Discovering and Embracing Our Shadow Self

For the first couple of years of his sobriety, my son did nothing (so I thought) except sleep and eat.  Well, that and go to 10-14 meetings a week.  I'd come home from work and ask him what he'd done that day and he would typically answer me with "I did some writing (or painting) and some reading."  I would then bite my tongue to the point of bleeding and walk away to calm down: I knew that anything I might say to him would be angry and ineffective.  At least, that's my self-serving memory of how it went: I think Pat probably has a different memory.  ;-}

Then, I think when he was about 3 years clean, he called me at work to let me know that his book was going to be published by Lulu Press (a self-publishing publisher)!  I was flabbergasted--at a complete loss for words.  His book was very well done, albeit a quite dark autobiography of his short but scary life before and after sobriety.  Shortly after that, I told my son that I was very proud of him and his accomplishment: in fact, I was quite jealous.  I'd always wanted to write a book myself and wish that I'd had half the dedication and commitment to that endeavor as shown by him.

That next Christmas, my son gave me a beautiful leather bound journal.  He told me that it was for my book.  I was blown away.  I almost burst into tears.  All that said, for the past 5 years, that beautiful leather bound journal has been sitting untouched and unbothered at the bottom of my book pile on my bedside nightstand.  What happened was that instead of writing in that journal, I began this recovery blog in December 2007.  The blog seemed better suited to me at the time: I could access it from almost anywhere and I can write faster and way more legibly using a computer keyboard than with pen and paper.  My handwriting includes a form of encryption exceeding many DOD standards.

This weekend though, I finally found a reason to begin using the journal: last week my wife gave me several books that she purchased for me while she was on a retreat.  One of the books was authored by a favorite author of mine, David Richo.  He wrote a book called "Everyday Commitments" that I've used regularly over the past 2 years for daily meditations.   My wife didn't even know he was a favorite of mine though, she just saw several books, including two by Richo, and knew that I would love them.  She's amazing that way.  And I'm horrible that way.  Oh, well.

Anyway, the book of Richo's that I'm beginning to read now is called "Shadow Dance" and in it he provides help in learning how to discover and embrace one's personal "shadow self" (sometimes referred to as our "dark side" -- that part of who we are which is oftentimes hidden deep down and denied or rejected). 

[An interesting aside:  Richo also makes a very interesting comment early on in his book, he says that "if you're an alcoholic, you might want to consider going to Alcoholics Anonymous.  There you will learn about the twelves steps of recovery and most of these steps are really nothing more than shadow work..."  (or words to that effect)]

After reading only a few pages of this book, I knew that it was the perfect gift for me right now and I knew that I had the perfect tool for keeping track of all this Shadow work: my journal!  

So, I grabbed my Journal and opened it up for the first time.  As suggested by Richo, I wrote a statement on the first page which states that I am choosing to become willing and open to learn more about my shadow self and that I was dedicating these pages toward that effort and adventure.  I then began with one of the first exercises which was to list the most negative traits I saw in people within various areas of my life: my family, my profession, my religion (here I used AA).  The reason behind this exercise is that we can oftentimes discover a great deal about our own shadow self by identifying the negative traits of people we really don't like!  Once I completed this list of negative traits, Richo then asked me to go down that list and start trying to identify how these very traits were actually a real part of my own self.  Much surprised, I discovered that he was right!!

I then took a nap (this Shadow work is exhausting work!), but before I drifted off to sleep, I gave myself permission to let my Shadow speak to me through the use of dreams (also a suggestion by Richo).  Amazingly, I had this dream in which I saw these huge concrete slabs laying on the side of a hill --- looked like they were the rubble of some deconstructed highway or building.  In the dream, I realized that these concreate blocks were part of who I was and that they constituted part of my Shadow self.  I then began staring at these blocks, wishing and hopeing that they would disappear, that they would just blow up into nothingness.  But then, I realized that that was not the right strategy for Shadow self: rather than blow them up and make them go away (which is why they make up my Shadow in the first place!  I don't want or like these aspects of who I am!) --- I need to simply be aware of them, accept them, embrace them.  There's nothing wrong with concrete blocks, there's nothing wrong with these shadows, these negative and unwanted traits of mine.  They are perfectly OK.

