Leslie Glass's Blog, page 396

Ghosting Why It Hurts

Ghosting may have its roots in the kind of shunning that some religious groups use to control the beliefs and behavior of its members. Perceived wrongdoing followed by punishment in the form of the silent treatment, banishment, excommunication, torture, and even death goes way back.

Today, being among the disappeared in social media can feel just as bad. It is personal, it is aggressive. And it is a common way of dumping someone.

The Modern Version of Shunning

Ghosting is the ultimate silent treatment. It consists of removing someone from all social media connections, and is often associated with dating, but ghosting occurs in lots of other relationships, too. Divorce, former work friends now competitors, relatives who can’t stand you, someone you were dating for a week or three years are all potential ghosting relationships. You can’t call, can’t see them on Facebook, can’t discuss it. Your phone number is blocked, your photos eliminated. When you’re ghosted, you can’t see someone’s present activities and future events, and you can’t see your own past reflected there anymore. Your entire history with someone may be erased. Ouch.

Ghosting Is A Kind Of Psychic Murder

If getting rid of someone were just blocking the phone or returning your letters, as in the old days, it still hurt. You’re rejected, no longer wanted for whatever reason. This form of blocking, which removes you from social media, however, is a kind of anilhilation. It may not have been personal to the person who doesn’t want you in their life anymore, but it is deeply personal to the one who is ghosted.

Ghosting Is A Necessity When Personal Safety Is At Stake

Ghosting is a healthy way of dealing with a scary or toxic relationship. Blocking calls and un-friending someone on Facebook, even moving to another location can keep you safe from an emotionally painful or violent relationship. You’re gone. That person can’t stalk, or hurt you, anymore. Nothing could be healthier than retreating from someone who sucks the life out of you. But when ghosting happens to you for no apparent reason, often you have no warning and don’t know why someone wants you gone.

Ghosting Can Be The Coward’s Goodbye

Human relationships are not magic acts in which you can make someone disappear at will and there are no consequences. Banishing from the kingdom of someone’s life is going to be painful to the ghosted one. That person is not only unloved, but also unvalidated as a human. If there is no explanation or warning for it, the ghosted one can be baffled as well as hurt by it.

In The End What Happened Doesn’t Matter

You don’t know what happened. You can’t discuss it. You can’t argue with it. It’s done.You could torture yourself wondering what you did and wishing you could fix it. But that would be a waste of time and energy. Ghosting is a very clear message to move on.

Treat Ghosting Like Spoiled Milk

You may feel betrayed. You may feel angry. You may feel hurt. All could be very legitimate feelings, but not useful. Instead, change your internal scenery and let the ghoster go. Letting it go makes room for the better relationships to come.

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Vince Gill Shares About His Sexual Abuse Scare

From New York Post: The #MeToo and “Time’s Up” movements gained an unexpected voice this week as country music star Vince Gill opened up about his experiences with sexual harassment during a live performance in Nashville.

“I was in 7th grade, and a young, dumb kid,” he said.

“I had a gym teacher that acted inappropriately towards me and was trying to do things that I didn’t know what the hell was going on,” explained Gill. “I was just fortunate that I got up and I ran. I just jumped up, and I ran. I don’t know why. And I don’t think I ever told anybody my whole life.”

Gill, 60, had been performing at the Ryman Auditorium on Tuesday for the Country Radio Seminar when he decided to get personal with the crowd.

“We’re living in a time right now when finally people are having the courage to speak out about being abused,” he told concertgoers. “And I think that’s beyond healthy and beyond beautiful to see people finally have a voice for being wronged.”

The 21-time Grammy winner went on to play an unreleased song of his, titled “Forever Changed,” which was inspired by his experience with sex abuse.

“You put your hands where they don’t belong and now her innocence is dead and gone,” Gill sings. “God was watching and he knows your name / because of you, she’s forever changed.”

