Although I will be talking predominantly about Addiction in this posting this can refer to other activities of life. Such as: Obsessive compulsive disorder, relationship issues, career change, or moving house. Please remember that this is only an opinion driven from my contemplations.
I will first explain the Cycle of Change and the Hero’s Journey, then show how the Hero’s Journey can be a better tool to help people with addiction. This is also a tool that helps gain motivation and self pride in the addicted person, which may need picking up.
Cycle of Change
Within the therapeutic tool box of addiction, the “Cycle of Change” model is extensively used to explain how people with addiction are on a path of change. This model is a guide to help the client get the right help at the right time and alleviate the client that every failure is part of a learning process and not a failure. The Cycle of Change is comprised of 6 steps that the person moves through on the quest to achieve permanent change. Furthermore a person can go through this cycle several time before permanent change is achieved.
The Hero’s Journey
Joseph Campbell is the person renowned for uncovering the Mono Myth that is embedded in all the Myths and Legends around the world, and for showing that how forms of entertainment today, (movies, books, tv shows, plays) are successful when the core points of the Hero’s Journey Mono Myth are in them. To have this further illustrated, all you need do is to Google “the Hero’s Journey” or search the same thing on Youtube. I want to talk about how this concept of the Hero’s Journey would be a better tool when working with people that in the midst of change, and show that there is meaning in what they are going through and what others are doing to them.
The Hero’s Journey has 12 stages. They are:
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I have been reading Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection By John T. Cacioppo & William Patrick (2008). Being a most interesting book about human connectedness and the genetic interest for humans to work in groups. This book is both a descriptive and prescriptive book about loneliness. I was going to write about loneliness but after doing a google search about the book, I have found that there are some great reviews, furthermore the author is talking about the book of youtube.
You wont be disappointed in reading this book.
This book on amazon.com and you can read a review.
You are up and finishing off the day, going to the toilet, turning out the lights, put your PJs on and then lay down into a nice bed. You think after a long day “wow it’s nice being vertical”, but then something happens. You close your eyes and try to rest, relax, and sleep, but the mind just gears up the over drive, put on the turbo supper charger, and you are strapped in as a passenger on a roller-coaster ride of thought.
We all have experienced this, but there are times when it just seems worse than other times. I remember listening to a psychologist talking on the radio as I was trying to sleep. I did not agree with everything that was talked about in the interview, and then suddenly my mind went crazy answering some of the issues, and interrogating my memory for the references that contradict the information being talked about on the radio.
There was another time when I was trying to sleep, my mind was working me through an entire workshop based on the Hero’s Journey, which I am doing the research for now and putting together the resources for the work shop. This restless night happened only a week ago. Although only last night, I had another restless night, and my mind was only picking random stuff to think about, however it still kept me awake.
Further more many people have the same types of restless nights, but the things that are being pondered are driven about negative, self persecuting thought, or concentrating on the persecution, and oppression, that they are suffering from others. Thinking about how to get them back, what should have been said to a response to a cutting remark, or just convincing you’re self that every one else is right. I know one person that was brain washed by a psychiatrist that did a great deal of harm in a person, it took me a long time to convince the client that the psychiatrist was wrong. This person stayed awake at night thinking that they were insane when in fact the voices that they heard were not in their head, but people talking outside the house as they walked past the house. So explaining that the episodes of schizophrenia only happened with severity on Friday and Saturday nights was a break through for the client. If only the psychiatrist would have investigated more, this person would have had a happier life for years.
Further more, people that are recovering from addiction also suffer restless nights doing head miles. The most common explanation for this is that the person in not bombed out on drugs, which frees the mind up to think. Which co-insides with the vivid dreams that feel so real that people awake, fearing to go back to sleep. For a recovering addict, restless nights are the hardest thing to get over, because the mind is thinking and collating years of information that it could not do because of the drug effect, affecting the ability to think. So now free from the affects of drugs, the brain goes into over drive, just to run sanity down, and then U-turn to do it night after night.
So how do we stop from thinking so much, or at least turn head miles into head meters?