I woke up completely rested and jotted down what I remembered from this dream into my journal.

Last night, I had many more dreams (I normally don't remember dreams...) and I'm not going to go into them here as this is not the place for that.  In fact, I think I may create a new secure blogsite just for me to supplement my Shadow journal.  Only I will be able to access this site: it too will be dedicated to furthering my Shadow work.  I am really excited about beginning this work.  My recovery is taking a new and deeper focus.

Take care!

Mike L.

p.s.  Son update: he now has two jobs, lives on his own, is completely and financially independent, has great friends and support group, is basically happy and 8+ years clean.  What was I worried about?

What's so Good about Hope; What's so Bad about Hopelessness?

In two different meetings this week, the chairperson has come up with the topic of "Hope" and while I've enjoyed hearing everyone's shares about how much hope they've come to have in their lives since getting sober, I was reminded by an article I read once written by Thich Nat Hahn, the Buddhist monk from Vietnam.  It was called, "The Danger of Hope" or something along those lines. 

His main point in the article while there's much good to be said about "hope" -- there's a somewhat hidden danger in placing too much stock in hope.  The danger, according to this wonderful Buddhist monk,  comes about when one's hope is based on a belief that there is something unacceptable about the present moment or our present condition or circumstance.  Thich Nat Hahn would have loved my grandsponsor Earle (and vice versa) because Earle was always saying that "everything is just perfect, just the way it is" -- and, as was often the case, Earle was talking more about "emotional" conditions and reality than he was about anything else. 

To be honest, I thought Earle was off his rocker when he would chant this philosphy of his to me in his persistent manner.  He'd sit next to me (or, more often, I would sit next to him) and ask me how things were going.  At first, I'd lie by answering "Fine..." -- but he would smile and look deeper into my eyes and chuckle/ask "You wouldn't lie to an old man like me, would you?".  Caught again, I'd laugh, "Well, I guess I would!".  But he wouldn't let me off the hook, he'd follow up and repeat the initial question: "Really, how are things going?  How do you feel?"  And then the dance would begin, I would give him a high level view of what I was feeling by saying, "Oh, I guess I'm feeling a little tired or worn out...."  And then he would answer that answer with, "And what's wrong with that?"  Now, I hadn't really said there was anything wrong with that, but there was I suppose and that's why I had so wisely answered his initial question with "Fine" and why I really wanted the meeting to start soon! 

But I'd made the mistake of getting there early and it would have been rude of me to get up and find a less annoying person to sit next to...  So I answered him with a little less high level perspective on what was going on inside of me and I'd disclose that "Well, when I get like this, I start to feel kinda depressed."  He'd look at me like he was really listening but the truth would come out when he'd ask me again, as though time was going in reverse, "And what's wrong with that?"  And that's how the dance would go, back and forth, me getting a little deeper and closer to the real truth of the matter, him remaining in the comfort of his mantra of "Well, what's wrong with that?".  It could go on forever it seemed, so ultimately, I'd want to skip all the preliminarys and jump to the heart of the matter in terms of what I was feeling and why, goddammit, these feelings were so goddammed wrong: "Earle, if I keep feeling this saddness or anger, I'm going to start wanting to drink again!" 

He'd laugh deeply and kindly, then pause, and then ask with all sincereity: "Well, Mike, what's wrong with that?"  I didn't have the heart or the time to follow that up with my ace in the hole, "Well, Earle, if I keep feeling like this, I might very well get to the point where I actually do drink!   Take that!"

Now, almost 8 years after getting sober and 7 years after Earle's death, I still feel like I'm just starting to assimilate this truth about hope and hopelessness.  And just as there can be a danger in assuming "hope" is all good, there's an equal danger, it seems to me, in portraying "hopelessness" as all bad.

