recovery

Learning emotional literacy

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When I started my journey of recovery, I understood two emotions: ANGER and FEAR. That was it. As I’ve progressed on my journey to emotional sobriety, my emotional literacy has expanded dramatically. I no longer live in a world of concrete, black or white thinking where there are two ends of the spectrum that I swing between. I live in a world now of nuance, of understanding that ANGER and RAGE are two different experiences, of recognizing the difference between SERENITY and PEACE.

Several weeks ago, I was working on the Sixth and Seventh Step on letting go some old coping behaviors from my childhood (the AA literature refers to them as character defects). I found myself searching on Google for words to describe what I was feeling – there was new depth to the experience and I felt the need to get as granular as I could. As I worked my way through that process building out the list of maladaptive coping strategies in my journal, I realized that such a list might be helpful to others. So, I am posting it here.

As I started to write this, I realized that I probably should be working on truly comprehensive list of the healthy coping skills I want to develop and all the feelings on the assets list. This will be my next endeavor as seeing myself and my life through a positive lens is significantly more challenging for me.

I hope this compilation helps you. Let me know if there are additional feelings or behaviors that I should be adding to this document!

Defects-Assets March 2025Download

Appreciating Radical Acceptance

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I happen to appreciate butterflies.  I am in awe of the idea that these fragile, ethereal, delicate creatures travel thousands and thousands of miles on their journey.  They are, for me, a symbol of strength, determination, and faith.

So, I plant butterfly bushes in my yard where I can. They bloom all summer long and attract butterflies, other pollinators, and hummingbirds.

This past Friday, overnight, the butterfly bushes in the yard burst into bloom.  I went outside to admire them and was thrilled to discover that a yellow swallowtail had discovered that dinner was available in my yard.

As I approached the bush to take a closer look at this beautiful creature, I was stunned by what I saw:  nearly one quarter of one wing was missing!  I moved around the bush to see if the angle of the light was creating an illusion.  It was not – clearly this little creature had a story to tell.

And that thought stopped me. This little wounded warrior was fluttering around the bush, just like all the other butterflies. It moved from flower to flower with ease and grace, clearly having adapted to navigating with part of its wing gone. From its behavior and flight, you would never know it had a damaged wing.

I smiled when it registered that I was in the presence of “radical acceptance”. This little butterfly – for all the trauma it had survived – had clearly learned to transcend its wounds and live a seemingly successful butterfly life.

And my next thoughts was: “how grateful am I that the 12 step rooms brought me to that same place. Living life to the fullest, accepting the trauma of my past as trauma of my past, and investing in adapting however necessary to build a meaningful life in spite of what happened to me.”

I am grateful that Steps 4 through 9 illuminate where our lives are out of alignment with acceptance. How we fight to re-litigate old harms – as if carrying them forward in our lives will somehow change the past. How we coat ourselves in self-pity hoping someone will come and save us from ourselves. How we lose sight of the truth that life is about what we make of it, not just what happened to us.

The presence of that little Swallowtail in my yard was a powerful reminder for me. Watching the grace with which he was comporting himself – in spite of the journey he had survived – reminded me of where I need to be in my own life: radical acceptance of life on life’s terms.

Dual process model of thinking

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In the decision sciences world, these two different pathways for decision making are referred to as System 1 and System 2. System 1 decision making is intuitive – it is fast, almost automatic.  System 1 thinking seems effortless – it is that “aha” thought that just appears.  This type of thinking often arises from association (whoa, I’ve seen this before…).  It is frequently emotional – we hold our intuitive thoughts very dear – we are often quite certain about our intuitive thinking, we just know.  

System 1 thinking may also be referred to as recognition-primed decision making, fixed pattern responses or stereotypes.  You might also see this type of decision making referred to as implicit knowledge or behavior.    Expertise is associated with System 1 thinking.

