by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Addiction
Transforming Addiction
In her book, “The Fourfold Way”, itself an inspired compilation of cross cultural indigenous wisdom, Angeles Arrien presents a well-informed alternative to our usual understanding of addiction. Through extensive research, Arrien has isolated four universal factors, which she describes as “life negating patterns” underlying all addictions. She further suggests that each pattern is actually a shadow side of an unclaimed human resource, which, if cultivated, heals addiction at the core. She describes the four addictions and their concomitant resources as follows:
- The addiction to intensity, which is the inability to tolerate silence, boredom and not-doing and is transformed by the expression love
- The addiction to perfection, which is the inability to tolerate mistakes and is transformed by the expression of excellence
- The addiction to the need to know which is the inability to tolerate uncertainty and is transformed by the expression of wisdom
- The addiction to being absorbed in what’s not working, which is the inability to see the bigger picture and is transformed by the expression of vision
Alternative vs traditional views
As you can see, these views differ significantly from more conventional approaches, which typically target the symptoms of addiction and focus on control, management and relapse prevention strategies. From Arrien’s perspective, focusing on the deeper addictive patterns and their underdeveloped resources is a far more effective, holistic and life-enhancing strategy. By fully acknowledging our own addictive nature, we set in motion the movement toward life affirming patterns and health. In her book, Arrien offers a series of suggestions based on indigenous wisdom and time-tested healing principles.
All this is to say that conventional 12-step wisdom, although extremely helpful, is not the full story. Arrien’s look at the deeper hidden patterns, underlying all addiction, offers a fresh perspective that serves to reunite us with the age-old wisdom traditions and their understanding of the restoration of balance and health. Many of these healing principles include things not often recognized as significant in our modern culture, like music, sonic, chant, dance, storytelling, silence and creative purpose. One would benefit immensely from including both in a healing regimen.
Taking a developmental look
Another relevant component contributing to our understanding of addiction comes from psychology. From the developmental psychological perspective, we can further utilize Arrien’s insights to understand the hidden unmet needs of the addicted individual, as well as hypothesizing how early childhood experience may have aroused the urge to self-soothe with substances fantasy or activity.
Addiction to intensity
Look at the addition to intensity for example. One might imagine a childhood in which caregivers were forceful, bad-tempered, confrontational, aggressive or addicted themselves. If indeed, we internalize attributes of our environment and our caregivers, it’s easy to see how a steady of diet of amplified drama, exaggeration and magnification might increase the chances of these patterns actualizing later in life. To one growing up in such an environment, the heightened intensity feels normal; so when life isn’t lived close to this edge, everything seems dull and uninteresting. Addiction to substances, fantasy or activity is a way to recreate the intensity associated with comfort and the familiar, despite its negative consequences.
Addiction to perfection
In the same way, the addiction to perfection may have developed by internalizing the patterns of highly critical, rigid, uncompromising caregivers. This individual may have been locked in world that compartmentalized reality into right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative, then punished deviations from parental rules through physical abuse or withdraw of love. It’s not much of a leap to see how one might grow up thinking mistakes are bad or wrong and need to be dodged no matter what the cost. In this case, addiction can be seen as soothing the constant strain of living up to impossible standards.
Addiction to the need to know
The addiction to the need to know may have been born of an early sense that the world is unsafe and chaotic. This can stem from caregivers who flip-flop between giving and withdrawing love, thus placing the child in the tenuous position of having to react to changing parental moods without knowing how to read them effectively. In this case, one may be drawn to numbing substances when things become confusing or disorganized.
Addiction to what’s not working
The addiction to being absorbed in what’s not working again may be born of highly critical caregivers who withhold praise, support and encouragement, forcing the child to focus on the negative in order to steer clear of parental retribution. Here, the urge to indulge may develop from the unremitting sense that everything is negative, wrong and unworkable and either must be righted or numbed from consciousness.
The addiction to avoiding unwanted experiences underlies all patterns
I would add, that underlying all of this is the even deeper tendency to avoid the disturbing feelings that emerge with each of these patterns. Substance abuse, workaholism, and sexual addictions can be seen as the outward manifestation of an inner struggle to avoid the immediacy of our present experience, either because the feeling is frightening or intolerable. We can take this a step further and add that addiction to any pattern, including the addiction to having things come out on our own terms, is a way to avoid feelings we find unsettling, terrifying, or unbearable.