The best thing is to get out of bed. Don’t teach your sub-conscience that the bed is the place to think. Now you can pick several from the list below, choose the options that suits you the best, ie. try each option, then pick the one that works best for you.
1) Tell your self that there is time in the morning to think about the issue in the morning. And while you are up have a cup of chamomile tea, which has a sedative component in the tea.
2) Have a note pad near by the bed or a voice recorder, sit up and record your thoughts. This action re-enforces the mind that the thoughts are placed somewhere that can be retrieved for later use. Then the thoughts do not need to be repeated over and over again so you remember it in the morning.
3) Get up and play a brain taxing game like a crossword, Sudoku, find a word, or drawing. This can use up the energy that is keeping you awake and dispelling that energy.
4) Do a grounding meditation, that brings you back to the now. How to do this is by closing your eyes and trying to pick where sounds you hear are coming from and what they are. Another one I use sometimes is to imagine an energy field around your body (aura) and move it around, have it flowing through the body and pulsate around and through the chakra points.
5) Grab a boring audio book or one that has a nice voice reading the audio book that you have listened to before, and listen to it. This is using our childhood created memory of our parents reading to us of a night. The soothing voice helps, but do not listen to an audio book that you have not listened to before, because you will then stay awake to get the story. I use this method a lot, and it helps me. I don’t recommend reading a book, unless it is a boring book, like a text book. If the book is a page turner, you may still be reading when the sun comes up. I should add that when you listen to an audio book, it can penetrate your dreams, thus you play out some portion of the audio book in your dream.
We are blessed and cursed with a great imagination, and when we do head miles (aka. busy mind), it is our imagination going into over drive. So remember that much of what you are thinking about is the creative mind helping the logical mind explain the information gathered. Thus much of what you are thinking about is fantasy and speculations of the imagination. This is why one thought will morph into another thought. When the thoughts are negative, people describe this process as a “spiral into the abyss”, because one negative thought accompanied with your imagination will build into the next negative thought, progressively worsening.
Here is a good video that talks about head miles quieting-the-busy-mind-2
When people are in the midst of communication, a complex process of cognition is used, and we are so adept at it that it comes automatically, though mistakes are made from time to time. When we talk, an idea needs to be translated into words, and then spoken. The listener needs to hear the words, translate these guttural utterances which are symbols of the idea, and decode them into the representation of the original idea. Thus the process has a sender of information, a receiver of the information, and hopefully the information will not be lost in translation. Furthermore, if this does not sound complicated enough, we then add into the understanding of the spoken word our fluctuating emotional state and the tone and temper of the speech. So you can see that when we speak, the probability of misunderstanding is quite high.
When you are trying to communicate, it is really important to pick the right words that have the right impact on the listener, and hope that the listener has the same meaning for the word/s that you have chosen, along with an interest in what the speaker is trying to say. So as a speaker you need to put your self in the place of the listener and orientate your chosen words around the listener. To a great deal I try to do this when writing up these blog postings. I know that some of you have a good vocabulary and other do not. Furthermore I am aware that even when someone has a good vocabulary the definition of a word is totally different to my definition. So when I talk about “guttural utterances” I am talking about “speech, talking, and communicatory grunts” but it could also mean a blocked air passage or a cough, by others.
We all wish to communication with the hope of being understood. But we have our emotions getting in the way, the listeners emotions impacts on what they want to hear, and the subject that we are talking about may be hard to put into words. But we still we want others to know the ideas that we have, and so we talk in metaphors, examples, parables, and stories, so we can give someone the same idea we have in context with the subject.
If we take a simple statement such as “the cat sat on the mat” and analyse it several ways. So firstly, if one person says it to another in an angry way, we can assume that the mat is new and expensive, thus the cat is not aloud to sit on it because it is so precious. Secondly, if a person says it in a loving way, we can assume that the cat is trained to sit there to receive a food or affection. So you can see that the words spoken are translated in context with the tone of voice and the environment.
To break things down further we can pick on one word, such as “date” as in a date between two people to get to know each other in a romantic way. We can pull out all the connotations that are built into the symbolic meaning of the word date. So let’s list out all the meanings and images that is places into one word.