On the other hand, System 2 decision making is deliberate problem solving.  It is a much slower process; this type of thinking requires effort.  Doubt and uncertainty are part of System 2 processes which are linear – step 1, step 2, step 3 and is often associated with specific rules or boundaries.

While we may assert that the superior cognitive abilities of the human brain are at the heart of all of our decision-making, unconscious decision-rules – what are called judgment heuristics in the decision making sciences world – are a common part of our daily experience. Regardless of what label is applied to these unconscious decision rules, it is important to understand that these underlying decision processes govern the behavior of every human.  

There is research that suggests that System 1, recognition-primed decision-making, or fixed pattern behaviors responding to trigger features (constellations (groups) of sensory data that compile into a pattern that has our brain scream OMG!), is responsible for as much as 90% of the decisions that are made in challenging settings.  (Klein 2006) Complex decision-making settings, such as aeronautics or warfare, illustrate how highly adaptive and efficient these fixed pattern behaviors can be.  A number of industries, including airlines, invest significantly in simulation training to develop the fluid decision making and responsiveness that arise from recognition-primed decision making.  Pilots are repeatedly subjected to challenging decision making scenarios in simulation so that pilots respond accurately with split second reaction times.  Many teaching hospitals have established simulation labs where they expose teams of staff members:  nurses, physicians, physician assistants – to challenges encountered in the emergency room, operating suite or cardiac codes so that the teams learn how to respond instantly and seamlessly as a unit.  Football players will run drill after drill in order to take the guesswork out of how a play will unfold during a game.

There are a number of books published about this idea that System 1 or recognition-primed decision making governs our behavior under stress.  “Sources of Power”  (Gary Klein), “How We Decide” (Jonah Lehner), “Thinking Fast and Slow” (Danial Kahneman), “Blink” (Malcolm Gladwell), “How Doctor’s Think” (Jerome Groopman) and others provide numerous examples and studies that support the idea that recognition-primed decision making plays a large role in how the human brain makes decisions – particularly when under stress or uncertainty. 

Isn’t it comforting to know that chances are that when things get dicey, your brain will more likely than not flip into automatic pilot – System 1 or recognition primed decision making – and ignore all your “high level processing capacity?”  But that is how our brains function – the first response is to – at the speed of light – reach back to identify what might have worked in similar situations before and to rely on that existing knowledge in times of danger or stress.  We need to keep in mind that our brains reward us with a wash of dopamine when we repeat patterns that have yielded positive outcomes before.

Recognition-primed decision-making/System 1 thinking, while an efficient data processing strategy, does not always generate an accurate assessment of the situation, nor does it always provide the best response.  We only know what we know.  Our neural origami only stores what we have personally experienced. And that personal experience governs how we see the world until we are challenged by life to revise our thinking.

Here are a few scientific papers that speak to this same issue:

Vandermeeren R, Hebbrecht M. Het duale procesmodel van verslaving; op weg naar een integratieve visie? [The dual process model of addiction. Towards an integrated model?]. Tijdschr Psychiatr. 2012;54(8):731-40. Dutch. PMID: 22893538.

McClure SM, Bickel WK. A dual-systems perspective on addiction: contributions from neuroimaging and cognitive training. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2014 Oct;1327:62-78. doi: 10.1111/nyas.12561. Erratum in: Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2014 Nov;1328:35. PMID: 25336389; PMCID: PMC4285342.

Hongxia Li, Yafei Guo, Quanlei Yu, Self-control makes the difference: The psychological mechanism of dual processing model on internet addicts’ unusual behavior in intertemporal choice, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 101, 2019, Pages 95-103,

Is it Truth or Confabulation?

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Addicts are really good at lying to themselves.  So, a really good question right now would be, “why do we [addicts] lie to ourselves?”  

The answer is really quite simple – everyone’s brain experiences cognitive bias (in other words, distortion of the truth or reality).  Read that statement again:  everyone’s brain experiences cognitive bias – it is part of the human experience.  (There are a number of reasons for why the human brain can be so inaccurate. Books like Predictably Irrational, Stumbling on Happiness, etc. provide much more depth).

