Difficult emotions • Creating Peace Through Forgiveness

If You Feel You Have No Value…

April 18, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hi and good morning! I wish for you a day filled with peace inside. I was struck by the person(s) who searched for “I have no value.” This is such a low place to be and I want to speak to it today.

If you feel you have no value, stop and think about where that message came from. Is it someone else who told you that? If so, believe, instead, that it is a lie. We each have value. You have value simply because you are a human being alive on this Earth.

You have one thing that is very special that you do, something you can share with the world around you, something you are alive to share. Perhaps it is one thing that you do, or one way of being in the world. Whatever it is, do some soul-searching and find that one thing you are special for. If you cannot think of anything, pray to the Universe to show you the one thing that makes you special.

If you feel you have no value, you can be of use to another person. Being of service takes you out of thinking about your woes, your feeling that you have no value. Yesterday I talked about this, and today I’m going to repeat it. Do something nice for someone in your life, even if you don’t know them. Smile at an elderly person, and say hello. You will brighten up their day, I guarantee you.

Find one thing about yourself and your situation for which you are grateful. Gratitude changes your mindset and begins to dispel the feelings that you have no value. I cannot recommend gratitude enough as a tool for feeling better.

You were not born into this word to feel you have no value. Identify those things that make you think you have no value and remember that they are not true. Remember that simply by “being” on this earth, you are valuable. Make your bad times into something good and be of use to another by talking how you got past it. Bit by bit, you will heal the feelings that you have no value. I wish you peace as you journey today.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions Tagged With: have no value, how to find peace, inner peace, peace

Grief Timeline and Behaviors – Part 1

February 16, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to you each. I hope your day has dawned with the promise of peace. Today, I picked the topic of grief and want to look at the process involved in grief recovery – how long it takes and what we might be dealing with throughout the process.

My information here is based on personal experience with seven years of a debilitating grief from which I recovered, as well as the book, The Grief Recovery Handbook, the 20th edition, by John W. James and Russell Friedman. Some of what I say about the stages of grief are based on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ teachings about the 5 stages of death and dying.

Perhaps the first thing about the grief process is to know that grief is normal after loss of any sort… death of a loved one or pet, divorce or loss of a relationship, loss of a job, or a move from one place to another. The other thing to know is we are not alone. Others have also felt loss and gone through grieving.

But what do we do when we feel this acute emotional pain, this loss? We take baby steps, and we allow ourselves to feel the pain in waves, or however it presents itself to us. If we cannot deal with the pain all the time, that is normal, and need to divert ourselves, distract ourselves, that is normal. I don’t recommend using substances to numb ourselves as a healthy distraction, however.

We honor our process, the steps we make. Our feelings may go back and forth between denial, anger, bargaining, and depression until we finally reach acceptance. This is totally individual and while one person goes through these in order and not too lengthy a time in each, another may go back and forth hundreds of times and take months or years to go through.

It’s important to remember we are each unique, that the relationship we had with what we have lost is unique and, thus, our responses will all be unique. People will say well-meaning things to us which are not useful and even hurtful, like “Get over it,” or, “You didn’t need her anyway. You’ll find someone else better.”

These things are said out of ignorance of knowing what to say to someone who has suffered a loss. Try to have tolerance of these things that are said and not take them to heart. Know that we as a society have not learned how to deal with loss and so, are uncomfortable with it.

I want to continue this tomorrow but I will leave you with this thought: Alternating between a roller coaster ride and calm are quite normal and if we can see our pattern and the things that trigger us to go on the ride, plummeting, than we can predict it and not go under when it hits.

Tomorrow, I will address feelings specific to the grieving process, and ways to move through them. Please come back for the conclusion when I write about how to cope with grief and its behaviors.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions Tagged With: grief, grieving, grieving a loss, how to grieve, Kubler-Ross

What Is Honesty?

February 7, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all, and may this be a day of great peace for you. The search term that I am going to write about today is honesty, what is honesty. When practiced, honesty brings peace and freedom to us.

Webster defines honesty as that which will not lie, cheat, or steal. That’s how I used to define honesty. Then, when I got sober, I learned an expanded version of it, which is included in Webster’s definition as free from deceit, being genuine and pure.

It is the latter that I wish to expound upon today. You see, we can be dishonest about who we are as a person, how we present ourselves to others. That’s what I did all my life… be deceitful in the sense that I pretended to be what I was not. I pretended that all was okay, for example, that I liked something, for example, when I didn’t.

Honesty pertains to portraying to people what we really are inside, letting people see our tender and vulnerable side. It also means looking with honesty at our actions, our behaviors. Let me talk a little more about this.

Most of us don’t like to admit our foibles, our faults, our poor behavior and actions. Yet, we all have these, all do these at one time or another because we are human and that’s just what we do. Honesty means admitting to ourselves and to others when we have poor or bad behavior, when we have done something to hurt another.

But when we admit to our wrong-doings, the freedom we feel is incredible, and then the peace comes. First we must admit to ourselves our poor behavior. I, for example, have a love of Haagen-Dazs chocolate and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

One day, as I was slowly savoring some chocolate, I remembered how my ex-husband used to also love it, the chocolate, and I refused for it to be in the house because it was too expensive, even though we could have afforded it. Wow, what a realization. I felt somewhat ashamed to have placed that restraint on him and his likes, how I curtained a simple joy of his. As I do not have contact with him anymore, I could not bring that up to him, acknowledge it, and apologize.

Instead, I began to see how my selfishness at the time kicked into play, how it curtailed him some joy in life. I shook my head in sadness for him, for me, for all the times my selfishness hurt another, and was glad I can realize my self-centeredness today, so I can keep it in check.

That is an example of practicing honesty with myself. I had to admit to myself something I was ashamed I had done, realized why, and now can resolve to watch for that in my further dealings with others. I am willing to admit it to him also, if I had contact with him. So, not only do we look with honesty at our actions and behavior, we want to admit it to the one upon whom we have displayed our not-so-hot behavior. That is where the freedom and peace lie.

How do you practice honesty in your life? Do you admit to yourself your poor and bad behavior, taking responsibility for it by first admitting it to yourself and then to the other involved person? This is a good question to answer in a writing exercise.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being honest, honesty, inner peace, peace, sober, sobriety, what is honesty

Is PTSD More Anxiety or Depression?

February 4, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Hello. Today I am going to talk about PTSD, post traumatic distress disorder. It was searched for by a Vietnam vet who is still suffering from it. Ah, my heart goes out to you and to all of you Nam vets who still suffer from this, and I want to thank you for your service and say, welcome home!

PTSD is becoming more well diagnosed for men and women who have been in combat. PTSD can strike people who were not in combat, also. It can develop for anyone who has been a victim or observer of trauma, including physical, sexual, and verbal. Symptoms include hyper-vigilance, or being acutely aware of what is going on around you at every instant in time. People with PTSD usually replay the incident(s) over and over in their mind. They are highly anxious and they are depressed.

To answer the question, is PTSD more anxiety or depression, for me, they were equal. And, the depression led to despair and hopelessness. I prayed to die at that point. I suffered PTSD from a physically abusive upbringing, being both the receiver and observer of traumatic acts. I dealt with the effects of it until I was 54 years of age, which was several years into sobriety.

PTSD was diagnosed for me after I was placed on medication for depression and I continued to be highly anxious. In fact, I was diagnosed with panic disorder, which I believe was from the PTSD. Today, for example, since finding my purpose in life and forgiving my parents for the abuse, I do not feel that hyper-vigilance, that anxiety, that panic.

What can one do who has PTSD? Well, you can seek help from a mental health clinic in your county, or see a psychiatrist. You can also see a person who administers EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It is a specific movement of the eyes guided by a therapist trained in EMDR, and that is what helped me, in addition to talking to a therapist, and anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. You can go to this site and this, for more information about treatment of PTSD.

So, PTSD can be equally demonstrated by high anxiety, as well as depression. It is a heck of a place in which to be, as one struggles with low energy, but has the need to watch what’s going on around them. It is exhausting because of this. There are answers, and I hope you, the Vietnam vet who searched for the phrase “is PTSD more anxiety or depression,” finds those answers and some comfort and solution in this post. You deserve peace in your life and I wish it for you.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: EMDR, how to find peace, inner peace, peace, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, treatment for PTSD

Feeling Hopeless with No Purpose or Reason to Live

February 2, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. I hope this morning dawns brightly, and that you aren’t feeling hopeless with no reason to live. Instead, I hope that you each reflect upon your strengths and the wonderful being that you are, and bring that to the world today.

