KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

An Excerpt from Kickass Recovery:
From Your First Year Clean to the Life of Your Dreams,
by Billy Manas

Having lived through a romantic separation recently, I had the opportunity to experience many different emotional states I didn’t necessarily appreciate. Whether it was logging onto Facebook and seeing my ex with her new boyfriend or just dealing with the challenge of being alone, I needed to get a handle on my emotions. I found this to be especially important when I first began picking up my daughters on the weekends. In the first few moments we’d be together, I’d be trying to process the feelings of seeing my ex, knowing we were no longer together, and making my kids feel loved and comfortable in this new and foreign situation. It was a lot to reconcile all at once.

If you’ve been to 12-step meetings, you’ve heard people speak about their “disease” talking to them in the sound of their own voice or about the endless chatter and noise we have in our heads. Have you ever stopped and thought about what that noise really is? I have.

That noise is usually a ceaseless barrage of questions that we keep asking ourselves. That’s essentially what thinking is in the first place, only with the alcoholic and addict brain, the thinking and the questions we ask ourselves are not terribly helpful. Take, for instance, my recent breakup.

The noise in my head was an endless loop of What’s wrong with me? Why does she find him sexier than me? Is this guy going to try to replace me as my kids’ father?

Here’s the tricky part, though: it doesn’t just come right out and ask those questions. I, like most people, have a huge ego, and because of this, the noise often comes disguised as Screw her! They deserve each other. I can do better, anyway.

But when you peel away all the hubris and bluff, the questions are more sensitive and vulnerable. Either way, when we find ourselves looping the same crappy thoughts over and over, we are basically interrogating ourselves like hapless detectives trying to find answers to questions that have none.

I heard self-help guru Tony Robbins tell a story about a Holocaust survivor named Stanislavsky Lech that forever shaped how I view the questions I ask myself when I am in bad situations. This guy Lech was a prisoner in a Nazi camp, and as he witnessed all the other prisoners around him dying, he noticed that these other guys spent the whole time asking themselves how God could do this to them or why they were in such a horrific situation. Obviously, this was very understandable. If you know much about history, you know that the persecution of Jews by the Nazis was one of the darkest periods of world history.

What Lech was able to figure out, as time went on, was that if he asked himself a different question, he could survive. So, he changed Why is this happening to me? to How can I get out of here? Now, he was in a concentration camp that was heavily
guarded by armed soldiers, so there was no easy answer to this question, but waking up every morning and closing his eyes at night, he kept just repeating that question over and over. Inevitably, he was one of the very few who made it out of that situation alive.

What that story taught me was that the brain is a magical vital organ. We will always get output when we feed it input, and the quality of the output is based primarily on the quality of the input. That’s just a fancy way of saying that if we want something good to come out, we need to keep putting good in. So, in my case with my ex-girlfriend, as soon as I realized I was getting trapped in a funk, I began to change the questions I was
asking myself, just as Lech did. So, in those first few moments on the weekend when I’d pick up my children, I would change my questions to How can I make this a good day? and What might be positive about their mother and me not being together anymore?

There was a reason I left that relationship. If I didn’t think it was going to improve the quality of my life in some way, there’s no way I would have done it. All in all, I was able to get through the hardest days, and like most things, it got easier as time went on.

Pushing Against Resistance

A second useful technique for gaining control over our emotions is, of course, how we use our bodies, or our physiology. I understand that seeing your ex walking down the street arm in arm with your best friend can make it difficult to smile and walk with a swagger in your step, but hear me out: you have to try to do it anyway. When you experience less-than wonderful circumstances, the first thing you want to do is slump your shoulders, put a scowl on your face, and walk like you’re headed to the electric chair in one of those old movies from the sixties. Unfortunately, when you allow your body to mourn like that, it only perpetuates more misery. You wind up in a loop of feeling bad and then worse, until you’re so far down, you start looking for unhealthy ways to get back up.