We – humans in general – have brains that are predisposed to distorting the truth. Even the healthiest brain among us experiences cognitive bias – ways of thinking that arise from our brains taking short cuts. These short cuts result in our telling ourselves stories about what is happening that may not be reflective of what is really happening.  Cognitive bias arises from processing too much information, not having enough context or meaning, the need to act quickly, the limits of human memory and other reasons.  While not always adaptive, it is a very common human issue that I believe plays strongly in the disease of addiction.

A recent article in Psychology Today, 20 Ways You Are Lying to Yourself (citation:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-second-n,,,.oble-truth/201805/top-20-ways-you-are-lying-yourself), summarized how cognitive bias skews our perceptions.  My favorites included:

  • Self-Serving Bias: This bias enhances or preserves self-esteem by viewing oneself in an overly positive manner. With this bias credit for accomplishments is due to hard work, but failure is due to external factors.
  • Egocentric Bias: People see the world from their own lens and accept it as reality. Over relying on one’s own perspective, which everyone naturally does, is egocentric bias.
  • Doppelgänger Bias: This…is the propensity to trust someone who looks like someone who, in the past, you found trustworthy.
  • Mere Exposure Effect: This is the tendency for one to like something simply because it becomes familiar.
  • Self-fulfilling Prophecy: This is the tendency to enact what one believes. For example, if you believe you’ll fail, you do.
  • Backfire Effect: This is the idea that telling someone facts that counter their beliefs will change their beliefs. In actuality, the person becomes more tied to their beliefs.
  • Illusion of Control: This occurs when one overestimates the amount of control one has in life. An example is victims blaming themselves because it is easier to believe they have control than the world is chaotic and horrible things can happen without reason.
  • Negativity Bias: It is the tendency of the human mind to give more weight to negatives than positives.
  • Confirmation Bias: The tendency to focus on information that supports one’ beliefs and / or remembering confirming information more than information contradicting one’s beliefs.
  • Dunning-Kruger Effect: When unskilled people are overconfident about their answers or ability, and remain unaware due to the lack of ability to recognize their shortcomings.
  • Affective Forecasting: Daniel Gilbert has studied the tendency for one to believe, and overestimate, that her preferences today will remain the same in the future.
  • Projection: Projection is taking something that resides in your unconscious and believing another possess it.
  • Confabulation. This usually means creating false memories, and though the malleability of memory is another way we distort reality (through distorting our personal history), in this case it is creating, and believing, reasons for our behavior without realizing the true motivation.

My favorite bias listed here is confabulation – the ability of the human mind to  believe the story it is telling itself – which just happens to serve its self-interest.  If you’ve ever engaged with an addict while they are active in their addiction, you will find confabulation and many of these biases in every sentence they utter.

So, beyond the obvious issue that our brains might be distorting the interpretation of what is really happening – what does this really mean in the context of addiction?  How about, everything?  If you think about the Kolb Cycle, learning begins when our brains encounter a prediction error and comes to understand that the solution that it just used isn’t as effective as it might be.  Our brains are primed to learn when concrete experience is compared to reality and a big “uh-oh!” results.  If our brains are looking at concrete experience through the eyes of cognitive bias – that’s not my fault, look what they are doing to me, etc. – that teachable moment is lost.  There is no reflection on what we need to change in ourselves, and, in the case of people with addiction we cast blame elsewhere and begin to build resentments toward others just so we don’t have to look more closely at ourselves.

So, the comparing concrete experience to reality piece of the learning process gets derailed because someone driven by ego or self-serving or confabulation cannot possibly embrace and objectively compare concrete experience to reality, identify gaps and thereby learn.  Our brains may confabulate for years telling ourselves the story we want to hear.  We’re not choosing to do this – we often can’t see the truth because our brains are so busy trying to hold on to the story it wants to maintain to avoid the pain of accountability or growth.