I was struck by this search, “feeling worthless with no purpose and no reason to live” because I have been there. I have been in that place that is so low, that all I wanted to do was to die. In fact, I prayed to God several times a day to let me die. He didn’t answer that prayer…

I’m so glad He didn’t because things turned around for me, and they can turn around for you, too. With a little bit of action, you, too can feel there is purpose to your life, to your living and you can quiet those feelings of feeling hopeless.

The first action I suggest is to take the time each morning to write in a journal. I suggest writing with your non-dominant hand. I am right-handed and when I started writing with my left hand, all sorts of things, deep feelings, came up and flowed onto the page. I printed instead of writing script. That was easier. There is a soothing quality that emerges when we can express what is in our heart and soul.

The second thing to do is to seek out books written about the thing you are feeling hopeless about. For example, my feelings of hopelessness centered around my abusive childhood, so I found authors John Bradshaw, Alice Miller, and Claudia Black and I read their books. They gave voice and definition to the feelings I had but couldn’t quite name. This was very soothing for me.

The third thing you can do is to find someone to talk to about feeling hopeless, someone with whom to share your burden. This can be a trusted friend, family member, or clergy/minister. Remember, a pain shared is a pain divided. Find someone who will not start telling you what to do, but will instead just listen and offer comfort to you.

Try these three things and see if you get some relief from feeling hopeless. The secret lies in trying to get the feelings out… either in writing or by verbalizing them.

To you who is feeling no reason to live, I wish you hope to live, hope that your life is worth it. You see, each life is worth it. Each person has a gift to share with the world. You just don’t know what that gift is yet. Be patient. It will appear. You will soon discover it and feeling hopeless will melt away.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings Tagged With: feeling hopeless, hopelessness, low self-esteem

Getting Through Grief After a Divorce – Part I

January 20, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning! The day dawns clear and bright, and like all days, brings the promise of peace and joy to my world. I hope this is so for your world as well. Someone was looking for inspirational sayings for after a divorce, and I can offer ways to get through your grief. You be the judge of whether or not what I say is inspirational. : )

Grief occurs with any loss we experience. In other words, grief does not only occur after the death of a loved one. Loss includes divorce, loss of a pet, loss of a job, even a move to a different location. If we recognize that we have experienced a loss, that makes going through the grief process that much easier because we are not resisting it or being blind to our grief.

Grieving is difficult, I will admit, yet, to return to whole and to get to peace-of-mind again, we need to allow ourselves to feel our grief. We need to allow ourselves to go through the process of recovery and repair of our heart. Today, let’s talk aboout the grief process after a divorce.

People are uncomfortable with another’s expressions of grief and say some pretty useless and even damaging things. Examples include: “Get over it,” “S/he was no good for you anyway,” “You will meet someone else and forget about him/her.” There are more, and these are most commonly said to us when we have gone through a divorce and are struggling with our grief. So, what can we do?

First of all, it is a grave disservice to tell someone who is grieving to “get over it!” This totally negates where someone is in the process of grieving. Obviously, they can’t, or they would! There is something stopping them from moving on. Often, that is unfinished business, anger, or guilt.

For me, after I left my marriage in 2001, I grieved the loss of my familiar routine the most. It took several months before I actually missed my ex-husband. Then I moved into the guilt phase, as I realized the ways in which I had led the marriage to demise. Occasionally, I still get twangs of grief over things I did, and I say soothing things to myself, like: “If you had known better, you would have done better, Jones.” “You did the best you could with the tools you had at the time, lacking though they were, it was the best you knew how to do.”

Sit with that self-talk for the day, and I will return tomorrow to give more information about how to get through grief. I am splitting it up, because I have a fair amount more to say and the post is getting long. Also, for the day, try to ignore what people tell you that is not useful, realizing that the person saying those things is uncomfortable. Feel compassion for their uncomfortableness and continue with your soothing self-talk. I’ll be back tomorrow morning…

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings Tagged With: divorce, grief, grieving, how to grieve, surviving a divorce, the stages of grief

Inspirational Thoughts for Feelings of Hopelessness

January 3, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There were two searches for hopelessness this morning, and I would like to address this topic today. I wish to offer some solace and comfort to those of you who are feeling hopeless.

I remember what it was like to have feelings of hopelessness. It was a feeling that what I wanted and expected would not happen, that there was no sign of a favorable outcome. It led me to great depression and despair, and I spent every day praying to God to let me die. I was miserable and did not want to continue in life.

Then something happened which turned that around for me. I listened to the people who were urging me to seek professional psychiatric help for my depression and despair. I sought help through the County Mental Health system. What I discovered was, I was suffering from major depression and panic disorder.

Ray of Hope

Suddenly, armed with this new information, I saw a ray of light, a twinkling of hope. I felt less like I was a loser, a failure. I accepted the recommendation to take medication for my disorders and I began to feel better emotionally. It was like it says in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing:

“A ray of light across the bars of my being lights my way, instills hope in my heart.”

Just that little bit of light began the journey out of my emotional prison. But what really transformed my hopelessness was being of service to another who was suffering the way I was. I shared with them about my story, and efforts I had made to heal from my past, which is why I was feeling so hopeless. I began to feel worthy, worthwhile. From that point on, I felt hopeful that things could get better.

The thing is, I had to keep sober to get to that point. I had to maintain my sobriety. If I had not done that, I believe I would have stayed in that feeling of hopelessness, unable to get out at all. As is was, I was given the gift of continued sobriety because I worked at it.

As that ray of hope grew, I began to look at my expectations and discovered that what I was expecting was unrealistic. My expectations were too high. In my case, I was expecting to clear the pain of my past away, to wipe it from my mind. What I learned to do instead was to use it to help others, and that led me to more hopefulness.

I began to set realistic goals and dreams, based in every day occurrences. The more I helped others, the more peace with my past I began to have. It was amazing how that worked, but it did. With just that small ray of light, that ray of hope, I was able to conquer my hopelessness and that occurred because I asked for help. Asking for help allowed me to get unstuck and move forward. I stopped asking to die, and thanked God instead for showing me a better way, for guiding me to be of service to others.

Today, I have continual hope and the feelings of hopelessness have not returned. I consciously try to not have expectations for anything, and my goals and dreams are more realistic and attainable. This has led me to peace and joy.

Do you have feelings of hopelessness, like life is not worth continuing? If you do, I wish for you the courage to ask for help, to talk it over with someone else. I wish for you to be of service to someone else who is struggling also, so that you feel that your experience is worthwhile and through that, feel more hope. I wish you well on your journey.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: depression, hopeful, hopefulness, hopelessness, how to overcome depression, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Stay Sober in the Wake of the Connecticut Shootings

December 15, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good afternoon. It is with a weeping heart that I write today, as I am writing to express my deepest condolences to the parents and families who lost children and loved ones yesterday. I am writing to help any of you survivors of those killed by writing about how to stay sober in the face of the acute and deep grief you are experiencing.

I do not have children, yet, I have a cat who is my child and I cannot imagine the grief I would feel if she were shot or lost in some other senseless, and devastating way. So, I can say that the loss of a child must be one hundred times more painful than the loss of my own “child,” my pet. I would want to drink to dull the tremendous heartache and grief.

This may be the case of any sober person related to someone who died yesterday. You are in such pain that the thought of drowning that sorrow in a drink or several must be tempting… oh, so tempting. Yet, with the help of your Higher Power, friends, family, and other sober people, you can get through this without a drink.

Try to separate yourself from your sorrow for a brief moment to consider where that drink will lead you… to total emotional meltdown, to possible DUI, jail, or other institutions. You could lose everything. And you don’t need that right now. It’s important to stay present for your family, for yourself. So think the drink through.

Prayer and seeking comfort from others are so needed right now. Try not to isolate yourself; rather, talk to someone about your feelings, or go to a meeting of your support group and share about your feelings of grief. Allow your sadness, your sorrow, to surface and to be known to others. Even as I recommend not to isolate, it is important to allow yourself alone time to grieve, but don’t do it with a drink.

In the wake of this tragedy, these are a few thoughts about how to stay sober. These words seem so trite and lacking, and yet, they are the only ones I can muster at this time.

To those of you who are reading this, please join me in sending prayers and thoughts to the families of the victims, and the children who experienced this tragedy. Thank you.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Sober Living Tagged With: Connecticut shootings, how to stay sober, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

PTSD Despair – the Conclusion

December 10, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Today, we conclude the post about PTSD despair. Yesterday, we ended with me saying I wanted to share my experience of what was happening at the end, when I was praying to die. Here’s what was going on for me.

I had been in a state of decreased energy, of lethargy, for weeks, feeling that my abusive past had occurred only to make my life miserable. Other than that, there was no purpose to it, there was no purpose to me, to my life. This was my state-of-mind at about five years of sobriety. One day, I was at a group meeting for that sobriety, and a man shared about the difficulties he was experiencing from his childhood that were affecting him today. It sounded like what I had been through, but I was a few steps ahead of him in the process of healing. So, I went up after the meeting and began to talk with him.

