1. Just for today I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals.
2. Just for today I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come and fit myself to them.
3. Just for today I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse nor neglect it, so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding.
4. Just for today I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
5. Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways; I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don’t want to do as William James suggests, just for exercise.
6. Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything and not try to regulate nor improve anyone.
7. Just for today I will try to live through this day only, not to tackle my whole life problem at once. I can do things for twelve hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime.
8. Just for today I will have a program. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests, hurry and indecision.
9. Just for today I will have a quiet half hour all by myself and relax. In this half hour sometimes I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective into my life.
10. Just for today I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.
If we want to develop a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, here is Rule #1:
Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful.
Written by Sybil F. Partridge 1916 and printed in How To Stop Worrying, And Start Living, by Dale Carnegie, 1951
LW: Whenever you set a new intention, or want to develop a positive new habit, or break an old negative habit, start something new, always remember, “Progress not Perfection.” Old ways are tough to change, but it will get done. Slowly, slowly, you can do it. There is a solution…Never give up💙
I’m excited to announce that we are hastening slowly to transform the world from the inner to outer, one DBT student at a time…
Up next: we will be exploring Mindfulness & Emotion Regulation skills from March 11 – June 17, 2020.
For all groups (Adults, Teens, Mastermind Groups) we have a minimum of six and maximum of 10 students.
The Emotion Regulation module has four sections:
Understanding and Naming Emotions
Changing Emotional Responses
Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind
Managing Extremely Difficult Emotions
The Mindfulness material includes:
Learning to be a good observer
Being non-judgmental
Staying in the present
Practicing being effective
Accessing Wise Mind (aka higher self, higher consciousness)
Understanding Reality Acceptance and detaching from negative or critical thoughts.
As DBT founder Dr. Marsha Linehan says, “It is difficult to manage your emotions when you do not understand how emotions work. Knowledge is power.”
We learn to cope better with social anxiety issues, negative thinking and get out of the Blame Game.
We learn to abstain from the “Compare and Despair” syndrome.
We practice “Face it, trace it and erase it” as we work the DBT Skills and grow stronger and wiser with effective emotional regulation and expression.
We learn to access “Wise Mind” and regain our center, remain calm. We learn to take a stand for our peace, and become bulletproof to bullies, nastiness and others’ negative remarks.
We learn to practice Radical Acceptance, as needed, and problem solve when possible. We are no longer victims.
Lisa Wessan, LICSW
DBT Skills Trainer
If this sounds good to you, please get in touch with me to start your enrollment process.
For exact dates, fees, insurance, FAQs, location, DBT videos and more details, please visit www.lisawessan.com or call 978.710.8039.
“Everyone experiences ambiguous loss if only from breaking up with someone, or having aging parents or kids leaving home. As we learn from the people who must cope with the more catastrophic situations of ambiguous loss, we learn how to tolerate the ambiguity in our more common losses in everyday life.”
– Pauline Boss, Ph.D.
In my immediate family, several of my nearest and dearest have battled with cancer over the years…both of my paternal grandparents, may they rest in peace, my dear first cousin Stephanie (may she live to be a super centenarian) and my delightful and fierce Aunt Yvette (known as “Auntie”), who is currently receiving hospice care. It has been a long and grueling journey with cancer for all my loved ones.
Sometimes I struggle with feeling powerless, and living so far away from my family in Sarasota, FL. When they lived in New York, it was so much easier to visit. Sadly, I can’t make frequent visits to Sarasota. The only “power” I do have is to send intentional healing and loving energy to my Auntie and family…and to practice radical acceptance so that I will function with some measure of inner peace here in my world.
For a while, my Auntie was in and out of the nursing home while she battled her cancer and other complications from treatment. Her life was severely compromised by her illness. As harsh as this has been is for her, since April 2015, I have also been witnessing how Auntie’s dying process is affecting everyone around her.
My cousins are fraught with anxiety and grief. Others in my family are a hot mess, watching Auntie dying so slowly, not being able to process their feelings and find some relief. Some people get trapped in the “Blame Game,” and are always looking to find ways to defocus their pain by pointing at others.
We are all coping with the ambiguity of Auntie being here, yet not here. She is no longer resembling her true self as we knew her. Sometimes she is delirious, sometimes she is too weak to talk. As her body deteriorates, she is no longer living the full and robust life she once enjoyed.
