In my last post, I discussed how our legacy – the experiences of those who came before us – impacts us emotionally in big ways. Multi-generational trauma is real, and powerful unconscious force in our lives.

Stories I Hear Regularly

Some of these experiences are quite extreme. Like a client whose parents were children in southeast Asia under a barbaric regime. There was a driving force toward genocide – a systematic persecution of and killing of citizens considered to be ‘enemies of the state.’ My client’s parents watched their loved ones be murdered. As an only child, my client learned ‘not to be a burden’ – so as not to put any additional emotional strain on his parents. Instead, he decided that one day he would make enough money to get the things he couldn’t have as a child and take care of his parents so they wouldn’t be so sad. While he has had enormous monetary success, it has come at a huge emotional cost. Today he is healing and finding more happiness and balance in his life.

The Transformative Power of Self-Discovery

Early in my own emotional healing, I had a dream. In the dream, I was being chased by Russians. I was terrified because I knew they wanted to kill me. I was looking for a door with a “symbol” on it, one that would tell me it was safe for me to go there. My heart was racing. Finally, there it was – safety. I woke up in a sweat, wondering what it could mean.

In telling my therapist, she pointed out that this was not my life I was dreaming of, but my mother’s. My mother was caught in what became known as East Berlin, the part that was under the Russians. West Berlin was occupied by the Americans – the Liberators. She was also one of the few people who were able to escape across “no man’s land” – a strip of land between East and West Berlin that allowed only vendors to carry supplies back and forth. She took her young daughter and started walking beside a vendor, holding his arm and begging him to pretend she was his wife. The Russians were yelling at her and she feared they would shoot her dead at any moment.

I have so much respect today for her courage in taking that risk – one that was literally ‘life or death.’ That took guts.

Other family stories involve divorce, infidelity, neglect or sexual abuse, often happening in families for many generations. Facing our legacies can lead to incredible healing. Constructing our family genograms is one way that we can target these issues and see our histories clearly.

Going beyond a childish fantasy to ‘protect’ our parents and deny our realities, keeps us stuck in the ongoing cycle of emotional pain and limitation.

“Those who cannot grieve with their whole hearts, cannot laugh either.” – Golda Meir

Healing Tips

Remember, whatever your family story is, you have already survived. Our survival strategies were our smartest attempts at self-protection. Today, however, they create limitations. We can’t heal what we can’t feel. We can’t be ourselves if someone else’s life is intruding upon us. To fully define who we are in recovery, we must differentiate from others’ experiences, expectations, and demands to conform. In doing so, we become free to live our best life.

​It has given me a sense of freedom to move far beyond what I ever thought possible and to give myself permission to have joyful abundance, even though that was not something my parents ever had.

Draw out your family genogram and make a note of all the traumas, losses, divorces, war survivors, abuses, neglect, criminality, and addiction. Use colored pens for each different issue. Making it real gives you the choice to decide to do something different.

Until next time,

I’m asking this because it’s important for us to know our history so that we can better define our future. Healing often involves the lives of those who came before us. When we face and heal our histories, we attain greater emotional sobriety. Here is why.

Our Sense of Self

It’s important to know that we can’t develop a sense of who we are outside of a relationship. Our earliest relationship was with our primary caregiver, usually our mother. Then comes our father, our siblings if we have any, and then as we grow, the people in our neighborhood and schools. ​

It’s in the way that we are held, looked at and spoken to, that propels our brain to organize a concept of who we are and how we can expect the world to respond to us. ​

In other words, relationships are key to our self-image from day one. ​ Whether love was felt, matters.​

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Bruce Perry, who is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and somebody whose work I admire a lot, wrote a book called “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.” As the title suggests, his mother was not simply neglectful, but incredibly abusive to him. Often, her actions were life-threatening to him at a very early age. Despite that, he went on to become a motivational speaker after working through his trauma.

