May 31, 2011 By admin

Welcome. We are so glad that you have found us. We deeply care about your recovery and this blog is an expression of that devotion. We want the best for you.

Our primary goal with the Living Beyond Addiction site is to inspire hope on your journey of recovery. We want you to know that freedom from addiction is achievable. We choose articles that are honest, straight forward and practical, all with the focus of supporting full sobriety and an empowered, healthy life.

Support of a positive, uplifting nature isn’t always easy to find. This blog is written by people from all walks of life with a variety of experiences. We believe that the more connected and informed you are, the better decisions you will be able to make to resolve substance abuse for yourself or a loved one.

We review every article before it is posted and look for submissions that are solution-oriented. However, solutions aren’t ‘one size fits all’ so expect to see a variety of perspectives from people who have found answers in their own lives and in helping others regain fulfilling lives.

If you or someone you know would like to contribute to this stream of empowering information and support, we invite you to submit an article. (Please do review the terms and conditions before you make your submission.)

Filed Under: Admin

Release Resistance and Breathe in the Power of Acceptance

June 14, 2011 By Joyce Marvel-Benoist Leave a Comment

When life looks ugly, being asked to accept what’s going on can taste like a very bitter pill. At least at first, we just want to spat it out and find some distraction from this calling to look life right square in the eye.

I recoil at the sound of new age cliché’s but the one about “Whatever you resists persists,” is such a powerful fist to the gut that it’s worthy of exception.  My clients give me an amazing opportunity to observe the utter power of resistance, and conversely of acceptance. We do indeed argue for our limitations, our fears, our dependencies, and our myriad of excuses to not do the really hard thing of accepting what is. When a person accepts themselves and their situation, the floodgates of breath and life and life-changing solutions come rushing in.

Ever notice how hard it is to be really present when you’re not breathing? Stopping the life force that rushes through us is hard, painful work.

If a drug addict doesn’t accept that she’s completely ruled by her relationship with her drugs, then how could she possibly begin to see the power she has to choose something better? Her energy spent on defensiveness, planning to get the next fix, denying the shame of neglecting her kids — it all just zaps her life energy. These behaviors do nothing to move her toward resolution, that is until she sees her own reflection in the mirror and acknowledges what she’s doing. Somehow, she must accept her pain alongside even the smallest spark of hope that she could have something more wonderful.

We have a collective habit of focusing on making change more than on being in our own skin. Compared with the rest of the world, Americans are more likely to move residences and careers often, to use mind altering substances like an everyday food group, medicate emotional and mental stresses just to cope with daily life, and live with more abundance and often luxury, while reporting low satisfaction with our lives.

People in therapy usually talk of their evil stressor ― their impossible situations.  Pointing the way to the solution of their dilemmas, I take them by the shoulders and head them straight into the middle of that un-resolvable issue, that terrifying crossroads and insist that THIS is the very place they will find their best  raw material for an enlightened solution to their pain and suffering.

Byron Katie has created a brilliant approach to this concept, involving a process which leads to complete personal ownership of what is happening. What is … is precisely the thing to pay attention to. She calls it “The Work,” which I find accurate to the point of bursting into a deeply revealing laugh. Let us not pretend that looking at the truth about ourselves and what’s going on around us isn’t really hard work. Until it isn’t.

It becomes easier when the resistance calms down and acceptance begins to set in. When I see that what I am experiencing is actually teaching me and that by exploring my inner depths I can see the brilliance in my own experience, I begin to see my beauty, my innocence, my well meaning heart, my all-out efforts to get things to make sense. I also see the ridiculousness of some of my choices to try to get joy by the practice of resisting the life that’s in front of me.

What if everything I have done has been for a good reason, or at least with a logical intention? Like maybe I was so terrified to be wounded again, that I skipped an opportunity to present my expertise to a conference while staying home numbing myself with food and drug, TV and fear? This strategy DID work, in that I avoided confrontation with my fear and expertly got myself off the hook.

