It seems like I am constantly talking about the 5 trillion pound phone when meeting with early recovering addicts. You know when they offer phone calls as life lines on T.V. shows no one hesitates but when it is suggested as a way to save your life then it becomes a different story!

Week after week I meet with people early in recovery and talk to them about using the phone. The deal is we need to call our sponsor or mentor daily. I know, I know,  I saw that eye roll and felt the panic in your heart. And here comes the ticker tape in your brain…. I don’t want to bother anybody, I am sure they are busy. They don’t really want me to call them. I am not having a craving or being emotional so why should I call, I don’t need them. I got this thing licked so I don’t need to call. I am not really doing that well, I will bring them down. I don’t have anything to talk about. The list is ad nauseam.

Folks all this garbage in your head is just that garbage. You need help. If you knew how to stay clean or emotionally balanced you have done that already. But the truth is you don’t have a clue or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The deal is you have to invest in the game. You have to take the risk and put yourself out there. That means pocketing your pride and picking up the 5 trillion pound phone.

This is a posturing issue, posturing before the Lord. It is a stake in the ground that you intend to be sober whether physically, emotionally or both no matter what and you are willing to go to any lengths to get there. You as an act of faith need to pick up the phone and ask someone else for help. Share with that person how life is going today, what your actions are for today and what your thought life is for today. You see recovery is worked in 24 hour periods. 

There are two things that happen in this process. One someone that is further down the path will be able to tell you when you are about to step off a ledge or into a pot hole. When someone has plowed the ground before you they have experience to share regarding places that hung them up and can recognize it when you are about to step off into an abyss. Secondly, you will be creating muscle memory. Muscle memory is when your body responds without thought because it has practiced so many times. So if you practice using the phone when you in fact are in trouble you will automatically pick up the phone because that is what you have been practicing.

You know none of this is rocket science.  If you want life to be different you have to do life different.  Recovery is about what your action today, not what your thoughts are, your intentions are, what you did last week or last month.  You have to take action today. Not taking action is like wanting an Arnold Schwarzenegger body without ever putting forth the effort to lift weights.  Insanity!

Fight for your recovery, fight for soundness of mind, fight for your new life.

Blessings ~Tammy

What are you meditating on today?

Philippians 4:8 [The Everyday Life Bible Amplified] Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things [are] noble, whatever things [are] just, whatever things [are] pure, whatever things [are] lovely, whatever things [are] of good report, if [there is] any virtue and if [there is] anything praiseworthy–meditate on these things.

I so often meditate on what is going wrong, who I think is doing wrong, how life would be so much better if….. When I follow God's instruction book life sure goes better. Who, what can you edify today?

All addicts know the insidious lies of  satan/addiction “this one time won’t hurt”, “just one”, “no one will know”, “I deserve”, etc. 

I was watching Joyce Meyers this week and she was talking about Luke 4:4-6 which got me to reading, meditating and chewing it over.  The part that struck me was Luke 4:5-13.  In verse 5 satan takes Jesus up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and promised to give him authority over it all if he would just worship him.  Boy this is the set up that gets the addict every time.  Those lies come, satan has been using this same lie since the Garden of Eden.  For addicts it is usually in the form of MORE and BETTER knowledge of some sort.  If you use this one more time you will have more and better fun, more and better money, more and better sex, more and better freedom, etc.  Satan says, if you will just partake in your drug of choice one more time I will give you all of this.  Of course we all know that the “all of this” is a big fat lie.  Behind the mirage are chains, bondage, destruction, shame, guilt, remorse, pain, unrelenting emotional and physical pain. 

What lie does satan attack you with?  What is that repetitive thought that he gets you back to the races with every time?  Fight back!  You are not a victim to satan’s plan.  Jesus overcame death for you and I to be free in Him.  What if the next time you thought “this time won’t hurt” you said out loud, “yes it will hurt”.  What if you told “just one”, “I have never had just one”.  Fight back, you know the truth start speaking back.  When you start fighting back with truth it brings new responsibility and accountability.

This is the place where most of us need help.  No one wants to ask for help.  Addiction and satan love isolation but the truth is we can’t do this battle on our own.  If we knew how to win on our own we would have already done that!  We have to have help.  Have you ever noticed that Jesus sent the disciples out in two’s.  We need to tell another human the lie that satan is hitting with so they can give us words to fight back.  If we could think of them on our own we would have already done that.  In the beginning having someone speak truth over us begins to strengthen us, then we are able to begin to fight back for ourselves. 