I first asked him for permission to share some things with him. After he said yes, I related to his experience by relaying some of what I had been through. Then I began to talk of the books I had read that had been helpful with the symptoms of abused people, such as Claudia Black, Alice Miller, John Bradshaw, books that had helped with my healing. I relayed how wondrous my therapist was in dealing with recovery issues, both for my alcoholism and my abusive past and the characteristics I was displaying, and was able to give him her number.

What I had to say was useful to him – I could see it in his face, in his eyes. He was so grateful for the information, he almost cried. As I walked back to my car, I realized in a flash that I DID have purpose, my abusive past WAS for a reason. That reason was to help others who were dealing with what I had overcome, even if I was just two steps in front of them in a couple areas. If I had not endured the abuse, I never would have been able to offer him anything. Therefore, my abuse had a purpose.

I had a purpose. From that point, I realized my purpose in life was to connect with people who were suffering emotionally, and relay the things that had helped me, so that the information could be of use to them.

In your case, with PTSD, let’s say you are a veteran, reliving the trauma you experienced, the terror, living in anger over the grief of premature deaths you witnessed, dealing with the guilt that somehow you could have prevented it. You are living a nightmare, and, yet, I invite you to take action to get out of the place where you currently are. Here is what I invite you to try. It worked for me.

Seek assistance from a qualified therapist, versed in PTSD issues. They exist at VA medical centers, if you are a vet, and interviewing a potential therapist about their experiences with PTSD treatment will help guide you in the right direction in selecting a well-versed therapist. I looked for a therapist that was versed in alcohol recovery and who knew the effects and treatment for being an abused child, for example, because at the time, I had not been diagnosed with PTSD.

After you select a therapist, ask about the use of EMDR, or get that yourself. It was roughly $100 a session and I needed three. I would imagine the VA centers have someone available to do it or could refer you. Do some reflection about your feelings of despair, your lack of purpose in the world, your guilts, your grief… writing, journalling was extremely helpful to me to get feelings out, and especially because I wrote with my left, non-dominant hand. They say that writing with the non-dominant hand brings forth new information from the other side of the brain, and it stimulates you with deeper thoughts. I invite you to try it.

I invite you to stop drinking, if you are doing so. The liquor fuels the symptoms that you are experiencing, especially the anger. I know it doesn’t feel that way when you’re in the middle of it. But your world remains very small while you are drinking, filled with resentments and bitterness, guilt and remorse. You look for relief for these things in the alcohol, yet you will never find them there. It is in the absence of alcohol that you will find relief. There are many resources to help you stop drinking that are listed in the yellow pages, or on the internet. For me personally, I found getting sober to be the beginning of the process that has allowed me to find the peace I looked for in alcohol and drugs. I invite you in from the cold.

Finally, I’d like to invite you to look at the cause of your PTSD despair, and discover how that experience, the experience over which you despair, can be useful to another if you were to share with them your experience and what one, maybe two, steps you’ve taken to heal. All you have to be is two steps ahead of them in the healing process. I cannot describe the way my heart soared to know I had been of use to another and I invite you to experience it also.

I hope these two posts have been useful for you. I wish you well in your journey. May you have peace.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: EMDR, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, peace of mind, PTSD, PTSD despair, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

PTSD Despair – the Beginning

December 9, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yesterday, there were two searches for PTSD despair, most likely the same person, yet I want to address it today and relate it to sobriety. I am thinking that whoever searched, was referring to the despair they feel because of their PTSD. So, let’s address this.

PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. According to all the information I have read, and based on my personal experience with PTSD, it is comprised of three categories of symptoms:

re-experiencing the traumas through flashbacks, bad dreams, and frightening thoughts about the trauma;
avoidance symptoms such as feeling numb, strong guilt, depression, or worry, avoidance of people and places that remind of the event, losing interest in once-enjoyable activities; and
hyperarousal, being on edge, getting angry easily, being easily startled.

You may be dealing with these symptoms as a result of recent trauma, or even years after an event that was traumatic for you. Or, you may be a veteran, dealing with either the long-term effects, or from the effects of recently being in service. If you are dealing with these symptoms and have not been diagnosed with PTSD, I gently invite you to seek assistance from a qualified therapist or someone at a VA Medical Center. There is great strength and courage demonstrated in the act of asking for help. For those of you long-term sufferers getting help, good for you! I applaud your efforts.

From my own perspective about PTSD and despair, I was diagnosed with PTSD at the age of about 53, and had been dealing with it since childhood, as a result of the trauma I endured and witnessed. I experienced all of the above symptoms, and I easily went to depression and despair. When I say despair, I am referring to the feelings that nothing is okay, in fact, everything is useless and there is no purpose in living. There is no hope.

In my case, I got to the point that I was praying to die because I was too scared to commit suicide. My anger had long-since been turned inward and it appeared in my life as major depression. I was a walking mess, feeling emotionally aweful. Fueled by my bitterness and under-lying anger at just about everything, I drank heavily, which only added to the flames. I felt there was no purpose in the events of childhood that had led me to misery in life. I had no purpose in life, no reason to be living.

Can you relate? if you are dealing with PTSD despair. I am thinking you are at the very hopeless stage. If this is the case, my heart goes out to you because I know how badly it sucks. Please know, however, that there is another side, another possibility. There is hope.

Hope came for me in the form of EMDR, a rapid-eye movement that retrains the pathways in the brain to lessen the effects of the trauma. With three of these treatments, my symptoms began to decrease, and even though some despair remained, I could see that there were possibilities to get out of the hole I was in. The despair was resolved in an instant, however, when I experienced the power of helping another, being of service to another.

And I’m going to address that tomorrow, because this post got to be well over 1000 words, so I decided to make it into two blogs. Tomorrow when I join you, I will be sharing my experience with you in the hopes that you may gain something from it that is of use to you.

I wish to acknowledge your pain by saying, yes, it is a very difficult place to be. I feel for you. You have great courage to face it and I invite you to keep putting one step in front of the other, doing the next thing that comes along your path to do. Writing in a journal with stream-of-consciousness writing works well. That’s where you write whatever comes into your head, in whatever order. It is very cathartic.

Join me tomorrow for the conclusion of PTSD despair. Until then, remember, hang in there. You never know when things are going to change around suddenly. Don’t leave before the miracle.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: despair, despair about PTSD, PTSD, PTSD despair

Overcoming Worthlessness

November 10, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. There were four search terms for worthlessness and no value, so will address this issue. However, I am out of time today, and not able to write. I was locked out of my wordpress account until just a minute ago, and now I have to get ready to leave for a workshop I am attending on how to be a more dynamic speaker. I’m excited for the day!

I wish you well for the day, and for those of you feeling worthlessness and of no value, I offer you kindness and love, and the words that you can feel worth it, and we’re going to talk about that tomorrow. Please hang in there.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions Tagged With: I feel worthless, unworthy, worthless, worthlessness

Perseverance in Sobriety

November 8, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Let’s talk today about perseverance in sobriety. This was searched for this morning. Being successful in sobriety takes sticking to it, through the good and the difficult times. Both can be triggers to drink, so need to be addressed.

As in all things, practice brings progress, it moves you forward. If you set up a plan of how to manage things when you want to drink, or when your thoughts start to go haywire, you will be that much more ahead of the game.

When we are feeling good, doing well, we want to drink to celebrate, to feel even better. Therefore, we want to be vigilant when we experience good things, and fetch ourselves up if we are thinking about taking a drink. You can find someone to talk to or write your feelings of success in your journal.

Perhaps even more difficult is not drinking when we are experiencing difficulty, when our feelings are running amuck. In this case, again, you want to talk with someone; get support. A problem shared is a problem divided. The more you can share with someone, the more you will feel relief from the issue. Ask for support from others.

If you take a drink, then persevere and get back on the wagon as soon as you can. Try again to maintain your sobriety. But there are things you can do to avoid taking that first drink, such as thinking the drink through. Where will it take you? To jail? To the hospital? Think it through. Think where you will end up if you begin to drink again.

Above all, keep returning again and again to the maintenance of your sobriety. Do what you can to manage your emotions when they arise. As I said, talking to another is helpful. I also found it helpful to journal about my feelings, especially when I wanted to drink. That was frequent at first, as I was in huge grief over an unrequited love and I was flipping out emotionally. It was acutely painful and I wanted to numb it. Instead, I wrote about what I was feeling.

