RECOVERING FROM THE DISEASE OF "NORMAL"

How do you think "normal" people can benefit from a 12 step program?
Debbie Strand

Will:  The 12 Steps were developed to successfully treat the neurological disease of alcoholism, which is centered around damage and dysfunction of the limbic brain .... The limbic brain literally affects all human functioning and dysfunctioning – whether addicted or not  …. It is the center of the human disease one might call "Normal" -- which can be as challenging as alcoholism and addictions but nowhere near as obvious....

In my experience, all human emotional challenges originate from the limbic area of the brain -- which the 12 Steps treat …. So it has proven applicable and effective in my life, and in others lives for anything as difficult as addiction/alcoholism, as painful as the death of a loved one, or as simple as spilling a coke at McDs ....

• Unfortuntely – in my experience -- most humans lack an even remotely necessary level of conscious emotional necessity -- desperation -- to do and accept the treatments .... Thinking is the primary human addiction of the disease of “Normal”, and much more powerful than any drug or alcohol ..... 

 Hmmmmmmm

CoDependent Insanity and Healing Presence -- Step Two/Twelve Steps

We came to believe -- through personal experience -- that a Presence – greater than ourselves – could restore us to sanity.

Healing Presence begins with Step One: We admitted and experienced that we were powerless over external outcomes – and over our internal perceptions and reactions of external outcomes ..... we are not only powerless over external people, situations, and things, but also over our perceptions and reactions to these external “things” .... we are helplessly insane ....

“Insanity” = unresolved/unhealed traumas – separations – from our past, that leaks, floods, or explodes into our present .... contaminating our perceptions ..... causing us to hallucinate emotionally and mentally .... so we are unable – helplessly powerless -- to alter our perceptions, reactions and actions by a sheer force of will ....

Neurological research shows that trauma – painful separations – alters the programming of the non-thinking, non-reasoning, impulse driven limbic primitive brain –which simply acts automatically at the perception of possible loss and pain .... and the cerebral thinking brain has no power to override the resulting reactions....

Trauma induced viral programming of the instinctive brain creates our uncontrollable addiction to outcomes – or Codependency ....

Religion offers the solution of “belief” – “faith” -- in “God” .... belief/faith is essentially “thinking” that something is true ... but the part of our brains that thinks is not the diseased or the dominant part of the brain .... and so religious belief/faith becomes typically the mental creation of an imaginary person who is neither real nor has any real influence over our disease .... a God of thought ....

What spirituality and the 12 Steps offers, in my experience, is an experiential alternative to “Santa God” and insanity .... a Presence/Power greater than our selves that we come to believe and experience personally and intimately, beginning with the intimate sharing of our pain, and of our individual experiences, strengths and hopes with each other .....

We seem to receive healing of our damaged neural pathways through intimate “conversation” – interaction – with others, our God, and with our selves .... Higher Presence ....

Is It Live -- or Is It Memorex?

(Topic from chairing a meeting March 5, 2011)

Since the first of the year, I have been very blessed to be involved in two Fourth Step groups with two groups of wonderful and very present recovering people. As I have gone through this spiritual inventory process with their support and guidance, I have become increasingly aware of how much my/our pasts leak and sometimes flood into our present. The unresolved traumas caused by others’ dysfunction is still active and controlling our current perceptions, reactions, and actions.

So with my many discussions with Kathy about my experiences with these awarenesses, I was preparing to chair this meeting, and I asked her to pick a topic. This is what she decided.

IS IT LIVE -- OR IS IT MEMOREX?

In the seventies and eighties there was a commercial for cassette tapes where a vocalist could hit a certain vocal pitch and break a glass. Then they would play a recording of her voice on a Memorex cassette tape, and it too would break a glass. So the advertising question was, “considering how exact the tape was in recording a voice, how do you know which is which – the live and present person, or the prerecorded version of her past voice?