Dr. Perry wrote an article many years ago entitled “Incubated in Terror.” It was the first time that I felt anyone had put a name to what I had experienced. While I have no cognitive memory of being abused in utero, what I do know is that my father was abusive to my mother and that it most likely did happen. ​

It’s a sense I have inside myself that I trust today. ​

You can think of it as intuition – something that becomes a resource as we get to know ourselves and change ourselves into the person we really want to be in recovery, no matter what our histories are. ​

I have a friend who was born prematurely. She was placed under a heat lamp and her mother kept her alive by giving her beer to drink. Yes, it’s true – she survived on beer because she could not tolerate milk of any kind. It was during the war and her mom needed to secure a ration card to go to the bar and get the beer. Because my friend did go on to become alcoholic, it would be easy to speculate that her early relationship to beer might have created it. Interestingly though, she also had a close relationship with her family and talks of how instrumental her mother was in getting her sober. There was a tremendous amount of love in her family, although divorce and poverty created trauma for her. Drinking eased her struggles with low self-esteem.

The Transformative Power of Self-Discovery

Once we get sober, our work is to get to know ourselves. Your behaviour and your perception of yourself is greatly influenced by the generations before you. We internalize what our parents said and how they treated us. We’re also carrying our grandparents’ beliefs, ideas, and wounds inside of us because they shaped our parents. Even if we don’t know our grandparents, it’s clear that their influences on us are real.

My father grew up in a poor farmer family in Poland. His father was an alcoholic and from what I was told, very strict and abusive. My dad was that way too. My mother grew up in Germany and was born just before the end of World War I. Her family was quite well off before the war but lost everything when the Deutsche Mark became worthless. She remembers her family sitting around a table full of money that had absolutely no value; everyone crying, wondering what they were going to do now.

Needless to say, these traumas affected my mother’s life on so many levels. And she brought them with her when she immigrated to Canada. ​

They affected my life as well. When parents and grandparents have a lot of unresolved issues, they are often incapable of being present, optimistic and loving with their children. The unfortunate result is that children don’t feel important and often don’t feel loved. I know that was true for me. ​

Our Work in Recovery

Often, we drink, use substances or behaviours to escape the feelings of self-loathing or unworthiness. Once we commit to abstinence, we can begin to access these painful feelings so that we can heal. ​

Learning to value and love ourselves is a long journey we take one step at a time. I’m here to testify that it is absolutely possible to accomplish this task and to move on to a life beyond anything your family may have had or lived. Protecting your physical sobriety gives you the opportunity to become whole, and the emotional work allows you to gain emotional sobriety. It may feel scary or even overwhelming at times. The important thing to remember is that you have already survived the worst. You made it because you were a smart and resilient young child. ​

Now as an adult, it is time to both validate your pain and nurture your inner child. To move on from pain and trauma, to happiness and healing. ​

Do you know your family history? If so, write it out or draw it and look for the losses, traumas and patterns. ​

If not, start talking to people who are still alive and learn as much as you can. It will help you as you deepen your understanding of who you are.

From my healthy self to yours,

Neuroscience teaches us that addiction impairs decision-making and bypasses impulse control. We do things under the influence that we wouldn’t dream of doing sober. ​

Recently, a client I hadn’t seen in some time booked an appointment. Her partner insisted she get help because she continued to drink and drive with the kids in the car. She was genuinely baffled – when she was sober, she agreed wholeheartedly not to do this, and yet once she had a few drinks, all bets were off. ​

She does not drink every day and there are often times when she can control the amount, contributing to the perplexing nature of addiction – since there are other times when her judgment is completely irrational and there is no talking sense into her. ​

Like many other people dealing with the stress of the pandemic, her consumption was on the upswing again. Her attempts to ‘control’ the amount and the frequency of her drinking had failed once again. ​

She asked if I could help her figure out how she could drink and not drive. She wanted her husband off her back. She wanted to believe that I had a magic solution that could help her have her addiction and a happy marriage too. ​

There is no way to make sense of why a mother would put her children at risk by driving under the influence unless we understand the powerful nature of addiction.

She did not want to quit drinking.