Just know you aren’t alone.  You aren’t the only one that has ever been attacked.  You aren’t the only one, this has been satan’s plan since the beginning.  He is doing to you what he did to Jesus.  Fight back, you are not a victim to satan’s plans for you.  Reach out ask for help.  I know you don’t want to.  I know you keep redoubling your efforts to control your addiction.  If that worked you would not be struggling.  You don’t have to continue to fight this battle alone….. 

This is a re-post that I thought you would all appreciate…..

Denying a person you love a request for money isn’t easy, even if you know she’ll use it to buy drugs or alcohol. By learning how to say no, you are doing your part to help her face her addiction.

By Krisha McCoy, MS
Medically reviewed by Niya Jones, MD, MPH
 

When you have a friend or family member who has an addiction, you may find that you have to practice “tough love.” This means that when you are asked for money that could very well go toward buying drugs or alcohol, you will have to say no.  Since you care for your loved one, you may be tempted to agree to the request. But the best thing you can do is stand strong, remember that this person needs your help to get better, and simply say the word: “No.”

 
Addiction: Are You an Enabler?
“Don’t feel guilty, because you are doing them good by saying no,” advises Thomas Kosten, MD, Jay H. Waggoner chair and founder of the division of substance abuse at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “It doesn’t mean that they are going to say ‘thank you,’ though,” Dr. Kosten warns.
While you may not be able to control all the external factors that afford your loved one access to drugs or alcohol, you can certainly control your role in the process.
Think about the things that you do for your loved one with the addiction. Do you:
• Provide money that may be helping fund their substance abuse?
• Allow the addict to come back and live with you even though he isn’t complying with addiction treatment?
• Cover for her when she misses work or school?
• Provide transportation to places where he may be engaging in substance abuse?
• Continue to help with legal troubles related to the addiction?
• Keep quiet when the person is disruptive or abusive?

If you answered “yes” to even one question, you may be contributing to your loved one’s addiction.

Enablers are not just family members. They can be neighbors, teachers, co-workers, even therapists. Enablers aren’t protecting the addict from harm; they are actually contributing to the addiction.

Addiction: Stopping the Enabler Cycle

Once you realize that you are enabling your loved one’s addiction, it’s time to put your foot down.

Try taking these steps:

• Talk about it. Instead of just saying no, discuss why you don’t want to provide the money or do other favors. “Say, ‘We’ve got to do something about this,’” suggests Kosten, and talk about your specific concerns.
• Stay strong. Your loved one may be very persistent about needing money or other assistance from you. Expect this, and make a pact with yourself to resist the desire to “help.”
• Set limits. Use saying no as an opportunity to set limits and steer your loved one toward getting help for the addiction. By withholding money, transportation, or other favors until your loved one seeks help, you are doing your part to help fix the problem.

You may very well feel guilty when you say no because you care for the person deeply and only want to help. But remember that by saying no, you are doing the best thing you can to help your loved one accept the negative consequences of addiction, which is an important step toward recovery.

Life is so interesting to me. I hired a pitching coach to work my son this season and it reminded me so much of the clients I work with everyday. The first thing they discussed was where did my son want the ball to go? Now that seems like a stupid question, but is it? When is the last time you thought about where you wanted your life to go? We all have these wishful thinking things, I wish I had a certain amount of money in the bank, I wish I were out of debt, I wish I had a different job, a different marriage, was a different kind of parent, could stay sober, could lose weight, etc. you get the picture.  

 The next thing he worked on was balance, how important it was to stay balanced so that the ball will go where you want it to go. It struck me how balance is one of the keys in life. If you work too much, play too much, spend too much, watch TV too much, stay locked onto your computer too much, eat too much, etc. you will obviously be off balance. When we are off balance our lives lose the focus of where we intend for them to go and often times the more off balance they become the more we dig into the hole we are already in thinking it will somehow pull us out. It is sort of like a ship without a rudder or with a rudder stuck in turn mode spinning us in circles.

