Surrounded by Recovery 2016 on 9 News

missing

 

I have decided to move on from blogger. it has been a friend for many years, but my belief is that wordpress will offer new advantages and challenges.

please look for future posts at www.afterthepop.wordpress.com

The Boy from OZ Once Before I Go Hugh Jackman

vagabond superstar

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
Buddha.

firstly, ii would request that all readers also read mark olmsted’s blog regarding the passing of phillip seymour hoffman at question marxist. mark olmsted – aka the trash whisperer- touches on the very core of a major challenge with living in recovery- emotional sobriety. people with addictions – both active and arrested- remains the most complicated and treacherous path that I have walked and that those ii walk with encounter.

 

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?
Buddha.

there are moments in which the clarity and cruelty of feeling are so uber-pronounced and omnipresent that frozen only begins to describe the fear and uncertainty that follow. sometimes an exchange of words or ideas will give a glimpse of unknowing that feels just like the chill of a visiting spirit. someone may something to me that ii am not clear how to take and ii will panic- not because of what was said, but more because of the not knowing how to proceed.

it may turn out that I struggle with emotionality for the rest of my days. it gets easier and the frightful crazy part lasts shorter periods of time. but as mark olmsted points out, it is not how we feel that creates problems, but more how we think we should feel.

Emotional Management

There is no feeling without a thought. There is no feeling or thought without a corresponding physical response. We are not many. We are one.

It is a mistake for any of us to so divide ourselves into segments that we lose the sense of ourselves as holistic beings. There is no thought without a feeling. However by singling out a specific aspect of how we as people function, in this case the emotions, specific care can be given on that aspect. Feelings have the power to both take us to heaven and pitch us into hell. Feelings are perfectly capable of telling us the saving truth as well as sending us on the road to destruction. Feelings are powerful. As with all powerful things the task is to control and manage that power so it works to the person’s benefit.

Feelings must be understood for what they are and where they originate if the person experiencing them is to gain a life of sobriety, balance and serenity.

Topics covered in our various products dealing with emotional management:

• Understanding the anatomy of emotions
• Learning to feel long repressed feelings
• Discerning if the feeling is telling us a useful truth
• Not allowing feelings to be the sole dictator of behavior
• Steps to gaining emotional management
• words and thoughts by ernie larsen

lone survivor

 

a friend and ii went to see “lone survivor” yesterday on the big screen (thankfully). it was definitely a bracing experience. ii’m sure there have been enough reviews written about its being based on a true story by the survivor of a mission in afghanistan although ii haven’t ready any of them. ii saw a short trailer of the actors- mark wahlberg, taylor kitsch, ben foster, and emile hirsch along with the director speaking with the author and main character marcus lattrell in a loft somewhere and ii was hooked.

ii have absolutely no desire to compare marcus’ traumatic and heroic journey to any other specifically. his abilities, determination, ingenuity, grace, and most of all his bravery are a gift he continues to share with us through his tale and his living. the human spirit that carries us along the thread of this life is so often much more resilient than our egos every allow us to be. in my opinion this is the case with marcus’ journey.

his story left me speechless (or speckless as someone had posted on facebook) with awe and humility and not at all sure of my real ability to keep trudging forward in the face of this level of adversity. there seemed to be a few layers to this story, but the intimacy of friendship and family leaps out front. our hearts adapt and change to mirror our circumstances and ii never realized what a survival mechanism this is. becoming a part of the military sector requires adaptation in order to stay alive. training is hard, but it is only practice for the actual work which can be both waiting and actual combat. ii walk from the theater quietly back to my life, but this film and it’s stories remain running in the background of my mind.

the glaring hypocrisy involved in the national mindset around how much we ask of them and how little in comparison we are willing to give them after they have given me a fresh perspective on my own participation in my own views. ii don’t believe ii have ever contemplated this with required focus.

then there is the monolithic trauma that is depicted here. my belief is that the actual event involved much more hypervigilence, fear, and confusion that was able to be captured on film. those emotions and the chemicals that race through our bodies and its receptors leave a deep dark impression like a large lightning strike on the landscape which may take the remainder of a lifetime to get beyond.

littrell’s telling of this story is one way he has addressed his demons created on that mountain on the other side of our world. my heart, our lives, and hopefully his- are stronger and wiser because of it. lone survivor – marcus littrell, his journey, his book, and the film feel like a quietly immense and abundant gift.