The Unsolvable Dilemma

I reminded her what we had discussed previously: that as somebody who had crossed the line into addictive use of alcohol, she cannot predict where her drinking will end. The sober woman sitting across from me wanting help is not the same woman under the influence. She is not a bad person. As someone who has an addictive brain, once she picks up, she has no more power over the processes unfolding in her survival brain than she does over the weather. ​

But she, nor any of us like her, wants to admit that. ​ It can feel too much like defeat. Like weakness. Instead, we desperately cling to the delusion that we are in control of our lives. We assert our willpower, determined that this time it will be different. ​

What most people don’t understand is that when it comes to addiction, willpower alone will never get us across the finish line.​

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Willpower is a real thing. According to neuroscience, it exists in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex – right behind the forehead. According to Susan Pearce Thompson, it’s like a battery, charging up when we sleep, meditate and nurture ourselves, and then draining off as we go through our day and our multitude of tasks.

In eastern spiritual practices, the “third eye centre”, on the forehead between the eyebrows, is considered the ‘centre of will’.

Most of us spend much more time in daily tasks, making tough decisions, dealing with difficult people and attending to the complexities of our lives, than we do in meditation and self-care. It is obvious that our willpower resources will often be depleted. ​ Those times leave us vulnerable to relapse – either back to our addiction, or back to the stinking thinking that leaves us miserable and isolated from our friends and family.

What to do Instead?

Many addicts recoil from the concept of ‘powerlessness’. In my case, I found it liberating. ​

I had been trying for years to stop and couldn’t. I felt like an utter failure. When I was told that it was a simple fact that my addiction would win out over my willpower each and every time, it dissolved years of shame. Instead of using willpower, I now accept that abstinence is the first and most important step in recovery. I no longer fool myself into thinking that I am “stronger” than that. ​ I am content to hold up the white flag to my addiction and get on with living an incredible life, free from the constant stress and exhaustion of fighting a battle I can never win. ​ I do this by daily practices that support my recovery – and by reaching out for help from others who understand my dilemma and can steer me in the right direction, if and when my ‘delusion’ returns.​ ​

​I hope this helps you too,

I recently listened to a woman tell her story of getting sober in Iran. Being a woman in Iran is hard enough, but being an alcoholic woman is an impossibility in a country that treats alcohol like it’s the devil itself. ​

There are no AA meetings in Iran because that would imply that alcohol was being drunk. There are many support meetings for people who are addicted to narcotics, because somehow in the minds of the Iranian lawmakers, drugs are different than alcohol. ​

At one point she threw out the word ‘rape’ in the context of “just what happens when you try to get alcohol in a country where it is illegal and not sold anywhere.” ​

The reason I’m sharing this with you is because it hit me right between the eyes. It made me take a good hard look at how addiction took over my life and the many scary things that happened to me and around me. I now see it all as part of the wide, destructive net that addiction throws over our lives.

Denial Drives our Thinking

Denial is a common defense mechanism for addicts. It drives all of our ‘stinking thinking.’ By this, I mean the way we continue to ‘deceive’ ourselves of the seriousness of our addiction. ​It helps us turn a blind eye to the horror of our lives. It starts with the thought, “It’s not that bad.” ​

From there, it’s how we recoil from the thought that we are “powerless” over our addiction. More than anything, most addicts want to believe that they still have a choice. ​

That we are absolutely in control of every aspect of our lives. ​

And in other areas of life, we did demonstrate control and good judgement. But when we took an honest look at how we behaved under the influence, we have to admit that even we were shocked and baffled. ​Our thinking that we have everything under control and nothing is wrong, leads us to pursue our drug of choice and justify it to ourselves, no matter how hurtful it is to others. ​

I am not proud to admit that I left my daughter home alone to go to the bar for “one or two”. This is an appalling lack of judgement – and one that is all too common for too many of us. ​How did I think that was ok? What did I tell myself? That I’d never do it again. That it was a simple mistake.

Rinse and repeat. ​

Why didn’t we stop when things got bad? ​

Why do we insist, “I’m fine, thank you very much?” ​ ​

Why are we determined to go it alone, even when we join a group? ​ Many of us are, quite simply, help-rejecting complainers. ​

We don’t like our lives, often have no clue how to solve our problems, but rather than accept help, we’d rather just complain. ​That can happen even after we put down our drug of choice.