This pain we are all experiencing has a name…it is called Ambiguous Loss. “Ambiguous loss is a loss that occurs without closure or understanding. This kind of loss leaves a person searching for answers, and thus complicates and delays the process of grieving, and often results in unresolved grief.” (Wikipedia)
There are a variety of types of ambiguous loss. One type is when people go missing and the body is never found. For example, a person does not return from a sailing trip, or from a hiking excursion, or war, or they are kidnapped. Their loved ones still feel a lack of closure because the body was not found. “Maybe they will return…” lingers in the mind.
After 9/11, all of us in NYC were processing personal and professional ambiguous loss for all of our New Yorkers who were lost in the pile of bodies that were never recovered.
Another kind of ambiguous loss is when people experience a new emotional boundary that hurts. This happens when people get divorced, or when someone ignores you, stops talking to you, shuts you out of their life. Any kind of break-up creates ambiguous loss, because the person is still here, yet not here. They are alive, but dead to you. This is considered more painful loss than when someone actually dies.
Medical illness and addictions cause ambiguous loss.
Ambiguous loss also occurs when a loved one has Altzheimers or dementia, and they no longer recognize social connections. Similarly, when someone is very ill, such as my Auntie. We have ambiguous loss because the illness is transforming our loved one into someone other than the person we always knew. We are mourning the living remnants of our loved one while she is here…so excruciating and bitter.
When someone is living with an addiction, this too causes their personal relations to deteriorate and they are not fully present for their loved ones. Again, they are here but not here.
I have a friend who had a beautiful daughter in Cambridge, MA, who chose to be homeless. Her daughter was an alcoholic. My friend tried all methods of intervention and help. Nothing worked. My friend suffered with ambiguous loss for so many years. Her daughter was a pianist, absolutely lovely. She died a few years ago, at 35, and it was one of the most heart wrenching tragedies I experienced. My friend is still recovering from this painful loss.
Learning to live a good life with ambiguous loss
I recently listened to a wonderful and insightful podcast interview with ambiguous loss pioneer Pauline Boss, Ph.D., who originally coined the term “ambiguous loss.” Krista Tippett hosts Dr. Boss on her podcast, On Being. You can listen here:
I prefer the unedited versions of Tippett’s interviews, because there are sometimes fascinating nuances that are deleted to make the long form interview fit into an hour. But I’m sure whichever one you listen to will be rewarding💙
One of the ideas I took away from Dr. Boss’ talk was that we will never have complete closure from our ambiguous losses, or from our complicated grief. What we can do is become more adept at processing our negative feelings and difficult thoughts. Dr. Boss has some wonderful suggestions on the process.
Cognitive restructuring, which can be learned, is a big part of the solution. Dr. Boss’ stories and explanations are very helpful in deconstructing the different kinds of ambiguous loss that we all have in our lives.
Even though I learned about ambiguous loss and complicated grief in graduate school, it seems I keep deepening my understanding of it every year. I learn more about ambiguous loss from clients who are struggling with painful divorce, adult children with addictions, my Auntie’s battle with cancer, harsh racial and homophobic incidents and for all the ongoing loss of freedoms in the world that never seems to subside.
Fun fact: Ambiguous loss is clearly part of our psychospiritual journey — for it forces us to grow and move to new levels of compassion and acceptance of things we cannot control. “Lack of power, that is our dilemma,” says Alcoholics Anonymous (Bill W., 1976). Yes, in our culture, we seek to control, cure, fix and manage everyone and everything as much as possible. We don’t like messy endings.
Yet what I have come to know, is that true mastery of life is being able to live in ambiguity with peace, even joy. My life is far from perfect…yet I am more often feeling positive, grateful, uplifted, inspired and anticipating good interventions that will transform it.
If we can learn to live in that “not knowing” place and be peaceful — that is a vast improvement on “hating ambiguity” and perhaps yelling at G-d or the Universe, or twisting into knots over why bad things do happen to good people…again, very messy, so annoying.
The truth is, when it comes to matters of love, there is no closure. As they say at the Grief Toolbox, “Closure is not part of the grieving process, nor is it necessary for healing. A connection formed in love can’t be closed.” Dr. Boss confirmed this with her years of research on ambiguous loss, leading to her forthcoming book on “The Myth of Closure.”