Going numb worked and worked well, but I didn’t LIKE how it felt in the end. My inner GPS was pretty unhappy about my insistence upon keeping my Ferrari parked in the driveway. How can life use me to reach out, help others, care deeply and show up if I don’t even accept myself and my circumstances? It can’t.

Breathe.  Release the grip. Become an observer who can look with gentle, astute willingness to truly see what is in front of you. Then you have the power to affect real change.

Copyright 2011 Joyce Marvel-Benoist

Filed Under: Counseling and Support

Changing Addiction Treatment to an Empowering Model That Works

June 10, 2011 By Joyce Marvel-Benoist Leave a Comment

Those who change the world for the better have something very important in common. They ask questions ― bigger questions than have been asked before. They believe in something beyond what has been done already. They stretch some very important societal paradigm.

Today, we should be asking questions like:

Why are recovery statistics so dramatically weighted toward relapse?

What if the best way to heal from addiction is a very different model than traditionally used?

Could it be that the problem with lasting recovery is not as much about the addiction as it is about the attempt to heal it through a paradigm that actually produced the problem in the first place? This common standard based on shame and fixed, worn-out, self-defeating beliefs?

Dictionary definition of paradigm: “A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them.” In the last decade it’s become a popularized word used to portray one huge change in society most noted as an expansion of awareness (bigger thinking) by western society. It’s often referred to as a paradigm shift, as if there’s only one and it’s happening to everyone.

We hear people discuss the “old paradigm,” often defined as the world of strict intellectual interpretation and belief in specific, predictable outcomes. In short, controlling. The “new paradigm,” is spoken of as an awareness of the broader, more limitless thought in which feelings, intuition and even divine intervention get equal attention. The shift is clearly more in the direction of spiritual and emotional awareness with less tendencies to accept a purely logical or historical answer to a problem.

Traditionally (call it old paradigm if you wish,) American society has focused on a triangle of dysfunction and defeat. The three points of the triangle are Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer. We bounce around from one position to the next, playing the roles as if they are our only viable choices. Even strong, courageous people are often so steeped in the questions of “Who’s to blame?” “Who’s bad and who’s good?” and “Who should be punished?” Those are the questions that have formed the processes we use and shape the very results we get in the end.

If my query is about who’s bad, where does my focus lie? Surely not on any form of honoring and empowerment.

Instead, we can ask ourselves, “Is a cure, a healing, a true health revolution possible without empowerment of the individual?” and, “If not, then what is the point of systems set up to jettison personal integrity and power?”

It might be that the whole point of the shame-based paradigm is simply to ensure the survival of shame, punishment, finger-pointing and fighting. The inner fight is the hard one. So, to support a person with addiction issues, the most useful personal question is, “How can I support you to empower yourself to live the life you truly want for yourself?”

Ask yourself this question. Ask your loved ones this question. And if the answer is something other than truly supportive, see it for what it is. Shame and blame are the ultimate addiction. The pain they produce is the very pain that we attempt to drown out with our substance of choice. Alcohol, Ambien (sleeping pills,) Red Bull, pornography, you name it — it’s all about the internal race, running from the shaming, finger wagging condemnation that we’ve had too much of.

What would happen if your inner dialogue and your support group didn’t use language of put-down and defeat? What would happen if the assumption was that each person is fully capable of living free of addiction and that there is nothing flawed about the inherent beingness of a person with challenges?

What would happen if the entire focus was on, “How might we help this good person release shame and hurtful inner dialogue?”  “What are the strengths of this person?” “What is the true reason for this addiction and how might we help this dear, precious being to fulfill their true craving for a life well lived?”

Then and only then will empowering answers of a new paradigm in addiction treatment become our collective reality. The attitude is truly the path.

Copyright 2011 Joyce Marvel-Benoist

Filed Under: Skills to Live Beyond Addiction