Underlying Causes and Conditions

Recognizing how our thinking is negative and not connected to reality, allows us to work deeper on ourselves, once we get sober. ​Some addicts believe that they were born this way. We look back on our early lives and we see that our thinking was always askew. We never remember thinking positively about ourselves or the world in general. ​

For others it wasn’t that way. For them, it was more of a slow evolution of worsening conditions. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr(s). Hyde – someone respectable by day, turning into someone sinister by night. ​

I lived that double life for many years, praying these two realities would never overlap. ​ ​ ​

The Way Out

In my experience, years of using denial, rationalization, and minimization to avoid the truth about our addiction takes time, patience, and diligence to change. The key is Honesty – our recovery from cognitive distortions starts with awareness of our thoughts with an honest desire to create a more positive and caring mindset.

Try this challenge:

1. Watch your thoughts for a day and notice each time you distort an event because you don’t want to see it the way it is. ​
2. Note when you have an immediate negative opinion about something that you have not fully investigated yet. It’s called “contempt prior to the investigation”.

As you do this, think about what your Higher Self would think. What would Love do? What would Love think? Note it down. ​

Practice making these little changes in your daily life and notice how it impacts your feelings. I guarantee you – the shift will be undeniable.

​In service of your highest self,

Do you ever stop and ask yourself if you are using your time effectively or not?

Notice I didn’t say “productively”. To me, effective doesn’t mean ‘getting sh#t done’. It means being meticulous and mindful about what feeds our soul, not just our pocketbook. Living life in recovery to the fullest means scheduling our time and activities to include self-care.

Getting clear on how much and how often to give ourselves time for self-nurturing and enjoyment are critical to ensuring our productivity long-term. ​ There are only so many hours in the day and it’s up to us to decide how we want to structure those.

Often, many of us waste so much time doing things that have absolutely no meaning to us. ​

What we do with our time is often learned early in life. ​ Some of us spend way too much time invested in other people’s happiness rather than our own. ​ Some of us are overly selfish about our time and don’t consider others. ​

I learned to be responsible for others at a young age. I learned that hard work and helping others were more important than following my dreams or playing and being a child. For those reasons, I can still struggle with listening to an inner calling to rest, to indulge in what I want to do, and know that it is perfectly ok to have fun. ​

When active in my addiction, I could ‘waste’ time – for sure; but I could also give myself permission to have fun. Now, I have to find healthy ways to do that. Quality recovery depends on the balance of both self and other care. ​

Most of us who grew up in alcoholic, neglectful, or trauma-based families, are pretty good caretakers or people pleasers. ​

What we really need to learn is how to care for ourselves, without feeling like it’s selfish. Being ‘selfish’ at times isn’t a terrible thing. Do you say to yourself: “I never have any time for myself“; or ​ “Let’s get to work. Why play when work is so much fun?” or ​ “Now that my children are grown up, my time seems so empty. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

A balanced, healthy self comes from a deliberate sense of time structuring.

Most entrepreneurs, myself included, work hard and long hours. However, making time for recreation — for meeting with friends, for doing hobbies, for meditating, or getting out in nature — keeps us from abusing time. ​

We can learn to pay attention to our dreams and desires that create good health and happiness.

And then make sure we make time for these activities:

• Eating nutritious (home-cooked) meals
• Getting enough rest
• Connecting intimately with friends
• Spending time in nature
• Having fun – being spontaneous
• Having quiet time – getting to know ourselves

​ I hope you will commit to making one small change in your schedule to include a little extra nurturing for you. You are worth it!

Wishing you all the best,

What the neuroscience of addiction teaches us is that the ‘high’ we experience from substances or behaviors is because the brain floods initially with a neurotransmitter called dopamine. While there is a cascading chain of neurochemical events that occur subsequently, stopping the flood is critical to long-term contented sobriety. ​ Here’s the problem: when we find a substance or behavior that gives us a very pleasurable feeling and our brain is susceptible to addiction, it sends a signal that it wants more.