As Dr. Boss discussed in the interview, our Western culture wants neatly packaged endings and for everyone to move on as quickly as possible. There is plenty of ignorant shaming that goes on, as in “Aren’t you over that yet?”
Sadly, our culture does not tolerate ambiguous loss very well at all. It requires more Eastern, dialectical thinking. To be able to say non-binary statements such as “She is alive, but also dead,” “He is not here, but he is possibly still alive,” or “She looks like Auntie, but this is not Auntie anymore,” requires a leap from dualistic thinking to a more dialectical thinking which allows us to embrace opposite beliefs without sinking into a deep depression or disruptive anxiety vortex.
Solution Focused Suggestions
For today, I invite you to learn more about ambiguous loss, and start to apply these non-dualistic, non-binary, dialectical thinking ideas to your situation.
Listen to the podcast above, and learn some skills to help process your ambiguous grief.
Perhaps find a good therapist who can help you learn to cope better with your struggles. Good news: coping skills can be learned!
Learn to laugh at the absurdities, paradoxes and incongruities of life (Gavin, 2010; Wessan, 2013).
Practice your Distress Tolerance skills …join a Dialectical Behavior Therapy group. You may then find it easier to work through the painful moments, and allow yourself to live in ambiguity with, dare I say it, some joy!
For some people, the holidays are a very joyful and exciting time of year. More parties, celebrations, shopping and gift exchanges coupled with lots of social stimulation. It’s all good…for them.
But for others, who feel painful pressure to have “forced fun” and may not have strong intimate connections, lack financial resources, struggle with illness or addiction, these times are fraught with deep loneliness and uncomfortable feelings of “Compare and Despair” (Wessan, 2011). For this group, we are entering “The Red Zone.”
The Red Zone runs through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve…and perhaps for many Valentine’s Day is also included in this over stimulating, emotionally charged, addiction riddled time of year.
When I was younger, single and living alone in New York City, I experienced the holidays as my Red Zone. I loved my circle of friends, but many of them were married or had moved far away. They were not available for the holidays. I found my loneliness was most acute during this time of year.
As part of my coping with loneliness, for many years I went away for New Year’s weekend to Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center, in Craryville, NY. Pumpkin Hollow is a beautiful place, with magical trails on lush Berkshire hills and a thoughtful and sensitive staff. They used to facilitate a wonderful Silent Retreat over New Year’s weekend (I noticed now they have one in late January and May).
There were moonlit walks in the woods, we ate delicious gourmet organic vegetarian meals , danced around a huge campfire, hugged trees and meditated together in the silence. The facilitators artfully helped us work through all the activities in silence, and I remember every year being amazed at how little language I really needed to get by and still feel peaceful and content.
For me, it was a relaxing and restorative weekend in the Berkshires, but I also I had to process some difficult feelings.
Forgiveness 101
Being in the Silence can be a powerful cleanse, as so many distractions are removed. The Silence gives us time to deeply work through some acceptance and forgiveness issues, serving as a “Mental Laxative,” as Iyanla Vanzant is known to say (Vanzant, 2013). This is a perfect time to take a moral inventory of ourselves, and notice where we need to improve.
Moral inventories vary, but at their core, we make a list of the people we have harmed, consciously or unconsciously. Then we make a list of the ways we hurt ourselves, consciously or unconsciously. Finally, we make a list of our fears and regrets. (The only way to do a moral inventory wrong is to not do it at all.)
All of this then requires a deep and thorough forgiveness practice, ultimately letting go of all of it. Then it is done. We have a fresh start.
You can use this Forgiveness Prayer to help you get started. Practice Suggestion: Read it into your Smart Phone’s Voice Memo app (or tape recorder) very slowly. Pause 5-10 seconds between each line. Save it, and then play it back to yourself with your eyes closed, allowing yourself to feel it deeply. As faces and names to forgive bubble up in your consciousness, you can make a note of them to add to your lists.
For all those we have harmed, knowingly or unknowingly, we are truly sorry. Forgive us and set us free. For all those who have harmed us, knowingly or unknowingly, we forgive them and we set them free. And for the harm we have done to ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly, we are truly sorry. We forgive ourselves and we set ourselves free. ~ Author Unknown ~
Afterwards, we may also need to talk to a few people and apologize for our behavior (or in some cases neglect). Hard Fact: In order to really feel healthy, whole, clean and strong inside, it is essential to give our inner emotional pipes a good Roto-Rooter cleaning by resolving any awkward or tender hurts. Apologies and amends need to be in the process. Fun Fact: Asking for forgiveness is the final piece in our quest for inner calm, or should I say, the Final Peace?!!
