The "Making Waves" Survival Kit, Etc.

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A selection of articles I've written and published along the way.....
Things I've learned..... And found useful to my sobriety.... That sort of stuff...
Good grief, some of it looks like poetry, and I didn't think I wrote that...

TITLES:
~~ Making Waves Survival ~~

 ~~ Evolution ~~

~~ Not Wrong ~~

~~ When I don't Know ~~

~~ How Big Does "BIG" Need To Get
Before It Can Be Seen For What It Is? ~~

 

MAKING "WAVES" SURVIVAL
(c1998, c2000)

The Spike stories can be read to elementary-age children.  They can be read by upper-elementary children and middle school/young teens.  They can also be read as allegory by older teens and adults ~~ older teen and adult situations/circumstances would be different yet the feelings would be similar.

Though the tales of Spike's life focus on alcoholism, they could just as easily have dealt with recovery from any of the other substance or process addictions, such as drugs or food or sex or relationship or work addictions.  They could just as easily have dealt with physical and/or sexual abuse as well as the verbal and emotional abuse on which they do focus.  Again, the situations and events would have been different yet the feelings remain the same:  anger, rage, shame, guilt, fear, doubt, confusion, low self-esteem....

One of the basic rules going on in dysfunctional situations is: "Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel".  Recovery changes the rules, and changes the dynamics between the "players" of the game of life.  Change creates "waves" of repercussions as the players struggle to maintain the status quo, to keep things "the way they've always been", in other words: at all costs ~~ don't talk, don't trust, don't feel.  Eventually the recovering person, whether child or adolescent or adult, is faced with the difficult choice of asserting their needs, thus Making Waves, or denying feelings.  It "looks like" the conflict is about laundry or cars or dishwashing or homework or curfew...  It's really still about addressing feelings, and dealing with personal boundaries creates the biggest feelings of all.

Making Waves:  addressing one's feelings and asserting one's needs, when others around you wish you would just shut up and not make things any worse than they already are..... As if avoidance had ever done anything except make things bigger and worse!  Denial at it's best!  Taking care of oneself is difficult, and seems to cause a lot of trouble.  Taking care of oneself means "making waves" of change, and not taking care of oneself means ignore the hurt and anger just like always.. Both hurt.  When you do it often enough, Making Waves does have the added advantage of eventually making changes for the better, even when it also feels like: If this is standing up for myself, why do I feel so wrong?  It takes some getting used to.

When I was two years sober, I made an "little" tool (which turned out be an incredibly useful tool.  As I made it for others, I reinforced it's usefulness in my own life.  I called it "The Making Waves Survival Kit"........ I noticed that the original left out a couple of pertinent items, such as WHY the Making Waves was occurring.... so, I added them now.  I also changed "you" to "I".... smile... :)

From DENIAL to AWARENESS to ADMISSION to ACCEPTANCE to ACTION to CHANGE.....  That's what I was told, and that's been my experience....

We act out childhood survival behaviors until we can see them for what they used to be, what they are now, and how they no longer serve us as sober adults.  I watch myself do it.  I watch others around me do it.  It hurts.  After enough hurt, I/we become willing to go through the above process.  This is what I learned, first from other people's stories, then from my own experience.  Of course, I didn't truly understand this process until my own experience mirrored what I'd been told.  Life and sobriety are like that....

Here's a way I learned to use the "change" process in a way that made sense in my life....  I've learned several versions of this one; this is the one I use at the moment.

I STOP for a minute, take a deep breath, and ask myself the following questions.  Whether I write them on paper, say them out loud, say them silently in my head, do them alone or with someone else, or make them into a cartoon: that part is a choice I make at any given time and circumstance.

Of course, there's also smashing rocks or breaking glass, in a safe way & place, while yelling....  There's yelling and screaming in my car -- with the windows all the way up!  One time that cost me a new windshield, so now I make sure my hands are empty, as in no wooden window scrapers with which to lunge and jab at a handy windshield!  There's pounding a pillow.... Or lying on my bed, kicking and pounding my fists and yelling, acting out the temper tantrum inside as well as any two or three year old -- that one always makes me start laughing after a minute or so!  It's very releasing in it's ludicrousness!