The musician first revealed the run-in with his gym teacher in 2014 during an interview with Rolling Stone, but has remained quiet about it ever since then.

“What’s been going on has even given me a little bit of courage to speak out,” Gill said.

Counseling can help you break free from abuse and trauma. Find help near you at Recovery Guidance.

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OxyContin No Longer Marketed To Docs

From Fox News: In a surprise reversal, the maker of the powerful painkiller OxyContin said Saturday that it will stop promoting opioid drugs to doctors.

Manufacturer Purdue bowed to a key demand of lawsuits that blame the Connecticut-based company for helping trigger the opioid epidemic.

The company’s statement said it eliminated more than half its sales staff this week and will no longer send sales representatives to doctors’ offices to discuss opioid drugs.

Its remaining sales staff of about 200 will focus on other medications.

“The genie is already out of the bottle,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University and an advocate for stronger regulation of opioid drug companies. “Millions of Americans are now opioid-addicted because the campaign that Purdue and other opioid manufacturers used to increase prescribing worked well. ”

He said Purdue’s decision is helpful, but it won’t make a major difference unless other opioid drug companies do the same.

“We would have more success in encouraging cautious prescribing if drug companies stopped promoting aggressive prescribing,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

U.S. deaths linked to opioids have quadrupled since 2000 to roughly 42,000 in 2016, or about 115 lives lost per day. More than 7 million Americans are estimated to have abused OxyContin since its 1996 debut, the Times reported.

The report said states where OxyContin abuse rates were the highest “experienced the largest increases in heroin deaths,” a research from Penn’s Wharton School and Rand said.

OxyContin has long been the world’s top-selling opioid painkiller, bringing in billions in sales for the privately-held company.

Eventually, Purdue acknowledged that its promotions exaggerated the drug’s safety and minimized the risks of addiction.

“They are still doing this abroad,” Kolodny said of their international arm Mundipharma. “They are following the same playbook that they used in the United States.”

Purdue and other opioid drugmakers and pharmaceutical distributors continue defending themselves against hundreds of local and state lawsuits seeking to hold the industry accountable for the drug overdose epidemic.

Pain pill addiction help is available. Change the ending to your story. Find help at Recovery Guidance.

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CDC Says Flu Is Now as Bad as the 2009 Swine Flu

From Time The flu has further tightened its grip on the U.S. This season is now as bad as the swine flu epidemic nine years ago.

A government report out Friday shows 1 of every 13 visits to the doctor last week was for fever, cough and other symptoms of the flu. That ties the highest level seen in the U.S. during swine flu in 2009.

And it surpasses every winter flu season since 2003, when the government changed the way it measures flu.

“I wish that there were better news this week, but almost everything we’re looking at is bad news,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Flu season usually takes off in late December and peaks around February. This season started early and was widespread in many states by December. Early last month, it hit what seemed like peak levels — but then continued to surge.

The season has been driven by a nasty type of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths than other more common flu bugs. Still, its long-lasting intensity has surprised experts, who are still sorting out why it’s been so bad. One possibility is that the vaccine is doing an unusually poor job; U.S. data on effectiveness is expected next week.

Some doctors say this is the worst flu season they’ve seen in decades. Some patients are saying that, too.

Veda Albertson, a 70-year-old retiree in Tampa, was sick for three weeks with high fever and fluid in her lungs. She said she hadn’t been this sick from the flu since the 1960s, when she was a young mother who couldn’t get out of bed to go to the crib of her crying baby.

“It was like ‘Wham!’ It was bad. It was awful,” she said of the illness that hit her on Christmas Day.

Heather Jossi, a 40-year-old Denver police officer and avid runner, said her illness last month was the worst flu she’s experienced.

“I don’t remember aches this bad. Not for four days,” said Jossi. “It took me out.”

Albertson said she got a flu shot, Jossi did not.