But you don’t have to go away for a whole weekend to give yourself an effective Mental Laxative…you can carve out some time each day, or each week, to sit quietly and review your life to forgive the imperfect moments. What worked well? What did not go so well? Whom did you judge too harshly? Even taking a brief inventory of your emotional interior will have huge pay offs in the long run.
One more Mental Laxative Practice Suggestion: set a timer for 10 minutes. Do as much of your list making as you can in that time, and then stop. It will be enough. Do this on a weekly basis, or more frequently if you are ready. Ten minutes of taking a Mental Laxative twice a week is a great beginning, perhaps once over the weekend and once during the week? Do what feels right for you.
As you progress, this could ideally become a daily activity…and who would you be if you had no resentments, anger, unresolved grief and rage? You would bloom on in a whole new way.
In addition, I believe that holding onto negative thoughts and unresolved anger, resentment, fear and grief will fester within, and eventually manifest into some kind of physical illness and/or mood disorder. We need to keep all of our pipes clean! Digestive pipes and emotional pipes, which actually work together in the big picture.
As the hallowed halls of the Mindfulness research and Functional Medicine have taught us, every thought becomes a chemical reaction in our bodies. Please note, the Mind-Body connection is not philosophical, theoretical or conjectured. It is grounded in science (Turner, 2014).
We need to be aware of this and carve out the time to release and let go of our negative and stinking thinking. If we don’t, it will just putrefy within, and poison our relationships as well.
What is Reflective Listening?
Being heard is so close to being loved, that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable. – David Augsburger
Another worthwhile activity to do if you find yourself being in the Red Zone now is to volunteer your time, talent and special treasure in places that will appreciate you.
Before I became a therapist, I used to volunteer at a Suicide Hotline called HELPLINE, at the Marble Collegiate Church in New York, which for me, was an exhilarating service. It was founded by the late, great Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, may he rest in peace. (There is also an excellent Blanton-Peale counseling center located at Marble, with wonderful psychospiritual therapists on staff, see reference below).
Most Hotlines have a fascinating and useful training program which enhances all human relationships. I first learned the power of Reflective Listening in my 10-week HELPLINE training, and it transformed my life.
Reflective Listening is being able to let someone else talk and just be present for them, listening quietly. When they pause, then you reflect back the essence of what they have just said. This feels very soothing and loving to the agitated talker. The person feels so validated by your Reflective Listening, it is often enough to help them get “off the ledge.” Listening is a form of loving each other that soothes, heals and restores us.
Learning Reflective Listening was the bulk of my HELPLINE training, plus there was also a lot to learn about making referrals and gaining trust.
Coming from a culture of chronic interrupters and non-listeners, I had learned some ineffective communication habits over the years, which I continue to strive to improve. The impulse to speak out and interrupt is fierce, but knowing that it compromises relationships and hurts people helps me to zip my lip, as best as I can. For today, I remain a humble work in progress, that’s for sure.
My hope for the future is that the Hotline’s training program is something that will be taught to all humans by the sixth grade. Similar to the skills learned in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT, which should also be part of elementary school education) during training we learned about interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, distress tolerance and emotion regulation. These skills give us the foundation for better emotional balance, and allow us to be more present for others’ pain and suffering, as well as our own.
Ask yourself the magical question, “How can I be useful today?”
I understand that a Hotline gig may not be your cup of tea. Volunteering at a soup kitchen, animal shelter, nursing home, botanical garden, museum, Indivisible, MoveOn or anywhere can also be very uplifting during the Red Zone.
Nursing homes always need a river of volunteers to help with feeding, reading, translation services and transporting non-ambulatory residents . I learned this when I was in graduate school, as one of my internships was at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged in the Bronx. I was facilitating several therapy groups each week, but there was a huge volunteer staff that coordinated all these helpful tasks for the residents. I was so impressed with the volunteers’ compassion and zeal to help these nursing home residents.
Yes, there is a time for self care, and then sometimes it is better to focus on others’ needs more than your own, to take a break from the painful ME-ME-ME inner dialogue you might be having.
