Stumbling & Stepping

The Addict’s plea…

By Diana Gardner Robinson Leave a Comment

I don’t know why I am posting this today. I wrote it a while back, prompted by things I’d seen and heard when working in the field of addiction counseling. I usually find that when I publish something on impulse, I hear from a reader somewhere that the timing was precisely what they needed. I hope that is the case today. Diana

Touching bottom, Lord, help me climb back up.
It hurts down here, where I’ve put myself
(There’s no one to blame but me).
I’ve gotta stop now, I can see that it’s true.
Can’t do it alone, can’t win without You.

Touching bottom, Lord

I lost a good job today.
Fine job, nice folks, nothing wrong with the pay,
But a friend came by with a beer in his hand,
And I followed him, off to the promised land.
So I lost a good job today.

Touching bottom, Lord…

Left my best friend alone today.
He needed my help, and I’d promised, but, say,
The phone rang again, with a tip on a pony,
The chance of a lifetime, so said someone’s crony.
My friend managed his crisis alone, today.

Touching bottom, Lord…

I hit my wife today.
Not her fault, rent was due, and she had it to pay.
But I wanted that money, and she held it tight,
So I yelled, and I freaked, and we had a fight.
I injured my wife today.

Touching bottom, Lord…

My daughter’s birthday today.
A party, her friends, and some kids’ games to play,
So I laughed, and I drank, and I had a ball
Till I saw her face. One look told it all.
I embarrassed my daughter today.

Touching bottom, Lord,

I lost a true lover today.
I took it for granted that she’d always stay,
She’d keep giving her love, and her help, and her care
So I took, never gave, while my mind was elsewhere,
And I lost a true lover today.

Touching bottom, Lord.

Once again, I have lied to my friends.
They care, that I know, they’re with me to the end
But I want their respect (though I don’t have my own)
So I played the big man with a fax and a phone,
And I lied, once again, to my friends.

Touching bottom, Lord.

I scammed my mother today;
Took her trust, and threw it away.
I thought I could buy my way out of my pain
But instead I feel like I’m going insane.
I scammed my mother today.

Touching bottom, today.

My life is a nightmare today.
I keep spinning, and turning, and trying to hold on, but everything’s flying away:
Dreams destroyed, friends betrayed, nothing’s immune,
Addictions, addictions are playing the tune.
My life is a nightmare today.

Reaching up, Lord.

I can take the first step today.
Can’t put everything right, but at least I can pray,
I can build my support group of people who’ve found
The way to the good life with feet on the ground.
I can take the first step today.

Reaching up, Lord. Help me climb back up.
It hurts down here, where I’ve put myself
(There’s no one to blame but me).
I’ve gotta stop now, I can see that it’s true.
Can’t do it alone, can’t win without You.

Lord, help me climb back up.

Can you name a feeling that you’re feeling?

By Diana Gardner Robinson Leave a Comment

When “I feel that..” does not lead to naming a feeling

Before we make any decision we need to listen not only to rational, objective reasons, but also to how we feel about the situation. One problem in many situations and relationships is that people may have difficulty in giving voice to their feelings, which they confuse with their thoughts about whatever the topic is. Instead of talking about them, they talk around them.

Loosing important information

It can be amazing to observe the lengths that some of us will go to in order to avoid speaking feelings directly, but this may be because we do not know how to, or we have been punished for doing so. Giving voice to our feelings is discouraged in many families. The emphasis is often on being “rational,” and to describe someone as “emotional” is often a put-down. As a result, many people have so little experience of speaking their feelings that they have forgotten how to tune in to what they really feel. This can mean that the loss of important information that is essential to good decision-making.

I feel that…

One of the most common ways of talking around a feeling, rather than about it, is “I feel that…” While working with adult students in discussion, or playing the role of a “client,” I notice that as they are asked how they feel, that is how they frequently begin their response.

Any time a sentence begins with “I feel that…” you are not going to hear what the person FEELS, you are going to hear what they THINK about what they feel or about the situation in general.

To clarify, this is how a typical coaching session might go:

Client: “I just don’t know whether I should stay or move.”

Coach: “When you think about staying, how do you feel?”

Client: “I feel that I should stay because people count on me.”