Last week, 43 states had high patient traffic for the flu, up from 42, the CDC reported. Flu remained widespread in every state except Hawaii and Oregon and hospitalizations continued to climb.

“It’s beginning to feel like a marathon,” said Dr. Anthony Marchetti, emergency department medical director at Upson Regional Medical Center, a 115-bed hospital in rural Georgia. A quarter of the hospital’s emergency department visits are patients with flu, and the hospital has added nursing staff and placed beds in halls to accommodate the increase, he said.

“It just means we have to keep on keeping on. We’re getting used to it,” Marchetti said.

So far, it has not been a remarkably bad year for flu deaths. Flu and flu-related pneumonia deaths have lagged a little behind some recent bad seasons. The CDC counts flu deaths in children and there have been 63 so far. They have gone as high as about 170 in a season. Overall, there are estimated to be as many as 56,000 deaths linked to the flu during a bad year.

But reports of deaths — some in otherwise healthy children and young adults — have caused growing fear and concern, health officials acknowledge.

On Friday, Delisah Revell brought her 10-month-old daughter to the Upson Regional emergency room. “I heard how bad it is and I didn’t want to take any chances,” said Revell, who drove 30 minutes to get to the hospital in Thomaston.

The CDC said the amount of suspected flu cases at doctor’s offices and hospital emergency rooms last week matched that seen in 2009, when a new swine flu pandemic swept the world. Swine flu, also called pandemic H1N1, was a new strain that hadn’t been seen before. It first hit that spring, at the tail end of the winter season, but doctor visits hit their height in late October during a second wave.

This flu season, hospitalization rates have surpassed the nasty season of the winter of 2014-2015, when the vaccine was a poor match to the main bug.

Health officials have said this year’s vaccine targets the flu viruses that are currently making people sick, including the swine flu virus that has become a regular winter threat. However, preliminary studies out of Australia and Canada have found the shot was only 10 to 20 percent effective in those countries against the H3N2 strain that’s causing the most suffering this winter.

Doctors say they’re a bit bewildered as to why this season is so intense.

“It is surprising,” said Dr. James Steinberg, chief medical officer at Emory University Hospital Midtown in Atlanta. “It’s not a hugely new strain. So why is it so severe? I don’t think we know.”

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West Virginia calls in National Guard to tackle opioid crisis

In Huntington, W.Va., the Guard has been called in to help tackle the opioid crisis — which the governor has described as a disaster.

“We have to stop this terrible drug epidemic,” West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said. “We have to. If we don’t, it will cannibalize us.”

Huntington has been called the overdose capital of America, with double the national average of overdoses, due in part to the decline of the coal industry, a lack of jobs and the easy availability of the drugs. And law enforcement is stretched thin.

“I don’t think there is a police department in America that has all the resources they need,” Huntington Police Chief Hank Dial said. “It is a complex problem and it needed a complex solution.”

The National Guard is flying its Lakota helicopters on reconnaissance missions in coordination with local police, providing eyes in the sky during busts and while serving warrants.  (FOX News)

The guard is flying its Lakota helicopters on reconnaissance missions in coordination with local police, providing eyes in the sky during busts and while serving warrants.

But its primary role is technical and analytical support.

Guardsman, who asked not to be identified, are manning hotlines and working on computers inside Huntington Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, helping track down dealers and drug networks so cops can focus on the street.

On Wednesday, the guard answered a call that led to the bust of an alleged dealer and the recovery of 430 grams of fentanyl, far more powerful than heroin, with a street value of $86,000.

“We are solving a problem in our country,” said Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, a West Virginia National Guard commander. “And, at the same time, making sure we have the highest level of readiness to respond to something else that may be out there, somewhere else in the world.”

In West Virginia, the National Guard’s primary role is technical and analytical support. Guardsman, who asked not to be identified, are manning hotlines and working on computers inside Huntington Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, helping track down dealers and drug networks so cops can focus on the street.  (Fox News)

U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-W.V., said this drastic step is needed to make a dent in the raging opioid crisis.