Basically, what all of this boils down to is:
- We are subject to specific patterns of addiction based on our conditioning.
- These patterns take many and varied forms, which extend far beyond what our culture considers addictive behavior.
- The tendency to avoid the experience that drives addiction is at the core.
- The way out of addiction is to recognize the deeper underlying causes and conditions, then apply the antidote.
Therapy can help
Therapy can help you untangle the tightly woven web of thoughts, feelings, actions and conditioning that drive addictive patterns. By slowing down your ordinary pace and taking an empathic focused look at your process and patterns, you can observe, first hand, the inner workings of these subtle connections. Learning to take this more neutral observer’s position creates a lot of fresh space between the urge to indulge and your habitual addictive reaction. This spacious quality makes it possible for choice and increased flexibility to take hold. As you continue to develop the skills and resources that counteract your particular addiction, you not only gain freedom, but also in fact, cut suffering at the core while increasing your level of compassion for all beings who are stuck in addiction.
by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the process of paying attention to what we’re doing, thinking, saying and feeling. This is not ordinary attention however, but rather a highly focused, yet gentle non-judgmental, look at the very nature of our own conscious processes.
Mindfulness practices are part of a centuries old wisdom tradition and, as such, include a whole host of specific instructions and methods to cultivate awareness. We can actually become mindful of just about anything: walking, eating, cooking, speaking, listening, cleaning, repetitive tasks and of course, thinking and feeling.
What we’re doing, in essence, is developing the observing part of our mind… the part that is always there behind the scenes watching it all unfold, day in and day out, minute by minute. Slowly, through practice, we learn to rest in this state longer and longer, letting go of habitual patterns, struggles and internal knots.
Slowing down
In order to cultivate this neutral observer’s perspective, mindfulness practices include ways to slow down our usual pace and tease apart our experience from the thoughts we have about our experience. Engaging in mindful meditation is a sure-fire way to see how quickly the mind takes off in endless chatter, when in fact the only thing we are doing is sitting in meditation.
As an experiment, try sitting for 10 minutes with the intention to just follow your breath. Most of us find we’re suddenly gone… we’re reliving past experiences, ruminating over injustices, planning future actions, imaging worst case scenarios, worrying about what’s for dinner and the like.
We are basically all caught up in thought. And this is not just isolated thought, it also includes feelings, physical sensations and emotions that serve to intensify the original thoughts and take us further away from the present moment and our intention to follow the breath. The simple instruction to return to the breath when we find we have gone off, slowly trains the mind to be present and to know what not being present feels like.
Building awareness
Being mindful, in effect, disentangles us the web we generally weave with our discursive thoughts about good/bad, right/wrong, should /shouldn’t and for/against. This training encourages us to watch thoughts and feelings arise, unfold and melt back into emptiness without getting all caught up.
Slowly, we begin to see how thoughts, feelings, speech and actions are interconnected, as well as how they create patterns and strategies that spring into action when triggered. Learning to separate things that once seemed inseparable, we are able to observe thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings and physical sensations as physical sensations… nothing more.
As we develop more insight into the workings of our minds, we then see how we have added extra, unnecessary meaning to raw experience. And more importantly we begin to clearly see where we are stuck, how we got stuck, and how we keep ourselves stuck. Here, it’s vitally important to apply warmth, intelligence and compassion so that we don’t make ourselves wrong or bad for having the patterns we have.
Mindfulness works by shining the light on patterns and igniting the process of change by making what was once hidden, conscious… not by making us bad or wrong. In fact, clearly seeing how we do what we do, without judging ourselves, enhances our unbiased curiosity and allows us to look deeper.
Cultivating the observing mind
Cultivating this observing part of our mind allows us to observe how, when and with whom we fall into patterns of judgment, criticism, comparison, distortion, generalization and deletion. More importantly, we begin to get closer to the unrecognized feelings and unmet needs driving these patterns and strategies.
We begin to see how we’ve been protecting ourselves thorough distraction, repression, acting out or other strategies that avoid feeling what is painful or unwanted. We come into contact with a more fragile quality of yearning to have our basic needs met, as well as our deepest fears that they won’t be met.