We ignore or discount countering evidence presented to us, we deflect and distract so we don’t have to address the issues we fear, we cast blame onto others so we can explain away the situation and not have to look too closely at ourselves.  This may continue until we can no longer ignore concrete evidence:  that moment when the unmanageability and the wreckage in our lives becomes too painful to discount and we wake up.

The living garment…

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Look around you.  If you’re inside, examine the walls that surround you, whatever surface you are sitting on, the tile or rug on the floor, and the glass in the windows that allow you see the larger world outside.  Consider the grass, the trees, and the garbage can at the end of your driveway.  What do all of these things have in common?

Things you might find around a home?  Yes, but look deeper.  There is something much richer and more vital that unites these things.

Each of the items I mentioned is held together by an invisible, unidentified and impossible to recreate force.  We all learned about how atoms interact with other atoms to form matter in elementary school.  Did you know that the greatest physicists in the world have yet to explain why or how that happens?  That they are still in search of the “God particle” that explains why the elements of the periodic table that we all learned about in chemistry behave as they do?

While looking outside did you see a pigeon, a sparrow, a squirrel, an ant, or your neighbor?  What do all of these creatures have in common?

Well, yes, they are all creatures, that is one answer.  Yes, they too are “held together” by an invisible, unidentified and impossible to recreate force.  But look deeper.

Each of these creatures appeared in this animated by an unseen, unquantifiable life force that sprang forth from life itself; connected to generation after generation of evolution and replication that came before as well as the seed for generation after generation of evolution and replication that will come after.  

Each of the animate creatures I named, along with every other creature that inhabits the Earth all possess that same life force – an energy that has persisted as long as there has been life.  The energy that animates a squirrel is the same energy that animates a slug.  Invisible, impossible to identify, isolate or replicate, but none-the-less present.

So what is my point here?  I’ll use the words of Emmet Fox here:  “in deed and truth, we are all one, component parts of the living garment of God.”  There is no need to look beyond ourselves when we realize that every single thing we see or engage with is a component part of the living garment of God. Every. Single. One.

This for me is humility.  There is no question for me that the suffering of others impacts me, because the suffering of others impacts the larger system of which I am a part.  The individual cells that make up my toenails are very different than the individual cells that comprise the lens of my eye.  While very different in look and function, these two cells are connected in a system where an infection in one group of cells can threaten or extinguish the life of others.

For me the gift of humility is the paradoxical understanding that we are all different while being the same.  We each bring unique characteristics that serve a role in the greater whole of which we are all but component parts.

 

 

Emmet Fox, The Sermon on the Mount, The Key to Success in Life, Buccaneer Books, Cutchogue, NY, 1934

Matching Calamity with Serenity – Zoom Meeting

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Many people are struggling with managing their anxiety as we are navigating the impacts of the coronavirus in the greater New York area.  The 12 Steps are essentially an anxiety or stress management process that works amazingly well in “rough going”.  Applying the steps to any problem can bring clarity and return you to a place of serenity, regardless of what is occurring around you.

If you’re interested in joining this conversation, please use the login information below:

Matching Calamity with Serenity:  Using the 12 Steps to Manage Anxiety in Challenging Times
Thursday, 8:00 PM Eastern
This group will demonstrate how to use the 12 Steps to relieve the anxiety we feel in uncertain times.  The discussion will focus on problems or worries that are suggested by the group as topics.  The meeting facilitator will then demonstrate how to use the 12 steps to uncover the underlying thinking that contributes to increased anxiety and offer suggestions for how to change it.
Here is the Zoom information for this group:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/9177565845

Meeting ID: 917 756 5845

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The God of My Understanding…

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I have an awesome, amazing God.  The God of My Understanding (GMU) is the origin of everything – the Alpha and Omega – the beginning, the end and everything in between.  There is no part of my world and day-to-day life experience that is separate from God.  The GMU lives in the concrete that I walk on in Manhattan, the trees that line my driveway at home and in every single cell that constitutes me in this moment today.  My Higher Power (HP) is not some esoteric being that sits separate and apart from me.  My HP is everything.

