Recovery Process

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Dorena

What is recovery?

The dictionary definition of recovery is that it is a return to a normal state of health, mind or strength. Inherent in the word is the idea that you are getting something back. However, many people in recovery have never had a normal state of health or mind. Further, what is considered normal is not necessarily healthy.

These days recovery has come to mean something much more than recovering from an illness or addiction. Indeed, it is used to describe the process of reaching an optimal state of health, mind and spirit. For me the recovery process is the enlightenment processes. When I am in recovery, I am acting from my connection with source and I am reaching for greater balance, greater wholeness, and ultimate peace.

There are many important principles that form the recovery process for both substance use and other mental health disorders. Five critical principles are: 1) recovery is self-directed, 2) recovery is individualized and person-centered, 3) recovery is non-linear, 4) recovery is holistic, 5) recovery involves peers and allies.

Recovery is Self-Directed

Recovery is about achieving a personally fulfilling life. To this end, each person’s recovery must be directed by them. Any other approach would be nonsensical and doomed for failure. Each person’s must decide what they want out of life or a particular situation. Here are some steps that are useful.

Make a list of what you value. Include everything that is important to you.
Prioritize the list. What items are the most important to you?
Group together things that seem similar.

Make a list of things you want to achieve in your life.
What would your ideal day look like? Where would you be, who would you be with, what would you be doing?

Recovery is Individualized

Once you have a list of goals, you need to create a plan. Recovery isn’t a one size fits all type of program. What works for one person, may not work for another. Each person’s recovery plan is unique and personal. Everybody has their own way.

For reflection: “What is my way?”

The process of recovery involves learning who you are and what works for you. To assist self discovery and progress to the goal of abstinence, try listing situations from your past (even childhood) where you felt successful and fulfilled. Describe them in detail and then explore common themes.

What types of things were I involved in?
Who or what was I working with?
What was the end result?
How did I work? Did I use my hands, mind, etc.

This process of exploration will help you learn more about what truly and naturally fulfills you. Then turn back to your goals and consider the following:

What would you need to do to reach your goals?
Break this down into doable steps.
Determine if you could use outside help to do each step.
Identify helpers and recruit them.

Recovery is Non-linear

Understanding that recovery is non-linear is important to avoiding a good/bad attitude towards progress. Judging our actions as good or bad is not useful. It is more useful to discern actions that bring us towards recovery and our goals and those that bring us away from recovery and out goals. One way to grasp this is to do a “relapse plan”. This means to focus on one behavior you are changing and write out the step that would lead you back into that behavior. For instance, if you have decided to not drink alcohol anymore and theoretical individual relapse plan may look like:

Feeling great with absolutely no desire to drink.
Deciding to skip recovery meetings or recovery activities because busy at work and/or with family activities.
No getting enough sleep due to extra activities.
Deciding to not exercise because feeling tired.
Go to a family activity and get in an argument with a family member.
Leave the activity and want to just relax
Decide to have a glass of alcohol just to chill out.

Prolapse is the process of moving away from relapse. At any one time someone could take the relapse plan and make a different choice at any of the steps. For instance, at step four one might decide that they need to cut down on extra activities in order to get more sleep so they can exercise. They then might have time again to go to recovery meetings. The key to this is learning about how to be aware of what we are doing, why we are doing it and the consequences of those actions.

We may also have to practice surrender. In this case it may mean surrendering the extra work or activities and dealing with the loss that is associated with that letting go at the same time as being cognizant of the greater good we are achieving. Awareness of one’s goals is paramount, as is a greater understanding of the steps that take one away from recovery and the steps that take one towards recovery.

Recovery is Holistic

This brings us to the important principle that recovery is holistic and all encompassing. Once we enter into a recovery process to change one thing often means changing things in many aspects of our lives. Often we may find that some of our goals may conflict with other things. For instance, having that specific great job that provides stable income may not allow us three months off a year to do a silent retreat. We may have to choose between the two or recreate our life so that we have both.

The best way to see that our recovery impacts our entire being is to consider what triggers the behavior you are in the process of changing and what you would need to complete the transformation. For instance, many people list HALT (hunger, anger, loneliness, and tiredness) as triggers for using. To effectively reduce such high risk situations as HALT you would ideally change lifestyle things such as when and what you eat and how much sleep you are getting. You would also need to learn new cognitive processes to deal with anger and/or improve relationships. In addition, increasing support networks and learning how to really connect with people and/or a spiritual source is critical for coping with loneliness.