With action, prayer, and support from others, I was spared breaking my sobriety, and I am grateful about that. How do you deal with your sobriety when the going gets rough? How do you persevere? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Practicing Honesty in Sobriety

November 7, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Today we’re going to talk about what it means to have honesty in sobriety, or to be honest any time, for that matter. When you thought of honesty, your thoughts went to stealing or telling lies, right? If you don’t steal and lie, you are honest, right? Possibly. Possibly not.

It depends. Are you practicing honesty in your sobriety about your feelings and about who you are? It is easy, even in sobriety, to not be honest, to not tell the truth about your feelings, to not speak up for yourself when needed. Honesty means owning your bad behavior… identifying and taking responsibility for it by apologizing if you hurt someone.

How can you know if you are being honest? Well, you can ask yourself these questions… “When I am feeling badly, do I say that, or do I say, in a huff, ‘I’m fine?’” If you say you’re fine when you’re not, you are not practicing honesty in sobriety because you are not saying what is true for you in that moment.

You can ask, “When I have intentionally, or even unintentionally, hurt someone else, am I apologizing for what I said or did… am I taking responsibility for my bad or hurtful behavior?” If you apologize in these situations, then you are showing honesty in sobriety because you are sharing your feelings of remorse, you are being honest about what you are feeling in the moment.

Honesty in sobriety is all about unveiling who you are at your core. It is about who and what you are in each moment. For example, I spent the majority of my life being dishonest. Oh, I didn’t cheat and only told a few lies here and there to protect others, but I considered myself honest. Then, I had to look differently when I got sober and I re-assessed my honesty in sobriety.

I discovered many things. First, when I was hurting or hurt, I did not relay that to the other person, thinking I it was better not to hurt the other person or to bother them. The thing is, the energy behind that deception came out in other ways, usually by being a bit standoffish in my approach to them, or making snide comments to them. Being passively aggressive. Whoa! It’s embarrassing to admit that, but it was true.

The fact is, I was not relaying my true feelings because of fear. I was afraid that if I displayed honesty in sobriety, then the person would get mad at me and harm me in some way because of that anger. Now, I find myself learning to tell others how I am feeling in the moment, and I say it especially gently if I think it will be difficult for the other person to hear.

That’s just one example of how to practice honesty in sobriety. I could go on, yet I’m sure you get the gist and my point. In case I didn’t make my point, it is that you can be ever-aware of your feelings and relay them to others when they occur. First, however, you need look at what is behind those feelings. If what you discover is something that will not harm the other to divulge, then be honest with them about what you are feelings.

If. on the other hand, you discover a personal problem or issue, then you will not want to tell the person your feelings. For example, someone said something that hurts your feelings and you, upon reflection, realize your old wound of feeling “less than” was triggered. You can consider that the hurtful comment was not said to harm you, and you were sensitive it to it because of your wound; you can consider not saying anything. You can also consider saying to them that an old wound was touched when they said what they said, and that you are having difficulty dealing with it.

By divulging that much about yourself, you open the way to share your honesty in sobriety, to share who you are at a deep level, and you further the relationship’s deepening with your action. That is practicing honesty in sobriety at its deepest level.

How do you display your honesty in sobriety? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being honest, honesty, honesty in sobriety, how to be honest, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Overcoming Hopelessness

October 30, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There were three search terms about hopelessness yesterday, so I want to address it. Hopelessness is the feeling one has that things cannot and will not get better. It is a feeling that you are at the end of your rope, cannot go on. It’s a miserable and difficult place to be.

I was about 5-6 years sober when hopelessness hit me full-force. Nothing I did mattered. I had no energy or “spark” to try anything new to get past the hopeless feeling. I just wanted to die and I prayed to God to let that happen.

Well, I continued to live until one day, I had the good fortune to discover my purpose in life, which gave me a reason to live, and that gave me hope. My purpose involves being of service to others. There is something grounding about being of service to others, something that makes your actions so much more meaningful than if you are doing something just for yourself.

I had been despairing and hopeless about the years of abuse I had endured; I believed there was no purpose to that experience. Then, I was shown that there was a purpose to that experience, and it was that I was to share with others how I healed from the effects of the abuse so that others might be helped past their pain and wounds.

With a purpose, my hopelessness was silenced and I came out of despair. All my actions had as my purpose to be of service to others. This further silenced my hopelessness.

You, too, can find hope when you discover your life’s purpose, your purpose right now. It may be to nurture your children or husband, or to share your story with others so that they might grow and heal. As you go through the day, stay aware of what is going on around you and notice when you feel “at home” with an activity or feeling.

Notice what you are doing when that feeling of being complete and whole comes over you. Perhaps, this is your calling… doing in the world the activity that brings you calm and peace. Once you have identified the thing that gives you great pleasure, keep engaging in it. If it is helping others through sharing your experiences and triumphs, then keep sharing.

To overcome hopelessness, uncover your purpose in life and engage in it. It will fulfill you, and you will get past the hopelessness.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: hopeless, hopelessness, how to find peace, inner peace, motivational words to the hopeless, peace

Living Sober Is Not Rewarding When You’re Dying Inside

October 29, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Living sober is not rewarding when you’re dying inside” is today’s search term that stuck out for me. How very true. When you’re in the middle of your healing, your growing, your awareness, living sober is harder than hell. It IS hell!

I can remember screaming at my sponsor that living sober was not better than drinking, that life was far better when I was drinking. It was at that time. However, I neglected to recall the emotional misery I was in inside during my drinking days. Also, I was not waiting for the pain to surface fully, to be healed, and then to dissipate. It does that, you know… comes upon us, makes itself known. We take action, or not, and the pain eventually gets less intense and soon dissipates. The more we take action, appropriate action, the faster it will resolve itself.

The best I can say when the going gets tough and the feelings get excruciating is to hang on and keep living sober. It gets better. It really does. It gets better and you begin to experience the rewards that I wrote about yesterday. Make it a mantra if you must… “it will get better. I am growing, and healing.” The thing is, the pain is being brought forward for you to experience so you can heal from the specific issue that is bringing you the pain.

The depth of that pain will vary from person to person and is directly related in intensity to the depth of the pain one felt with the infliction of the wound. To make it through, remember one thing: The depth of your pain is equal to the depth of the joy and peace you will experience. Notice I said “that you will experience.” That states that you WILL experience relief. And you will, as long as you stick with it and keep living sober.

In your efforts of living sober, I suggest you get help. Trying to do it alone is not necessary nor is it recommended. There is lots of help out there from support groups that deal with getting sober. For me, a 12-Step program worked wonders, and I was able to not only stop drinking as a result of my involvement, but I was able to heal emotional issues, as well. It will work if you are willing to hear with new ears and heart.

Back to me screaming at my sponsor that living sober sucked… As I stated, I was neglecting to recall the emotional difficulties I had experienced throughout my lifetime, the times when I was wailing… keening… in emotional misery. In my drinking and drugging days, I was searching for peace-of-mind, and it was ever-illusive. It was not until much pain had been brought up for me to deal with in sobriety that I began to feel better.

Of course, I had to take action. I had to put in the effort to heal. I had to look at how I was treated and come to grips with it. Coming to grips with it means I allowed myself to feel the pain of betrayal, confusion, hurt. There were losses I endured as a result of how I was treated… loss of safety, loss of trust, loss of a normal childhood. All of these losses had to be mourned and healed. I had to recover from them.

In order to heal from them, I had to feel them and it was awful. That may be where you are now in the process. If so, please remember, the depth of your pain is equal to the depth of joy and peace you will experience. Hang onto that thought through the rough times. Just keep living sober to the best of your ability.

Reach out to others; for the most part, they will feel closer to you and be anxious to help. Cry, wail, if you must, and wear yourself out. Do the dishes, take a nap, and don’t drink. Stay living sober. You will be rewarded in the end with feelings that exceed your wildest notions.

Where are you in the process? Are you dealing with difficult times right now? If so, I send you my heart-felt wishes that it works its way through soon, that the purpose of the difficult feelings is soon resolved. Remember that your difficult feelings are being raised so you can heal from the issue related to the original wound.

Take breaks from your recovery – some tasks can be healthy and can serve as distractions. Engage in them. Help another. Be of service. Know that you can define your purpose by telling another the message you have to relay to them, by speaking to them of your experience. Use your miserable times to set an example for another who is suffering, too. You’d be surprised how much inspiration your painful experiences can be to another because you will have demonstrated it is possible to be in the pain and not drink. Above all, keep on living sober.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how do I get sober, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

What Are Resentments?

October 19, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Resentments are grudges or angers we hold against another or ourselves. They can be major or minor.