IS IT LIVE -- OR IS IT MEMOREX? Doing a Searching Spiritual Inventory

I have done three in depth Fourth Step inventories and much Tenth Step work in the past twenty plus years. After the first Fourth Step, it has always been routine to review areas where I have done past spiritual work, as well as inventorying newer past and present material. As I have been doing this in this inventory, I have been re-experiencing patterns of survival from my past where a smaller traumatic or stressful event would occur and activate my mental tape player – suddenly I would be experiencing much more exaggerated trauma and stress.

A tape or tapes from the past would begin to play, I would be unable to realize that what I was hearing and experiencing inside my brain was not “live” – it was prerecorded tapes from past traumatic life events.

I would perceive, react, and act in delusional hallucinations, and never realize how insane, unconscious and destructive my perceptions and experiences were. Now, looking back with this inventory process and with major help from others, I am realizing more and more how insane the prerecorded tapes of my past have made me, and how they can and do affect me today.

Define “Trauma”

In dysfunctional or painfully harmful past situations, and relationships, we experienced emotional separation from others, from ourselves, and from our God – abandonment, rejection, judgment, and abuse. These separations were “traumatic” – injuring of our “souls” with shaming stress. Unless these separation wounds were treated quickly with some form of human and/or spiritual presence, they were recorded in our brains as permanent mental emotional memories. These recorded memories have in turn created other wounds – traumas – by recreating the perception and experiences of harmful painful separation within current events -- beyond what occurred, and even when no separation was occurring.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is where one has had an obvious series of traumatic experiences, and the replay of recordings of fear, pain, and shameful separation occurs dramatically and obviously uncontrollably when activated. One relives past trauma recordings as if they are currently happening – right now.

Is this Live – or is it Memorex? Spiritual Principles of Healing

In my experience, no amount of therapy, education, reading, knowledge or understanding could change my recordings and my pain. Not until I began practicing the Twelve Steps did I begin to find relief, hope, and a healing erasure of the mental tapes.

Step One: We admitted we were powerless -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

Past traumas- -- separations, abandonments and abuses – which resulted from exposure to dysfunctional relationships were recorded in my brain, and are still there. As it was in the past, so it is today that I don’t know consciously when and how these tapes are being activated and played – how my perceptions are being disrupted and distorted – how my reactions and actions are merely perpetuating and increasing the harm from my past. I am Powerless – helpless – unable to control my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When I consciously can experience the pain, I am experiencing my powerlessness.

Step Two: We came to believe that a Power/Presence -- greater than ourselves – could restore us to sanity.

There is a Powerful Presence -- greater than myself and greater than my brain -- who can access these mental tapes and begin to erase what is recorded on them – restore me to “sanity”. I am coming to believe this by seeing how They(Higher Power/Presence) are changing others, and by beginning to experience changes in my life recordings that cannot be explained by logic and reasoning – by thought.

Step Three: We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him/Them.
Based on this relationship with this personal God of my personal experience, I am to actively beginning to let go of my survival grasp on my perceptions (will) as the source of ultimate and final truths, and to let go of my reactions to (life) outcomes as being the deciding factors in my overall happiness and peace. I am surrendering – more and more – my perceptions and outcomes over to Their loving care.

Step Four: We made a searching and fearless moral/spiritual inventory of ourselves.
I am making a thorough and searching inventory of remembered painful traumas from my past -- experiencing the pain, recognizing the fear, and identifying the patterns of behavior, action, and reaction that the recordings have produced in my past and are producing presently.

Step Five: We admitted to God, to our selves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Verbally and emotionally share the most exact conscious awareness of my mental recordings – the nature of my disease – with God, myself, and others .

Step Six: We became entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character (symptoms).
Become spiritually prepared to have God erase our past recordings. Must be spiritually prepared, because without these recorded tapes, there will be a vast emptiness, a frightening sense of loss of self, and a general disorientation regarding who we are and how we fit into this world. These recordings have defined me and my life – even though they were very diseased.