Coach, in a gently humorous voice: “Okay, that’s what you THINK about what you should do. Now, imagine you have decided to stay. How do you FEEL?”

Client: “I feel that people will be angry if I move.”

Coach: “When you say you feel THAT, I know you are going to tell me a thought, not a feeling. You just mentioned how other people feel, but we need to talk about how YOU feel. Get in touch with what is inside you. What is your gut saying? When you think about staying or moving, what is the feeling, not the thought but the feeling?

Client: “I feel…. I guess I feel trapped.”

This type of interaction lets people (partners, friends, clients, others) know that it is okay to speak of feelings, and by doing so has helped them to listen to the messages that are being sent from the gut. This is an important predecessor to making major decisions.

Try it… first and most importantly on yourself, but also on the people around you who may find it easier to talk around a feeling than about it.

Diana

I hope you find this blog interesting and/or useful. One way to keep track of my posts is to subscribe to my newsletter (see form on the right), which will always contain a link to my recent blogs. Or, of course, you could bookmark this page and keep checking back. Either way, I hope that my work makes your life easier and more balanced. To explore my offer of the gift of a 30-40 minute coaching session on whatever issue is a stumbling block for you, please see my Contact page.

Why I Wept – A Real Life, Yet Unreal

By Diana Gardner Robinson Leave a Comment

The other day, I wept.

I was watching an episode of the television program “60 minutes.” The subject was Schuyler Bailar, a transgender man who was originally accepted by the Harvard women’s swim team, and ended up swimming on the men’s team. How? Because in the interim he had decided to live his reality as the male he experienced himself to be, rather than as the female indicated by his birth. Even though that reality meant that he ended every swim race near the end, rather than winning as he had when his opponents were women, that was his choice. That was how he felt real.

Why did I weep? Not because I disapproved, but because I saw the joy in him, and his certainty that he had made the right choice. And I remembered someone dear to me, someone quite a bit older, who has now passed. That someone, born physically a male, for much of his life, and when in private, had cross-dressed – dressed as a woman. He told me he had started fantasizing about doing that before he was seven. However, hesitant to face societal judgment and rejection, he also maintained his outward life-style as a male. In those days, that is what many people did. People close to him knew his secret, but many, those he thought would judge and be hostile, did not.

He was an amazing mechanic at work and could fix anything at home. Family members, both those who knew and those who did not, turned to him for wise guidance. In his twenties he met a woman, they became lovers and got married. His wife shared her clothes with him, went with him to special events at which he was “dressed” (i.e.as a woman). After she died he stopped going to them, and “dressed” only at home at night.

Time passed. He seemed content – a bit over-sensitive, but content. Then came fourteen words that hit me like a blow to the head. It was a couple of years before his death, but at the time he was in good health. Sitting companionably one day, he commented to me, completely out of the blue,

“If I had known then what I know now, I’d have had the surgery.”

I knew what he meant, but I did not know what to say. I was stunned. He had always insisted that, despite choosing to cross-dress, he was comfortable living his outward life in accordance with his birth gender. He had always insisted that “just dressing” was enough for him to feel fulfilled. His sudden pronouncement was my first intimation that his “male life” was not fully real to him and that he wished he had chosen to live as a female.

He died a relatively short time later.

And when I see the joy, and the feeling of freedom that is clear on the faces of people like Schuyler Bailar, people who have made the transgender choice, regardless of whether or not they have had “the surgery,” I wish that my brother could have had that freedom, that joy, in his lifetime. I wish that he could have lived his life in the way that he felt was real. Alas, he was born too soon, and just a little bit too afraid.

And I weep for him.

Sometimes it is hard to live a life that feels real. Yet over time the pain of being unreal can become a terrible burden. That he was living with that burden explains a lot about my brother, a lot that saddens me… but what about you? There are many ways in which we may choose to not be true to who we truly are inside, and there are many outside pressures that try to convince us to be who “society” expects us to be. Somewhere in a childhood “autograph book” that I have not yet unpacked someone once wrote,

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Shakespeare wrote many great truths, but this is one of my favorites. My hope for you this week is that you can feel free to be who you really are, that the life you live enables you to be real. There are few thing more important.

