Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 32

Black and White Thinking is Poisonous

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

I’ve certainly been guilty of black and white thinking in the past, but it is only in recent years that I’ve discovered how prevalent this narrow-mindedness is in the world. It seems to be the norm rather than the exception. I suspect that it has always been this way, but the popularity of the internet really shows that this limited way of viewing the world can be poisonous. It is this that creates the mentality of ‘us versus them’ and this inability to see that most of life is just one huge gray area can easily drive people into mental illness.

The Nature of Black and White Thinking

Black and white thinking is a type of fallacious reasoning whereby people allow themselves to become a victim of a false dilemma. It means that we limit ourselves to just two options in life – good or bad, right or wrong, and all or nothing. In our relationships with other people, it means that they are either with us or against us. Black and white thinking is usually a sign that we are uncomfortable with uncertainty, and that we need to have everything fit into an easy to manage box. The problem is that life is chock-full of uncertainty and most things we will be faced with fall into a gray area. This means that if we insist on pushing everything into our comfy black and white boxes, we will be regularly banging our heads against reality – and likely pissing lots of people off as well.

Black and White Thinking and Depression

It is now more or less accepted that there is a link between black and white thinking and depression. I find this easy to believe, and I can certainly say from my own experience with depression that my all or nothing approach to things was a major factor. The problem with this narrow view of life is that it limits our options to such an extent that we can no longer function. We want our life to be wonderful all the time, and our failure to accomplish this can lead to despair – if only we could see that there is a middle ground where we can be content without perfection.

Black and White Thinking and Conflict

Most conflict in the world occurs as a result of black and white thinking. You only have to visit any of the online forums to see this in action. In fact, these forums wouldn’t be popular at all if it wasn’t for the conflict generated by only viewing the world in two flavours. Seeing life as one huge gray area makes it harder to fall into the ‘us and them’ attitude and without the conflict these debates with lack entertainment value. The reality is that you get rewarded for being a black and white thinker in the modern world – for example, if I was to write a blog post titled ‘Religion is Pure Evil’, it would probably get a lot more hits than a post titled ‘Religion is a Mixed Bag’.

Cure for Black and White Thinking

Black and white thinking is poisonous (even if saying this may make me sound like a bit of a black and white thinker). Thinking this way means that we are always going to be at odds with reality, and this is almost certain to lead to suffering. The cure is to become more comfortable with the uncertainties in life – to understand at a fundamental level that at best our beliefs are just a vague description of reality. It also means becoming comfortable with saying ‘I don’t know’ a lot more frequently and knowing that there is no shame in not knowing.

How to Go it Alone in Addiction Recovery

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

This video and podcast is part of a series that provides a template for a self-directed approach to addiction recovery. The blog post related to this episode can be found here – A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 4. Press play to watch the video – the podcast edition of this episode can be found below.

Press play to listen to the podcast:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 4

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

This is the final part in a series that provides a template for people who wish to build their own addiction recovery program. You will find the earlier posts in this series here:

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 1



A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 2

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 3

How to Use Your Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery

We have been using an analogy of a life-raft to describe this self-directed recovery program, and in order to make this to work you will need to treat it with this level of seriousness. There is not going be much benefit in creating your own blueprint for recovery, and then filing it away in a drawer somewhere. This program is useless until you actually use it as a basis for creating your new life. Here are a few suggestions for how you can do that:

- You need to have a copy of your program that you take with you wherever you go. You can write everything down in a notebook or create a document on a mobile device such as an iPad.

- Look over this document at least a couple of times a day – preferably first thing in the morning and last thing at night. During the first few weeks of your recovery, you will probably be looking at your program multiple times during the day.

- If there is a part of your program that is not working, you should remove this. If necessary, replace what you have removed with something better.

- Keep chipping away at unnecessary words in your document and clarify

- If you are faced with an unexpected challenge, you will need to create a new strategy for dealing with this.