Step Seven: We humbly asked Him/Them to remove our shortcomings (symptoms).
With a conscious awareness/experience of my helplessness to erase my own recordings, I ask God to erase our recordings, based on the depth of Presence They and I have developed to this time. More details of this process are given in Steps 10, 11 & 12.


Steps 8,9: (8)We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. (9) We made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
We harmed as a result of our being harmed.
When the prerecorded tapes of my past harms were replayed, I frequently “harmed” others with some form of separation and abandonment. I need to review these recorded harms to self and others and to actively pursue a spiritual Presence with God, my selves, and the others I may have harmed. I need to be empowered by Their love to forgive my selves, or those recordings will continues to rip and destroy me with historical, prerecorded shame and guilt messages.


Steps 10, 11 & 12:
I continue to take personal inventory – continue to ask the question, “Is it live – or is it Memorex?”
1. And when - with our new Higher Powered sanity (Step 2), I recognize that tapes from my past are leaking or flooding into my present experiences – which is revealed by the exaggerated intensity of my emotional reactions –
2. I promptly admit my helpless powerlessness to God, to myself, and to another human being ....
3. Step 11 -- and promptly begin improving my conscious contact with my God through intimate conversation with Them (prayer and meditation).
4. Step 12 – and I consciously do this in all of our life affairs and circumstances – with others.

How do you know when it is “live” or “Memorex”? And what do you do about it?

A new and wonderful life can begin with one simple spiritual question, followed by the practice of spiritual principles of Presence –

Is this my Life – or Is This my Memorex?

Fourth Step Groups Starting January 6th -- Spiritual Inventory

FOURTH STEP GROUPS:

Making a Spiritual Life Inventory

“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

When: two separate groups.

1. Thursdays beginning January 6, 2010 from 3-4:30

2. Sundays beginning January 9, 2010 from 3-4:30.

Will continue for six to eight weeks, with the opportunity to continue if group conscience would like to continue working on Step Four longer and in more detail.

Where: Token III Club on Dutchmans Lane, Louisville, KY.

Who: Any interested person in Al-Anon, AA or otherwise interested.

Format: Introduction to:

• The nature of our Al-Anon/relationships disease, and of our “symptoms” as inventoried in Step Four.
• Standard Methods: both groups will deal with all four components.

Ø Life Story

Ø Four Column Spreadsheet (standard, derived from AA and practiced in Al-Anon)

Ø Blueprint for Progress (Al-Anon guide to doing a 4^th Step)

Ø Fear and Sexual Inventories

o The format of the Thursday group will be focused primarily on the Four Column method: for person who have never done a Fourth Step in columns, or would like to do it again, and it has been requested by current group members to show how to use the Four Column method specifically for current life issues as they are attached to past experiences (grief work).

o The format of the Sunday group will be focused primarily on the Blueprint for Progress – especially how to answer the questions and use it vast resources.

(Participants may attend either or both groups, as they are interested and available. The current room will allow for about 10-12 persons each group. Other arrangements may be possible if we exceed the comfort level of the room.)

Leader: Will Wass

How to sign up:

Email me at wwass12@aol.com or call 499-0581. Please leave contact information so you can be reached in the event of changes. Also, messages can be sent and received through Facebook. A list will also be posted at the Token III Club.

Group contribution will be given to the Club for use of the room. No other costs for the group. For Sunday Group especially, will need a copy of Al-Anon’s Blueprint for Progress.

(These groups are a continuation/extension of Spiritual Maintenance Groups begun in 2008 using Al-Anon Twelve Steps, and the Spiritual Maintenance groups will continue when the Fourth Step group is completed.)

First Assignments:

1. Read some literature that introduces the principles of Step Four: Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Paths To Recovery , The Courage to Change (from index in the back), and/or any other literature about Step Four.

