Steps on our Road to Recovery

Daily Steps On Our Road to Recovery for 12 to 18 July 1999.

Published Last Week. A daily hint published each day since June 1996. This is past my third year anniversary since starting my web pages. Page Down for the next days that are added a day at a time. I have moved to http://www.recoverybydiscovery.com and this daily page is now here at https://www.recoverybydiscovery.com/daily.htm . I would appreciate any feedback, questions and suggestions that you have.

What I am mainly going through now is the DSM-III-R Desk Reference a "disorder" at a time and commenting on the spiritual and recovery aspects. The DSM is what the American Psychiatric Association uses to label symptoms to facilitate communication in their community. Unfortunately, the labeling from the DSM can shut down communication with those seeking temporary assistance and spread the stigmas of mental illness. The DSM can also bring some comfort by telling some that others have had the same experience. I am adding additional comfort by pointing to some ways to start getting out of the "disorders". I am not writing about cures. I am writing about how the cure process works over time. Instantaneous cures can be as traumatic as the original event that generated the disorder or illness. Instantaneous cures may not do us any good, when we get the same disorder back, since we have not changed the thought system that caused the disorder in the first place.

I am just going to give you a picture of what is left in the DSM-III for us to discuss. There is an Appendix A with three disorders that they thought needed more study before they coded them. Then there is Appendix B with decision trees to help give us our codes. Appendix C has an alphabetic listing of the "disorders". Appendix D has a numerical listing of the codes they use. And lastly they have an appendix with out a letter. That is a list of symptoms with all the name that they can call us. I found it significant that they did not just call this Appendix E. It seemed like they are avoiding the simplicity of just using symptoms. I am not going to avoid that here although this non appendix seems to have been left out of the DSM-IVR Desk Reference.

12 July 1999

Challenges

Like yesterday, things happen. Then I found a copy of my

missing file. Life is good, again.

The program I use the most to do this column, AOLpress 2.0,

crashed, with what I had started writing. Fortunately, this program

usually saves what had been done. Life is good, again.

I found an office program that is cost effective. I will write more

tomorrow. Life is good.

13 July 1999

StarOffice 5.1

I am just starting to use StarOffice 5.1. It is free, for one person

home offices. So far, it is well laid out and responsive and useful

and uses less computer resources. This program is the most integrated

office program I have seen and it appears to be what I need at

this time. As usual, I still need other programs to do what it does

not do as well. Life is good.

One catch, is that their download is a over 50 meg file and most

the worldwide servers are slow. However, there is a way to help

out on this challenge. An ad supported program called Go!Zilla.

Go!Zilla will download from multiple servers and restart when

blocked.

14 July 1999

E R

There are a some things I would like to point out in Francine's

book. One is her story in Chapter 12 about how a Reverend assisted

some pedophiles in their recovery. He chose to assist them in fixing

their problem, instead of fixing blame. It is interesting to note that all

the things that society does, makes the problem worse. Things like

pointing them out, not giving them work, etc. These things increase

their stress and increase the probability of their acting out their problem.

Just like stress does on all of us, with our different problems.

Another thing is how medication sometimes works. It may suppress

our problem for a while and then we may need more medication. Then

we may reach a level that our medication no longer works. We may get

off our medication and we may have an even bigger problem when we go

through our withdrawal process. Sounds just like the addiction process,

does it not.

Another thing is that I noticed a case about Ross in Chapter 10, where

he recovered from addiction and diagnosed manic depression. It turned

out that they discovered that he was recovering from the cruelty of his

grandfather, with E R being used by a good therapist to effect his

recovery.

15 July 1999

Manic Depression

One symptom that may be misunderstood is when we are feeling

low energy and high energy at the same time. I have felt like just laying

down and yet felt high energy flowing through me. What was going on?

I had low physical energy so that I would not expend much energy at

the physical level. The high energy was where my real energy was and

it was busy healing many things. That was my spirit. My physical needs

needed to be low so that my spirit could do its work. Sometime when

we are feeling low it is wise to see all of what we are feeling. It may be

just a point where changes need to be made at the spiritual level and

we need our energy there.

As I have written many times, recovery is about recovering our

feelings. Our feelings are our physical point of reference. We need

all of them to tune into what is really going on. It can be a lifetime

challenge to recover enough to be getting our glimpses of that.

16 July 1999

New Book

I am about half way through a new book by Gay Hendricks, Ph.D.

It is called,

The Ten-Second Miracle, Creating Relationship Breakthroughs.

Gay has produced another classic book that could change mankind when

read and understood and used. Gay has kept it simple and yet challenging.

Just like life is. This is a life changing book. I have respected Gay and his

wife's work, since I saw them at several symposiums and participated in

the exercises they shared there.

17 July 1999

The Hendricks

When you are interested in finding more about the Hendricks, Gay

and Katherine, you could check out their web site from my links page.

They have some interesting stories to tell and some good work to share.

They are among those that I appreciate for their contributions to making

our planet a better place. Every thing we all do to make our planet a

better place makes this planet closer to our Garden of Eden. Eden

means Pleasure, so why not make your Garden with more Pleasure?

18 July 1999

The Irrational Zone

Yesterday, I entered the irrational zone. As I was in my irrational

zone, I recognized that I was arguing like my Dad would when he

thought someone was being unfair. I was doing this as I was at the

airport, saying goodbye to my sister. I am sure it reminded her of our

father. In fact, it led to more of an emotional connection as she left.

It is amazing the unconscious things we do, to keep our emotional

connections. How familiar is the irrational zone to you? Perhaps

it is not as irrational as I first thought.

Very Respectfully,

Michael Foster, MA

DiscoveryCoachemail

https://www.recoverybydiscovery.com or

http://i.am/rbd; Total-DC or 868-2532

or 868-6749

Very Respectfully,

Michael Foster, MA

Discovery Coach

https://www.recoverybydiscovery.com

DiscoveryCoachemail

"Learn HOW to recovery by discovering the blocks you need to remove and the actions you need to take and what you need to let go of as your blocks to your blessings."

From my book in process, The Spiritual Cookbook (Generic Recipes for a Better Life)

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I started my daily page, because it is useful for me to look for some recovery tip or secret each day for my spiritual growth. we and I only need one secret to work on and let it work on me each day. They are secrets because they are usually the opposite of what the majority of society teaches. They must be secret because they are not commonly used. A friend of mine once said "Common Sense is not much in Common.". Now that I have grandchildren I am also writing for them. I would have really liked for my grandparents to have passed on what they learned.

I am including Sunday as it is my formal day of learning the lord most high's secrets. If you would like ask questions, or contribute some of your wisdom, or want to make some comments or want to vote for which day to put on my tip of the month page or tell your success stories, click Michael Foster, M. A.