- Anticipation
- Romance
- Dinner
- Interview
- Hope
- Attraction
- Conversation
- Flirting
- Exchanging a phone number
- Fun
- Dress nicely
- Food
If you can think of more images that the word sparks in you, please post it in a comment.
You can use a word that means one thing to you and it has a totally different meaning to some one ells. Take for example the word “gay” in years gone by it just meant happy, but now is has a totally different image set in the meaning. In other words you could say that each word has a whole schema set behind them, much more than what is printed in a book of synonyms. Taking the word that we used above “date” one person may see it as a harmless event that has no real personal meaning, besides an act of fun with an ego boost, while the other person may place greater meaning on the event and hold it almost sacred in the start of a relationship. Thus the words we use within context are designed to illicit emotional responses to build or break another person. Even in the interpretation of verbal interactions can be misinterpreted because the receiver is in an emotional state.
The emotional state of a person can create a completely opposite meaning to a word or statement because of their own emotional view of what is going on. For instance, if a person is in an agitated state, almost aggressive, a smile with the statement “how are you doing?” may be sent to this person but is interpreted as sarcasm instead of concern. Being in an agitated state can alter ones view of the environment along with every interaction to the point that any form of communication can be seen by that person as a provocation for aggression.
I have seen people and at times had to jump in to a conversation because I could see by the look on one of the faces, that what was being said was taken as an attack on the person, when in fact the other person was only talking about them self. Thus as I have posted in earlier postings, we create the world we see, even when it is totally misinterpreted, but to us we think we are seeing a fact. In this state even the words that we use with our self in self-talk is of a negative kind. Though the opposed is also true, when we are in a great mood, full of happiness, we do not see that we could be annoying others or misinterpret a sarcastic remark designed to hurt as having fun.
You may have heard it, you may have said it you’re self, that lying to you self is the easiest person to lie to. If we don’t lie to our self we then blame the situation or better still others for our own inaction. It is so easy to procrastinate by lying to our self, we need to get out and go for a walk of do something around the house, so we say to our self that it can be done tomorrow or I have something ells to do that is more important, or you don’t want to miss a show on TV. I have told clients that I may be the only therapist that will quote Hitler in a therapeutic context. So I will quote him here and tell you the same thing. Hitler stated that the hardest war to fight is the war with your self. Likewise Frank Herbit in his Dune books stated something very similar, “When the mind commands the body there will be no resistance, but when the mind commands its self resistance comes all to easy”.
People with depression will be told by therapists to get out and walk, this is to get the body to work and to stop dwelling on unpleasant thoughts, also when walking the body starts to create all thous feel good chemicals. That is why some people feel addicted to jogging, it is not the jogging that they are wanting to do, it’s the feel good chemicals that the body creates that they want. Like wise getting things done around the house can also create a feeling of accomplishment, again the dopamine pathways in the brain are being used to bring about those feel good chemicals.
I know that you are saying, because I say those things to my self. I just don’t feel like doing that stuff. At the moment the slave cylinder on my clutch is leaking like a sieve. The part has been ordered and I just have to wait for it, but in the mean time I have to top up the fluid every day and if I am not careful, I need to bleed the clutch, which I have done 5 times in the last 2 weeks. You know I lied to my self several times, well 5 times to be exact, some of the excuses you may have used your self. So some of the excuses were, I am having an interesting chat on facebook or skype, I am not going anywhere today I will look at the clutch tomorrow, I am to tiered because I have been on my feet all day, I don’t need the car today I don’t need to look at it, and finally, this documentary is so interesting. Its funny how work around the house has so much passions, we could learn from the dishes, they will sit in the sick and wait without making a sound passionately waiting till you wash them and put them away. Likewise, have you found the some books have a magical power to just drain you of all your energy, I sit down to study and Wow, I get so tiered, I start yarning and just want to go to bed for the next 5 years. So we end up cramming for the exam and do the essay two days before it’s due. So again we lie to our self to get out of that stuff, thus the dishes and everything ells that is low on the list of priorities get done.