“We have people’s lives at risk,” Jenkins said. “We have horrifically  lost way too many lives as result. It is a bold action but, you know what, we need to take action and we are doing that…”

There will not be Humvees blocking roads or soldiers on the street corners with long guns. But the guard could be deployed in this state for years – funded by the state – as long as cops say they need help.

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What is crosstalk and how does it influence us

The idea that previous interactions can affect unrelated future decisions might seem obvious: the stranger in front of you pays for your coffee, and then you pay for the stranger behind you. You’ve had no interaction with the latter, and no reason to do them a favor, but you do it anyway. Similarly, if a friend refuses to help, you might be less inclined to help the next person who asks you for something. These are both instances of crosstalk — previous interactions affecting unrelated future decisions — and though this notion might seem natural, it had never before been incorporated into simulations of groups engaging in repeated social dilemmas. A new framework developed by computer scientists at IST Austria and their collaborators at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford has changed that, and enables the analysis of the effects of crosstalk between games.

Credit: (c) by IST Austria, 2018

The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic example of a social dilemma — that is, a situation where both people would be better off if they cooperated than if they both defected, but there is still some incentive to defect. When social dilemmas are repeated, people develop (usually subconsciously) a strategy that dictates when they should cooperate, and when they should defect. Researchers use computer simulations to study repeated social dilemmas or “games” by assigning virtual players different strategies, and have established which strategies lead to the development of cooperation, and how stable the resulting cooperative situations are. Successful strategies include, for instance, “tit-for-tat”(I start by cooperating, and then I’ll do whatever you did last) or “win-stay, lose-shift” (I start with cooperation, then I’ll keep doing what I’m doing until I lose).

However, in all of these previous studies, scientists have assumed that a player is only interacting with one other player (i.e. Bob only ever plays Alice), or that a player’s decisions in one game is completely independent of their decisions in another game (i.e. Bob’s games with Alice have no effect on his games with Caroline). These assumptions do not necessarily apply to real-life social dilemmas, however: humans are often involved in many simultaneous games, and interactions with other players spill over into other games. In other words, these games are subject to crosstalk.

Now, a team of researchers has developed a new framework to address this limitation in the theory, and allow for the quantitative evaluation of the effects of crosstalk on cooperation dynamics in a population. The team includes co-first authors Johannes Reiter, IST Austria alumnus and current Stanford Instructor, and Christian Hilbe, a postdoc at IST Austria, as well as Professors David Rand, Krishnendu Chatterjee, and Martin Nowak, of Yale, IST Austria, and Harvard, respectively. Their various expertises and perspectives, including evolutionary dynamics, game theory, psychology, and economics, all played a role in helping to create the new model.

In a given simulation, each virtual player has a memory of the games played with each of the other players. In previous models, a player would review their past with their current opponent, and decide on a course of action based on this past and their game strategy. In the new model, there is some chance that these memories will be replaced with the memories corresponding to a third player. This method of encoding crosstalk is in fact general, and accounts for all the many varieties of crosstalk, be it simple human error (mixing people up) or paying-it-forward (you remember your good experience) or some other type. Moreover, it can be applied to any societal network — from a group where everyone knows everyone else to a circle to a random mess of connections.

For Christian Hilbe, this development was exactly what the framework needed: “When modeling repeated games, you always have certain phenomena that you want to describe. For me, it never felt as though previous models were complete. When we introduced crosstalk, it was as if everything snapped together — this is the model we should be using.”

Human error has previously been considered in simulations of repeated social dilemmas. The difference here is that while these errors affected only the repeated game in which they occur, crosstalk causes ripple effects across the entire population: “When crosstalk is introduced, suddenly you’re not playing against a single person — you’re playing against everyone you are connected to, the whole society,” explains Krishnendu Chatterjee.