So, try this out. Walk around like you’re on top of the world, especially if you feel just the opposite. Hold the door for someone, and smile at them, like “I got this” — and guess
what, soon you will have this. Put your shoulders back and take a deep breath. Keep doing it. Then do it some more. Get up and move around. Moving your body will move your mind. A friend who taught second grade told me that when the kids were stuck on a math problem, she encouraged them to get up and march beside their desks, to switch their brain patterns. You can switch your brain pattern by moving around at any
time. Use your body to take you where you want your brain to go — forward.

As difficult as it may sound, you need to push against the inertia of your own sad emotions. Easy? No. Important? Without exaggeration, it is as important as it is to feed yourself and breathe. I’m sure, if you’ve been to more than one 12-step meeting,
you’ve heard the cliché “Move a muscle, change a thought.” I’ll be honest: I wanted to punch my sponsor the first time he said that to me. That was not the advice I was looking for, if I remember correctly. All these years later, I finally understand the wisdom in that trope.

One of the most perplexing secrets of life is that the answers we are all looking for are usually in those simple clichés we hear and quickly shrug off, with an “I know” or “No kidding.” How do I know this? I used to do the same thing. For decades. When I finally found the secret to making my life incredible, I realized it was because I put all those simple and overused expressions into practice.

I cannot stress this enough. Everyone knows the only way to succeed is to never stop trying, but how many people actually keep trying to accomplish the same thing every morning they wake up — day in, day out for weeks, months, and even sometimes years? Not that many. Just the famous ones you read about in biographies and newspapers.

This is somewhat puzzling, too. I have listened to some of the greatest people of our time give incredible commencement speeches — Jim Carrey, Denzel Washington, J. K. Rowling,
Steve Jobs — and the message is generally always the same: Do. Not. Ever. Give. Up. Unfortunately, it’s one thing to know something on an intellectual level and another thing entirely to put it into practice. As Edgar Allan Poe mused in his famous story “The Purloined Letter,” sometimes a secret hides in plain sight.

The Choice to Be Happy

Finally, what we choose to focus on will ultimately determine our emotions. My experience with finishing this book turns out to be a useful example. January and February in the Hudson Valley region of New York can be somewhat brutal. As hard as I push against it, by the middle of February, my mood and morale are almost always dark. It feels as though winter has been going on for an eternity, and more often than not, I even get some kind of bug that puts me down for a few days. Not this winter! This winter I had an entire book to write, and January and February kind of slipped by without my notice. They could have been April and May for all I cared. I was too immersed in what I was doing. It almost makes me feel as if I should probably try to write a book every winter.

This is no small thing. I used to dread winter. This year I went to work whistling every day. Snowstorms, icy roads, scraping off my car after work — none of it affected me. I was usually lost in thought about what I was writing, what I had written, or what I was going to write. Now that I realize I have a choice, I will most likely never experience winter the same way again.

I am telling you this not as some great authority but as someone who has just experienced this magical fact firsthand: what we choose to focus on, how we communicate with ourselves, and how we use our bodies will dictate our feelings and, ultimately, the quality of our lives.

We get to choose. Our circumstances are not that important. They never have been. When you realize this on a visceral level, you, my friend, will have some Kickass Recovery!

Billy Manas, author of Kickass Recovery, is a regularly featured columnist for Elephant Journal, a contributor to Good Men Project and The Fix, a published poet, a working musician, a full-time truck driver and a dad to three daughters. His journey from Adderall-chewing, methadone-swilling, pot-smoking maniac to speaker/author with over nine years of sustained recovery is, as is so often the case, fraught with excitement and a few valuable anecdotes. These anecdotes have found their way into his many talks at jails, detoxes, rehabs, and his new “Kickass Recovery” workshop. www.BillyManas.com

Excerpted from the book Kickass Recovery. Copyright © 2020 by Billy Manas. Printed with permission from New World Library.

Recently I jumped to a conclusion concerning a friend that I had just asked out on a date. After she said that she'd call me back, I assumed that since she was my friend, she would, but she didn't. Later that night I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk to tire myself out, and I found her car parked in front of a guy's house. (I know who this guy is.) After that I blew up because I assumed the worst possible things and I didn't care. I understand that I made a mess of things by blowing up at her, but I felt that I was justified. Now I just want to repair what has happened, and no matter what I try to do (meditation exercises, distraction, distancing myself) I can't get what I did or her out of my mind. Am I wrong to feel this way? I want to have her friendship in one form or another, but how can I fix something that was completely my fault when she won't give me a second chance?

