An Idea Whose Time Has Come

I used to have as low a level of self-esteem as I think one can have and still maintain life. When I realized what self-esteem was, and when I realized I lacked it, I went in search for it. [cue "Lookin' for Love in All the Wrong Places" (Mickey Gilley)].

I thought I had found it in a bottle. It didn't last. I thought I had found it in sex. Again, it wasn't real and it didn't last. I found it in new jobs, and it wore off along with the honeymoon period. I once had a hefty sum of money - didn't do it for me (maybe because the money wasn't mine?). I looked for it in prescription medication. I looked for it everywhere, including not drinking. I went to counseling - lots of it. I successfully completed parole - felt good, but the feeling didn't last. I love playing piano, but if that actually gave me self-esteem, I'd be practicing a lot more than I do. Same with writing. Same with education - 168 college credits, and debt I'm still paying today, with no degree, no self-esteem.

When I wasn't trying to gain self-esteem through the various methods listed above, I covered up my lack of it through false pride and arrogance. God, I used to know it all, and I let people know I knew it all too. The problem (or maybe the good thing) is that that, too, didn't work forever. 

Three years ago, when I ran my own business, I remember realizing, for the first time in my life, that I could support myself. I had the skills necessary to do that. It was really nice to realize that. I don't think I realized it deep enough at the time, or perhaps that was just a taste of what was to come.

When I began my recovery, I knew that I would have to be true to myself, and I knew that I had to learn how and then take responsibility for my life. Actually, I knew this stuff in my head a long time ago, but 2-1/2 years ago, I really knew it deep down - enough to begin to take action. So when I was discharged from Genesis House and got a room on my own, I endeavored to make my top priority (regarding my finances) my rent and paying back money to my friends and former customers. I began living within my means. After a relatively short time of living within my means, and starting to really take responsibility for this life, I began to notice a strange new feeling emerge. It was a good feeling, but it wasn't euphoria. It was kind of a motivating feeling, almost like pride, but not quite. I felt good about myself and the way I was living. I felt more 'solid'. I did not know what this feeling was, and at alumni group one evening at Genesis I reported this feeling and wondered if anybody could help me name it. The counselor said, "It's called self-esteem." Wow.

Self-esteem has it's levels - it's not an on/off thing - it fluctuates. But I've been noticing some things over the past year happening to through me that I didn't ask for specifically. I began valuing the people in my life, and people in general, a lot more than I used to. I began respecting my jobs - meaning that I came to work prepared, and I wasn't just there to put in my 8 hours. I began to become interested in ethics and boundaries, and began following them, even when I was tempted not to. Weird stuff like that. I used to be honest and ethical when it suited me, or when I had nothing better to do. Now I do it all the time the majority of the time.

In the process, somewhere along the line, I began to really value my gifts, and value myself as a human being. Again, it used to be that if I received a compliment for something I had done or for a particular trait, I passed it off. Either the person giving the compliment was crazy and didn't know what they were talking about, or I felt inside that I had fooled them, or maybe they were just being nice. Nothing that was ever said good about me was real. Now it it's becoming real. 

Today for work I went to a meeting in Janesville with others who are engaged in the kind of work we do at work. (That's actually less cumbersome than trying to explain the whole thing in detail). I gave a 30 minute presentation on "The Role of the Certified Peer Specialist [that's me 😊] in the PATH Program." It went well. But I came away from today really really feeling like I belong in what I'm doing. I did not feel fake, I did not feel arrogant, I did not feel untrue to myself. I felt that solid feeling inside that comes from doing what is mine to do, and knowing that I have inside of me what I need. More self-esteem. 

And since true self-esteem does not come from doing harm to others, or from trying to make myself big, it is lasting, and it increases. The more I operate from my True Self, the more I operate from my True Self. Make sense?

So today's topic/point is not self-esteem - self-esteem is the example. Today's topic is "Everything in my life (and creation) begins with a thought." However, since I've been writing a long time, I'll make this quick.

Decades ago, I realized I had no self-esteem, and thought to myself, "I gotta get me some of that shit." (I used to be a lot cruder). And I held onto that thought - I didn't let it go. At some level, it was always with me, and though I sought after self-esteem very unskillfully, I began to arrive there. When we have a deep desire for something, it gets fulfilled. That's the way the Universe works. We live in a 'Yes' Universe. After a while, hopefully, we become a bit better skilled at requesting things, and at receiving. Really, 30 years ago, I didn't even know what I was asking for. 

Another Truth of the Universe (and the Wizard of Oz) is that everything we seek is already within us. I was born with self-esteem, because when we're born, we know where we come from. I un-learned self-esteem pretty early on, and it was a long and circuitous journey to get back to even the outer borders of it. I feel like I've entered a new country.