Exploring such a scenario puts recovery into perspective as a life-long project. Indeed, you may start with a small change in eating regularly and then realize that the coffee or soda habit is creating additional tiredness and sugar cravings. When you eliminate these you feel worse during withdrawal and then better after. Then you notice that other aspects of your diet are not optimal and you can focus on these.

Recovery Involves Peers and Allies

Finally, recovery cannot be done in isolation. It requires the support and assistance of peers and allies. This becomes clear once the extent of change that is needed for a person to reach a fulfilling life is realized. In addition, the recovery process is a more enjoyable journey when walked with peers.

Review you list of goals
Determine ideal level of help you need to reach each one.
Identify helpers.
Who or what serves as an impediment to reaching the goals?
Plan to recruit the aid you need.

Recovery is a life-long self-directed process that is unique to each individual. The process tends to be non-linear and involves all aspects of a person’s life. As such, the process of recovery and reaching ones highest potential and self-fulfillment involves multiple people that serves as support and guides.

V for Vendetta

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Dorena

V for Vendetta portrays an aspect of spiritual development that is frequently overlooked and rarely embraced. In many traditions, both Hindu and Buddhist, there are fierce deities that perform the job of removing obstacles. Two such fierce babes are Kali and Ekajati (Blue Tara). Some of the many obstacles that these two remove are complacency and deep seated fears and addiction.

If that little bit of wine you take at dinner every once in awhile keeps you comfortable and not growing spiritually, then they can create circumstances that turns that into a devastating addiction. Or if your great job and comfy home has lulled you into inaction, Kali or Ekajati will be glad to take that job away for you.

In V for Vendetta Natalie Portman, our lead star, has suffered from anxiety most of her life, probably due, in part, to losses she experienced as a child. Then through torture and trial she overcomes the greatest fear (fear of death) and becomes free. It might have been thought she did not have what it would take to withstand her circumstances and stay in integrity, but she did. And through her strength of will she tapped into an even stronger and more eternal sense of self.

It is when we lose attachment to things and then finally ourselves that we achieve true freedom. As long as we are acting from fear of any sort we are chained. As my favorite quote of the week says:

…swept along on four fierce river currents, chained up tight in past deeds, hard to undo, stuffed in a steel cage of grasping self, smothered in the pitch-black ignorance.

Je Tsongkapa (Three Principle Paths)

Natalie’s liberation came because of a choice she made. Eventually, due to that choice, and the actions that followed she was able to realize a cessation of fear. This absence of fear (a major mental affliction for many of is) means that she actually realized a greater truth about who she is.

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Tooth Decay

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Dorena

It doesn’t look like much, but here is a close up of the gold inlay filling that just “fell” out of my mouth. It was put in about 20 years ago.

I’ve been losing parts of my teeth over the years. I used to have quite a reaction to this. I’d get all worried and desperate. This time after only a moment’s perturbation, I wondered if it fell out because my teeth were beginning to regenerate and no longer needed it. I was quite pleased with the thought.

Here is a picture of the space left behind. Doesn’t look like much, but it feels like a huge gap. The low area has a sharp ridge to it that I keep running my tongue across. You can see that next to the hole where the gold inlay was is a mercury amalgam filling from my childhood.

I Space in tooth left behind when gold inlay fell out. (November 1, 2014) Notice an older mercury amalgam filling remains in the tooth.

So what am I going to do? I decided right then that I was going to stop and reverse any tooth decay. This motivated me into action. I immediately went online and googled “How to heal a broken tooth naturally”. That lead me to a blog site and then to this book: Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition. I’m still studying the problem and solution, but it seems that what I need to do is eliminate phytic acid from my diet. There are a lot of testimonials on Amazon about how effective this diet is.

The book also goes into the rationale behind the diet and talks about holistic dentistry. I was especially interested in the author’s opinion regarding mercury fillings since I have several from childhood. Actually, the author is not opinionated at all. He gives the facts, explores the pros and cons, and lets the reader decide on a course of action. I’m still in a wait mode when it comes to removing the fillings. I think I have a mercury resilient phenotype.

My diet is pretty close already to the one recommended. In addition, I was already gearing up to eliminate my favorite sugar source, dried fruit, because I thought they might be causing cravings. However, dietary changes can be challenging, so I decided to call my mom to fortify my motivation.

I asked her, “Mom, how much have you spent on dental work in the last couple years?” Well, last year she bit into a dried mango and the tooth her bridge was attached to broke. That was $5,000 to repair. The year before she had gotten extensive restoration work done to the tune of $12,000.

$17,000. That was good enough for me. I do not want to spend $17,000 on my teeth. She also has osteoporosis, a condition that would also benefit from the dietary changes I was considering. Further, changing my diet is alignment with my idea that I should eat to live, not live to eat.