2. Make a list of important persons in your life, from birth to present : parents, siblings, other family, friends, teachers, supervisors, other authority persons, romantic friends and partners, God, etc……

3. Make a list of institutions that have directly or directly affected your life.

4. Make a list of persons with whom you have significant individual memories: e.g. clerks at stores or institutions, acquaintances at school and otherwise, co-workers, etc …..

It's Not Hard -- It's Impossumble!! Twelve Steps and Choices

For me, I always confused "choices” with "options", and believed I could control aspects of my life for which I was actually totally powerless .... I would "chose" to do or say one thing, and would do or say something totally different .... and damn myself to the hells of my own self-induced shame and blame ....

The concept of “choice”, in my experience, is a symptom of mental and spiritual dissociation – massive losses of selves -- disconnected and trying to operate independent of each other to protect and care for themselves. Some label this negatively as “ego”.

“Choice” means there is a “chooser” and a “choice”, two different entities separated by some trauma induced psychosis of self, of absence of Presence, and of necessity to operate independent of intuitive wisdom and spiritually intimate nature. Each “choice” represents a dissociated self who becomes attached to the outcome which that choice may or may not represent. Ultimately the dissociated self with the strongest urgency – limbic survival necessity – will determine one’s behavior and words – no matter the cerebral brain’s awareness of likely or ultimate consequences or preferences.

For me, Step One was the beginning of conscious experience of my separated and lost selves, and the beginning of my conscious experience of my human dependency on a Presence greater than my selves who could empower me to know what I wanted to do or say, and actually do or say it. It is not “choice” – it is a natural intuitive flow of who I am in conscious Presence with Them -- who I am being restored to being.

Spirituality, for me, today begins with the admission, experience, and acceptance that I am ultimately totally powerless -- without Their Presence.

In the story of Jesus, there was a time when people were admiring and complimenting Jesus’s work and outcomes. His response was, “It is not I who does this, but my Father who is in me, He does the work.” He refused to accept the illusion of power of choice over his actions and outcomes. Everything he did and accomplished was a direct result of his intimate connection with his Father. He refused to accept credit for his successes and positive outcomes.

This is my experience as well. I cringe when I hear people say that they “chose” not to drink or drug, or participate in some unhealthy behavior today. For me, this statement is the equivalent of stepping away from conscious connection with my God, and telling my self I can now handle my life – the damning delusion of “free will”. In over twenty years of recovery, I have seen and experienced the hellish results of such spiritual and mental psychosis.

It's not hard -- it is impossible!!!!

From the Depths of My Selves -- Rebirth and the Twelve Steps

“Each night a new layer of my “onion” becomes exposed and begins to peel away .... by morning I am consciously experiencing rips and tears within my self – pain and fear – shame and separation – as more of my past becomes current in my present .... fortunately, I am not alone – They are with me .... and each day becomes rebirthing into presence of those I left behind ....” My Journal (October 3, 2010)


Motions –
crisscrossing, repeating,
over and over the surface and depths of my mind –
energies exploding, then rippling upward and across
from the buried depths of what cannot be found or remembered.

Silence creeps unexpectedly across shallow pools
beyond and into deeper and deeper depths of selves.
Waiting , expecting,
knowing that something, someone,
will again touch the hidden triggers –
explosives –compressed, constricted,
volatile energies of selves
forced to remain while others continued forward and beyond.

Darkened depths,
cold currents of fluidly controlled space,
time wandering restlessly the surface above,
dangers seem imminent,
like walking tight ropes
above precipices of racing raging falls –
balance and unbalanced –
waiting for a shifting current of selves
and blinding flashes of sight, sound and feeling,
as more and more of me
rips their way to the surface of my mind.