Using mindfulness, we can attend to these tender feelings and learn take care of ourselves through the cultivation of self-compassion, love and nurturance. This work also puts us in contact with the human condition at large and engenders a sense of compassion for all human beings who are up against the same things we are.
Being present
Mindfulness practices, in fact, bring us back into contact with the exquisite beauty inherent in being alive and present. As we touch the miracle of mindfulness, we also touch the miracle of our precious human life and the creative force that flows through all of life and creation. We see how all things are connected and interdependent and how our thoughts, speech and actions affect the whole. Engaging in this work awakens the compassionate heart, the clear mind and the ability to stay present, which, in turn benefits everyone, across the board.
by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Communication
Transforming Communication
Too often, our words and nonverbal language are a blend of mixed messages that don’t match our true intention. Similarly, rather than listening, we can get tangled in our own thoughts and strategies for getting others to do or see things our way. Although, these are actually self-protective tactics, they pull us away from heartfelt communication and serve to distract us from our deeper feelings and unmet needs.
Mixed messages are unconscious
In our defense, these strategies are pretty much unconscious and are generally the consequence of internalized patterns acquired from family, culture, environment and experience. For example, if the expression of our childhood feelings has been met with ridicule, belittlement, anger, indifference or the like, we learn to suppress these feelings to protect ourselves from being negatively received by our caregivers. In time, we may have achieved so much distance from our own feeling state, that we are no longer very good at matching words, feelings and actions.
Mixed messages are protective
In a paradoxical way, these patterns protect us from having to go to the places that expose deeper feelings, but they also unintentionally limit authentic communication. In fact, how often have you covered up a feeling of fear or sadness by acting in the opposite way, or by taking the offensive?
Through time, these unresourceful learned patterns become the knee jerk reaction that begins to define our interactions, relationships and personality. Altering this takes a lot of work, as you might imagine; but doing the work has the power to transform your way of “being in connection” at the core.
Qualities of effective communication
Being an effective communicator is essentially about saying what you mean, in a way that is clear, congruent and compassionate, as well as doing what you say with consistency, appropriateness and accountability. These qualities, which are the basis of connection and relationship, can be nourished through deep listening and the willingness to recognize the meaning and unmet needs beyond the spoken word.
Skillful communication thus combines the artful use of language, both verbal and nonverbal, with an empathic stance that focuses on building rapport, rather then winning an argument. Although we are not born with these skills, they are learnable. All it takes is a willingness to recognize and explore where you’re stuck in unproductive patterns, along with the commitment to practice acceptance, compassion, presence and truthfulness.
How therapy can help
Therapy helps you slow down and recognize your habitual responses and take a closer look at what’s happening behind the scenes. In a safe supportive environment, you have an opportunity to deconstruct the language you use and take a look at the specific strategies that define your communication patterns.
Seeing how thoughts, internal knots and unsettling feelings give rise to speech is the first step in unraveling this process and contacting the deeper needs, which have long gone unmentioned and unmet. Learning and practicing complementary skills then helps you verbalize these needs and feelings in a way others can hear, as well as helping you listen for the intention and meaning behind others’ words and gestures.
It is said that having language sets us apart from other sentient beings, but more than that, learning to use language in an authentic and heartfelt way, opens the doors to our true humanity and interconnectedness.
by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Creativity
The true creative process is born of a deep inner yearning to be used in a way you, yourself, find resonant with the good, the true and the beautiful.
It’s often felt as a strong pull you simply cannot ignore… a compelling magnetism that draws you deeper toward the realization of your inborn potential. It’s something we all long to experience because we instinctively know it makes us feel alive and connected to something greater than ourselves. Without it, the world seems mundane, ordinary and tedious. But what exactly is creativity and how can it be developed and cultivated?
The “aha” moment…
Quite simply, creativity can be described as a process that taps into our innate intelligence and comes back with something novel. We experience it mentally as shift in consciousness, moving us from a state of uncertainty into one of clarity. It’s an “aha” moment that’s both ephemeral and difficult to describe, but we know it when it happens.