When I hear people talking about hopelessness, oftentimes when they are referring to the hours, days and weeks before they got sober, they seem to portray this hopelessness as this horrible state of being that made even the horrible thought of life with alcohol as more attractive than the hell they were experiencing after alcohol seemed to stop working for them.  While that's true of course, Earle used to talk about how much he cherished those moments of despair and hopelessness in his life---particularly after he got sober!---because were it not for the fact of these moments (short- or long-termed) of despair and hopelessness, we would have never had the following experiences of enlightenment, of waking up!  He even wrote an article for the AA Grapevine called, Thank God for Despair along these same lines.  What he would do during those moments of despair, would be to remind himself that in every prior experience of despair, there was always an end to the despair (eventually) and that following the despair (always) came a moment of enlightenment.  A moment where things made sense.  A moment of clarity.  An "aha!" moment.

I try, as best I can to remember these strange truths about both hope and hopelessness.  Nothing intrinsically good or bad about either one of them.  Hope seems healthy and beneficial when it's for something that's possible and loving.  Hope seems unhealthy and harmful, for me and others, when it's for something that's not possible (e.g., an alcoholic like me trying to be a non-alcoholic) or harmful for me or others.  Hopelessness, on the otherhand, seems bad when I feel unable to do/be someone I am not.  And seems good when I let go of trying to be someone I'm not.

Take care!

Mike L.

Hints of Second Step Insanity Found in the First Step...

In the Big Book, it begins talking about the second step of recovery in Chapter 4, We Agnostics and finishes just after the preamble of Chapter 5 ("How It Works")  -- you know, that part of Chapter 5 that we read at many meetings.  Well, just after that section, there's a statement, "Being convinced, we were now at Step Three."  Well, if we're at Step 3 at that point in the book, then we must have just finished Step 2.

But even before We Agnostics, I just noticed that there's some great insight into the concept of alcoholic insanity contained in More About Alcoholism, especially that first page which I call the long version of the 1st Step.  I didn't really notice it before until I began finishing up working through Step 1 with several guys and I was going over that long version of the 1st Step again.  I simply can't get enough of this first step.

What I noticed yesterday was that there are several references to insanity on p.30:

"No person likes to think they are bodily or mentally different from their fellows."  Here Bill is laying the groundwork for his belief that there was a mental aspect of this disease and that the solution is going to have to do something in that regard if we are going to get better.

"...our drinking careers have characterized by constant vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people."  The constant vain attempt to be someone that we aren't (i.e., non-alcoholics) is, I believe, alcoholic insanity.  It's a layman's attempt to describe our experience as alcoholics and I can't think of a better way to describe my own experience for over 30 years of my life....  In fact, I still see traces of this insanity in my present sober life.  And these traces of insanity lead to similarly "vain" attempts to be someone I'm not.

"The idea that some how, some day, he could control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker."  Again, this "idea" is insane because it's based on the desire to be "who we want to be rather than who we really are".   That's insane.

"The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death."  Need I say more?

"The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."  Our insanity then, as it pertains to our alcoholism, is holding the false idea that we are different than we really are and ignoring all the facts to the contrary.  While it's not an immoral or silly desire not to be an alcoholic, just as it's not crazy to want to avoid having cancer or a heart attack.  What's crazy though, is once one "is" an alcoholic, trying to be something or someone who is not alcoholic. 

My problem was not that I was an alcoholic, my problem was that I was an alcoholic trying to act, to feel and to drink "like" a non-alcoholic.  That was my problem.

The 2nd Step, again: for me!, has nothing much to do with God or a higher power.  It has to do with becoming aware of who I am as an alcoholic and that there's nothing wrong with that fact.  For me, the higher power referred to in this step is "Truth".

Take care!

Mike L.