The Benefits of Repetition

Anyone who has ever attended an AA meeting will soon get used to hearing the same things being said over and over again. This will not only include slogans but also readings from the approved literature. I haven’t been near one of these meetings in fifteen years, but I can still recite whole sections from the Big Book. This repetition did cause me to really absorb the program at the time. AA members sometimes referred to it as a positive type of brainwashing—that sounds about right.

I think that we can adapt this tool of repetition to help us fully absorb our own program. Just writing the information down is unlikely to be enough, we need to train our mind so that it automatically hits upon the right answers – so if we are faced with a challenging situation, we will right away implement one of our strategies for dealing with it. We can enjoy this form of self-brainwashing by frequently thinking about our program throughout the day and repeatedly reading what we’ve written about it. It might even be helpful to reach a stage where we can recite the whole program off by heart.

How to Develop the Motivation to Quit

As we’ve already said, you will need a strong motivation to break away from addiction. By now you will have hopefully begun thinking hard about what this motivation will be. Once you have decided upon this, you then need to charge your motive up – in other words, you need to give it some power. The way you do this is by thinking about your motive as much as possible, and you can deliberately make yourself feel excited about it – imagine how great it is going to be to achieve your goal and how much better your life will be as a result. Keep focusing your attention on this motive until you feel charged-up enough to quit, and then continue to focus on it to power you through the early days of your new life.

A Program for Living

This self-directed program for recovery is just the start. Once you become settled into your new life, you will want to keep things moving in a positive direction. A great way to do this is to create your own program for living. This will be the blueprint that will guide you through the rest of your life. The days of being an addict will be behind you, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from having an organised approach to living. This is a program that you can spend the rest of your life modifying, so that you end up with something that eradicates all fear and allows you to deal with anything that comes your way.

Final Words for Now

I’ve tried to spell out this program as best I can here, but this is still very much a work in progress. I know that this approach works (at least for me), and I want to provide the clearest possible description. I will be providing more details about the program in future posts, and I also intend to create a longer document that fully outlines this approach (possibly an eBook if I can find he time). If there is anything that is unclear, please leave a comment. If you have any questions, please leave a comment. If you have any criticisms, please leave a comment.

Destination and Strategies for Addiction Recovery

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

This video and podcast is part of a series that provides a template for a self-directed approach to addiction recovery. The blog post related to this episode can be found here – A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 3. Press play to watch the video – the podcast edition of this episode can be found below.

Press play to listen to the podcast:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 3

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 3

This is part three in a series that provides a template for self-directed addiction recovery. You will find the earlier posts in this series here;

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 1

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 2

Strategies and Destination

We’ve been trying to build a recovery life-raft and so far we’ve examined two elements of this craft; motive and principles. We are now going to think about your destination in recovery and your strategies for getting there.

Deciding on Your Destination

It is a good idea to have some type of overall goal for your new life. This is the general direction in which you want things to move. The destination does not need to be set in stone, as your ideas about what you want out of life are likely to change over time. It is important that this initial goal is both desirable and within your power to reach. It is likely that your motive and destination are going to be closely related, and you certainly don’t want to choose a destination that will undermine your motive for getting sober.

One of the benefits of setting a goal at this stage is that it will give you something against which to judge your progress. There will almost certainly be many positive changes occurring right from the start of your break from addiction, but it can be easy for you to miss this evidence of your progress. The nice thing about setting a goal is that you should be able to see if you are moving closer towards it, and that will give you a definite sign that your life is going in the right direction.

Let’s look at an example of a suitable destination. My motive for quitting addiction was to develop a real sense of inner-peace and contentment without the need to use alcohol or any mind-altering chemical. This meant that my destination in recovery was to experience increasing inner-peace and contentment. I wasn’t expecting that there would be constant upward movement towards this goal – I knew there to be ups and downs along the way – but I did expect that there would be evidence of some progress when I looked back on my experiences over a reasonable time period.

One of the problems with setting this goal at the start of your new life is that you may not be completely clear about what you want. Addiction can make us have a very low opinion of what is possible or it can push us into the world of delusional aspirations. Don’t worry about this too much now, you will be able to change your destination to something more suitable later on. The main thing is that you have something to aim for from the beginning.