The signal originates with the flood of dopamine. In a so-called “normal” brain, the dopamine would turn on and off, and pleasure would be experienced and that would be the end of the story. For addicts, that’s not what happens. The flood gates open and dopamine tells us that it’s ‘never enough.’ ​ ​​ ​

But that’s only half the story. ​

Here is the real kicker. ​

In an attempt to restore our internal world to homeostasis – i.e., balance, our brains then reduce the number of dopamine receptors (landing docks) in the brain. In other words, while we are ingesting our ‘fix’, our brain is responding with, “It’s too much, I have to shut this down”.  At the same time, the dopamine is swimming around looking for a place to latch on to, attempting to let us feel that temporary bliss we are searching for. ​

If we continue to act out in our addiction, dopamine continues to flood, but there are not enough sites for it to attach to. That means we are not getting the ‘hit’ as easily. It takes more of whatever we are doing to get what we are hoping to feel – a sense of ease and comfort. A moment of believing that “I’m ok”. ​ ​

A Drug is a Drug is a Drug​ ​

The good news is that we can get a balanced brain back in recovery. Our brain will want to restore itself to the highest level of functioning, which is why we must be vigilant to ensure that we are not indulging in any substitute addictive behaviors. ​

Too often, we quit alcohol but think, “Pot can’t harm me; especially now because it’s legal”. ​ Wrong. ​

Or, we quit using cocaine and get hooked at the casino. Or we stop going to the casino but we bet uncontrollably on our favorite sports teams, keeping it secret from our loved ones. ​

Or, we watch pornography whenever we get a chance, telling ourselves, “I’m not harming anyone”. Yet, over time we realize that ordinary sex with a partner seems somehow too…well, ordinary. It’s not working for us anymore. ​

Or, we give up drugs and alcohol but find we can’t take time off; we work incessantly; we justify it with grandiose reasons to convince ourselves we are ‘just fine.’ “I love my work.” “They can’t do it without me.” ​

Often we look just fine – busy running our businesses, winning at our trade, filling up our bank accounts. ​ But, that’s not what matters – it’s what we are feeling that determines our quality of recovery. We can’t look outside ourselves for happiness. It’s an inside job.

To the extent that we are being obsessive or compulsive in any way in our lives, means that we are setting ourselves up for either marginal recovery at best, or relapse at worst. ​ ​

What We Can Do Instead – Healthy Pastimes and Habits ​ ​

In the Good Life Recovery community, we focus on creating balance by learning and participating in healthy ways to feel good. There are a lot of ways to restore ourselves to health, knowing that we have a brain that needs it more than ever. ​

I love gardening. I find it peaceful and nourishing. When I look at a rose, I feel utter awe. ​ I can walk in nature, talk to my grandson, play with a puppy or eat a good meal. All of these can stimulate a healthy response that helps me know that life in recovery is a joyful, ordinary experience. ​

I can read a good novel, connect with a close friend, hang out with others in recovery, or watch ‘The Voice’ – all of which help regulate my brain and communicate that life is meant to be enjoyed. ​ ​

We Can Never Get Enough of What We Don’t Need ​ ​

If we worry that we don’t have enough….love, money, status, sex, etc., then we not only miss out on what we do have, we are still repeating the mantra of the addictive cycle –‘it’s never enough.’​ ​

Make a list of the things you are doing that are still addictive or compulsive. Be honest with yourself so that you can make sense of why you may not be feeling your best. ​ Make another list of activities that bring you joy. What do you love to do? When have you last done them? How can you bring more enjoyment into your life in recovery? ​

As an entrepreneur in recovery, I’ll be honest – I know this is one of our biggest challenges. We are Type A’s, with tons of creative energy. We also often suffer from low self-esteem or negative self-worth. When the latter is at play, it drives us to prove that we are worthy, to avoid the sense that ‘I’m not enough.’ ​

Healing in recovery includes all these layers interacting with one another. It is our responsibility to ensure that they are interacting in a constructive rather than a destructive manner. ​ When we do so, ordinary life feels extraordinary! ​

Wishing you all the best,