We also experience it physically; we’re lighter, yet deeper. We feel a pulsating energy down to the cellular level; we have been moved, shaken, transformed. The physical results appear in the world as art, poetry, dance, music, design, elegant theories, scientific discovery or even a good meal. These worldly expressions have the power to extend far beyond the single creating individual; they reach out and touch us in a way that can shift our worldview, move us to tears, or just brighten our day.
Setting up the conditions…
One thing seems certain… you can’t will creativity into existence, but you can set up the conditions for its manifestation. Historically, we can look to the example of Mozart, who reported that the Divine dictated his symphonies to him, in completed form. But Mozart’s dad set the conditions when his son was a child… giving him lessons and providing him the leisure and opportunity to fulfill his vocation. Mozart, too, allowed himself to be used by divine inspiration, working tirelessly to communicate these revelations.
The literature is also full of stories by prominent scientists (Einstein, Kekule and Archimedes, to name three) who report solutions appearing in dreams or from unrelated experiences that trigger full-blown clarity… after the hard work of focused intellectual effort.
Current research indicates that diligent brainwork, followed by a period of relaxation allows problems to incubate into resolution. What happens during this incubation period is anybody’s guess, but I suspect creativity is at “play” deep beneath the realms of conscious thought. Doing what? Well, magic…pure and simple.
Yearning…
It seems to me that the willingness to set the conditions AND do the work, combined with the desire for fulfillment, engenders the experience of deep inner yearning. This is not just ordinary wanting, but a deeply felt, full-body, cellular longing to manifest possibility. Perhaps it is this energy of yearning that resonates with the divine’s desire for us to connect with our own potential. Interestingly, this is also a feeling that can easily be cultivated.
Try it now… relax and sense deeply into your cellular structure. Feel every cell of your being, down to your atoms, pulsating with energy. See if you can tap into this quality of deep yearning… yearning for every part of you to be what it is meant to be. Feel even deeper, beyond physical structure to the pure underlying energy beneath it all. This is the pulsating frequency that has the ability to align with deeper universal forces. This is creative power in the raw.
Giving up the need to know…
But what seems to ignite the whole process is something almost unfathomable… it’s the requirement that we give up our attachment to outcome. This is an unexpected twist… like a koan asking us to give up our desire to get that which we desire.
Is this possible? Possible, yes; easy, no. We are being asked to let go of all our preconceived notions of how things should turn out, and in fact, we are asked to give up the need to know, altogether. Think about it… if you want something truly new, you need to be wide open to all possibilities, even the ones beyond which thought can think. Essentially, this means getting out of your own way, setting the sails for inspiration and allowing the winds of grace carry you.
How therapy can help…
Therapy can be an important adjunct to this work by providing a supportive environment in which to slow down your ordinary pace and look closely at where, when and how creativity manifests in your life. For example:
- What do you do unselfconsciously well?
- What activity are you drawn to when you have free time?
- What do you find yourself thinking about when you daydream?
- As a child, what is the first thing you remember wanting to be?
- Who are your heroes?
- What obstacles and negative beliefs do you allow to stand in your way?
- How do you talk yourself out of self-expression?
Creativity doesn’t have to produce global life-shattering results, it can be as simple as a meal well prepared. The important point is that you feel alive, connected, and engaged in a project you, yourself, find resonant and worthy. Engaging like this, on a regular basis, can develop and cultivate the creative life force that’s already there waiting for expression.
by Sandra Paolini | Jan 5, 2022 | Anger
Transforming Anger
Anger can be described as a complex of thoughts, feelings and urges that show up when things don’t go our way. It’s pretty simple to understand; we just want to be happy. Unfortunately, we believe our happiness is contingent on things turning out according to our likes. Problem is, everyone else feels the same way.
But what’s wrong with wanting things our way? Well as it turns out, quite a lot. Bare with me here and think about this idea: suffering results from not liking what we have and from wanting what we don’t have. It’s a little nugget of wisdom that’s pretty hard to disagree with. But how can we be happy with what we have and lose our attachment for wanting things to be different?
It’s all about wanting things to be different
In an interesting way, working with anger puts us in direct contact with this red-hot urge to have it our way. The only way to work with this urge is to experience it in broad daylight, to come face to face with it’s attachment to outcome and gently ease into the exploration of coming to know the true nature of ‘wanting’, itself. Fortunately, the experience of anger willingly supplies us with all of this.