This is the start of my post yesterday, Thurs the 18th of October. Then, nothing came to me, and I decided to wait till the afternoon to write. I forgot… This morning got away from me and I had to leave for my volunteer job. My apologies for no post yesterday or earlier today. I hate to have you come here and not find a new post when that is what you’re looking for…

Many people carry huge resentments… years old. I did. I carried mine against my parents for 38 years, and fueled it with drinking and drugging. I was one wound-up, angry woman! Provoke me and watch out… My husband got a lot of my wrath, and in all fairness to me, I must say he slung his mud my way, too, and many times that’s what I was reacting to. Mostly, I kept my mouth shut. All that did was build the resentment I had against him for his verbal abuse, and many other things. Life was filled with drama…

Is this a familiar story for you? Sound like your life with different circumstances, perhaps, but the same gist? How is your life working?

Maybe your resentments are smaller than a full-blown rage against Uncle Harry for something he did years ago. Maybe, it’s an issue in traffic, when someone cuts in front of you and then slows down to 5-10 miles under the speed limit. Do you do the slow burn in that situation? I do sometimes… Or how about the neighbor who plays loud music late at night… do you begin to momentarily resent those things?

The point is, we deal with even minor issues that lead us to generate resentments, which are things we go over and over and over again in our mind. If we have a momentary anger and were able to resolve it by taking action of some sort, that is not a resentment. The on-going thinking of the offense is what makes it a resentment.

What are we to do with these annoyances, these little things that get under our skin? Ah, there is relief. Let’s take the example of the driver who pulls out in front of us and then slows notably. This driver is oblivious, unconscious. Don’t you have to have compassion for someone who is so clueless in their life? I’m saying “in their life” because if, while performing a function in which one wants to be fully present, they are so absent, chances are they are like that in all areas of their life.

I feel compassion that they miss out on all the miraculous things that occur in front of us all day, every day. The beauty, the mystery, the bad experiences that lead to good outcomes… They are leading a life similar to the one I led before sobriety, before I learned to deal with resentments by learning to manage all the things I mentioned above. But at least I was a conscious and aware driver.

The next time you get peeved about something that seems small, yet it develops into something that consumes you, try offering compassion. You will begin to see many things about which to be compassionate. It takes some practice, and is so worth the effort in the end. It offers you peace and calm.

Does this give you some idea of what a resentment is, you who searched for this term yesterday morning? I hope so. How does my suggestion to see the other person with compassion sit with you? Does it resonate, or make you angry and resentful that I would suggest compassion as a course of action? Leave a comment and let me know.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, resentment, resentments, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, what are resentments

Forgiveness – Step-by-Step How to Get There

September 13, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. For some reason, this did not publish yesterday and I thought it did. I even read it on the website, I thought. I apologize for any confusion and now offer the how-to’s of forgiveness. Here is what I wrote for yesterday.

Good morning. Welcome back to the continuation of our discussion about forgiveness. Two days ago, I talked about what it was like to discover it. Today, I will present a process that could serve to move you from anger and resentment to forgiveness and peace.

I say “could” because the process will work when you are open and willing, with your action and participation. Let’s look at a system I stumbled upon that worked to move me into forgiveness; I am confident it could happen for you, too.

This is going to be a write-along today. I invite you to do the exercises that are defined below… It looks like an endless list, and much of what is written is explanation or information for you. I would strongly urge that you allow your mind and heart to be clear by avoiding the use of substances while you do this. Otherwise, you will never move forward to peace. Know that if you get stuck in any one spot, there is support and assistance available. That’s what I do… guide people over the hurdles on the way to forgiveness.

Here’s the process:

Identify the person who wronged you and how they wronged you. List them.
Determine if you provoked the other person and if you did, then own it, be accountable for it. It’s time to be humble, give up on the anger you hold, and forgive. Apologize if you have hurt another.
Determine if you have ever done the very same thing that was done to you. Own it and be accountable if you have. Write down the circumstances – what you did and how you were feeling at the time.
Feel compassion for yourself, an emotionally damaged person at that time
Now consider and believe that the person who wronged you was also emotionally and spiritually damaged.
Let compassion fill your being; feel compassion for their spirit, their soul.
Even if you have not repeated their wrong, feel compassion for them.
Stay in that space of compassion you would have for any wounded person. Hold it for both you and the other person.
Allow one chunk of anger and heartache to melt away and replace it with just a little bit of forgiveness.
Consciously notice any relief that you felt by the small amount of letting some anger go.
This is the gift you’ll experience. Write it (or them) down.

This is a process you can do over and over, and it will gently erode away your resentment, your bitterness. It will leave you eventually, the resentment will, if you keep at this.

If you are successful in shedding your anger and resentment, I applaud you. This all occurred through your creation. You created your own peace by forgiving and accepting what is. Nice work.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: finding forgiveness, forgiveness, how to find peace, how to forgive, inner peace, peace, the art of forgiveness

Dealing with Despair and Hopelessness

September 7, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Spaces of Courage

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a great start. The search terms that stood out for me yesterday were how to gain emotional strength when someone put you down and inspiration quote for hopelessness. So, hopelessness and a downgrading of one’s spirit. These lead into today’s topic of despair.

Hopelessness and despair often happen together. It is the feeling that nothing is worth it, that there is no point in continuing. You have reached the end of your rope and don’t know how to move forward. An assault on your character can sometimes lead you to hopelessness and despair.

How do you move past these? How do you regain a feeling of worth and goodness? The first thing to do is to just keep moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, believing with some part of your heart that things will improve. and actually, they will. I know that’s hard to believe, but read on.

For me, getting past this hopelessness and despair happened when I learned what my life’s purpose was. I discovered that my purpose is to share my story from great despair and praying to die, to joy and peace, so that others might benefit from it. My purpose is to be of service. Perhaps that is yours also. Look at what you have suffered in your lifetime, and how that can be useful to another.

Perhaps the one thing that talks about the despair the most is my verse from my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. The verse is Spaces of Courage and it offers solace and a viable solution. I would like to share it with you today.

“We all hold feelings of hurt, disappointment, grief, and despair deep within from which we desperately seek relief. We repress it, drink it away, or turn to another to make it right.

“Perhaps, rather than cast the pain out of our heart or give it to another, it would be better to find the courage to touch that oh-so-vulnerable spot, to hold the pain gently, tenderly… with great compassion.

“If we find the courage to invite in a sacred force to embrace those deep wounds with us, perhaps, we will be graced with the ability to befriend our pain and then, to heal.”

This verse suggests to us that asking for spiritual assistance can help. I have found this to be true. I have discovered that when I feel these emotions, I can turn to my Source for comfort. Then, it is up to me to place one foot in front of the other and take some sort of action to further help myself. Usually, that action involves talking to someone else about my feelings.

You, too, can follow this formula when you are feeling despair and hopelessness. Connect with your Source for comfort and solace, then take action. Try asking for help from someone you trust. You’d be surprised how many people are wanting to help.

Beware, however, of those who wish to do nothing more than to tell you what to do. Find someone instead who will listen and show compassion for your feelings, who will relay what worked for them without pushing it on you. You will discover some relief when you do this.

Hopelessness and despair are difficult at best, yet, there is a way through them. Do not give up. Try what I suggest and see if that helps. I am hopeful it will.

The feelings we have discussed… fear, grief, and hopelessness/despair, are difficult and I hope the input I have provided will be of some use to you in opening the gates of your heart. Tomorrow, I shall start to deal with using the keys to unlock those gates. Until then… many blessings.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: despair, hopelessness, opening the gates of your heart

Do You Feel You Have No Value?

September 2, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

One of the search terms that led an enquirer to yesterday’s blog was “I feel I have no value.” My heart stopped when I read that, first because it went out to that person; I know what that feeling is like. My heart did a double-take I suppose because actually, I am feeling that a bit about myself right now.

I am curious why no one answered my questions from yesterday, and I can get myself to the place of feeling that I have no value because no one responded. I equate people’s responses to me with my value as a person. The problem with this belief is that the two have nothing to do with each other.

You see, we are all valuable simply because we exist on this earth, because we are human beings. Because of your unique story, for example, you bring to the world the lessons you have learned from which others can benefit.

What lessons have you learned that you can share with others to be of service? I know that I have learned the lessons of how to get past rage and bitterness, past grief and guilt. And I know that those lessons are of use to you if you’re dealing with these emotions.

I know this because I have created a process that begins to take you past anger, past bitterness. It starts the steps of grief recovery and it looks at how to give forgiveness to yourself so you can begin to deal with guilt.

I mix talking about how to stay sober in with my information about how to feel more valued because that is a huge part of my story… my sobriety is. It may be one of the things with which you are struggling also. If so, I invite you to join me.

I say, come on over and start reading my blog where I am about to go through the process I have created… the four strategies. Whether you are a veteran or not, the information will transform your life when you apply these strategies. The process did for me and it can for you, too.