- Jamie

Dreamchaser:

Jamie, I hate to be the bearer of "bad" news, but people do NOT have to give us second chances. I'm sure everyone has begged someone else for a second chance and received the blow off at some point.

The reason for this is FREE WILL. We are each given FREE WILL when born into human form. As a result, there will be times that we really think we know what is best for ourselves or someone else, but people will not listen to us.

This is not the first time you blew up around her. This is not the first time that she's felt your wrath (in one form or another). She does not want to deal with that and she does not have to. Her free will allows her to make that choice. Now as her friend, you have to respect that decision and leave her alone. If she wants to contact you, she knows how to go about doing so.

You cannot force someone to love you. You also cannot force someone to forgive you. She chose not to take it past friendship. I know you think that she would be good for you, especially at your current stage in life, but she has the right to choose what she wants in her life, and no matter what you feel, you have to respect her right to choose.

As much as you are going to hate hearing this, you have to trust that some higher power has a better understanding of what you need in your life. I know this is an old cliche, but it REALLY does stand true:

When one door closes, another one opens.

You need to take some time to work through the issues that her "rejection" of a date (but NOT of your friendship) sparked, along with your discovery of her car at someone else's house and everything else that transpired. You are striking into some very deep and painful scars. These scars go way back to previous lifetimes, but in this life, go back as far as your early childhood. You are dealing with issues of abandonment, betrayal, and a fear of being unloved. All of those lead to feelings of inadequacy. If you deal with them now, you will come out of this stronger, with better understanding of yourself and why you react to women the way you do.

You are a wonderful person and will have the love you are looking for. You will look back on this particular woman and swipe your forehead and say, "Whew. I'm glad that did not work out. I am SO much happier now than I think I could have been with her." I know you cannot see that now because you are too close to be objective, but the day WILL come.

I wish you a swift "education."

*****

Astrea:

Yes, this is a big mess, and you're right, you have only yourself to blame.

I hope someday the girl sees that you're not dangerous and that she CAN be your friend again. It will take you a long time to get her to trust you, and a lot of hard work on your part. If you really want to make up with this girl, be ready to work at it, and be ready to be PATIENT, too!

The night this happened, you asked her on a date and she said she would call you back - but she didn't. That would indicate that she didn't want to go out on a date with you, and for the time being, you should have left things the way they were. By following her around and losing your temper, you have ruined any chance with her for a long time. She's seen you out of control, and she REALLY doesn't want to go out with you now.

The first step in repairing your friendship, if you can, is for you to realize that what you did was WRONG; there was no good reason for you to lose your temper because she was visiting someone else's house. YOU COULD have been angry with her for not calling you back, but you overreacted and took things over the top.

You had absolutely NO BUSINESS walking by "this guy's" house that you "know about." If you were really walking to "tire yourself out," you would head in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION, where you wouldn't be tempted to check up on where she was. This was something that might be considered STALKING in some places. You're lucky that you weren't arrested!

Then you lost your temper because you "assumed the worst." Whatever she was doing with him wasn't any of your business. You think it's okay because you felt "justified" at the time? I can't figure out why you would think that you had any say about that girl's whereabouts, who she sees or what she's doing, since she is just a friend and you weren't even dating.

I know you have apologized to her over and over (that is, if she'll speak to you at all.) Now you have to LEAVE HER ALONE until she is ready to talk to you again.

It's very important that you try to PUT YOURSELF IN HER PLACE and understand what she is feeling now. Trying to apologize more will only make her more afraid of you. You can't MAKE her forgive you any more than you could MAKE her date you before this happened.

I'm sure if this girl is really your friend, she'll forgive you after some time has passed. What I hope you LEARN from this experience is that you shouldn't be trying to control someone else's actions.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.