The Recovery Guy Blog
Robert shares varied concepts and approaches to understanding behavior that diverts us from our healthy desire to become well. We delve into social and medical aspects.
Blog #143 Deny, Deny, Deny
No one really knows what it takes for an individual to get to a place where they can no longer deny or dispute the obvious facts surrounding the depth of their addiction. For every person, they come to their own place and time if they are to get well. As I previously stated, most of those addicted will either die or live a life that is minimized and happiness if any is realized at all.
Episode #142 The Power of Personal Time
As we go down this road of reinventing ourselves, reclaiming the things that we lost is a priority. Two of the areas we lost related to personal power and personal time. Since our life became so out of control any semblance of power was imagined and when it was real it was fleeting. Our personal time was equally affected.
Blog #141 Finding What Works
One of the most challenging things that any of us do is finding what works. When we start down the journey of recovery we must decide what is going to work for us. When I was an obese person I tried various diets and types of activity that could help promote healthy food choices for me. I ultimately decided on gastric bypass surgery. That procedure ultimately gave me a new start. It would also transform me physically that could allow me better control and helped me change my mental approach to food. It’s the same thing with any type of recovery. Regardless of where we are at in our personal life and whatever we are looking to overcome, we must find out what is going to work for us.
Blog #140 The Great Exchange
This approach is, what I call, The Exchange Theory of Recovery. In this Great Exchange, what we are doing is understanding the need to remove negative past thoughts, experiences, or people by exchanging them with something/someone more in line with the positive path we are choosing.
Blog #139 Making Amends as Directed; Step 9 in Action
So much of Step 9 is more than just an apology. It is about moving forward differently. Many of the amends I needed to make were living amends. Yes, there were direct amends I needed to make, to myself, my children, my mother, and a few close friends.
Blog #138 The Connection Between OCD and Alcoholism
In simple terms, obsessive compulsive disorder is a disorder in which people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations/ obsessions that make them feel driven to do something repetitively and compulsively. OCD is common, chronic and a long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts/ obsessions and or behaviors/ compulsions that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over. This defined me perfectly. It was my trap that I thought I was going to die in.
Blog #137 Gratitude
The importance of becoming grateful is far greater than most of us can appreciate especially when we are new to or resisting recovery. In the beginning, we are often too angry, frustrated, or confused to recognize how vital gratitude is in our lives.
Blog #136 Fear vs Faith Part II
Without faith, we would never become who we are designed to become. Faith is fuel to the power that we will need to breakthrough our negative lifestyle into a life of victory and personal accomplishment. One of the things that I have found in my personal journey, is my personal faith serves to encourage others.
Blog #135 Step 8: Making Amends is Part of Healing
hose of us who find ourselves in the program of Al-Anon have often lived with either a distorted, self-righteous view of ourselves—that all the pain suffered was the result of someone else’s choices or behaviors, or the opposite—that some of us have an unwarranted sense of responsibility for our role in the difficulties and pain in our family. Neither is an entirely accurate view of reality. If we were honest with ourselves, even if we had the purest of intentions, sometimes our reactions to alcoholism hurt those in our lives.