Seek and ye shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened unto you [attributed to Jesus]. Doesn't necessarily mean today, but it's there. 

Enjoy the journey!

Namaste,

Ken

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

Stigma

This is a discussion board post I wrote for one of my classes. The question was how do I think society views mental illness?

As a whole, I do not believe that society views mental illness as a brain disorder. There is much stigma and lack of understanding surrounding mental illness. I like what my colleague says when speaking about mental illness: "It's ok to have a heart disorder - we call that heart disease - or a pancreas disorder - we call that diabetes; why is it not ok to have a brain disorder - mental illness?"

Mental illness as a medical disorder/disease is a relatively new concept for humankind. Centuries past, mental illness was often viewed as demonic possession, and treated as such, usually by exorcisms or 'laying on of hands', depending upon your religious flavor. These methods of treating mental illness have not shown great success. Therefore, to have a mental illness is to feel isolated and defective; the degree to which one who has mental illness feels this shame depends upon their gender and culture of origin. For instance, many more women are treated for depression than men; yet, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, "Men die by suicide 3.5x more often than women," and "White males accounted for 7 of 10 suicides in 2015." (https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/) Men are less likely to seek help for depression because, I suppose, it is not manly to feel chronic low self-esteem, experience a decreased inability to function and to enjoy life, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. Men are expected to 'man-up'.

We are all familiar with the person living with schizophrenia who roams the streets, mumbling to herself or shouting out at imaginary figures. Those folks, most of us will say, have a mental illness, or at the very least, they're 'crazy'. How many of us, however, think that there's anything that can be done? How many of us have friends or family who we know are in recovery from schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder? These folks are roaming the streets too! With the advances in treatment of all mental disorders and mood disorders, many people who are affected by these disorders are able to live relatively normal lives. But because we don't see them much or hear from them, we're not necessarily aware that these people in recovery exist. We only become aware of mental illness when we see the guy on the street shouting, or hear of a murder/suicide or an office shooting on the news. This negative publicity and stigma inhibits people with lived experience of mental illness from sharing their experience.

A very important aspect of mental illness in the United States is that we still are more apt to treat mental illness with incarceration. Because the symptoms of mental illness are often disorderly (and occasionally violent) behavior, our society locks people with mental illness behind bars. I can vouch for the fact that jails and prisons are not conducive to mental health recovery, so as a society we are mis-treating mental illness. However, if the person whom we don't know how to deal with is safely out of sight, they are also safely out of mind.

Fortunately, the tide is turning, albeit slowly. More people are experiencing greater recovery from severe mental illness, and these people, me included, are open and honest about their experiences. It took me nearly half a century to acknowledge and accept all of my mental health issues, and I could not fully recover until I did. I now share my recovery with others through speaking, writing, facilitating support groups, and working 1:1 with my peers. If I did not share with you that I live with 2 mental illnesses, you would not know it; yet I manage my illnesses every day through medication, therapy, support, and practicing healthy life skills. The more people who are in recovery share their stories, the more mental illness will be treated successfully, and the less people will suffer and die. 

Namaste

Ken

Designed for Success

An affirmation I learned while I was affiliated with Unity goes, "I am God's enterprise, and God doesn't fail."  It's kind of catchy, but I didn't take it to heart - it required more faith than I had at the time.

As many of my readers (3 or 4, at least) know, I recently took the plunge again (God no, not marriage!) and enrolled in school. I was getting cold feet toward the start of classes. I went to orientation, and one of my instructors explained how the blended options program in which I'm enrolled works.

A few days later, I realized that the program is designed for the student's success - why would a school set students up for failure? And then I realized that my idea of school is much like the old TV series with John Houseman called The Paper Chase. In it, John Houseman played a crusty old law professor (and he played it well), whose aim seemed to be to make it really, really difficult for his students to succeed. That was my belief, that schools make it really hard to do well. Of course, that doesn't make sense, but beliefs that run in our subconscious don't need to make sense.

Back to now. I realized, then, that all I have to do is follow directions, follow the program. I can do that! The only thing stopping me is me! 

When I go on long bike rides, my head often tells me I can't do it. It's too hard. I won't make it. When that happens, I switch to what I call physical mode - I know all that I have to do is keep my legs moving, and so that's all I do - I concentrate on the movement of my legs. And this is the truth - if I didn't have a mind that makes up excuses and runs off of doubt and self-centered fear, I could do a lot more - maybe anything!

So, as I began to think about all I've heard and read and learned, I realized that the human being is designed for success. The reason we don't experience unbridled success is we've created something called doubt and fear. All of the 'what if's' and 'I don't know if I can's' distract us from focusing on success.