This results in cooperative and defective behavior spreading much more easily — even a single defective player can cause the complete breakdown of cooperation in a society, if the other players are not sufficiently forgiving. But crosstalk also necessitates strategies with the “correct” level of forgiveness: too harsh, and you end up with a society where no one cooperates, too generous, and defection can also spread as players learn to take advantage of other players. Crosstalk moreover hinders the evolution of cooperation: the authors implemented an evolutionary model, and found that crosstalk decreases the number of different starting societies that end up in stable cooperative states.

Their paper, published today in Nature Communications, presents an interesting message for our current society. Johannes Reiter explains: “The presence of crosstalk means that players must be more forgiving, especially in a network that is highly connected. A harsh strategy for cooperation, such as tit-for-tat, is particularly disastrous in this environment.”

Content originally published by Science Daily

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How To Throw The Best Singles Valentine’s Day Party

Single and another Valentine’s Day is around the corner.  You may think:  I’m going to stay in my pjs, order a large pizza with all the toppings, then finish up with a chocolate ice-cream cake for dessert and watch “Sleepless in Seattle” for the millionth time.  That scenario sounds like the quiet desperation.  No.  Enough is enough, because you are not staying alone this year.

Break Tradition On Valentine’s Day

When you are alone, especially on Valentine’s Day, desperation is almost a go-to response.

“Is it me or is Valentine’s Day this year on steroids?” – Sex in the City

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Almost all dates have the potential for disaster. Will he like me? Will I like him? While a night out with friends almost always means love and laughter.

Text your single friends and ask them to get together with you and celebrate your friendship. Some of them may have a hot date for Valentine’s Day, but the others will jump on the invite, because probably they have no plans but staying at home too.  Hosting the party at your house is a fun way to shower your friends with love. Let’s start planning!

1. Pick A Fun Theme

Have your single friends to wear a certain color such as red or pink.  Then go to the party store and purchase cheap red or pink hats. Another fun idea is to go to the second-hand store and find red or pink ties, so everybody can accessorize their outfits.  These extra touches make great props for fun photos.

2. Drinks

To support your friends’ sobriety, offer two choices of Valentine’s themed mock-tails. For a sweet treat, mix club soda with a few drops of red syrup and add a strawberry or raspberry for each champagne glass.  For a savory treat, use V8 tomato juice to make a healthy non-alcoholic Bloody Mary.  Just add a dash of lemon juice, couple of drops of Tabasco sauce, a pinch of celery salt, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and black pepper.  Decorate the glass with half celery stalk.

3. Food

Do a Valentine’s pot luck.  Ask each friend to bring a dish.  Make sure you have appetizers, main dish and desserts.

4. Atmosphere

Create an energetic atmosphere with Pandora on your IPhone or Alexa as far as music goes.  Get some inexpensive party decorations at the Dollar store and decorate your home.  You could also do some yourself if you like arts and crafts.  Take red and pink paper.  Cut into heart shapes and cover the food table with them.  If you are really crafty, create a vintage banner. Using a red marker, write all sorts of friendship quotes on the back of old greeting cards. Glue some sparkly glitter on them, then attach them to a raffia string and hang them on the entrance door or the windows.

5. Entertainment

During the party your friends can dance, or even leave a small spot for arts and crafts to make.  To make fun jewelry, you could tread colorful beads onto thin red or pink ribbons.  Or get small picture frames and decorate them with cut outs from magazines.  These small crafts will stay with them as a souvenir from a fun and friendly Valentine’s Day even as singles.

Set up another station dedicated for games like picking up Valentine’s candies with chops sticks.  The one who gets the most without dropping on the floor is the winner.

If your single friends are more into writing, ask them to write their visualization for next year’s Valentine’s Day with a partner, or who is their desired partner, what does he or she needs to be or do or have.  What is important for them in a partner.  If there are any volunteers to share their desired partner there should be no judgment.  Each one and his or her own ideas.

