More Gratitude

Gratitude has been a frequent topic over the past 3300 plus days I’ve been writing this blog.   It’s also a buzzword around TLC.  Maybe to the point of becoming cliche.   It's looked upon as a panacea – a powerful tool in our recovery arsenal.

We tout it in 12-step meetings as the cornerstone of recovery.   After all, we hear, it’s hard to relapse when we have gratitude for what we have today.

Further to this, my experience is that those who’ve been sober for multiple years regularly express gratitude. For what?  Actually for nearly everything.  Another day sober.   For our freedom.   Our jobs.  Our friends and loved ones.  The list is long – and sometimes includes the most mundane aspects of our lives.

Gratitude is the one secret I share with newcomers when they wonder how to live sober.

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I am the Culprit

I had an impromptu meeting with a client the other day who said that for some reason she was always angry. And when I asked what she was angry about, she told me that it was because she was in a halfway house. That the DPS had her child. That even after seven years of using, she hadn't been able to stop. That she had virtually no education. That she had little job experience. She had no car. And had no savings.

And when I asked her who was responsible for all the things she didn't have that seemed important to her she readily admitted that that she was responsible. She said that she had tried and tried many times to get clean and sober but was unable to do so. I asked her why?

She said she wasn't sure. But what would happen is she would get frustrated with her situation and knew the way to feel better really fast was to find a bag of heroin. So I asked her, that if she knew the answer to her dilemma what was the problem with following through? And she shrugged her shoulders and said she really didn't know.

But I told her that I knew the answer, even though I just met her. And what I told her is really the core truths that all of us addicts deal with: we don't quit using until we get enough pain and misery. And the more we use, the more pain and misery we accumulate.

I shared my story with her, about how I got sober 34 years ago. I was homeless. I was broke. I did shoplifting and other kinds of thefts every day to get enough money to exchange for heroin and alcohol. 

I sometimes stole a car just so I would have a place to sleep. Once in a while I would get lucky and steal enough to rent a room in a cheap motel for a night or two. But the reality is that my life was totally miserable. I was at a crossroads. I was either going to end up in a mental hospital, back in prison, or dead. And that's when I knew I had enough misery and needed to work on getting sober. Like this client that I'm talking about I already knew who was responsible for my anger and what I had to do to stop being angry.

Sometimes I like to write about things like this because many of us addicts and alcoholics forget who the cause of our problems really is. I remember a cartoon character named Pogo from many years ago and in the cartoon strip he was standing in front of a mirror and saying "I have met the enemy. And it is me." 

And that line has always stuck with me because I know that no matter what goes wrong in my life 99.9% of the time I am the enemy. And when I leave other people out of the equation and look clearly at myself I know that I have met the cause of my problems. Do I still get angry? Yes. And do I know who is responsible?  Yes.  But If I don't know, all I have to do is look in the mirror and there is the culprit.

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Gratitude is Healthy

Gratitude is often a default topic at 12 step meetings. And many say it is harder to relapse if one has gratitude for whatever life has brought us. And now a mainstream study cites further benefits of being grateful.

This excerpt from an October 20, 20ll press release from the University of Kentucky cites a study on the subject of grateful people:

“Grateful people aren't just kinder people, according to UK College of Arts & Sciences psychology Professor Nathan DeWall. They are also less aggressive.

DeWall proves his point with five studies on gratitude as a trait and as a fleeting mood, discovering that giving thanks lowers daily aggression, hurt feelings and overall sensitivity. 

"If you count your blessings, you're more likely to empathize with other people," said the researcher who is more well-known for studying factors that increased aggression. "More empathic people are less aggressive."

Gratitude motivates people to express sensitivity and concern for others and stimulates pro-social behavior, according to DeWall. Although gratitude increases mental well-being, it was unknown whether gratitude reduced aggression.

DeWall and his colleagues conducted cross-sectional, longitudinal, experience sampling, and experimental studies with more than 900 undergraduate students to show that gratitude is linked to lower aggression.

"We tried to triangulate on this phenomenon in as many different ways as we could," said DeWall, who tested the effects of gratitude both inside and outside of the lab.

The study, found in Social Psychological and Personality Science, links gratitude to "a nonviolent heart," with those less inclined to aggression.

Across all, there was "converging support for the hypothesis that gratitude is an antidote to aggression," according to DeWall. The relationship proved consistent even after controlling for general positive emotion.

"We know that grateful people are nice people," said DeWall. "But this is the first study to really show that they're not very aggressive either."

You don't have to be a naturally appreciative person to experience these effects, either.

"I wanted to bust the myth that only certain people are grateful," DeWall said. "Gratitude is an equal opportunity emotion that causes lower levels of aggression."

An activity as basic as writing a letter or mentally counting your blessings can be enough to decrease aggression.

"Take a step back, and look at what you've got," said DeWall. "Don't spend every waking moment being grateful, but one time a week definitely increases your well-being over time. And if you get bad news—you're given a shot that protects you."

DeWall's findings have broad applications and can inform interventions aimed at reducing interpersonal aggression and anger."

This article isn’t going to increase my level of gratitude but it’s nice to have science in our corner.

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Life goes On

 A speaker at last Sunday's 12-step meeting said something to the effect that "life goes on."In her near 15 years of sobriety she's experienced loss of family, sickness, marriage, and other setbacks. Yet none of this has driven her to pick up another drink.

