Steps on the Road to Recovery

Steps On the Road to Recovery for 14 to 20 December 1998.

Published Last Week. A daily hint published each day since June 1996. This is past my second year anniversary since starting this site. 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.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: FOR ANYONE THAT REQUESTED MY MONTHLY E-MAIL LETTER SINCE 1 AUGUST, PLEASE SIGN UP AGAIN, I HAD TO FORMAT MY HARD DRIVE AND START OVER AGAIN, AGAIN AND LOST SOME ADDRESSES.

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 thought I was a day behind and found that I was even this morning, after I edited what when into what week. See you tomorrow.

14 December 1998

Recovery By Discovery is now a one person home business. Today I

finally was able to download a free office suite to evaluate. StarOffice 5.0

is available at http://www.stardivision.com and is free for single person home

offices and individuals for non commercial use. I am adding this to my free

stuff page. I read earlier that StarOffice 5.0 was a product that was developed

in Germany. I remembered that StarOffice had been considered by IBM as a

competitor to MS Office. I am anxious to review this program. I already

suggested that they change their over 50Meg download to smaller chunks,

so that that the probability of successful downloads would go up. It took me

over 10 tries. It may be helpful for everyone else to make the same suggestion.

That is why it is useful to find your own positive support people, numbers

working together help. I have received support messages from some readers

and I appreciate that. That way we are a positive net of support people.

15 December 1998

Last week we were considering sleep "disorders". We are continuing to do

so this week. Today it is sleepwalking, "307.46 Sleepwalking Disorder".

We have two major influences on ourselves. First there is our waking

consciousness. Let us call that our real axis. Then there is our sleeping

consciousness. Let us call that our imaginary axis. What we experience

is the vector sum of our real and imaginary vectors. At night we get an

opportunity to see our imaginary sleeping consciousness axis. We are

influenced by our real axis, but the imaginary axis is in charge.

During daytime we get to see our real waking consciousness. When

we are sleepwalking we have lost touch with our real axis. When we are

sleepwalking in the daytime we have lost touch with our imaginary axis.

Actually we have not lost touch with our imaginary axis during daytime,

since it is talking to us by what is happening and what our biases are that

we do not consciously know are influencing us. You see, the imaginary

axis never is sleeping, it is always actively working.

There are some clues in this to help us to wake up more. All we need

to do is pay more attention all the time. Enjoy.

16 December 1998

Today we have the catch all for sleep challenges, "307.40 Parasomnia

Not Otherwise Specified". The one example they give is nightmares from

dropping drugs. Nightmares can be very useful. It is a good thing to get

through nightmares at night and not have to do them in the daytime. We can

recover from all kinds of things in nightmares. Almost like TV and the

movies, we can become totally protected for a while. That is the good news.

Here we are in God for the night and things get cleared and we are protected.

That leaves the daytime. Seems to me that we could choose to be protected

and for less difficult things to get cleared. What do you think?

17 December 1998

Now we get to the "Factitious Disorders". Factitious is a fancy word for

contrived. "301.51 Factitious Disorder with Physical Symptoms" is when

we have physical symptoms, without a good reason, other than to contrive to

fool others. Here we are trying to fool the doctor. Perhaps a good reason

would be to get better treatment. Since all we do is a vector sum of our

conscious desires and unconscious desires, we may not even be aware of

what we are doing. Our desires include our fears since they are opposites.

For example, fear of death is a desire to live.

So perhaps all we are fooling is ourselves when we fake a disorder. We

may have a high level of skill to fake physical symptoms. A good question

to ask is: Why does our soul need this? A good question to ask anytime.

18 December 1998

Next we have faking psychological symptoms for a unusual psychological

need to be sick without gains from being sick. This is coded as "300.16

Factitious Disorder with Psychological Symptoms". This is easier to do,

since we can change our minds easier than changing our bodies. Although

the doctors think of this as faking, how would they know the difference of

this arising out of the unconscious or out of the consciousness or both?!

No matter what we have ,we have the challenge of "peeling our onion".

We can learn how to forgive the surface layer of faking or neediness and

our tears may come and then we can get on to what the hurts are and then

on to our next layer. Somehow our soul has need of this layer of "faking"

and disrespect is one way to keep that layer there. Perhaps the good doctors

have found less judgmental terms in later editions or they will find less

judgmental terms for all these mental "disorders" in future editions.

19 December 1998

Then when we are able to "fake" both physical and mental "disorders"

we get a special catch all code: "300.19 Factitious Disorder Not Otherwise

Specified". We would have to be rather talented to pull this off, but you

may notice that everyone does to some extent. Our unconscious can do

this and some conscious yogi can do this. Our unconscious can release

both physical and mental disorders into our life and others may think

we are faking it. How can they know that we are faking it. Even if

we appear to turn things on and off, that may be what the unconscious is

doing. This is a level of control that is probably frustrating to any doctor,

especially when they think we are doing this on purpose. The doctors may

not see any gain, but we gain by processing our unconscious stuff. The

doctors may not see how we are doing the best we can with what we are

conscious of and what we are unconscious of.

20 December 1998

Next week we are on "Impulse Control Disorders Not Elsewhere

Classified". Actually they are classified most everywhere else, but

they do not know that yet.

Today I am completing faking it. The recovery community has a

saying, "Fake it, until you make it." Other spiritual communities say,

"Act as if." We have to convince our unconsciousness that we want

something different. One of the best ways is to struggle to gain a new

way of acting until it is no longer acting. A most effective form of

prayer is action, acting out what we want, directly getting what we

want.

I foster Discovery and Recovery of the Life of Your Dreams,

Michael Foster, M. A.

Mental Health Coach

"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.