Because the GMU is everything – it is impossible for anything to be separate from God.  Everything is of God – with no exceptions.  If God is omnipresent, ever present and all loving, how could there every be a time when God is NOT happy with me?  If God is in it all – a part of every element of the fabric of life – how can God not be okay with everything exactly as it is?

And if everything is exactly as it is, how can anything I do be anything less than within God’s plan?

My Higher Power is thrilled that I just breathe – regardless of whether I make adaptive choices or not.  My body is “engineered” by God to run best when I am sober, eat a healthy diet, exercise and allow myself adequate sleep at night.  When I choose to align with these behaviors, I have the privilege of living in a strong, healthy body.  Were I to fill my body with mind-altering drugs, eat poorly, forget to exercise and burn the candle at both ends, the quality of my life is the outcome of my choices.  On either path, God’s will is done.  With either outcome, my Higher Power smiles.  Even when I am making choices that do not align with my well-being, the Universe has a path to improve the lives of others through my delinquency.  My abuse of alcohol or other substances opens the opportunity for legions of people providing services in rehabs and out-patient counseling to have well-paying jobs.  If I choose to eat poorly and allow my body to deteriorate, there are doctors, nurses and hospitals full of people who have well-paying jobs because of my poor self-care.  My suffering that arises from choices that demonstrate the worst in me creates the  opportunity for others to demonstrate the best in them.

The GMU is not interested in me making Her happy.  The GMU has no agenda for me except that I achieve the level of potential that I set for myself.  The GMU most certainly doesn’t need me to praise Her all day every day as my very life is a testament to the power of Her creation and the depth of Her love for me.

My HP rejoices when I am finally able to take the necessary steps to make my life better.  Not because I have aligned with “what God wants for me” but because my alignment with more adaptive living ends my suffering and places me more firmly on the path to bring others joy and support.  My Higher Power is the rapid outpouring of good, constantly reorganizing itself – offering opportunity for change in every breath – yours and mine.

The God of My Understanding does not find joy in my praise for Her, She thrills when I overcome the limitations that impede my life and share what I have learned with others for their lives to improve as well.  Not because it benefits Her, but because it benefits all of us.  I have an awesome God.

The greatest matters God has entrusted…

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I am working through Rick Warren’s, “The Purpose Driven Life,” with a group of friends in recovery.  I am struggling with some of the opinions and interpretation presented in this book.  I will be posting my view of these opinions here as they are too long for the chat thread we have started.

Day 5: Thoughts…

The question to consider today asks “What are the greatest matters God has entrusted to me?”  My answer to that question is simple and clear:  the spiritual growth of my two children, all of you and the people that I come into contact with during the day.  Remember, for me, love is the selfless promotion of the spiritual growth of another.

For that reason, I feel compelled to comment (again) on some of the language I am reading.  Yesterday, I thought about contrasting some of the stuff in this book with the writings of Emmet Fox, a Christian philosopher who had a profound influence on Bill W.  Once I get home, I will be doing that.  I don’t want to be perceived as anti-Christian in my comments about what Rick Warren has written.  Using Fox’s work can illustrate that there is a different interpretation of some of this stuff among popular Christian authors and will underscore that this is all a matter of opinion; that this is all a matter of “the God of My Understanding.”

Some of the language that I had trouble with in today’s reading:

  • God withdrew?
  • “at the end of life you will be evaluated and rewarded according to how you handle what you’ve been given?
  • how I manage money prevents God from doing more in my life?
  • there is a direct relationship between money and spiritual life or “worldly wealth” versus “true riches”.

Um….yikes!

