am perfect, whole and complete.
4. Every cell of my body is healthy.
5. My body heals quickly and easily.
6. I love and accept myself exactly as I am.
7. I joyously release the past. I forgive. I am at peace.
8. I always take good care of myself.
9. My body is strong and healthy. I am strong and healthy.
10. I am grateful for my good health.
What we say to ourselves repeatedly and over time will tend to show up with us physically.
The Breakdowns that those in Recovery will eventually be confronted with.
Sep 1st
What are breakdowns? Experientially breakdowns start to occur when an event or events happen that the individual believes should not happen or ought to happen differently than how they take place.
As a result the individual starts to feel frustrated, angry, disappointed or even sad about what is happening in his life. Inside these types of emotions the person starts to become resentful, creating a story about the event and to which he will eventually begin to blame, be it other people, places, things, situations or circumstances for that which is appearing.
A breakdown eventuates into a relapse when the individual believes that his experience is intolerable, feels inadequate with respect as to how to handle it and chooses to use drugs or alcohol to reduce the emotional component of that he is experiencing. In this case, a breakdown and ones inability to transform the breakdown leads directly to relapse.
Positive Affirmations for Enhancing Self Esteem.
Sep 1st
The following affirmations can be used to enhanced positive self esteem.
Repeating them each day can help to improve what you think and feel about yourself.
1. I love myself.
2. I love everything about myself.
3. I love who I am.
4. I love my life.
5. I am perfect, whole and complete.
6. I love and accept myself exactly as I am now.
7. I always take good care of myself.
8. I love an approve of myself.
9. I am loving, lovable and loved.
10. I am love.
Recovery involves being able to deal with Breakdowns.
Aug 27th
Success in recovery, or rather, staying in recovery, is dependent upon a variety of factors. For example, it appears that attending daily NA or AA meetings and staying in communication with ones chosen sponsor will definitely assist an individual in successfully implementing his recovery plan. Getting and staying committed to working the 12 Step Program also appears to increase the probability of the person staying abstinent from drugs and alcohol. While the above-mentioned elements of a persons overall recovery plan are crucial to his recovery, another major factor that will greatly influence an individual’s continued abstinence is how he is able to handle the breakdowns that happen in life.
Knowing about breakdowns, what they are and how to manage them, is absolutely necessary for one to stay committed to his recovery plan. Breakdowns are what brought an individual into treatment and eventually created the space for him to begin his recovery. Breakdowns also happen while a person is in treatment and will continue to take place after he leaves. Even after successfully completing a treatment program, breakdowns are almost certain to happen as one returns to the community from which he came. In fact, both the client and his counselor should expect breakdowns to occur after treatment. It is for this reason that knowledge of the structure of breakdowns and how to transform them is very important if not crucial for the individual wanting recovery.
Positive Affirmations for Creating a Positive Body Image
Aug 27th
Positive affirmations can be of help to transform your life. Positive affirmations can also assist you in creating a positive body image.
1. I am perfect, whole and complete.
2. I love and accept myself exactly as I am now.
3. I love everything about myself.
4. i love and approve of myself.
5. I let go of the past. I ive life in and from the present moment.
6. I joyously forgive others and myself and I set myself free from the past. I am at peace.
7. My body restores itself now to its natural state of good health.
8. I always take good care of myself.
9. I have and maintain my ideal, natural and healthy weight.
10. I respect and always take good care of my body.
11. My body is healthy and filled with energy.
12. I have and maintain the weight that I want.
13. I am safe and protected at all times.
14. I can, I am able and I will. I always do my very best.
15. I am good enough just as I am.
You can transform your life with positive affirmations.
The Process of Saying Goodbye through Acceptance.
Aug 26th
It has been eight weeks now since my mother has passed. While I think of her every day that goes by, the process of saying goodbye is just that, a process. I am coming to accept, slowly as it may be, that she is gone and that I will never speak to or be with her ever again. While in many ways I do not believe that I have fully come to terms with what has happened, I am finding comfort in a concept that I was introduced to to in recovery, that of acceptance. My work is to stand in the space of acceptance.
While the process of saying goodbye is still painful it is assisted by accepting that what happened did happen in the way that it was supposed to happen. It was perfect, perfect cause it happened in God’s world. My work, as difficult as it may be at times, is about coming to terms with what happened, of learning to accept it fully, not make anything wrong about the process and knowing that it happened as it was intended to happen. Acceptance is about accepting that my mother passed in the way that she did and that it could not have been any other way.
Everyday is about saying goodbye to my mother, being gratitude that she brought me into the world, that she was there for me in so many ways and that she loved me without condition.
Ten Principles for Transformation in Recovery.
Aug 20th
The ten principles listed below can be of assistance to a person who is in recovery. While they are not to be confused as the actual work in recovery they will provide a frame or structure from which to do recovery.
1. To take complete ownership and responsibility for your life. Understand that you have created and chosen your life the way it is occurring. You are the cause of what you experience and your life.
2. Watch your word! Stay present to what you think and say. Choose to say positive things about yourself and others. What you think and say creates your experiences of how life will occur and be for you.
3. Practice your Self Affirmations and Possibilities everyday. Say your Self Affirmations and Possibilities in the morning, throughout the day and before bedtime.
4. What is your Intention? Plan your Intention each morning upon awakening and stay present to it throughout the day. What are you committed to today? What are you committed to now? What is it that you want to create in your life? What is it that you want to create now?
5. Develop your RECOVERY PLAN. Plan your work. Your RECOVERY PLAN is about your life. Your RECOVERY PLAN is about your Integrity. Integrity is the bottom line. Are you in integrity with your RECOVERY PLAN. Are you in Integrity with your life?
6. Develop your DAILY ACTION PLAN. Work your plan. Do it everyday! Your DAILY ACTION PLAN is about your commitment and integrity with respect to your RECOVERY PLAN. Your DAILY ACTION PLAN is about fulfilling on your intention and commitments. Your DAILY ACTION PLAN is about keeping your RECOVERY PLAN in existence!
7. Acknowledge yourself and others daily. Acknowledge the miracles in your life. Practice affirming that every moment of your life is a miracle.
8. Practice patience! Remember that you are doing the best you can. At the moment that we do we do the best we can. When you know more, you will do things differently. Do this in regards to others too.
9. Share with others what you are getting out of your recovery.
10. STAY HUNGRY FOR YOUR RECOVERY!