Then they talked about approaching every pitch whether practice or in a game the same. You will do in a game what you do in practice. Hmmm…isn’t that interesting. How often we find ourselves in a crisis (the game) and we do all kinds of things to straighten it out. We spend more time with God, we rebalance our priorities, we spend quality time in our relationships, we tighten down our budgets, etc. Whatever it takes to get out of the pain. But then during practice (the floating times) we let our guard down, get back in our old ruts and thank God that little crisis is over. Then we act surprised when we frequently find ourselves in a new crisis, we are baffled how that happened just like my son wonders why his ball goes over the batters head. Now if we do everything right in life will it turn out perfect, no. Not anymore than professional pitchers only throw strikes. But the more on target and focused your life the fewer crisis that come up and the quicker the recovery time.

The last thing that hit me was the little things that a coach can see from a distance that we can’t see for ourselves. Is your head up, even? Where are your eyes, where are you looking? How high is your back hand? You know fine details that make huge differences. I am always amazed at people’s responses as I share with them little adjustments that I can see need to take place in their life and what big impact they have when they take action. Let’s take for instance if you are new in sobriety get on your knees (specifically on your knees) and ask God to keep you sober in the morning and thank Him for keeping you sober at night. You would not believe the number of people that have rolled their eyes at me when I suggested this regiment. But you will also not believe how many people have come back to me and said that is unbelievable. I thought you were crazy but there is something about humbling yourself on your knees and then asking for help. Or I often recommend reading the scriptures laid out in Victory Over Darkness to remind you Who You Are In Christ. Again I get many eye rolls and yea rights followed up with disbelief how such a simple thing gives just big results. There is something about being able to have enough distance from someone to be able to see little changes in their lives that will produce big impact. There is also something about wisdom and having a lot of so called tricks up your sleeve.

Blessings as you keep taking action toward health and wholeness.

Tammy ~ Relapse Prevention Specialist

For those of you that don’t know me I am committed to recovery. I am committed to having a fully restored life. I am constantly reading trying to learn more about addiction, recovery and manifestations of each. As those that I work with each week know I am currently reading Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood. For the record it is a need to own book instead of a library book if you struggle with relationships. There are lots of stories to help you identify the manifestations of relationally addicted/obsessed women. Sometimes these type addictions are so hard to take in that you have to read the book or sections a few times for it to really sink in. My experience has been when someone grows up in a family or environment where addiction, legalism or chronic illness exists then children typically become either very lonely and isolated or rejected, or overburdened with inappropriately heavy responsibilities. This creates fertile ground for relationally addicted/obsessed and/or substance abuse . In the book  Women Who Love Too Much the author lays out the comparison between Alcoholics and Relationally Addictive Women. I thought you would find this information a little confronting but very useful.

                                            Characteristics of Practicing

                          Characteristics of Recovering

Wake up friends, I work with women everyday that press and press on their husbands to heal.  What becomes clear typically to all those around them is that the wife is sicker than the husband in many ways.  There is not a wife alive that wants to hear this information.  I had my own eye opening moment when I was asked two confronting questions, “Why do you think God brought you here”.  It was obvious what God was trying to work out in my husband but why had He brought me here?  I really thought that if my husband would just change life would be grand.  That question made me begin to get the magnifying glass off him and begin to look at me. Me, my actions, my behavior, my attitude, my responsibilities, my relationship with God and others.  And then the most painful question on the planet… “Do you want to get well?”  I thought I was going to hit the man that asked me that.  Did he not hear what I just told him?  Did he not hear what my husband was out doing?  What was he going to do about him?  Why was he turning this around on me?  Did he not hear me?  What was wrong with this man?

Truth is only at this place can you begin to heal.  At this place where you stop looking at them and start looking at you.  You stop focusing all your energy on what they have done or are doing and take responsibility for your own actions.  I had spent a lifetime of being responsible for everyone’s actions but my own.  I had overcompensated and covered up, I was exhausted.  This is the place that recovery can begin.  You can either begin to get better or go around the mountain one more time.  You have a choice.

We will talk more about this over the next few weeks. 

If you are ready for real change, real life, real healing….  “Do you want to get well?”