How we get triggered
Imagine this scenario… we see our mate has just left the cap off the toothpaste, yet again. Here comes the surge and we move into full-blown red-faced anger in a split second. We’re pummeled with rapid fire thoughts: thoughts about inconsideration, rudeness, thoughtlessness, stupidity; ideas about his plausible negative intentions and passive-aggressiveness; memories about all of the past transgressions; self-righteous indignation and feelings… really bad feelings.
All of this happens so fast, we find ourselves moving into action before the dust settles. Later, we console ourselves with the idea that the other has made us angry. If he had simply conformed to our standards, we wouldn’t have to feel this way. What’s the matter with him?
What part of this is do I own
Perhaps a better question, or at least a question more likely to have an answer is, “what’s the matter with me”. How did all this energy arise from simply seeing toothpaste without a cap? How did this uncomplicated visual wind up having so much extra meaning?
Well, although not always so obvious, the extra meaning comes from the thinking mind. The nature and flavor of your particular meaning comes from your personal experience… from birth onward. Since there’s not much we can do about changing past experience, the logical place to work is with changing our relationship with past experience. So, how might this work?
Working with angry thoughts and feelings
Imagine the same scenario again, but this time fortified with the willingness to stay with the heat and urgency of anger, without suppressing, denying or acting out. We see the cap off the toothpaste and the full catastrophe kicks into action. But this time, we catch ourselves in action; we observe our thoughts and see them for what they are. They are just part of a pattern we enact when faced with painful feelings.
We gently tell ourselves we are “doing” our pattern; we encourage ourselves to hold our seat and just stay. We breathe deeply into our felt body sense and let go of the thoughts. The thoughts come back; we breathe and let go again. We re-fortify our commitment to stay present with the immediacy of our experience… for as long as it takes.
In reality, we are teaching ourselves on the spot, using our own natural warmth, intelligence and compassion. Slowly, the feeling passes, we put the cap on the toothpaste and get on with our lives. Sometime later, we discover our mate has become more considerate, warmer and happier. This isn’t rocket science… but, it is hard work, because it flies in the face of what we believe is right.
It still doesn’t seem “fair”
Although we may have toughed it through the above scenario, we’re still plagued with a sinking sense that we’re doing all the work and it’s not fair. Why does he get off scot-free? Doesn’t this mean, he’s won and I’ve lost? Again… all this stuff is extra meaning we’ve attributed to the situation based on past experience.
If you grew up with a critical or abusive parent, you may have learned that anything less than perfection is wrong, and you’re bad for being imperfect. We carry these unconscious beliefs into relationships, but they aren’t truth and furthermore, they carry within them seeds of suffering. Therefore, staying with angry feelings has the effect of tapping into old familiar feelings that are painful, scary and sometimes traumatic. You’ll recognize that the anger has been a strategy to avoid going to this very place.
Ending suffering at the source
Now is your chance to heal suffering at the core. Feel it fully, let it wash over you, let it move you and shake you up. Recognize this feeling is the way you’ve learned to protect yourself from overbearing caregivers; at least being angry kept you safe from feeling rejected, abandoned and alone.
Allow this growing sense of understanding and compassion for yourself ventilate the atmosphere and bring fresh air and spaciousness to your experience. Recognize your parents did the best they could with the skills and resources available to them at the time. Let forgiveness, empathy and healing widen the space even more.
Next time you swing into unconscious anger, you’ll notice that there’s more time between stimulus and response, the space is wider, newfound kindness and a sense of the bigger picture show up. As you continue practicing this skill, one day you’ll look back and notice small things no longer bother you. You’ve changed, softened, and grown up. And, all this from a toothpaste cap!
How therapy can help
- Learn to experience angry feelings without suppressing, repressing or acting out.
- Understand the nature of triggering events and end the tug of war with anger.
- Separate thoughts from feelings.
- Develop tolerance under fire.
- Replace habitual behaviors with flexible intentional actions.
- Cultivate willingness, patience, compassion and forgiveness.
My approach helps you work with unwanted emotions without letting them rule your life. By slowing down your ordinary process and looking closely at the places you feel stuck, you can begin to unravel the fear and pain behind angry emotions and behavior and move on with the creative business of living your life.