We lie to our self to get out of work, house work, or what ever. So why can’t we lie to our self to get them done. You will find that its only getting started that is the hard thing, once you have started the work you get stuck into it and you get the work done. It’s just getting started that is so hard. I have used some lies on my self that seem to work, I would love to hear of your ways of kidding your self in getting started. For instance, I have just cleared my mind about the whole job and told my self to just check the flued then I go to the next step. So I don’t do the big job in my mind I am doing a set of little jobs that are not hard. Another lie I use on my self to get a job done is to pretend that I am getting payed for the work, well that’s not a big lie, I am actually saving my self money by doing it my self. Another one I use is that of pleasing another, my grandfather was a mechanic before he became an auctioneer, and taught me heaps about cars and trucks. So what I do is pretend that he is behind me helping me with the work and once it is done, we shake hands and pat me on the back. By the way he passed away about 15 years ago, but is still with me.
Blaming others is a great way of lying to your self. This works so well and is the best way to build excuses, that everyone does it in all walks of life from the leaders of the country to the long term unemployed. Fill in the blanks; “If it would not be for ………. I would have been able to do ……….”.
As a kid we try to blame the dog for eating the home work for school. After that time goes on and we get older and learn a whole heap of new excuses that are plausible. What blaming other does with great effect is to take all the focus off of you and places it on something ells or someone ells. Talking with other people that deal with addiction therapy, have stated that until a person stops diverting blame away from them self and owns the problem, recovery from addiction is a struggle and therapy will not work. When we own the issue and admit to our self that the problem was created by our own stupidity or lack of action recovery is far more likely.
I remember that whenever I did something stupid that I paid for through pain or damage to stock that I purchased when I was an auctioneer working with my grandfather, he would always say, “Frank you need to think before you act, that’s how you avoid stupidity”.
This posting follows from the last posting about creating your reality. Granted you must realise that this posting is not talking about accidents that were totally out of your control, such as being a victim of crime or an accident. But how you deal with the incident aftermath is in your control and the decisions you make to get your life back on track is your responsibility. Friends, family, and professionals are there to help, but even then they cannot do the job of helping if you blame your inaction on others and think they will make you better. Like the old saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. Every one around you may try to help you, but if you don’t help yourself, they cannot make you help your self. This is the thing I encounter on a daily basses, ever time I am working with people with drug and alcohol addiction. So I hear the phrase a lot, “I am only doing this because of my family, partner, kids, work, or justice system”. Over time the person starts to realise that if you don’t do something for your self it won’t be done. Thus they stop blaming others for their plight and start being involved in their own recovery.
Here is another artical on this subject if you wish to read more: Excuses, excuses, excuses: Why people lie, cheat, and procrastinate
All too often we are told, is our socialisation process, that we are not in control of life. This comes with statements such as:
- Behave your self.
- Can’t you fit in with others?
- Don’t be a pain.
Furthermore, when we are in a good mood or bad mood we are asked, what made you in such a mood? This is telling us that any and every source of emotional flux is created by an out side influence. Thus our emotional life is always seen as a part of us that is never in our control. This is evident in our every day speech, in statements like; he can make me happy, she will make me a happy man, I can make you happy, you have made me so happy, You drove me to drink, you made me so mad, the drink will make me happy, drugs control my life, and the list goes on. If you can think of more please put them in a comment for this posting.
The same is taught to us in school and in songs, TV shows the power of one over other’s emotions, even in the foods we eat, or buying the stuff to fill your home. We are taught that eating this will make you happy or drinking that will do it. But alas this is a path that will always yield an empty cup. For when you fill the cup with outside source of pleasure it will soon be evacuated and spent. Just like a drug you will need to find more with greater potencey, trying to fill an empty vessel that will never be content.