When one of my daughters was working her way through college, she was struggling with boundaries.  Boundaries in relationships, boundaries with substances, boundaries with her own self-perceptions.  I very clearly saw the struggle; I very clearly understood what was happening; I very clearly saw the challenges that she had to surmount.  The battle that she was fighting was one with herself – her own self perception, her own willingness to engage in life, her own migration into adult responsibilities.  This is a journey that every adult must face (and it is one that many avoid until they are in their fifties!).  I saw where she was.  When I took her back to school one January, she got out of the car and I told her that it was up to her to show herself who she was.  I didn’t withdraw (I cried most of the way home), I didn’t abandon her, I left her to her own choices while facilitating a path for her (lots in info regarding meetings near school, lots of numbers of women she could call, etc.).  As a loving parent, I let her fight the battles she needed in order to slay the demons chasing her and grow.  In my view that is how God acts in my life.  She is in every step of the battle with me, encouraging me, offering me opportunity after opportunity to redefine who I am and how I interact with the world.  God does not sweep in to make the problems “go away” because it is those “problems” that are refining me into the woman I say I want to be.  That’s not withdrawal or “testing,” that is a tremendous act of love and confidence.  God doesn’t bring me to something that She hasn’t already framed in a way for me to overcome.

And then this idea of the Santa Claus God?  You’ll be evaluated and rewarded according to how you handle what you’ve been given?  “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…?”  The God of My Understanding is in this mess with me.  How life unfolds around me is testament to every action I take having a logical consequence.  God isn’t evaluating and waiting to reward – the God of my understanding is on the sidelines, desperately hoping that I find the courage to run the ball all the way down the field and make the choice to kick for the goal even though I’m exhausted, at the end of my resources and not believing I can reach the goal.  She hasn’t withdrawn, She is my biggest cheerleader doing everything in Her power to make the path for me and others.  There is no “distant” evaluation and reward – She is in every minute of that game letting me show me who I want to be in relationship to it.  She is in every minute of that game, offering me the next chance to overcome myself and evolve.

And now we come to this idea of worldly riches and a relationship between money and spiritual life.  Ummmm… I know quite a few people that have amassed huge amounts of resources that I absolutely would not turn to for spiritual advice because their behavior is so far outside the frame of what I would consider grounded and loving.  I could argue that people like Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, the Kardashians and many others in the spotlight today that demonstrate little relationship between spiritual growth and wealth.  I know that there are literally billions of people living in impoverished areas of the world who have nothing but live in tremendous, deep faith.  Bill W., a man whose spiritual journey has impacted the lives of millions of others, never achieved “worldly riches” but quite clearly received “true riches.”  Emmet Fox has quite a few thoughts on this idea – the underlying one being:  it is God who provides us with jobs, resources and money.  But those things are not provided to us as rewards, they are provided to us as simply the vehicles necessary to achieve what the Universe hopes from us.  Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and other members of the Giving Trust are living examples of this philosophy. Resources are the vehicles by which God achieves Her purpose through us – not a reward for us.

 

Mission Control…

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Visualize the images of “mission control” that you might have seen as part of any space shuttle launches or a scene from the movie Apollo 13. Another good image to conjure would be the “bridge” from the starship Enterprise in Star Trek. uss_enterprise_alternate_reality_bridgeIn each of these images you have a similar underlying idea of a location where a massive amount of “sensory” data flows into a command center. Advanced technology and highly skilled resources review every bit of data that is possible to capture, scanning the data stream for any anomalies or patterns. Once something “blips,” attention is immediately focused on that aberration and a reaction is mounted:

“Captain, they’re raising their shields!”

What happens next is immediate: “Red Alert”

There is a structure in the human brain called the amygdala. It is part of what is known as the limbic system. The amygdala is located in the temporal lobe of the brain – in close proximity to the brain stem.

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Source: brainmadesimple.com

There are some who refer to the amygdala as the fear center of the brain; it is considered by others to be the emotion-processing center of the brain. I like to consider the amygdala “mission control” or, maybe more accurately, a “strategic command center.”

