The Value of Hanging In There (Pain Part III)

Recently an acquaintance voiced their frustration about not being able to find a suitable job. My response, which I don't think was taken very well, was, 'Hang in there.' I think it wasn't taken well because it was viewed as a platitude rather than a piece of good advice.

I didn't have a lot of time or space to give the full 'Hang in there' story, so I'll do it here. 

Perhaps one of the best pieces of advice I've received about early recovery is this - early recovery can really suck (situation-wise), but if you hang in there, it will get better. If you don't, it won't.

So here's my early recovery story (which is in other places in this blog, too, at least in bits and pieces):

When I began recovery I was homeless, jobless, penniless, and owed lots of people money. This is not, by far, a unique situation; however, it still sucks. So I'm staying at the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army in Waukesha is one of the best shelters I've ever been in, and I've been in quite a few. But it's still a shelter. After a couple of months, I landed a part-time, low paying job at a non-profit second-hand merchandise retailer. I know that a job is a job and having one will often lead a person to better things. During this time, the head counselor at Genesis House, from which I had graduated 2 years previous, invited me to stay there for 1 month. It was a better place than the shelter, and I ended up staying there 6 weeks. I then found a room in a rooming house. I had been inside it once before - I'd helped a friend move into it - and I said I'd never live there. Oh well. The place was dingy and dirty and looked like it should burn down at any minute. It was filled with addicts and alcoholics and people on disability. But it was a place to stay. Before I moved into the rooming house a friend suggested I apply at his place of employment, and I did. I got the job, a full-time job at a little better pay, after I moved into the rooming house. Now, the rooming house was cheap, so I endeavored to pay back the people to whom I owed money. I got most of them, but it took a while. And during this time, I rode the bus or bicycled to work (I actually walked twice), and I got rides to recovery meetings. I lived in that rooming house for about 1-1/2 years. Then I moved to another rooming house, one that was a little bit nicer. During this time, I began working part-time at Genesis House (after I had 1 year of sobriety) and I began volunteering and eventually working part-time at NAMI, my current full-time employer. I began working full-time at NAMI 19 months into my recovery. After another two months, I was able to purchase a used car. One of the things I had to do in order to secure a decent place to live was to satisfy an eviction judgement from 3 years prior, for about $1400. I did that at about 18 months into recovery, I think. 3 months ago, I moved into my own 2 bedroom apartment with a year lease. That was after 26 months of recovery.

This is what I mean by hanging in there. At any time I could have given up. I could have said, "This is bullshit," or "F#%k this shit," or whatever we say when we think we're not getting a fair shake from life, and gone backwards into active drinking again. But I didn't. I did the "two steps forward, one back" dance for over two years. And it wasn't always fun and was rarely comfortable. But it was never as bad as the pain from which I came.

And along the way I gained self-esteem, I built character and integrity, and I paid back lots of people. These things cannot be taken from me. They're part of who I am today. 

So, when someone laments that their job sucks or their living situation sucks, and I say "Hang in there," this is what I mean. 

Namaste,

Ken

Listening to Pain - Part II

I recently survived a very painful experience. The short version is that due to having too many things on my plate I wasn't taking very good care of anything in my life, including myself. I got to the point where I felt very overwhelmed, I felt like a complete failure, and I wanted to drink or kill myself. 

I'm familiar with that pain - I've been there before. A lot. Something was different this time - despite the way I felt, I felt something more deep down. I felt a connection to the life I have today - my recovery, the people I have in my life, the things I'm doing. I knew deep down that what I was feeling wasn't really the truth about me.

So, I quit school. I did talk with a confidant before I did that. The reason I quit school is because it's not really necessary right now, and it was the activity in which I was not honoring my integrity. I was doing school like I used to do school - skimming the surface, not really learning, but just doing enough to get by. That's the way I used to live my life, and I know today it's the main cause of depression for me. The way my program at school was set up, I couldn't just take a break; I had to get out. I baffled my two instructors, because they were very pleased with the work I had done so far - I'd received perfect scores on everything. Yet I wasn't ok with the work I was doing, and more importantly, I wasn't okay with me.  It's imperative to my recovery that I live in a manner that I'm ok with.

And after I quit school, most of the pain went away. Now I'm not really sure if I did the 'right' thing, and I'm not even sure there is a right thing; however, I know that I did something to stay in recovery, and, right now, that's the important part. The one thing I did right in this instance was treat my recovery like it is the most important thing in my life, which it is.