Have fun with your friends either you are going out to a restaurant or staying at home.  Do something together and make happy memories as a group.  Next year something might change, or you might enjoy it so much that you’ll want to do a repeat.

If you need help to maintain recovery, or deal with addiction, check out Recovery Guidance for a free and safe resource to find professionals near you.

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3 Steps To Get Free Of Manipulation

Manipulation is getting you to do, often unreasonable, things that you really don’t want to do. It’s important to know that manipulation is often built on a series of lies or misinformation intended to inspire feelings of guilt or sorrow, or worry about what could happen. Your natural eagerness to fix things fuels the manipulator to ask for more. Yet no matter how many hoops you jump through nothing is fixed for long. Manipulators rely on you to back down and give in to ever greater demands. Call it an addiction.

Manipulators use arguments, moods, emotional threats, etc. to keep you working for them no matter what the cost to you. A few examples include:

Transportation anywhere any time for any reason
Money for crisis after crisis
Help finding shelter, jobs, food, travel, medical needs, law enforcement, legal
Job covering up or fixing things
Moral Support on the phone for hours every day

How to disengage is ridiculously easy in concept and incredibly difficult in reality because manipulators will stop at nothing to confuse you and make you think you’re both essential to them and crazy or selfish or plain mean for objecting. Steps to recovering your sanity and your life include Awareness, Thinking About Change, and Taking Action.

Step One: How Do You Know You’re Being Manipulated?

It’s simple. You’re uncomfortable.
You never have a free day to be yourself or do what you want to do.
You dread interaction with the manipulators in your life.
Someone asks you to do something you know isn’t right.
Someone tells you something you know isn’t true.
You don’t dare tell your true feelings because it will start an argument.
You explain your feelings endlessly, but only to yourself.
Someone’s tugging on your heartstrings so you’ll feel guilty, responsible, horrible, if you don’t fulfill requests.
You lose sleep over the one-sided relationship and what you should be doing about it.
You’re afraid of what will happen if you don’t do what you’re asked.

Step Two: How To Begin Thinking About Change?

It may come as a huge relief to know you can get out from under by beginning to say no. If someone asks you to dance you can say no. Or if someone offers you food and you’re not hungry you can say no. When someone makes you feel bad all the time, you have the choice to disengage.

It takes a lot of practice to say no to manipulation. With children and teens it takes a professional, so be sure to ask for help. If you feel you’re going crazy, it may not be you. Your manipulator has gotten into your head and is telling you how you should think and what you should do. You can stop his/her voice in your head by the following.

Don’t accept anyone’s lies as your reality.
Rely on facts instead of stories about who’s to blame. Especially if the other person thinks you’re to blame. Get the facts.
Don’t even think about arguing. There’s no way you can win in an argument with a manipulator.
Stop listening to anger and hurt feelings. It doesn’t help the other person to vent to you, and only hurts you to listen.
Your actions can be guided by the truth, your feelings, and what’s right for you.

Step Three: Taking Action

It’s really scary to change. What are the right actions to take? This depends on many factors including whether your manipulator is living with you, is potentially dangerous, or at risk for suicide or overdose. If you are fearful, call the hotline below.

Setting boundaries is a good first step. You may already know that your manipulator will not accept boundaries, but try it with empathy and firmness. You can always disengage further if you need to. Setting boundaries on phone calls, visits, running errands and paying for things works like this:

Accept one phone call a day, not a dozen.
Talk for one minute, not 40.
Don’t be available for visits or errands that aren’t convenient for you. Really this is important. You can say no and the world won’t end.
Don’t listen to venting. Say you have to go.
Don’t take blame for someone else’s troubles and woes. Say you have to go.
Don’t argue. Say you have to go.
Get help if your manipulator is living with you.
Get support from family or friends or a therapist when you’re badgered, or feel anxious or hopeless.