What Do We Really Want? -- Spiritual Awakening and the Twelve Steps

“The problem with doing what we want is that we don't know what we want .... powerlessness .... but our Higher Power knows – and Their will for me is what I “really” want – but don’t know it .....what happens is my life today is what I “want” – even if my humanness disagrees – all there is and can be is God’s will ..... right at this moment, my humanness is anxious about today’s outcomes ....How do I receive and accept Their gifts for me today? .... “ My Journal (posted on Facebook Saturday, August 14, 2010)

(Responses on Facebook at end of article. Thanks to everyone for sharing)

The challenge for me regarding what I want is that everything I perceive is filtered through my human brain, which attaches a good or bad rating to each molecule, and each unit of perception ....

Going back to the metaphor of the Garden of Eden, the curse was the perception or “knowledge” of good and evil .... at that point the illusion of good and bad was programmed into the human brain, and when the perceptual question is asked, “are you a good witch or a bad witch?” (Wizard of Oz), the answer will always be we and they and it are bad – frequently disguised in the thought and experience of “just not good enough” ....

In the context of the concepts of wants and needs, I will never be satisfied, because my brain will assert its “knowledge of good and evil” and nothing will ever be good enough – I will never be content or truly happy .... the best I can hope for is to be inebriated on thought or some other brain altering substance ....

The “knowledge of good and evil” is ultimately the foundation of separation from my God .... the temptation in the Eden metaphor was that they would become “like God” – without “needing” God .... and separation from God, from themselves, and from each other occurred – They were “ashamed” --- before there was no good and bad – but now, they were naked, and they experienced the shame of being bad – not good enough – abandoned and separated ... and they damned themselves to suffering and death for their perceived “sins” .... actually there was and is no “sin” – only shame = the perception and reaction of deserved separation and loneliness....

I spent most of my life trying to determine what God’s Will was. My brain – dominated by right/wrong, good/bad filter programming assigned the thought label of God’s Will to what I did and what occurred that seemed to be good or right ..... frequently this was just a judgment based on the results of outcomes .... when others seemed pleased – good or right .... if others were displeased – wrong and bad..... and I would punish myself accordingly .... I have never “needed” a “God” to create a hell for me suffer in....

For me, as all of the Twelve Steps converged on Step Eleven, I began to experience that as my conscious contact with my God improved, I began to see my self, and my life from their eyes .... as that occurred, I began to lose incrementaly the effects of the good/ bad mental programming filter .... with the “knowledge of God’s will for me” came an increasing awareness that all is good, and that my human self, without my God’s conscious Presence could not live that awareness ....

The material world and its inhabitants – including myself -- do not operate comfortably within such a radical “mental awakening” .... intimate Presence with God, for me, must be practiced as a life style, or my humanness will make outcomes appear life and death, right and wrong ... and I will ultimately be miserable no matter the outcome ...... when I have gotten the outcomes I “wanted” I was still restless, irritible, and discontented out of fear that I would lose my outcome and/or that the next outcome would be “bad” – “unwanted.”

“Having had a spiritual awakening, as the result of these steps ...... we practiced these principles in all affairs.”


Responses on Facebook to the original post:

Drollene B: If we need a lot of things to make us happy, we can cut down the possibility for unhappiness by paring down the list of needs and downgrade them to wants. If we have a long list of wants, thinking having them would make us happy, we can cut the criteria for happiness by downgrading our wants to preferences. If we have only preferences, we can always be happy. I think it's something to strive for. I'm not there yet.

Joseph P. Where we've been wrong is in the belief that we exist. At least in some concept of separateness and individuality. Such is the egoic illusion. The space in which this phantasmic self exists is merely holding a place in time and space better used as a channel for God's love, comfort, Light, forgiveness, peace. There is no MY will, only God's will and the opportunity to fall into harmony with it.

Gary S, Keep it simple.

Courteney B. Keeping my need/wants vs want/needs is what i strive for. when we get something we want we may not be ready for it, as it's 'our' will, not gods. we then may have to ask for it to be removed and clean up another mess, been there myself. :)

Drollene B. Okay, Gary, here it is, simple: Need nothing, want nothing, be happy with what comes when it comes.

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