Blessings ~ Tammy

Well obviously Valentine’s Day is coming again as every woman that I have counseled in the last two days has mentioned it and how they are already dreading it.  I work with women in multiple phases of life so the single and/or divorced women are all depressed or anxious because they know they are not receiving anything for Valentine’s Day and the married women are already mad because they know their husband is going to disappoint them.  The women from both groups seem to have the same issue they are not going to receive flowers, candy, etc. in front of their co-workers on Valentine’s so they will not “feel special”.  So I would like to challenge your thought just a little.

First off let us look at the keeping up with the Jones’s that being concerned about your not having what others have implies.  So if Sally receives flowers and I do not does that really mean that my husband loves me less?  Really????  Or does it mean that he isn’t wrapped up in commercialism or does it mean that money is tight right now and that is not the “wise” thing to do?  Or maybe there really is a problem in the relationship but do you honesty believe that just because Sally receives flowers and you don’t that her life is somehow better than yours?  REALLY???? 

Secondly, is whether I receive flowers on Valentine’s Day really all that defines me as special?  UGH!  Isn’t that like relying on people and things to classify me as special rather than knowing that I am special and significant because I am the daughter of the King?  For all my Christian friends, that is what being a Christian is really all about, I am a child of God which makes me a daughter of the KING.  Just how much more special do you really need to be? 

Look I know this is hard it is kind of like going to a birthday party when you are on a diet.  All those people eating cake and having a good time when you “can’t”.  But the truth is this is a choice.  You can choose to be happy in all circumstances including singing praises while in prison just ask Paul and Silas.  If you are a child of God you can’t get anymore special than you already are.  Waiting on others to make you “feel special” is banking your happiness on others actions,  they will fail 9 out of 10 times.  Don’t give someone else that kind of power, no one wants to be responsible for your happiness.  

So let me tell you a quick story, several years ago I was in the process of a divorce and too was dreading Valentine’s Day.  That first year your divorced is awful just for the record, it comes with a bucket of self pity.  So I decided that if I was going to be unhappy I was going to over compensate in the other direction.  I went to the store and bought a couple boxes of those stupid kids cards that you received in elementary school, a large bag of those candy hearts with messages on them, a roll of red cellophane and roll of ribbon.  I then made up a little bag of candy with a card for everyone in my office.  On Valentine’s Day I went in early and placed them on everyone’s desk and didn’t tell that I was the cupid in the office.  They loved it.  You know for some of the folks in my office it was the only Valentine’s they received.  Do you know how wonderful it made me feel to love on other people.  Do you know how special I felt that day to know that I could make a difference in someone else’s life? 

Maybe this Valentine’s Day you could focus on what you can do for others rather than focusing on what is NOT being done for you.  The blessings will last way longer than a bunch of over priced, freezer burned roses that you won’t even remember next year.  You see it has been almost twelve years ago since I blessed my office with a Valentine’s surprise and my heart is still flooded with the memories of others……

Blessings ~ Tammy

P.S.  Happy Valentine’s Day, Jesus LOVES YOU! He is sold out crazy about you!

You know everyday I learn something new about myself, about God about others and about the world I live in.  Today was a fresh revelation about what goes on in the life of an addict, the thought life that is.  I was watching Joseph Prince this morning and if you have never listened to him please go check him out at http://www.josephprince.org/.  He always uses Greek translations in his teachings which are very helpful for me to better understand the God’s word.  So today the thing that struck me out of his teachings was the word condemnation.  He talked a lot about, it isn’t really so much about what we do as much as it is what we think about what we do (condemnation).  And the light bulb went off!  Addicts inherently feel bad about themselves.  It is this vicious cycle that they live in.  Most addicts that I work with are anxious 98% of the time, they typically aren’t connected enough to their body to realize that is what is going on but indeed it is typically anxiety that starts the ball rolling.  So they become anxious as a cat on a hot tin roof so they begin to think, how can I calm myself.  How can I get the intensity that is going on in my body to come down a notch.  They begin to think I can eat a ____, I can drink ____, I can swallow ______, I can snort _____, I can smoke _____, I can buy ______, I can shoot ______, I can call ______, the fill in the blank list is ad nauseam.  The point is that we begin to look for something outside of ourselves to calm us down we call this self gratification.  Don’t be offended by this but it is similar to giving a baby a bottle or a pacifier.