Strategies for Recovery

When you first break away from addiction, there will be a period of adjustment. Things may get a bit bumpy for awhile, and if you are not prepared for what lies ahead it will be difficult to stay afloat. It is unlikely that you will be able to prepare for all the challenges you might face, but you can certainly prepare for the ones that you are most likely to run into.

Your goal here is to develop as many strategies as you can so that you can face this new life with confidence. The aim of these strategies is to help you reach your destination (see above), and this means being able to overcome any problem you are likely to face. It is sort of like setting out for an expedition to climb Mount Everest, you don’t want to weigh yourself down with unnecessary junk, but you also want to have all the items you are likely to need to reach the summit. You will be able to develop new strategies along the way, but it is best if you do not have to do this too much– remember what we said earlier about how our best thinking might not be available to us in the middle of a crisis.

The way to develop strategies is to write down the problem clearly, and then figure out the solution that will allow you to overcome this problem. This isn’t about writing things down that sound sensible or wise – you only want solutions that you feel confident are going to work for you. So let’s look at an example:

Problem: I may have cravings to use alcohol or drugs.

Solution: I will remind myself that relapse isn’t an option, and I’ll use a mindfulness technique (objectively examine my thoughts) to see how this craving can’t harm me.

If you are worried that your solution might not be enough to work every time, you can add additional solutions as a back-up plan.

Putting Together Your Recovery Program

Now that we’ve examined the different elements of your recovery program, it is time to begin putting it all together. The way you do this is similar to how you might put together a jigsaw puzzle. The different elements feed into each other. The first thing you will want to do is find your motive for quitting. This will then provide you with your first couple of principles. Let’s see how this works in practice:

If my motivation is, ‘I am going to give up alcohol forever so that I can enjoy inner-peace and contentment’. This will provide me with my first two principles –

- I can give up alcohol forever

- If I give up alcohol forever, it will mean that I can begin working towards finding inner-peace and contentment.

I will have to check to make sure that each of these principles are solid enough to be used. I do this by asking the three questions we talked about in the last post (Is it necessary? Is it reasonable? Is it clear?). I also need to make certain that it doesn’t contradict any of the principles that are already there. Once I begin adding my strategies, this will mean that I’ll have to create additional principles to cover these – remember, unless you have adopted it as a principle, it doesn’t exist in your program.

As you put your program together, you have to make sure that everything fits nicely together. There should be no contradictions between one part of your program and another part. This requirement is nothing to do with being fussy – it is all to do with encouraging you to be as clear as possible. You need to keep working away at your program until you feel satisfied that it will get you through early recovery. Remember though, you only need something basic for now. The clock is ticking and you want to get your life-craft into the waters of your new life as soon as possible.

In part 4 of these series we will look more closely at how you can use this self-directed template for recovery.

Motivation and Principles of Addiction Recovery

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

This video and podcast is part of a series looking at self-directed recovery from addiction. The motivation and principles of recovery are also discussed in this post – A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 2 . You will find the podcast edition of this episode below the video.

Press play to listen to the podcast edition of this episode:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 2

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

This is a continuation from A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery Part 1

In the last post we talked about how this program for breaking away from addiction would involve four elements:

- Principles

- Motive

- Strategies

- Destination

In part 2 of this series we will focus on principles and motive.

Principles of Recovery

The Principles of Your Recovery

The principles of your recovery refer to a number of assumptions that you are going to need to make in order to get the ball rolling. They are like the rules of the game, and they need to be treated as such. It is best not to think of these assumptions as being carved in stone, and you are likely going to need to make adjustment to these over time.

There are a number of questions that you should always ask before adding any principle to your recovery program:

- Is it necessary?

- Is it reasonable?

- Is it clear?

If the principle does not meet these three criteria, it will be best to not use it.

In order to use your principles effectively, you will need to start with a clean sheet. This means that you need to forget about everything you have ever heard about addiction recovery – at least for the moment. You may decide later on to reintroduce some these ideas as principles, but from now on it is best to only deal with assumptions that you have decided deserve to be in your program. You will also want to make sure that any of these old ideas that you want to add to your principles do not conflict with any other principle and that they meet the 3 criteria mentioned above.