To you who feels no value, I gently invite you to join the journey written about in this blog. I wish for you those feelings of having no value to begin to lessen and, eventually, to be replaced with a strong sense of value and purpose.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: I feel like I have no value, living sober, sense of purpose, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, value, veteran, veterans, Vietnam veterans

To Stay Sober Just Go to Bed – Part 2

August 31, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

In yesterday’s post, I told the tale of my friend who is struggling with tremendous feelings and who is wanting nothing more than to pick up a drink. As I said yesterday, I suggested she first think the drink through to what would happen if she did take it. Today, I will tell you what else I told her…

Next, I invited her to allow herself to feel her feelings of despair and sadness as they arose, and to let them move through her. Difficult feelings will move on you know, if you just acknowledge them. “Oh, I feel so sad to remember my life back when I got this…”

When she looks at an object that makes her sad to remember that point in her life, I invited her to consider the good feelings she had about that same period of her life, those feelings of positivity that occurred when she got that object. Take a minute to reflect on those good feelings, to be grateful for those good times she experienced… then decide to get back to the task at hand and decide to keep or sell it.

I invited her to allow herself to grieve the loss of her life before it turned south. I suggested she stay acutely focused on the project, to not let her mind wander from that project and when it did, to gently return to the task-at-hand. In order to stay sober, she needed to stay focused on the moment in front of her, the task in front of her and not drift into the future or the past.

So, if you’re trying to stay sober yourself, I invite you to follow these steps I’ve described so far. Realize that you can only do what is being placed before you to do in that moment. When it is time to move to the next thing, the Universe will make that fact known to you by bringing something else that needs your attention. At that point, you will focus your attention on the thing that has been placed in front of you to do.

When you do all these things and you are still distressed and wigging out, then go to bed, go to sleep. Just go to bed. If you haven’t eaten, drink a protein shake… no meal prep, minimal clean-up, and you get your nutrition.

Very simple, and yet, we sometimes forget to do just that. More to the truth is we don’t even think of this as an option…

One of the things I stressed to my friend was that she only had to do today what was being placed in front of her to do. She didn’t have to create more things for herself, she didn’t have to think ahead to “what will I do if…” All she had to do was sort through her belongings and when that got to be too tough, all she had to do was to go to bed and sleep.

As far as the fear, I forgot to suggest to her a remedy, which is: breathe through it, then ask for help, and finally, take action. That is how to deal with fear.

Today, if you are faced with wanting to drink, follow these steps and you will find that taking the first drink is not something you want to do. When stuck and in doubt, just go to bed to stay sober.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, Sober Living, sobriety, stay sober

Stay Sober By Just Going to Bed – Part 1

August 30, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Just stay sober. That’s what people tell you. But when you are emotionally distraught, really stressed out, those words mean very little. They are like saying, just breathe. They take away the security blanket you have used for years to cope with stress and distress.

Imagine this. Your husband just tried to strangle you last month… to kill you. He was put in jail for a month over it. Meanwhile, your life has fallen down around your feet and you are forced to foreclose on your house because of huge debt. You are going through a house where you have lived for 40 years, sorting out what to keep and what to give away or sell.

Your husband got out of jail yesterday, you have no idea of his whereabouts, and you are scared for your life despite the restraining order you have out. And I want you to stay sober? Yeah, right!

Yes, right. I do want you to stay sober through all of this.

Does the above example seem extreme? Yes, it does and, yet, it is the reality of a friend of mine to whom I was speaking last night. She said the only thing she wanted to do was to go get a drink, to go to the liquor store and get something to deaden all the feelings that were surfacing.

Did I have some input for her, having learned to get sober through extreme heartache and distress and to stay sober for the last 11 1/2 years? You bet I did! I still remember how difficult it was initially, wanting to just drink a 6-pack to deaden the edge. Being so agitated and frenzied as a result that all I could do was scream that learning to stay sober was not worth it. Life was better when I was drinking.

Ah, but I forgot about my emotional state, how beaten down emotionally I was at the end of my drinking. I selectively wasn’t remembering how all I could do for several months was drink and cry, not even able to feed myself. I forgot about how I had lost touch with relaity and was psychotic.

I forgot about the years of issues from my childhood coming up for me to look at, creating hell in my mind and heart. I was forgetting about these things. Trust me… I remember what it was like to stay sober at first.

So, what in the world did I tell this poor woman who is going through absolute hell? This is what I invited her to do, to consider… Think the drink through. What will happen if you take a drink? What will it lead to? Most importantly, what will it solve? Will it make the current situation go away? No, she would just have to deal with it when she sobered up, and then maybe have to deal with a hang-over as well.

I invited her to sit with those thoughts for a bit, and I’m going to ask you to do the same in your efforts to stay sober. Tomnorrow I will continue what I suggested to her so she could stay sober.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, stay sober

New-to-me Theory – Finding Freedom From Grief

August 20, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I see that many more of you visited yesterday, and I wonder if you were looking for some practical input about finding freedom from grief? That’s why I am writing today with some information I have recently discovered about the grieving process.

I just completed The Grief Recovery Handbook by John W. James and Russell Friedman. It was highly informative and dispelled my beliefs about grief recovery. It is a book one works through either in a partnership with a close someone, or by themselves. The exercises they invite you to do take you through a grieving process that leads to more happiness and peace, less grief and sorrow.

In it, they talk about doing a Loss History Graph and a Relationship Graph, which points out to you your patterns of grieving with whom or what, and how it occurred, based on what you learned early in life. Their theory is that, with awareness, comes the beginning of change, of grief resolution.

I had been following the teachings of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who is famous for her work around the grieving process in the death and dying arena. I still like some of the things she says about acceptance, even though I am swaying toward the new information. This is the fifth and final stage of the process she defines. In it, she relays that just because you have accepted the death or imminent death, does not mean it’s okay. It never is alright, it just loses it’s charge over time and after one goes through the first four stages. Those are denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.

John and Russel do not believe that grieving occurs in stages. They believe it is a process, one which is totally individualized and can vary in length for each person. They believe it is unique to each person, and is dependent upon the relationship you had with the other person or experience. Yes, experiences can produce grief, such as moving from one location to another, or changing jobs/leaving a job.

They define grief as anything that produces conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior, so that’s why the above examples fall into the category of something from which you may need to grieve. We are taught at an early ago how to respond to loss, and the messages we have heard are: don’t feel bad, replace the loss, grieve alone, just give it time, and be strong for others.

John and Russell cite and give examples of why these beliefs are a detriment to and, in fact, block, the grieving process. So what is their process? It involves first developing awareness of your difficulty with grieving and even that you may be grieving. Then they have you identify what you are feeling, at the time you are completing a Loss Graph. On the graph, you list out all the losses in your life… the major ones which leave you with uncomfortable feelings today or in the past.

They have more about it, of course, and they add a Relationship graph, in which you define your relationship to the people/pets/loss involved. I am limited in my space to portray the information in this book, and would love to see you to get a copy and follow the exercises suggested… with a partner.

I plan to start with sessions from a coach certified in this procedure and I look forward to finding out if I am still grieving something about which I am unaware, but which affects my ability to maintain my weight. I am also thinking strongly about becoming certified as a coach in this process. That’s because this philosophy really resonated with me and because I deal with Veterans who are dealing with grief in their lives.

Today, consider the messages you were told about loss when you were growing up. Do they sound soothing, do you get strength from them? Perhaps it’s time to discard or alter them. Tomorrow, more about this information…

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: death and dying, divorce loss, grief, grieving, grieving a loss, loss of marriage

Freedom of Forgiveness in Sobriety

July 4, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Tiers of Forgiveness

Perhaps one of the most rewarding things that comes to us in sobriety, when we are able to do it, is the freedom of forgiveness. Once we are able to forgive others for their wrongs, and then forgive ourselves, we will experience deeper peace and serenity.

It has been my experience that forgiveness happens in tiers or stages, over time. Just as the baby tears which grew by this gate in this picture evolved over time and are beautiful, so can forgiveness grow over time, and is beautiful when it occurs.

How do we get to forgiveness when someone has wronged us, led us to a life of anger and resentment over those wrongs? “Ruined” us emotionally… Made our life a shambles… Is the cause of our emotional misery…

How can we let go of this seething power which has control over us, and why in the world would we even WANT to let go of it? We are, after all, justified in our indignation!

This was me when I reached sobriety. I had spent my life being resentful and miserable because of incidents from my childhood. It had left me deeply scarred. It affected me every single day in one way or another and prevented me from having lasting emotional peace.