The addict already has a history of doing whatever he fills in the blank with and it is most likely causing him problems.  It is causing him problems because he believes in his gut that what he is doing is wrong or worse he is wrong.  So his anxiety is shooting through the roof and he is trying to get a lid on it all the while he is thinking about just how he is going to do that.  He is thinking about what he did the last time and it worked, at least temporarily but he swore he wasn’t going to do that again (condemnation).  He doesn’t like himself when he does that, he doesn’t like what happens when he does that, it hurts him or others when he does that (condemnation).   But then the pressure gets so great he says “f” it and is gone back to what he swore he wouldn’t do anymore.  Condemnation, condemnation, condemnation. 

I see it all the time in my work with addicts.  They want to do different but this condemning voice has them before they know what to do.  The whole cycle I described above can happen in a matter of minutes or take months to manifest itself depending on where they are in their walk with God or their recovery  This brings me back to Joseph Prince and his topic today.  So we all know about satan/devil but let’s look at the Greek word for devil, it is diabolla (dia – by means through) and (bolla – to throw, slander, accusations).  Satan gets us by throwing slander and accusations at us.  Romans 14:22  …Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. 

It hit me like a ton of bricks this is where it happens.  You got satan whispering about our addiction or coping behavior and then we pick up the bag and begin to repeat those condemning words to ourselves.  If you keep getting snared it because of this self condemnation.  It goes something like…see I told you you couldn’t stay clean, see you really are a piece of ______, see you really don’t care about your family or see you really are like your dad, mom, etc said.  Condemnation, condemnation, condemnation.  I typically call this hamster cage going off in your head, the committee meeting that you are not invited to. 

This whole story reminds of my smoking cigarettes adventure.  I started smoking when I was 11 years old.  I wanted to be included with this group of girls, they were cool and smoked so I said I did to.  So the battle begins between what I know to be right and what I am doing.   I have pages and pages in my diary from when I was a kid about smoking and was God going to love me.  I knew what I was doing was wrong.  So every time I smoked I would condemn myself and the anxiety cycle would crank up a notch.  I tried multiple times in my life to quit, only to go back to them each time feeling more and more defeated.  Then one day I was talking to one of the counselors at the treatment center where I worked.  He told me every time I lit a cigarette to thank God he was removing the desire to smoke and I wasn’t going to have to do that much longer.  Wow, really that is it.  So I did it, every so slowly and sheepishly.  Just for the record it is hard to do what is in your mind as sinning and  talk to God at the same time.  Like somehow if you are doing it and not acknowledging Him he won’t see you.  LIE! 

So with every cigarette and every drag I began to praise God and say “thank you God that you are removing the desire to smoke cigarettes.  Thank you that I am not going to have smoke much longer”.  That was it.  It took maybe six months but then one day I woke up and I knew that was that day.  That was sometime in February 1990 and I haven’t smoked since.  It was still hard, I still had to go through all the withdrawal issues and find an identity that did not include being a smoker but I have never returned.  But I knew in my heart that I was no longer and smoker. 

It hit me today in listening to Joseph Prince why that worked so well.  I stopped condemning myself with every cigarette.  I started praising the God, the one with the true power to take away the cigarettes.  As it tells us in Ephesians 6:18 “pray in all occasions”. 

We are going to talk a lot more about this in the blogs ahead.  As I believe the reducing the anxiety is key to what is going on in every addicts life.  Begin to listen to how you are condemning yourself.  John 3:17 says … For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him”.  If you are condemning yourself you are lining up with satan’s plan for your life not God’s.  Soak in that and we will talk about it some more soon.  Until next time…

Blessings ~ Tammy

I came across this posting today  about Olympic Medalist Nancy Kerrigan’s father’s death http://bit.ly/5PXgBH.  It appears her brother, who was drunk at the time got into an altercation with their father which resulted in him dying from a heart attack.  Wow, who amongst us thinks we would become so angry that we would in any way kill someone.  No one thinks that their drinking is so bad that they would lose their composure  to the point of striking another individual especially their own parent. 

Have you done things while under the influence that you can’t believe you would ever do?  Have you done things under the influence that you do not remember?  When you begin to act outside your nature or when you begin to have black outs those are red flags for concern. 

If you want to stop drinking but can’t stay stopped or if you are miserable now that you are sober I can help.

New Relapse Prevention Groups will be starting in February, limited seating available.   ———>–>–>–>–>  Sign Up Here  

Blessings ~ Tammy