The pain was there all along (this is the start of the longer story). It starts with the thoughts, which lead to anxiety. Prolonged anxiety leads to depression. One of my challenges is self-discipline - I'm still a novice at that. So I didn't have a lot of self-discipline surrounding my school work. Eventually what self-discipline I did have unraveled, and I was doing next to nothing to take good care of myself. And I knew it. There has to be in my life a foundation of recovery, and I had let that foundation erode.

The pain I was experiencing was warning me that I was getting farther and farther out onto thin ice. It spoke to me in a way that I listened. I'm still a little in pain, because I have to repair my foundation; but I'm not in the kind of pain that makes me want to escape or die.

Sometimes we see recovery as two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes it is that way. That's why recovery can be frustrating, and why some people don't make it. It's not all rainbows and lollipops - it's a lot of hard work and character-building experiences. The way to make it easier is to listen to each of these experiences and learn as much as I can from them. 

And that's how pain can be my friend and my teacher today, rather that something to be avoided and shooed away when it shows up on my doorstep.

Namaste,

Ken

Listening to Pain - Part I

I have the great good fortune of being a tiny bit wiser than I used to be. I say this in all modesty, because much, if not all, of the success I enjoy today is not my fault. It's simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and the only thing I can really take credit for is keeping my eyes and ears open and being willing to learn.

One of the things I've learned is that pain is important in life. Pain has a purpose - it's purpose is to say quite loudly to us, "Hey, something's wrong!" It's like those strips on the sides of the freeway that make a lot of noise and shake our car when we're not paying attention and start driving off the road -  "Hey, wake up and straighten your wheel!"

We I don't know about you, but I seem to live in a society in which pain is to be avoided and gotten rid of as quickly as possible when it appears. I don't like pain, and most of my life energy has been spent either trying to alleviate pain or avoid pain. If you've been following this blog at all, you know that this tactic has not worked very well for me. To put it very succinctly, my practice of avoiding feeling pain has fueled my addiction and my mental illness. In all fairness to me, I must say that much of the time I didn't know any better. I thought I had found some pretty neat ways to get rid of the pain that appeared in my life. What was really happening, however, when I tried to 'get rid of' the pain in my life was that I was pushing it forward. I keep thinking of a snow plow pushing snow out of the way and creating a huge mountain of snow. That's what happened to me - I came to a point in my life where I couldn't push the mountain of pain I had been creating any more, and I had to deal with it. The tools and tactics I used to use for pain removal no longer worked. My plow was dead, and I had to start using new tools to deal with my pain.

The very first thing I learned about dealing with pain skillfully is I don't have to can't do it alone. You might have read me writing once or twice before that we live in a connected universe. None of us, me included, really live alone or live in a vacuum. We might suffer the illusion that we do, but we really don't. My air is your air; my sunlight is your sunlight; my pain is your pain, and, your pain is my pain. You may not feel my pain as much as I feel it, and I may not feel your pain like you feel it; however, it is shared. So, if I want to deal skillfully with my pain, somewhere along the line I will have to share with someone else that I am in pain. I need to expose it, to admit it. I need to let the light in on my pain. I have to admit that it is there. 

The second thing that I need to do in order to skillfully deal with pain is to begin to understand that pain is my friend. (It might as well be - it seems to have accompanied me my whole life!) Pain lets me know that something I'm doing or something I'm experiencing is not good for me and needs to change.

     I'm going to take a moment here to mention an 

     exception that I learned in yoga - the pain that I 

     feel when I stretch and grow is ok - the dull pain 

     I feel when I'm stretching and strengthening my 

     muscles is good - the pain I need to listen to in 

     exercising is any sharp pain - that's the pain that 

     says, "Don't do that!"

As I accept that pain is my friend, I stop attacking it or avoiding it. I begin to listen to it and learn from it. "What are you trying to tell me?" I can learn a lot from pain if I can sit with it and listen to it rather than trying, through various methods, to ignore it or get rid of it.

And then comes dealing with it. I don't deal with the pain! I try to find out what caused it, and then change or heal the cause. Sometimes pain is caused by a specific fear. Sometimes pain can be caused by a habit that no longer serves me. Sometimes pain is caused by something that I need to face within myself that I've been avoiding. And again, I don't have to do it alone. By now in my recovery I have people in my life whom I trust, and who are willing to support me in my recovery. And I support others. Again, this whole life thing is not just about me, it's about knowing my connectedness  with the whole. That means I have to give as well as receive. 

Thus endeth Part I. Part II will deal with a recent experience with my friend Pain.

Namaste,

Ken