Living A More Peaceful Life

Having a manipulator in your life means the storm is constantly in you. Someone is always tugging at your heartstrings. Freeing yourself means the storm will be transferred to the other person for a while. He or she won’t want to let you go. But then, he or she may grow up, and start taking responsibility for himself and find happiness when you stop jumping at every command. It happens.

Or she/he may just stay mad and feel thwarted. That’s his or her choice and consequence. Your reality will be different. It will get quiet and peaceful if you let your anxieties go. Many people turn to God for love and support. Others start doing all the things they didn’t have time for when they were the serving others’ needs. Our advice is to get as close to nature as you can. Nature is a good model. It is cruel, but always changing. Beauty always follows the storms. We can learn to change with nature and the seasons.

Take walks, go to the movies, bowl or play tennis or golf. Take up gardening. Learn to cook or quilt. Read a novel. No one should be dominated by another. The pain and guilt of letting go passes if you let it.

Counseling can help you break free from manipulation and addiction. Find help near you at Recovery Guidance.

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Letting Go Of An Ungrateful Son

Letting go of someone you love, but who uses you, is the hardest thing to do. My friend, Jackie, asked me for some advice last week. Her 29 year old son, Brent, was angry because she didn’t pay his bills or seem to care about him at all. He told her he never felt loved by her. Jackie is confused and hurt and was now considering giving Brent, who couldn’t keep a job or girlfriend, money to ease his pain.

Ungrateful Child Happened To Me

I have been in Jackie’s shoes. I knew she wanted me to tell her, “Spend money on him, and he will suddenly wake up and realize how great he has it and stop being a self-centered adult.” Instead I said, ”Let him go.” Her eyes filled with tears. I knew it was not the answer she had wanted and yet it was the answer she probably needed.

If I have learned anything over these past 6 years of being a single widowed mother of five children, it is that the quicker I let go and let them experience the consequences of their choices ,the quicker they are to take charge and improve their lives.

Letting Go Is Being Brave

My mother’s heart has betrayed me more than once. I didn’t think a group or therapy could help me. I was wrong. I’ve used both to  guide my actions. The help of Al-Anon, my friends, my sponsor, and my therapist I have seen a better way to live my life and let my children live theirs. Yes, it is counter intuitive to let adult children struggle when they beg for help him “just this once.” Which is never just once.

Learning To Swim Before It’s Too Late

I told Jackie a story that always stops me from enabling my adult children. I picture my child struggling to swim in a calm river. He flounders and begs me again and again to give him an inner tube, or a boat, or a yacht. He feels he shouldn’t have to work this hard. I may be tempted to give him everything he wants and bask in the temporary glow of his relieved smile. While my child may be safe right now, the real danger for him is downstream with its boulders, rapids, and waterfall. He needs to get stronger before the real problems arrive.  My helping would only harm him.

The “What If”

My friend, Jackie, wasn’t satisfied with this story. “What if Brent dies because I didn’t help him? What if he kills himself?” I had the exact same fears and feelings. I told her what my therapist had told me. “Have the funeral.” If Brent’s death or suicide was the absolute worst outcome of Jackie’s not enabling him, then she would need to face that fear. I told her to picture the casket, the flowers, the music, all the people crying. Give each detail her full attention. Feel what it might feel like to lose her son this way.

This exercise helped me a great deal when I faced my greatest fear of not enabling my children.

No Guarantees

There are no guarantees whatever you choose to do. Not helping often yields better results in a far shorter time. When I think of the years I poured money, time, and excuses into my children with no real change, I’m sad. The real changes came when I stopped enabling and let them fall into their messes.  It sounds easy, but my gut always ached. My knees shook, and my heart felt felt torn in two. The only certainty was pain.

The Hardest Decisions Can Be The Best Ones

My heart goes out to Jackie. I know my hardest decisions were the best ones I could make. I know I wouldn’t have been able to let my children go without a support group encouraging me, taking my calls, texting me to stay strong, and patiently loving me as I formerly gave into the temptation to “fix the problem just this once.” The crises will keep coming, but not enabling will get easier. Part of me will always yearn to dive in and save my child, just one more time, but today I resist the drama machine and everyone benefits.

