A blog by Dr. Harry Henshaw
Posts tagged possibility
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.
Creating Life from the Possibility of Acceptance.
Jul 25th
One of the most powerful of principles is that of acceptance. Acceptance creates possibility in your life. For me acceptance is the key to recovery and transformation. It is that from which we experience of sense of serenity and peace, and with it our power as human beings. Without acceptance we are at the mercy of life happening.
Below is one of the most powerful passages that exists. The passage on acceptance comes from the Big Book, page 449 in the third edition and 417 in the fourth edition.
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober, unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.”
The conversation of being inauthentic and recovery.
Jul 15th
One of the goals of counseling is to help a person become authentic. One of the goals is to help others see where they are being inauthentic in their lives, in one or more domains of their life. The work of becoming authentic helps a person to get unblocked thereby allowing them to move forward with the things that they want to create. Being authentic requires a person to give up the pretense of life and to let that which has been hidden to be revealed to others and in some cases, to the world.
For a person in recovery the process will be the same. Many individuals in recovery live inside a way of being that uses pretending as one of the defense mechanisms. Putting forth the image or perspective that things and themselves are a certain way, and hiding what is true from others, is how a person in active addiction moves through life. Create pretense and repress the truth. The counselor’s role here is to help a person shave that which has been hidden and to take full ownership of it. It is only from this admission that the possibility for change and transformation can take place.
Taking suggestions is one of the keys to recovery and transforming your life.
Jun 8th
Our tendency is to continue in the direction that we are headed. Our tendency is to continue in the direction that we are headed unless something happens that will create a necessity to alter our chosen path. Once we pause to contemplate the direction that we are headed and begin to consider a possibility our life we do enter a space of true change and transformation. For us to utilize the insight that is generated from this space will require that we seek the assistance of another person, of another human being. If we do not seek the assistance of another person our tendency will be to get back into the habitual way of being from which we came, that created our current life situation. This requires that we communicate with another person and allow that individual to help direct us, to assist us in our journey. No recovery or transformation takes place unless we communicate with another human being. To gain the benefits of this communication requires that we take suggestions from another human being.