Transparency is Healing
Finally, being in the Red Zone totally in secret is just exhausting and no fun. Be honest and authentic about your feelings — transparency is healing — and see who matches your energy. You might find a few people who also feel put upon and even hate the holidays — great — these will be your Red Zone buddies and comrades in getting through the muck of the season.
Make it a point, however, to be victorious together, e.g.”let’s stay sober and clean through this nightmare,” or “This too shall pass. How can we be useful today?” or “Let’s go for a hike and get away from the shopping madness.” Complaining is draining, so it’s important to find ways to support each other to rise above the chaos of the season.
Being able to laugh about it, the complete absurdity and paradox of Christmas especially, is so refreshing. Whenever I see huge displays of gifts and glittery objects everywhere tempting us to buy-buy-buy, I chuckle to myself and think “What would Jesus say about all this? Would He be happy with this display?” Yikes.
I’m not judging, nay, nay, I actually love the glittery Hand of G-d in all of this (Wessan, 2012). But you know the commercialization of Christmas becomes excessive and downright irritating at times — so I like to take a step back and think about the real reason for the season…our awesome connectivity, celebrating our Oneness, and the mystery of the Numinous in our lives.
Another reason is the magnitude of working through the bittersweet feelings of existence together and being brave enough to peacefully co-exist in this tumultuous world. We can acknowledge the dialectical paradox, that sometimes we want to live and sometimes we don’t, but we choose life anyway. We need to be courageous during this time, knowing that we are struggling in the Red Zone while “everyone else” seems to be having the best time ever.
In Conclusion
For this holiday season, The Red Zone, I encourage you to try something different:
Experiment with a daily or weekly Mental Laxative experience, or go away on a retreat for more in depth forgiveness work.
Volunteer somewhere that will give you a chance to focus on someone else, take a break from “Poor me, Poor Me, Pour me a drink” thinking.
Give honesty a chance, come clean and tell a few people how you really feel. Defrost some of that hidden grief, rage, loss, loneliness, “Compare and Despair” and all the inner stressful thinking that puts a damper on your days.
I promise if you follow some of these suggestions you will feel lighter, brighter and perhaps, dare I say it, even more peaceful during this relentless Red Zone.
Good health is wealth, go for it!
References
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills (DBT). This is a four part psychoeducation program that covers Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, Distress Tolerance and Interpersonal Effectiveness. It takes one year to complete the curriculum.
Turner, K. (2014). Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds. New York: Harper Collins.
Vanzant, I. (2013). Forgiveness: 21 Days to Forgive Everyone for Everything. Carlsbad, CA: Smiley Books.
Blanton-Peale Institute and CounselingCenter, New York, NY, for individual, family and couples counseling. Accepts most insurance. Highly recommended for quality psychospiritual therapy. Founder: the late great Reverend Norman Vincent Peale.
Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center, Craryville, NY. Owned and operated by the Theosophical Society. Organic vegetarian food served from their own farm, non-dogmatic, beautiful retreat center. Highly recommend, especially the retreats on Therapeutic Touch, and the Silent Retreat.
Even if you don’t have a chemical addiction (Alcohol, Pills, Sugar, Flour, Dairy, Cigarettes etc), you might be addicted to crises, drama, or intense emotions that put you center stage.
You could even be addicted to isolation, anger, hatred, “Compare and Despair” and other emotional states…it’s universal. Ideally, no one would feel shame about their impulse issue, and more than half the battle is naming and releasing the shame around these issues. “If you can name it, you can tame it!”is one of the most hopeful slogans of my guild. We are all striving to grow, learn and heal from whatever ails us.
In my Westford, MA, DBT Skills Group (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), we recently explored addiction models, including Total Abstinence, Harm Reduction and Dialectical Abstinence.
Total Abstinence is useful when you have tried 1000x or more to practice Moderation Management but it failed. Moderation Management has you set a boundary or limit to what you can do before you are at risk. For example, if you have a challenge with alcohol, saying “Two drinks per evening, and no more than twice a week.” If you consistently zoom past that limit then Moderation Management has failed, and you cannot get well with that system.
Complete abstinence is usually for those who know that “One cookie is not enough, and a thousand are too many. ” For those people who cannot enjoy one or two cookies, for whom the desire to keep going will override all rational thought, complete abstinence from cookies is the easier, softer way. You make the decision once and for all, and then keep surrendering to it because you know it is less painful than the alternative inner haggling dialog on whether to indulge “this time” or not.