Everyone kept saying to me, “Get over it. Move on.” Except I couldn’t; that’s what I’d done with my drinking and drugging… tried to get over it. It didn’t work; I numbed out instead to avoid the feelings of shame, worthlessness, hopelessness, and despair. Of course, at the time, I could not name these, I just knew I was miserable – still angry, definitely not experiencing serenity and peace on a lasting basis.

Yet now, I experience serenity and peace every day. It is a place of calm from which my actions, thoughts, and emotions well. I have resolved my anger, my resentment, and have forgiven those who wronged me. That was the piece which was missing for me, which prevented me from finding emotional peace and serenity.

At this point, I need to tell you how I got to that place of forgiveness, but this piece is getting long. Instead, I will save it for tomorrow. I suggest that what you do between now and tomorrow’s post is to do some work around who or what you cannot forgive. Recognize who/what you cannot forgive and clearly define why. See what emotions surface and try to sit with them for a bit. Feel in your heart how wrong their action was.

Then turn your attention 180 degrees. Consider how this has consumed your life and darkly colored it. Do you want something different for yourself? Consider the possibility that you can leave this misery behind and create a new story and become willing to hear about how. Then, wait for tomorrow’s post which will describe how I found the freedom of forgiveness.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: forgiveness, how to find peace, how to forgive, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Overcoming Despair in Sobriety

June 7, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Face of Despair

Perhaps the hardest thing we have to do is to overcome despair in sobriety. It is a most debilitating feeling, and if we are “down” enough, we might be feeling this despair.

Despair is a loss of hope. To be without hope is devastating, a bleakness beyond belief. Often, we drink heavily over our despair, and this only serves to compound it.

The sound of despair is that of a wail, a keening. If you have ever been there, then you know what I’m talking about. Have you ever been there? Are you there now?

If you are there now, there are things to do which may be helpful. At least, they helped me to dispel my despair in sobriety.

The first thing to do is to stay sober, no matter what, no matter how difficult the feeling of despair becomes. Then, what worked for me was journaling about those feelings. Brisk walks several times a day also helped, but often, we don’t have the energy for this.

It pays to understand why we are in despair, and that is what journaling can help to uncover. It also helps to get professional help from a therapist. At least, those actions worked for me.

But the thing that helped the most with my despair was to discover that my life had a purpose. Once I discovered that purpose, my despair went away and it has not returned. For me, discovering that I could help others by telling my story, combatted my despair. I discovered that my life of misery and woe and hardship was worthwhile because it could be of use to others.

Try to discover the purpose of your life. Do some journaling about it and see if something comes up about your purpose in life. Perhaps it is to share your art, or your words with the world. Or maybe your gift is to cook.

Whatever your gift is, find the one thing that makes you of service to others, the one thing you can bring to others to make their lives better. When you can figure this out, then you can overcome despair because you are being of use to another and that is a divine feeling, a divine purpose. You feel complete when you are being of service to others.

What is your gift that you can bring to others? How can you be of service in the world? When you figure this out, see if that doesn’t begin to rid you of hopelessness, of despair in sobriety…

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Sober Living Tagged With: despair, despair in sobriety, feelings of despair

Dealing with Sorrow in Sobriety

June 7, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Agony of Sorrow

Sorrow refers to the deep, often long-continued mental anguish caused by a sense of loss or disappointment. Grief implies a more painfully intense anguish, usually of shorter duration. Whether your grief and sorrow are of short or long duration, when you get sober, you must first deal with the loss of your friend, alcohol.

You will have a, hopefully, brief period of mourning the loss of your familiar life. My sorrow and grief over the loss of alcohol in my life was pretty short, because I was thrilled with the lack of hangovers I experienced.

You see, for seven years prior to my quitting, I drank myself into oblivion every night, and the hangovers from that were horribly difficult. So, to not be experiencing hangovers was freedom.

You also will find yourself possibly mourning the loss of friends you had during your drinking and partying days. Often, we who have a drinking problem have to give up these friends because to be around them is too tempting to us… we may want to pick up a drink. At the very least, you may need to take a vacation from them until you establish your sobriety.

Then, as you continue along your course of sobriety, look at your history, your wounds and scars from earlier days. For me, this meant looking at my childhood. I found myself experiencing grief and sorrow over the fact that I never had a happy childhood. I had to grieve that loss before I could move through my sorrow.

It is an agonizing feeling, sorrow is – searing in quality. You may be tempted to ignore it or shut it out, but you must feel it to continue along your course of sober living.To repress it will only prolong your recovery and may even lead you back to the drink. I found that journaling helped me to deal with the sorrow I experienced.

When you have dealt with your sorrow, you are ready to move on to other emotions. And, sorrow may not hit you until you have been sober for a while. In that case, you will be prepared when it comes.

What is your sorrow about? Have you taken the time to acknowledge it, to really feel it? Allow yourself to do that and your sobriety will be stronger. You will be stronger. As thisblog moves forward each day, we will discuss ways to ease the pain you have identified, as we move through my book,Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Sober Living

Getting Past Feelings of Worthlessness

June 4, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Corner of Worthlessness

The beginning of the book deals with four difficult emotions, the next one being worthlessness. For me, this was a feeling that I was about as good as a pile of debris in a corner, just like in the photo to the left.

It was one of the things I drank over, heavily, not only because of the bad feelings, but because of my resentment at the person who called me worthless so frequently. I was looking to drown or numb the sting of the feelings of worthlessness – the pain of hearing it, thinking it, living it.

I did not know how to rid myself of these feelings, so I drank. It was a vicious circle… I drank cause I felt worthless and wanted to feel better, and then I felt not only worse, but depressed, as well. It wasn’t until I discovered my life’s purpose that this all changed.

It also wasn’t until I had been sober for a few years that my feelings of worthlessness diminished. I won’t pretend to tell you the feelings disappeared overnight… they didn’t. Rather, it was 5 years into sobriety and I was still having difficulty with these feelings. Then, a miracle happened. Here’s how it played out…

I felt worthless and great despair over the fact that the pain of my upbringing was for no good purpose except to bring me down, to lead me to failure. I saw no purpose to my life and prayed to God to let me die because I was too afraid of committing suicide.

Then, one day I was at a support group and I listened to a man share about his pain, which was very similar to the pain of things I had dealt with and healed from. So I went to talk to him, and was able to relay books to read and even gave him my therapist’s name and number.

He was so grateful, he cried. As I walked to my car, I realized that my history had been of use to this guy. If I had not experienced it and suffered as I had, I wouldn’t have done healing work, and I wouldn’t have known resources to give to this man. Suddenly, I saw my difficult and painful childhood as a benefit, a plus.

In that instant, I realized my life’s purpose was to relay to others in emotional pain the information I have gained along the way in my healing process. I had a purpose, my life had a purpose! The feelings of worthlessness and despair lifted and were resolved right then and there! Yes, worthlessness creeps in there occasionally, but I am able to dispel it quickly, and to regain my sense of worth.

Do you have feelings of worthlessness over which you drink? Have you thought that your worth lies in the help and service you can give and be to others? Think about it, for there is a lot of merit in the thought that your life has had a specific purpose all along… that of healing from your wounds so you can help others heal from similar ones. I hope these words bring you feeling of worthiness, that they help you to look at worthlessness from a different light so you can become sober…

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Sober Living Tagged With: feelings of worthlessness sobriety, living sober, sober, Sober Living, worthlessness

Show Gentleness to Yourself as You Heal and Grow

May 1, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Bed of Gentleness

There is nothing quite like showing yourself gentleness to speed along your healing and growth processes.

It will go a long way toward helping you to overcome the desire to beat yourself up, or to criticize yourself, not only during the appraisal portion of your journey, but throughout your journey.

Cut yourself some slack. I’m not advocating you pat yourself on the back for unkind and uncaring behaviors, but I am saying to allow yourself to be human with failings.

The thing about your failings, your short-comings is that you can choose to change them into victories, lessons to learn.

I am advocating you take a long, hard, honest look at yourself, using humility to do so. And I am advocating that you show yourself gentleness as you do that looking. Beating yourself up is counter-productive.

Feeling regret or remorse over some action, words, or behavior? Be gentle; recognize that you did the best you could at the time. If you’d have known better, you would have done better.

Now you have the opportunity to change anything you did that you don’t like, or, at the very least, to get some peace from your regrets. Be gentle with yourself as you go about making those changes.

Allow yourself to slowly and gently reveal yourself to yourself and others. Showing gentleness to yourself and others is paramount as you continue on your journey to living your dream and finding peace.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, finding peace, gentle, Gentleness, inner peace, peace, show gentleness to yourself

Search Your Heart, Discover Your Dream

April 30, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Search of Self

One way to find your true path, your dream, is to search your heart by doing a self-appraisal. Buried in this exercise is one way to find your dream.