Diana

I hope you find this blog interesting, useful, or amusing, depending on its topic. One way to keep track of my posts is to subscribe to my newsletter (see form on the right), which will always contain a link to my recent blogs. Or, of course, you could bookmark this page and keep checking back. Either way, I hope that my work makes your life easier and more balanced. To explore my offer of the gift of a 30-40 minute coaching session on whatever issue is a stumbling block for you, please see my Contact page.

Getting Unstuck and Off the Couch

By Diana Gardner Robinson Leave a Comment

Sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes it feels as though there is no way we can get unstuck. But we can.

A while ago I had written about the spiritual practice of patience, of just waiting, and preparing, as one waits, for whatever is to come, known or unknown (and, truly, it is always unknown – but that is for another blog).

A reader rather indignantly responded,
“Oh yeah, and how does one get unstuck and off her couch to begin getting her self ready for whatever it may be that she is awaiting???”

Why are we stuck?

There are many reasons why one might be “stuck on the couch,” either literally or metaphorically. But to know how someone could go about getting themselves off the couch, one would need to know why they are ON the couch and unable to get off. If we find ourselves in this state of mind, perhaps we could ask ourselves some of these questions, and see which ones resonate.

Do we feel that getting off the couch and moving into action will be useless? That whatever we do, we are not capable of achieving anything worth achieving? When we get into this state of feeling that we can achieve nothing, it is very difficult to break out of the cycle. Among other things, I urge such folks, who are often coaching clients, to make a list of their achievements, and re-read it every day. To think carefully, to go back over time to any time when they were proud, when someone praised them, when you achieved something you were working on, even as a ten-year-old. You HAVE achieved. Be proud of that fact.

Other techniques include: to be determined about writing a gratitude journal every day, to find someone worse off than you who can benefit from your help, and/or to let people know that you need encouragement and are feeling down. This last can be very difficult, since society tends to teach us not to admit to being vulnerable. Yet people are usually more willing to respond warmly and give encouragement that we give them credit for. If you literally know no one to whom you can turn, find a way to widen your circle of friends. Network. Consider seeking a mentor or a coach.

Other questions: Have you given up on your dreams?
Do you no longer believe that they are worth having?
Do you have no dreams?

Try this trick. Make a list of everything you have ever wanted, or wanted to do. Start as far back as you can remember. Now go through that list and notice what there is on it that you would still like to do. Pick one that is realistic, and decide what you need to do to achieve it. Go for it. **

Another question: Have you allowed your body to get into the habit of not moving much?

Sometimes our bodies can get so lazy that we feel too tired to move off the couch. Many years ago a doctor, to whom I had complained of feeling tired all the time, told me, “Then you need to exercise more.” Even though exercise may tire us temporarily, in the long run (no pun intended) it invigorates us. It is also a powerful antidote to some. though not all, forms of depression.

While on the topic of depression, there may be therapeutic reasons that keep you on the couch. It may be that you are in a state of depression that calls for time to be spent talking with a counselor, in which case I urge you to find one. Depression can be a downward spiral from which some people cannot emerge without professional help (and no, going to a counselor is not the same thing as hiring a coach – as a general rule coaches are not licensed therapists, though a few are).

Assuming you are not so serious a “couch potato” as to need therapy, I suggest that you put together a schedule for yourself that includes most or all of the techniques I have suggested above… list your achievements and savor them, keep a daily gratitude journal of at least five items a day, examine your goals and pick one to work on, and schedule yourself to do some form of exercise (other than walking to the refrigerator!) several times a week. Commit to yourself that you will keep up these habits for a month. Do it.

Then, let me know how you feel.

And consider these words by Anais Nin:

“Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.”

** If “Go for it” is intimidating, you might find help at How Dreams Become Goals

Diana

I hope you find this blog interesting, useful, or amusing, depending on its topic. One way to keep track of my posts is to subscribe to my newsletter (see form on the right), which will always contain a link to recent blogs. Or, of course, you could bookmark this page and keep checking back. Either way, I hope that my work makes your life easier and more balanced. To explore my offer of the gift of a 30-40 minute coaching session on whatever issue is a stumbling block for you, please contact me via my Contact page.