 

It is the amygdala that signals “Red Alert” in the brain. The amygdala is the emergency management system in the brain using to separate pathways of response. The amygdala is the initial, immediate, instantaneous response to anomaly.

There is also a data stream to the amygdala’s mission control that links through the sensory cortex of the brain. This secondary data stream provides the problem-solving associated with the “red alert.”

To give some context to how the amygdala processes and responds to the data that streams through it, let’s talk about a walk I took through a nature park near my home. It was a balmy late-summer day. Beautiful clear skies and roughly eighty degrees – it was a perfect day for a walk on the asphalt path of the park.

As I was strolling through the path, enjoying the beauty of the gorgeous day, my attention suddenly snapped to an object that had been laying on the edge of the path as it began to stretch itself out across the width of the path.   My immediate reaction was to stop. It took a millisecond or two longer for my brain to grasp that it wasn’t a stick that was moving, it was a snake! I took an instinctive step backwards away from the snake as I was observing how long it was before I remembered that I live in a part of the world where few poisonous snakes are found outside zoos and pet stores. I then took a step closer to see if I could capture a picture of the reptile with my cellphone because I didn’t recall that garter snakes could grow to three feet in length.

My amygdala was responsible for the immediate snap of my attention to the unexpected movement on the side of the path, the immediate stop and my step backwards: Whoa – stop – safe distance!

The curiosity and inquisitive action that occurred once my initial startle had passed reflected that my amygdala had moved from the immediate “survival” response into processing through the sensory cortex which transformed my initial surprise into an investigative process. “What is that?”

Another good example of this blended pathway of sensory processing would be an adult’s response to a loud noise. An explosion occurs, your amygdala has you “jumping” and turning your head in the direction of the sound before your eyes, ears, and nose are reporting that the car next to you backfired.

The amygdala generates the “Houston, we have a problem” response. The sensory cortex pathway brings forth the investigative team: what was that? What direction did it come from? Have we seen this before? Who is involved? Etc.

All incoming stimulus – visual, auditory, tactile, spatial – is processed through the amygdala. There is a constant stream of data flowing through – even when you are not conscious of it. In all truth, the amygdala is reviewing this stream of data particularly when you are not conscious of it.

Is anyone reading this asking themselves why I would be including this information in a blog about addiction and recovery?  I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Meet Magellan…

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Last Friday, I was sailing with a friend in the middle of the Long Island Sound.  I looked down to find a grasshopper exploring the roof of the cabin on my sailboat.  Sunday I was sailing again – once again in the middle of the Sound easily three miles from shore. As I IMG_0608was sitting by the tiller, I happened to look to my left and came eye to eye with a different grasshopper!

Meet my new friend Magellan.

My response to this close encounter was to laugh (after I got over my initial shock at having this creature so close to my face).  And then I began looking for God as coincidences in my life usually let me know that my Higher Power is present.  I’ve owned this boat for over a decade, having one grasshopper aboard was noteworthy – having two in three days was unprecedented.

So Magellan remained with me for the remainder of the day on Sunday – about three hours of sailing.  He quite happily maintained his position on the rail with his antennae flowing in the westerly breeze.  As I moored the boat in the harbor, I carried on a conversation with him extolling the virtues of the foliage surrounding us and wishing him joy for wherever his travels would take him. And I got off the boat.

I returned to the boat on Monday to enjoy my lunch in the glorious weather.  I climbed aboard and got the cushions all comfy for my meal and some meditation.  When I happened to look up and I found myself once again eye to eye with Magellan.  He had made his way around the cockpit and was now perched on the teak rails of the cabin.

Now I am really intrigued.  Not only was a grasshopper on the boat, it was the same creature as the day before – this is getting interesting.  I greeted him and let him know that I was concerned for his health as I was now wondering if he might have flown into the sails the day before and injured himself.

I settled on one of the cockpit benches to meditate.  I opened up an app I use, started the guided meditation and closed my eyes concentrating on the meditation and the movement of the boat.