From now own, it is best to ignore any ideas about recovery unless you have decided to add them to your principles. This is not to say that you will not be interested in these ideas – by ignore I mean that you will not allow them to impact your approach to this new life. Remember, if this idea does not have enough value to you to be added to your principles, you don’t need it at all. You are trying to create a program that is as minimal as possible, so there is no room for fluff.

It is your job to find the principles that are going to work for you. Here are some of the assumptions that I would suggest you start with:

- You have the ability to create your own recovery program

- You know better than anyone else about what is good for you

- You have the power to end your addiction forever

- If you break away from addiction your life will improve

- You can go it alone in recovery if you need to

- You have the right to try to build the type of life that will satisfy you

- Challenges in life are a test and a chance to grow

Rules of the Game in Recovery

The principles are like the rules of the game. They set the parameters for your program, and you can look to them for guidance when planning your escape. So if one of your assumptions is that you have the ability to build your own recovery program, it gives you permission to do just that. The only assumptions that you should use are the ones that feel right to you – if they stop feeling right then you just get rid of them. The important thing is that you treat these principles as true until you have good reason not to.

The one thing you want to try to avoid is messing around with these principles during the first few months of your recovery. This is why it is so vital that the assumptions you choose now are solid enough to hold you over until you feel settled in your new life. I would recommend that you only set sail on this journey once you feel confident that these principles are going to keep you afloat.

Another way to look at your assumptions is that these will provide you with the tools to help you achieve your purpose in recovery. If these assumptions interfere with your ability to achieve this purpose then you will need to fix that. Not only do you need a valid reason to quit, but you have to be confident that you will be able to achieve this goal. So if your purpose is to live a life of constant bliss and one of your assumptions is that challenges in life will help you grow there will obviously be a problem.

Motive for Recovery

The next important element of your new life will be your motivation. This is arguably the most important of all of these elements.

Most humans struggle to make major changes in their life, so this is not just a problem for people who have fallen into addiction. Undergoing any type of major change is always going to involve a good deal work so you are only likely to go through all of this if they feel they have a good reason to. No matter how bad your life has become as a result of alcohol or drugs, it is almost certain that you will have plenty of good reasons not to change – even if it is just the lame belief that it is better the devil you know.

So long as you hold onto the idea that alcohol or drugs can be a positive force in your life, it will be extremely difficult for you will be able to quit these substances. Why would you even want to quit? You must have a strong reason for breaking away from addiction, and it needs to be compelling enough that you will be willing to commit 100% to this new way of living. This motivation for quitting has to to be solid enough that there is no danger of it wavering in response to any challenges that may arise. Your motivation for quitting needs to be so strong, that you will be willing to do anything to make it a reality.

I can’t tell you why you should quit alcohol or drugs. If the reasons of your loved ones and the addiction experts are not enough to convince you to change your life I doubt that mine will fare any better. The reasons for why other people think you should change are not going to be worth much – the only thing that really matters here are your own reasons. You need to find a motivation that is really going to get your juices going, and if you can’t do that you are kind of screwed.

It is vital that you spend some time thinking about why you want to quit drinking. In fact, you shouldn’t stop thinking about it (except for toilet breaks) until you can come up with the most powerful reason possible. This is the first step of this journey to a new life, and if you mess this up the chances are that it will be the cause of your later undoing. I’m not going to tell you what your reason for quitting should be, but there are some things that I want you to consider when deciding what this should be:

Your reason for giving up alcohol and drugs needs to be clear and precise. You do not want some type of rambling statement that is full of words but doesn’t really say anything. It is best that you get your reasons down to a couple of sentences – or even better one sentence. Avoid any unnecessary words and remove any type of vagueness.

Do not use the word ‘should’ anywhere in your mission statement – in fact, it would be even better if you could remove it from your vocabulary altogether. “Should” is a weasel word, and when people say that they ‘should’ do something, it is the same as them saying they are not going to do it.