The source of all things, has always been and shall always be within. We are all on the cusp of two worlds, that of being an animal, responding to stimuli and being a reactionary machine. The other world that we strive to achieve is that of the full realisation of the self and all power this realisation grants. The animal within us seeks excuses for our acting, putting reasons for our actions towards the outside world. Thus the animal part of us acts without thought of the interpretation of our actions in the sight of others. Furthermore in this state of animal action, all our actions are driven by meeting and dealing with immediate needs of running from pain and moving to pleasure. This is well described in the theory of operant conditioning within psychology. The alternative to this mode of living is to act with purpose and with the full realisation of the self. As we are co-creators in the life we lead. I will regard this part of us as the self-creator. The self-creator within us strives to be more than a reactionary machine, making each action speak of goodness and dignity, to live in harmony with our surroundings. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs poorly describes it in the summit of his pyramid of Self-actualizing, being described as a need. But if a person is not aware of the possibility to reach for a life of purposeful living, they will never seek it. Any person in marketing will tell you that, “that is their business”, creating needs that meet the animal within us, not that of the self-creator. Thus people will settle for quick fix solutions, seeking easy fulfilling goals that in fact take much more energy to achieve than that of self-actualization and being a self-creator.
I have talked about the hero’s journey in previous blog postings, so please read about the Hero’s Journey, as the hero’s journey is the key to how one can achieve the order within, to achieve the control of the self-creator over the animal within us. The achievement of the self-creator state will only fail if we follow the path of the animal, that of being a slave to external sources and the fulfilment of our two basic needs of feeding and fornication. We begin to despise the ones and things that hurt us, and live in a world that has no forgiveness, because that is all one sees, without understanding that we have created those maladaptive passion’s. The reason we see the outside as the source of our problems is because in that state with out self awareness, we react to the outside with fervour and fury. Fear and hatred will lead your way without the realisation of that within.
For an illustration of what I am on about, when you are in a bad mood or emotional state, look around you. You despise the stuff in your house, the books you read, and the people you are with. Thus the opposite is just as true, when you are in a good mood, you are happy with everything you see and touch. This is reactionary behaviour. What you see, perceive, and behaviour ebbs and flows with the emotions that are ruled without your control, as a reactionary creature. I have come across people that look for excuses for their actions in the outside world all the time. They act in a was that appears to others as being self-absorbed, thus suffer the consequences of being ostracised and despised, and not understand that they are the ones creating that reality. Because as soon as you realise that every person you are in contact with, apprise, interpret and react to our behaviour is a consequence to our own behaviour, we will soon alter our behaviour to bring harmony to bring about favourable consequences.
These two terms are banted about a bit in the media, yet do we really know what they are and how they interact?
Nature
When we talk about nature in the field of behaviour we are not talking about someone’s personality. So to say that someone has an angry nature, is a mixture of psychological terms that dose not make sense. But if a person is angry by nurture is a good use of the terminology. When talking about nature, we are talking about genotype, and phenotype. Nature is a hard thing for psychology to get a good grasp on. For instance there may well be a gene that dictates over anger, introversion, extraversion, consciousness, agreeableness, and openness. Though alas there is little scientific evidence for genes that control these traits. The only scientific research that investigates the interaction of nature (ie. genes), within the environment are twin studies, where the twins live together and apart. In these types of researches, researchers can attempt to separate the impacts of the environment (ie. Nurture) from the influences of the genetic make up (Nature). Some have made statements that empathy is an innate behaviour that is governed by genes, and is bleach out of people through nurture, but again there is no real proof only theories.
Nurture
Nurture refers to how one is raised and the environment, such as parents, peers, and teachers, also the media. Nurture is how we are nurtured in life. Thus if a person is shy by nature, it can be overcome by nurture. The next term is “Best fit” that creates the extremes. That means that if you have shy genes and live in an environment that promotes shyness, the outcome is an extremely shy person. Likewise aggression, cruelty, and all the personality you can think of will act the same way within the best fit combination. The vast majority of my postings talk mainly on nurture, because that is where change can happen.
Thus if there is a Nurture verses Nature argument occurs, one cannot have a full debate, because there is no real evidence for nature and an overwhelming evidence for nurture. As I was taught at UNI (University) it is a case of 100% Nurture and 100% Nature that is involved in personality creation.
Please have a look at older postings about what is considered to be innate behaviour.
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