A horn sounded.  My eyes snapped open and I had the pleasure of watching Magellan walking his way across the roof of the cabin toward my phone that was playing meditation music.  I turned the sound off, the grasshopper stopped moving.  Ok, now we’re in really strange territory!

While all this was unfolding, the thought that kept circling around in my head was, “Is it odd or is it God?” But I couldn’t immediately see the message.  I sent a friend a text with Magellan’s picture and she helpfully provided a link about the grasshopper totem and what it might mean.  I read the information:  patience, prosperity, perseverance.  Okay, I get it but why now?  Why today?

As I was reflecting on this creature  and why he had been dropped into my life it dawned on me that he might be legitimately injured, hence his prolonged visit on my boat.  That left me with the dilemma of what to do next.  I certainly wasn’t going to jump into codependency, grab a cup and bring him home.  But at the same time I was uncomfortable just leaving him.

Being me, I jumped on the internet to determine what grasshoppers actually eat (okay – I’m not taking him home but I’m also not leaving him to starve if he is injured!)  I was quite pleased to learn that any plant-based carbohydrate might appeal.  I just happened to have a bunch of grapes in my bag.  Feeling absolutely ridiculous that I was worried about the health and welfare of this grasshopper, I bit a few grapes in half and strategically located them within antenna distance of Magellan.

Screen Shot 2016-09-01 at 5.31.21 PMTo my surprise and glee, Magellan walked over and began to eat.  I sat there watching as his antennae blew rhythmically in the wind.  He investigated each broken grape, nibbled a bite or two and moved to the next.  And that is when the lesson hit me directly between the eyes.  Here was yet another metaphor for recovery.

When I started the process of recovery, I was adrift in an ocean of my drugs of choice.  Literally – quite literally – drowning in my addiction and the bad choices that arose from it.

And much like my friend Magellan, by God’s grace alone, I found myself on the boat called love, sailing in the direction of the safe harbor of unconditional love and acceptance – a place I had never been before.  On that first leg of my journey, I relied on the skills and wisdom of others for navigation.  I had no clue where I was going or much less how to get there, but I was carried by my home groups until I could carry myself.

But even in a safe harbor, life isn’t simple or straightforward – challenging things happen – people die, we lose our jobs, we are unexpectedly injured, our bodies age.  Even when we are on the boat called love, difficulties arise that challenge us, our ability to cope and our recoveries.  In sailing terms, life can be smooth sailing until a ferry leaves a wake immediately adjacent to the boat – everything rocks, stuff falls everywhere and you have to hold on so you don’t fall too.

During those hard times, when we can’t figure out what to do, when we’re injured and can’t do for ourselves, when those waves of change have rocked every part of our lives and seem particularly hard to navigate and downright unfair, it is easy to question our faith and to wonder if God truly loves us.  Those dry periods where everything is rocking, we can’t see the path through and it feels like God has abandoned us can be some of the most difficult times of recovery.

And then, one day, boom, out of nowhere, in an environment where it is wholly unexpected, grapes appear.  My needs are taken care of in ways that I simply couldn’t imagine (I mean really, do you think any self-respecting grasshopper would be expecting grapes to drop out of the sky in the middle of a harbor?).  Literally, manna from heaven arrives in my life.

So this little grasshopper became the guru for me earlier this week.  His presence in my day led me to being reminded of a powerful lesson about patience with God.  He served as a potent reminder from my Higher Power.

I had been journaling that morning about the discomfort of living in the “space between the miracles.”  The space between the miracles are those points in recovery where change isn’t happening (or happening fast enough for me !), when I don’t have the clarity I feel I need, or when the struggle for growth is overwhelming and feels like it will last forever.  In my mind, the God of my Understanding sent Magellan to remind me that grapes are on their way in my life, that I can’t predict amazing and that gratitude for where I am and a willingness to just show up in faith will lead me to them.