And her central point – that life goes on – is a truism for all of us in recovery. Some in new recovery have the naive idea that life becomes a bed of roses when they get sober.

But that's not the case. We'll all encounter challenges, as this woman did. But when we’re sober - instead of becoming so devastated we pick up alcohol or drugs – we have the tools to deal with issues.

Newcomers sometimes react to challenges by drinking or drugging because they haven’t figured out how to put the tools in action.

Those who us who succeed use the steps when facing life's challenges. We may be jobless. We may have rough times with our children – or our jobs. We know life brings myriad challenges. We expect some adversity, but don’t let it get us down.

We practice the principles of the program in all our affairs – especially with emotional things. And if we're lucky we get to the other side still sober.

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Recovered vs. Recovering

 At times I've heard people use the term I am a "recovered" alcoholic. Or a "recovered" addict.

But really, that's a misuse of the term "recovered." And I say this because I learned a long time ago that for us addicts and alcoholics there is no such thing as being "recovered." I understand what people mean when they use "recovered" this way.

But the correct way to use the term is recovery. Not recovered. Because even though they mean to say that they are in recovery when they use the term recovered the words have a distinction that is very important. Recovered means that we have arrived at the state of sobriety. And recovery means that we're in the process of recovery and we will never arrive at a time where there is an appropriate use of the word recovered.

Being in recovery means that we are living a certain kind of life. Usually, one that we learned in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book, the fellowship, the sponsor–sponsee relationship are all part of the process of being in recovery. And the things that I just mentioned are part of a process – not a place where we sit on our laurels and say that finally we have arrived and we no longer have to take any action.

Being in recovery means that we have a toolkit that has been given to us through the generosity of  Alcoholics Anonymous. And, other than the Big Book itself, all of these tools that have been given to us describe a kind of behavior that we practice as members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Among these behaviors are making amends when we do something untoward to another person. Another behavior is giving our recovery to others who need our help. Another behavior is sitting alongside someone who is having a rough time understanding what this recovery is all about, explaining the process of recovery to them.

The term recovery – used in the place of "recovered" – signifies action. It signifies that we're following a certain path in life that will help us remain sober and clean.

To put it more simply, recovery means action. And recovered means that there's nothing else we need to do to stay sober – something that's a fallacy in most cases.

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About Recovering Employees

Running a business with so-called “normal” people has plenty of challenges. Running a corporation totally staffed with recovering substance abusers – as at TLC - can at times be much more difficult.

At a regular company the most common motivation for working is for a paycheck. But at a company like TLC money is not the key motivation.

Instead staying clean and sober takes precedence. It’s about saving our lives and escaping the demons of our past. It’s about not walking the big yard for years. About not seeing the looks of disappointment on the faces of our loved ones. It’s about returning to school. About rebuilding our mental and physical health.

Working with employees in recovery, however, requires patience and understanding. The reason being that just become someone’s gotten sober doesn’t’ mean they’re all of a sudden emotionally healthy.

Egos and territoriality come into play. We addicts are often emotionally fragile. Our self-esteem is in shambles. And sometimes that affects our relationships with our co-workers.

So how do we work with employees in recovery? Mostly we use the tools of recovery that we learn in 12-step meetings.

We ask them to look beyond pettiness and to the larger mission: which is to rebuild our lives and recover from substance abuse. We ask them to remember what it says in the recovery literature about not fighting anyone or anything. We ask them to forget small differences that might interfere with our efforts to change our lives.

And it’s worked for over 34 years.

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Living with Anxiety

 "I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free." Thich Nhat Hanh

A manager talks to me about being in overwhelming anxiety. He's concerned about his job performance. He's afraid he might be replaced by someone else. He's riddled with fear.

I explained to him that none of those thoughts are real, just ideas that are popping up in his brain. That they have no basis in reality because we haven't had any plans to replace him.

I go on to explain that our anxiety is a natural part of our genetic inheritance. Maybe 100 generations ago, when his ancestors lived on the plains or in the jungles of Africa anxiety was a natural state of being. Those who didn't have concerns about what was hiding behind the next bush or rock might easily become a predator's next victim. Our ancestors, those who handed us our genetic blueprint, survived only because they were wary and fear-based. In some respects, anxiety could have been looked upon as a survival tool.

Today many of us, addicts and non-addicts, experience anxiety. But it's mostly anxiety that's conjured up in our brain. The anxiety we experience today is not an immediate threat to our existence, but too much of it can disrupt our happiness and peace of mind. It can lead to bad health and other physical problems.

Those who come to me with anxiety are those who are always peering into the future, imagining that something dire is about to happen. And even though it's all in their head they sometimes are so worked up that they're on the edge of panic.

My prescription for those who are in this state of mind is always the same: eat well, exercise, and above all – practice mindful meditation.

And I emphasize meditation because the longer we practice the more we free ourselves from our tangled thinking. Meditation helps us realize that our fearful thoughts are not real, just illusions that pass through our minds in sometimes endless streams. And they appear without our help, just as they will pass through our minds and disappear without our help. As we meditate, we observe them and accept them without judgment. 

And as strange as it seems, after a short period of practice our thinking begins to change and our thoughts are not the threatening monsters that used to keep us in a state of unrest.

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