When doubt comes about my ability to successfully complete school, I tell myself, all I have to do is follow the plan. What would happen if I used that same psychology or philosophy in every area of my life? That I am designed for success, and any thought that comes along that is contrary to this idea should be discarded immediately.

I might have mentioned this once or twice before in some of my posts, but most of my life I have felt and believed myself to be less-than, to be not good enough, and to be incapable of success. That's just Ken. But who says? I haven't found anybody in recent times that has told me I can't do something, that I'm incapable, that I'm not good enough. So I think it's time to discard the old Ken suit, and put on a new one. According to many faiths, I am the spitting image of my Creator, which means that I automatically have all the attributes of my Creator - just like I cannot deny the fact that I am my father's son, because I look just like him (I used to think I was adopted. No such luck).

One really good way to see the best in myself is to see the best in others. And I am practicing that (note the word practicing). When we uplift and encourage others, we uplift and encourage ourselves. Jesus claimed that to be the Truth when He said, "Seek, and you will find." A better way to understand that in our vernacular might be "Whatever you look for is what you're going to get." If I look for sickness and failure, I'll surely find it. And if I look for courage, strength, health, creativity, success, in others, and myself, I will surely find that as well.

Today I commit to setting aside doubtful, fearful thinking, and replacing it with visions of success in whatever I do. 

Namaste,

Ken

Always Hopeful

An essential ingredient in recovery is hope. Without some flicker of hope, recovery cannot begin. People who struggle with addiction and/or mental illness often spend years struggling alone before receiving any kind of help. We know that something isn't right, and we look for ways to make things right again. Often our struggling serves only to mire us deeper in our illness.

Most of us begin recovery after losing all hope of ever finding a solution on our own. It takes a lot of pain, a great amount of courage, and a huge amount of desperation to go to someone and say, "My life is out of control and I don't know what to do. Please help me." This is the general idea; usually, it's not so neatly packaged. Our journeys into recovery often involve police contact or time in locked wards. Rarely does one wake up and say, "I think I'll check out a recovery meeting today," or "Perhaps I'll make an appointment with a psychiatrist to help me overcome these suicidal ideations." Usually, it's the drama our unmanageability creates that pushes us toward those that can help.

After some time in recovery, we realize we were trying to fix what was broken (our brains) with what was broken. We gain hope when we see others who were in the same boat as us leading their lives without the interference of their disease. We gain even more hope when we begin living in the solution handed to us by our peers.

And then we find the greatest hope generator of them all - we share our experience, strength, and hope with others whose lives are spinning out of control. This is certainly a huge blessing, because we need to do things to maintain recovery, at least for those of us who don't pop back to 'normal' once our disease(s) is arrested. We work with others, we speak, we write, we put our recovery out there for others to see. This strengthens our hope of continued recovery.

However, (there's always 'however'), something can happen in the course of our sharing that might diminish our hope - the intended receiver of our gift doesn't receive it in the way we think they should. This can take many forms - a person gets hope for their own recovery, but chooses to use a different vehicle (recovery support group) than you, or they choose to try to recover on their own. Sometimes they die.

"We will never give up hope" is one of the guiding principles of NAMI support groups. I have experienced some dark moments in recovery - moments in which my hope for myself or for someone else (and sometimes for the whole planet) has been diminished, always due to my perception that some situation is hopeless. And what I'm really saying when I say something is hopeless is that I can't see the solution. I often, perhaps daily, remember back to the start of my recovery. Now that was hopelessness! I couldn't see my way out of a paper bag, and that actually turned out to be a good thing - it meant that I became willing to accept the vision, the hope of others. And through following the vision of others, I began to see results - I began to feel and act differently, and new opportunities opened up for me. Where I am today is miraculous compared to where I was a little over 2 years ago. 

So, in order to sustain and even grow my own hope, I hold the vision of hope for others who may not have much hope, or even none at all. We do not have to die from our mental illness. We do not have to die from our addiction. We can not only survive, we can thrive.

Underneath the situations, underneath the circumstances, underneath the illness is a human being, a human being created with the same stuff that created the Universe. So we look past the circumstances and we see the human, meet and greet the human, and make a connection. We say, "No matter what diagnosis you have, no matter what roads you have traveled, you are here now, and I recognize both the human and the Divine in you. I see you. And we are connected." And when we can spot the human and the Divine and acknowledge it and begin to focus on it, healing begins, and hope is renewed. To be a part of someone else's healing is perhaps one of the greatest blessings of being alive.

To you who might be reading this, if you feel your hope waning, give away what little you seem to have. Pass it on to the next person, and you will receive twice back (at least) what you just gave. 

Namaste,

Ken