The reason for why you want to quit your addiction has to be positive in order of it to remain powerful. At the end of my addiction, I would have been happy just for the pain to stop, but there is a problem with this type of reason for quitting addiction – it doesn’t work for long. There is a good deal of truth in the statement that ‘time heals all wounds’, and this means that once we begin to feel better we are no longer so easily satisfied with just having the pain stop. We can then begin to downplay the seriousness of our former problems and before we know it we are right back where we started.

Our reason for stopping should not be conditional – for example, it is not a good idea to use “getting my girlfriend back” as our reason for quitting. Your life is going to improve as a result of breaking away from addiction, but if you try to micromanage things too much it is going to blow up in your face. The problem is that we don’t really know what is best for us, but if we stick with our plan for a sober life we can end up with far better than we ever imagined.

The best motivation for giving up an addiction can be the reason for why you developed this problem in the first place. I talked about this before in an older post – The Best Reason to Quit Addiction is the Reason You Fell into Addiction

A Self Directed Program for Addiction Recovery – Part 1

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

I often get emails from readers who are looking for advice on how to overcome their addiction problems. These tend to be people who are struggling to escape from alcohol or drugs using the more popular recovery options like the 12 Steps or therapy. A high proportion of the individuals who contact me want to go it alone – they are looking to hear about my experiences with self-directed recovery (aka going solo in recovery).

I always try to offer the best advice that I can, but the problem is that up until recently, I haven’t thought too much about why my path works – I just know that it does. This means that in the past, the answers I gave could be a bit vague. A few months ago, I decided to write down my approach to recovery in more detail, and this has all led to this series where I will outline a self-directed approach to addiction recovery. I’m not suggesting that this is some type of miracle cure, but it may work for some people. So far, I only know that this path works for me.

How to Build Your Recovery Life Raft

In order for this program to work you are going to need to build a life-raft. You will then use this to launch yourself into this new sober way of living. Once you get further along in your journey, you will be able to build a more impressive type of craft, but for the moment you just want something a bit basic. If you tried to create a craft that was too fancy right away, it might be difficult for you to manage so lets keeps things simple.

This life raft is going to have to see you through the early adjustment period of your new life, There may be some rough waves ahead, and you certainly do not want to take to the high seas unless that you feel certain that this craft is going to take you where you want to go. You need to have 100% confidence in your raft because if you go out in a vessel that is not ready it will be likely to sink, and this will damage your confidence. On the day that you are ready to launch, you want to feel as confident as possible that your raft will be up to the task.

OK, let’s dump the life-raft analogy for now and get directly to the point. The first thing that you need to do to break free of addiction is to create the right mental attitude. You will also need to develop some strategies to help you cope with the challenges that are going to lie ahead. To achieve all of this, you are going to need to do some writing.

Write Your Way Out of Addiction

I have talked on here before about how you can write your way out of addiction. This self-directed approach to recovery basically requires that you create your own recovery book- it does not matter if you do this on paper or if you do this on the computer. My guess is that you might have some reservations about writing this stuff down. Here are some things to consider:

- This is going to be your recovery manual and nobody else will ever need to see it.

- Your spelling and grammar does not matter one bit so long as you can read what has been written.

- It does not matter how messy your handwriting is – the only important thing is that you can read what is written.

- There is no busy-work involved in any of this – there is no need to write things down just for the sake of writing them down. You are completely in charge here and you write down what you want to write down.

- Don’t be concerned if your initial attempts at writing are a complete mess – that’s perfectly normal. Over time you will keep on refining what you have written, and your writing will become clearer as your thinking becomes clearer.

- You do not need to have any talent as a writer. In fact, you don’t have to even like writing – think of this as a type of medicine.

I would not suggest that you do this work unless I believed that it was important. I’ve no interest in wasting your time, and I’m not trying to help you become a better writer. I’m convinced that writing things down is crucial for a number of reasons including:

- The shit that is most damaging to us is the stuff that is rolling around inside our heads unchecked. By writing things down, you get this shit out of your head and into the light where you can deal with it.