The Three Ps of Alcoholism: My Answer

Several people tried their best, but no one was able to come up with my answers to this riddle....except me.  Funny how your own riddles are easiest to solve!  Anyway, without further ado, here are my answers to the question/riddle in regards to the Three Ps of Alcoholism and how all of them end up being summarized by the one word, Powerlessness:

The disease of alcoholism, as described in the long version of the first step (p.30 of the Big Book), is:

1.  Physical or Physiological in nature:  "Most of us were unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think they are bodily or mentally different from their fellows."  One of the most important aspects of this disease to me was that it was physiological in nature.  My disease was not a moral failure on my part.  My past actions in relation to alcohol weren't due to a weakness of moral fiber or willpower: everything became clear to me when I woke up and realized that my body processed alcohol differently than those who were not alcoholics.   Ahhh, that's why I did that and felt that....  When it says here that "no personal likes to think that they are bodily (physically) or mentally (here you may think this is not physical, but I'd challenge you to think about what organ in the body does all the mental stuff (the brain) and that the brain is physical!) different from their fellows." --- I take that to mean that we didn't like to think that we alcoholics were physically different from our non-alcoholic fellows: but too bad!!!  We are different!  And that's ok.

2.  Permanent, not temporary:  "We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control. But such intervals, usually brief, were inevitably followed by still less control which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization."  When I was younger, I learned somewhere that alcoholism was a disease but (and I didn't realize this until after I was sober...) somehow I thought that this disease was something more akin to a bout with the flu.  It would come and go.  In this framework, I was able to think that I had a few "alcoholic incidents" over my first 30 years of drinking but that I was always able to recover from those drunken and shame-filled incidents with a new and powerful resolve "never to do that again" -- and I wouldn't!  I would never again drink 151 rum!  I would never again drink beer, then tequila, then scotch, then more beer! (I would, of course, drink tequila, then beer, then more beer, then scotch!)  It was a real awakening to truth the morning I woke up and realized that this disease was no intermittent or temporary: it was permanent.  This was the way my body works and that will never change for the better.  It will, however, change for the worse....which leads me to...

3.  Progressive:   "We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period of time, we get worse, never better."  This physical and permanent condition is not static in nature: it's progressive.  Progressively worse, not progressively better.  That is, the way my body processes alcohol is such that once I've started putting alcohol into my body, my body will act as though I desperately need more...and more....and more.  There is no amount that will ever be "enough" for any period of time.  What might be enough when I was 20 was no longer enough when I was 30.  And by the time I was 48, I knew that there was really no quantity that would ever be enough.  I was hopeless.

Well, I was hopeless until I discovered through watching my son and two other young people get and stay sober for 5 months and 10 days.  When their success blinded me to my own delusions, I woke up and saw myself as I really was: an alcoholic, a man whose body process alcohol differently than non-alcoholics, whose body would always process alcohol differently and who disease would continue to get worse and worse as long as I kept putting alcohol into this same body.

So when I'm reciting this long version of the 1st step, the most important part of the reading comes in the middle: "We learned that we had to fully concede to our inner most selves that we were [Physically, Permanently and Progressively] alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed." 

Well, this delusion of mine got smashed October 21, 2001.  The Powerlessness referred to in the Reader's Digest version of the first step found on p.59 of the Big Book, does not get me thinking about me vs. a glass of scotch.  No, powerlessness gets me thinking of the Three Ps: that my Physical body processes alcohol the exact way an alcoholic's body processes alcohol; that my body will always--Permanently--do that and if I were to put alcohol into my body now, this disease would reactivate and begin its Progressive destruction of me, body and soul.  I'm not so much powerless over alcohol as I am powerless to be someone other than who I am: at least in regards to alcohol and other outside solutions to inside problems.  Thank God or Whoever.

If you feel any sense of disappointment that you couldn't figure out my riddle, please don't feel bad.  The only reason that I think this became so clear to me is that I decided to add this long version of the 1st step to my daily routine of reciting things to myself while I drive to/from work every day.  I suspect that I have recited p.30 to myself probably close to a 1,000 times in the last five years.  You try that and you will find things within such a passage that you never saw before.  You'd be amazed at what I've found in How It Works after reciting it a comparable number of times AND hearing it in probably 700+ meetings each of the last almost 8 years:  and I'm still able to hear one "new" word in that passage now that I never saw before!  Shaking my head...  Some are sicker than others.

Take care!

Mike L.