I hope Jackie will find the courage and support to resist, not only for herself, but also for her son.

Recovery and treatment are for everyone, not just the person who is using. Find family therapy and support groups near you at Recovery Guidance.

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Facing The 7 Deadly Needs

How do you feel during your interactions and relationships? And how do you get your needs met? The seven deadly needs listed below can get you in the same kind of trouble as the 7 deadly sins.

In this case the need to take action can lead you into dangerous territory. Digging for information that’s not your business, having over the top reactions, allowing ego infestations to affect your life, setting your self up as judge and jury are a few of the 7 deadly needs. Let me share mine. Do they resonate?

1. The Need to Know

I love trivia because it makes me feel smart to know lots of useless facts. With technology I am able to access unlimited amounts of information anytime anywhere. Would my life be less fulfilling if I didn’t know how deep the Atlantic Ocean was? Wouldn’t my serenity be better served if I would simply relax and not have to know all the details of everyone else’s life on Facebook, Twitter, and Snap Chat? What if I let it go and moved through my life seeking silence and calm instead of facts and gossip? In family situations I often want to know every detail to make a fair judgement. What if I suspended my need to judge and therefore didn’t need to know all the dark details of the latest family drama? These days I try not to need to know the details and am able to stay out of the other people’s drama.

2. The Need To Be Right

This deadly need has caused many a battle in my life and possibly yours. I want to prove to you how wrong you are and how right I am. Once again my ego was fed when I could corner someone and get him or her to admit I was right and they were wrong. What does that do to the relationship? Facing my need to be right causes me to examine how unkind I really am being. What if I am wrong or what if we are both right? What if it is OK for the other person to continue with their day believing they are right? Being right may make me feel important, but it doesn’t make the people in my life want to be around me.

3. The Need To Get Even

This is a sad need. It causes so much harm. It leaves me feeling  smug and self-righteous. None of those feelings are positive or healthy. No matter what was done to me, it is in my best interest to not seek revenge. This need can take me down to a dark place and it is better for me to “Let Go and Let God.”

4. The Need To Look Good

How many times have I felt less than because I wasn’t wearing the right clothes at a party or driving the right car? I wanted others to think I was all-together. This need was born in my insecurity of not being enough just as I am. I have learned in recovery that my value is the same no matter what I am wearing or driving. My Higher Power determines my value and that is always the same no matter how I appear.

5. The Need To Judge

I judged some people as being better than me, and some as worse than me. I lived my life on a ladder always trying to find someone less than me to make me feel better about myself. How freeing it is to learn I don’t have to judge anyone. I can simply accept people as they are and that we are all equal. It certainly saves time and energy. It also builds relationships when I can decide if I want someone in my life or not without judging, but by simply asking if I want to spend time with them. Not living  life on a ladder is a good life.

6. The Need To Keep Score

This is what I did when I was little. Unfortunately it carried over to my adult years. I like things to be fair. The way I make sure of that is to keep score and add it up. My life is so much easier when I accept that life is happening exactly as it should. I don’t have to find the fairness my life, only the acceptance.

7. The Need to Control

This need is one that makes many of us crazy. I felt if I controlled everything I would be safe. How untrue and maddening this need has been in my life. When I trust my Higher Power with the details of my life I am better able to enjoy the moment and not drive everyone around me crazy by trying to “help them.”

While I still struggle with these deadly needs I am happier now. They are my flawed human attempts to meet my insecurities and fears. Living humbly and without fear of what others think can only help to bring peace to my life.  I and my Higher Power continue to search for new ways to get my needs met in healthy ways.

If you have trouble with the 7 Deadly Needs, visit Recovery Guidance, a free resource that locates mental health professionals near you.

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