- When we try to plan things inside our own heads, it will tend to be all muddled and vague – this is no good for the business we have set for ourselves. In order to break free of our addiction we must have clarity of purpose.

- One of the most important reasons for why this written work is important is that it gives us access to our best thinking on those days when our thinking is all fucked up. The problem is that when we need clear thinking the most, it tends not to be there. This is why we can start off our quit with the best of intentions, but we still fail because our best thinking goes AWOL when we need it most. By writing this stuff down, your best thinking will be there when you need it.

How to Build a Life Raft

OK, lets get back to the life raft analogy. In order to build this craft that is going to help you break into this new life you will need four things::

- You need a sail so that you can use the wind to propel your boat forward. This is your motive for quitting.

- You need planks of wood on which will be the part of the life raft that will keep you afloat. This is going to be the principles of your recovery.

- You are also going to need some type of rudder device so that you can steer your raft. This will be your strategy for dealing with early recovery.

- You will also need a destination. If you don’t have at least some type of basic idea about where you want to go, you could end up just going nowhere.

Ok, as you have probably guessed already, I know nothing about building lift-rafts, so please allow your imagination to stretch in order to accommodate my feeble account.

In the next article in the series, I will be start looking at each aspect of your recovery raft in much more detail.

I also talked about this approach in a recent video/podcast

I would be grateful for any comments you might have so don’t be shy.

Self Directed Recovery from Alcoholism and Drug Addiction

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

In this video, I provide some information about a new approach to recovery that I’ve been working on in recent months. It is something that I hope will be of value to people who are considering a self-directed path away from addiction. You will find the podcast of this episode below.

Press play to listen to the podcast edition of this episode:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Evening Walks on Mae Ramphung Beach, Rayong

|||||






0
I Like It!

|||||

Since moving to Rayong two months ago, I’ve been able to go walking on Mae Ramphung Beach each evening. I absolutely love it, and it has become something to look forward to after a day staring at the computer screen. I walk for at least 90 minutes, and for most of the way I’m barefoot and moving through water. It is incredibly relaxing. It does not matter how I’m feeling when I first arrive for my walk because I always leave in a good mood.

I’m becoming familiar with the sights and sounds of Mae Ramphung, but the beach looks different every time I visit. It’s going to be fascinating to see how it changes over the year. The beach is at its most beautiful when the tide because then there is miles of almost-unspoilt sand. Mae Ramphung is less attractive when the tide is in because the small stretch of sand that is left is mostly covered in junk. On the weekdays the beach can be practically empty, but it can get really busy at the weekends and bank holidays.

Walking with my Father on the Beach

I haven’t always appreciate beach walking. I grew up beside the sea, so it was just something that I just took for granted. My dad loved walking, and he would expect me to go with him for long treks along the beach. I looked upon this as a chore, and there were times when I resented having to go with him. It is only now, many years later, that I can see that these were among the most precious times we had together. My father would use these walks as a chance to share his views on life, but at the time I mistook this for lecturing.

I can now see that there is something really special about walking beside the sea. Maybe it has to do with being so close to something so vast and powerful – it puts my life into perspective. The movement of the waves has a calming effect on my mind, and the sea air is invigorating. Most of the people who I see while walking on the beach are smiling, and this only adds to the feeling of rightness. I think humans need to connect with nature on a regular basis and these walks are a great way to do that.

Mae Ramphung Beach Has Healed My Eyesight

One of the unexpected outcomes of my evening walks is that it appears to have improved my eyesight. I no longer need to use glasses when working on the computer. I’m not suggesting that anything miraculous has happened, but I think it has something to do with how the eyes work. I remember reading somewhere that computer screens are damaging because we are constantly focused on something close to our eyes. My walks on Mae Ramphung mean that my eyes have the chance to focus on objects further away – so it must be counterbalancing the effects of staring at the computer all day, and this is causing my eyesight to improve.

My First Morning Walk

My work schedule is a bit messed up at the moment, so I decided to go for a walk first thing this morning. There was a bit of light rain, but there was a lovely cool wind. I’m hoping that walking in the morning will improve my concentration, but I’ll see how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just return to walking in the evening.