So when moderation is impossible…then you know. Usually you cannot skip straight into to total abstinence…most of us do the hokey pokey for a while with Moderation Management before we surrender. Fun fact: The whole journey is necessary for your inner process to be complete.
Dialectical Abstinence is a middle path for those who cannot, or will not, practice total abstinence from their substance abuse, or addictive behavior, yet ultimately desire total abstinence. Yes, it’s the perfect paradox, “I want to abstain, but I won’t right now.” Moderation Management and Harm Reduction are applied here to manage your addiction and prevent a complete relapse.
Harm Reduction is allowing for a thought system to be flexible enough so that if someone has one drink, or one cookie, they don’t say, “Oh what’s the use, why bother, I might as well go all the way and finish the bottle (or box of cookies)!” Harm reduction takes you out of the dualistic, all or nothing, black and white thinking so that you might have three cookies and then say, “Ok, that exceeded my limit, but I’m going to stop right here. It’s good enough for today.”
As my old beloved professor Christopher Lasch at the University of Rochester once said “We live in a culture of addiction.” Lasch was fairly well known for his book on The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979), but he had a deep belief that the rise in our addictive culture was correlated to our self-absorbed lifestyles.
So much of our need to medicate ourselves or have a Pity Party for ourselves is tied into our “Me-Me-Me” anxiety and fear. Clearly there is no simple altruistic solution for our multidimensional addictions. The research and science on this vast topic has repeatedly shown that when we do aim to give service and get out of our heads for a while we can find some relief and peace when focusing on fulfilling others’ needs.
And yet, if you are obsessed with others’ well being and are codependent, then you have another kind of addiction…which requires detaching and letting go of others’ business! Oh my, it’s a slippery slope in the land of addiction!
I find with my DBT students that many of them are recovering Drama Queens and Kings. Before they started this healing process, they were often embroiled in wildly high risk and/or debilitating situations. Once they realize that they do have an addiction to Drama, they start letting go of the the need to be center stage, stirring the pot and getting everyone around them wound up. But it requires a process of compounded skill building, education, homework and practice, and re-wiring their brains in order to shift from the “Poor Me” narrative to the “Serene Me” experience.
When someone says, “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!” they are stuck in Victim Consciousness and do not see how many choices and options they have. Slowly, slowly, with DBT training, rehab treatment, or 12 Step processes they start to see how many other options they have besides using their addiction to cope.
We live in a time where treatment for addiction and mood disorder is available, and the only way to do recovery wrong is to not do it at all. So if you or a loved one are struggling with something along the addiction spectrum, trust that there is a solution for you. As the Dalai Lama says, “Never Give Up!”
“Thanksgiving is the day when you turn to another family member and say, ‘How long has Mom been drinking like this?’ My Mom, after six Bloody Marys looks at the turkey and goes, Here, kitty, kitty.” – David Letterman
“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” – Jon Stewart
“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.” – Johnny Carson
“Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise America’s obesity statistics. Personally, I love Thanksgiving traditions: watching football, making pumpkin pie, and saying the magic phrase that sends your aunt storming out of the dining room to sit in her car.” – Stephen Colbert
“Thanksgiving. It’s like we didn’t even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?'”
– Jim Gaffigan
May you and your loved ones eat less, exercise more and be as authentic as possible with your families — in safety — LOL, today is 34 days off sugar, flour and alcohol for me, looking forward to feeling lean and serene during and after this holiday…food is not fun for many of us! You know who you are…join me this Thanksgiving in living lighter and with more freedom…with a big AMEN for our health prayers.
I know I’m not alone in wondering how the internet is changing the way I think, write, respond and create in this world. But I choose to believe that it’s all for the good, that this is part of our evolution. I might be wrong.
More and more documentation is showing that advanced internet use does decrease our attention spans, although it may improve our analytic skills. I’m at the point where I can’t write as smoothly in longhand (and my penmanship is nearly an illegible code), whereas in front of the keyboard I feel lucid and quick. I used to think I was just a kinesthetic learner — but there’s more to it. I need to be able to sit at a keyboard to think about certain subjects with maximum focus. I am clearly conditioned to work with several web pages open at once, fact checking and spell checking as I go.
The research is mounting….pros and cons…this is a good overview of the issues in this recent clip from Scientific American (June 15, 2010).
The Lighter Side of Transformation 