A self-appraisal is like a performance evaluation. You do it to ferret out your thoughts, beliefs, actions, and behaviors. The point is not to beat yourself up, but to discover your core self.

When you uncover and follow what lies in your heart, you are well on your way to peace because you will be following your dream.

I believe this is because your heart and soul are connected, and when you are doing what your heart urges you to do, you are doing what your soul’s purpose is.

When you do your soul’s purpose, you are in synch with your true purpose in life, and that brings you peace. All this from looking within.

When searching yourself, look first at your positive points, actions, words, and thoughts. Look at ways in which your behavior helped another, or made them feel better about themselves. Then look at how they helped raise you up so that you learned some positive points about yourself.

Then think of things you said to another to build them up. After that, think of your self-talk and determine what you are saying to yourself. Are you positive and encouraging? If not, this is your goal.

Your goal is to identify your positive points and then acknowledge your goodness.

Now it is time to look at your negative thoughts, words, and deeds. In what ways have you torn down another, said disparaging words to them, talked badly of them behind their back, denigrated their spirit?

How do you talk to yourself? What do you believe about yourself and do you denigrate YOUR spirit?

When you shine the light of awareness on your shortcomings, you can begin to heal and change your negative behavior toward others and yourself.

While you are doing this exercise, keep in touch with a friend, spouse, or family member so they can offer you support and clarify your behavior by offering their unbiased perspective. Ask them to provide that for you.

You will find that you uncover some delightful and beautiful things about yourself. You will also discover some embarrassing or damaging things you thought, said, or did. Take ownership of them all. Apologize as indicated if it will not be hurtful to another.

This may be a difficult exercise to complete, as it may bring up some uncomfortable emotions. Stick with it and try to be present through it without self-medicating for a set period every day.

What you find will eventually lead you to peace in your soul and that is one of the things you are searching for, right? Look honestly but fairly at your heart. What do you see? What are you doing to follow your heart’s longings, your dreams?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: heart, performance evaluation, self-appraisal

Shed Worthlessness and Share Your Dream with the World

April 3, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Cornet of Worthlessness

Good morning. Today, we will continue through my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. The next topic we come to is worthlessness.

Now that we have identified and acknowledged our fear, we can begin to look at other feelings that are keeping us from following our dream.

Perhaps, somewhere in our past lies the secret to any feelings of worthlessness we may hold. Perhaps, at one point, we were told by another that we were useless, that we had no value. Or, we have deduced that on our own.

If you were told you were worthless, let me just say, it was a lie. It is possible that whomever told you that was actually feeling it about themselves. They were feeling worthless themselves, and in their pain, lashed out in agony and frustration, spouting it to you.

The fact is, we each have importance and merit, simply because we exist on this planet. We each have value. Let me say that another way. You have value.

Everything about you has value because everything about you helps others in some way or another. When you are on top of your game and in a positive space, being of use to others, you are helping them to grow their sense of worth and value. That is being of service.

Even when you are being negative and/or hurtful to others, it can be a learning experience for the other person. They can look at your behavior as an example of how they do not wish to be in the world. This can act as a motivator to some, as they then strive to act in kindness and love to others.

There are those, however, who, when exposed to negative behavior from others, begin to believe they are useless and worthless. If that describes you, use even this as a learning experience. Look at yourself and ponder what is leading you to that conclusion. Ferret out what it is that you believe about yourself that makes you feel that worthlessness.

Then try this exercise. Think of one thing that you love to do, the one thing that makes your heart sing when you are doing it. You may or may not do it well, but time may slip away when you do it.

Consider that this one thing is your gift, something you were gifted, something you were intended to have or to be like in order to share with the world. This is your light that Spirit intends for you to gift to others, simply by doing it or being a certain way.

Now, wear humbly that thing which you love to do, your gift, and go be of service to another. Shed your feelings of worthlessness and stop playing small. Instead, play big, as there is someone out there waiting to receive your gift. They are waiting to receive you in all of your glory and goodness.

The choice is yours. Playing big is the way to peace and playing small will keep you in misery. Which way do you choose?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: feeling worthless, finding peace, I feel worthless, inner peace, peace, worthless, worthlessness

Fear of Following Your Dreams

April 2, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Webs of Fear

Good morning. I have been at a conference for the past four days, learning how to become a speaker. It was a dynamite workshop! I am armed with the tools to move forward with my dream of speaking to audiences about how to find peace of mind from anxiety and agitation.

Do you have a dream for your life? Are you living that dream? Chances are, if you are not living that dream, it is because of fear… fear of the unknown, fear that you are not good enough, fear to let go of the unhappy life you are living and step into a new way of being.

Just because you step into something new does not mean you have quelled all fear. For example, I am about to embark upon a new career of speaking, and I am terrified.

The terror is that I will not know what to say, that I won’t get it “right,” that my mind will go blank while I am on stage, that I will look stupid to the audience. I feel all of this and still, I press on. Why do I do that? Why do I continue to work my way toward my dream? Why don’t I allow the fear to win?

The truth is, I am allowing the fear to slow me down, allowing it to hamper my movement forward. Still, I inch forward through that fear. I will not allow it to stop me.

Through the actions I take, I will be able to move past the fear. That is not to say that the fear will be gone. Oh, no. I will continue to move forward despite the fear because I feel so strongly that I have a message intended to be shared with the world.

Because that belief is so strong, I will move forward even though I still feel fear. Will it feel uncomfortable? Most likely. Yet, I am bound and determined not to let that stop me. I will notice and acknowledge the fear, and I will gain strength and courage to move forward through it despite its presence.

That’s the thing about fear – we can continue to move forward toward our dreams even though we feel it. It will not hurt us. What will hurt us, however, is allowing that fear to stop us in our pursuit of our dream, our happiness. If we don’t try, we will feel we have failed. We will kill our spirit if we do not pursue those dreams we hold dear to our heart.

So, let’s take a look at our dreams, our desires, and let’s identify and acknowledge any fears that come up. Allow them to be and gently move forward anyway. When we can do this, we will feel victorious, and eventually, the fear will subside, or not. But we know we can set aside that fear and still meet our heart’s desires.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: courage, faith, fear

How to Find Forgiveness – Part 2

March 4, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Tiers of Forgiveness

We are starting today at the first tier in the forgiveness process. This is the place where we have defined why we are withholding our forgiveness and from whom. Overnight, we sat with the emotions that arose for us.

This morning, we have become willing to look at the resentment we hold against those who have wronged us because we want emotional peace and we want something different for ourselves in our sobriety, in our life.

Forgiveness is for us, not the other person. Yet, it does often benefit the other person as well. By forgiving, we are in no way condoning what occurred as right. It was not. Yet, we can get to a place of forgiveness even though that is true.

Having said all of that, let me say that there is tremendous freedom in forgiveness, and that is what allowed me to reach emotional peace in my sobriety. This is how it happened.

I was about 3 years sober and was doing a self-appraisal about my romantic relationships, looking at all the ways I contributed to their demise, being accountable where I erred. What I realized was, I would get drunk and yell at each of them how worthless they were, that they would never amount to anything.

I was appalled to remember I had said those things! I didn’t mean them. I said them because that’s how I was feeling about myself. Knowing how terrible I was feeling at that time, I started to feel compassion for that woman who was in so much pain that she lashed out at another human’s spirit, denigrating it, for that was a terrible thing to do and say.

Wow. That was powerful when I looked at it in that way, allowing compassion to come into my being. For when I saw myself with compassion, I was able to then see the person who used to yell at ME that I was worthless and would never amount to anything, with compassion for what he might have been feeling when he said those things to me.

I began to realize he was so very young and was dealing with his own wounds. I say that not to excuse his actions, but to lend some understanding to him, and especially given that I had done the very same thing. He was an emotionally and spiritually sick man, I have come to understand over the years. I feel compassion for the sick man he was, and he has changed.

Armed with the knowledge that people do bad things, sometimes because they are emotionally and spiritually sick, I began to apply this thought and heart process to other incidences and people. I found myself getting to forgiveness, even if I had not repeated their behaviors myself. I have to say, there has never been a more freeing sensation for me, a feeling of deep peace.

With this new freedom, I had all sorts of time on my hands, time in which I was not spending my energy being angry. Ah, so suddenly, I had to become accountable, responsible, for myself, and totally. I have found that my time is freer to pursue my own heart’s desires, which has included the publication and distribution of my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.

Most recently, because, in part, to the freedom of forgiveness, I have turned my attention to adding two new services that I offer, those being coaching and speaking. I use the book as our guide through the process I am blogging about. I am able to perform in these capacities because of the freedom I have found in forgiveness.

You, too, can find forgiveness and can soar to new heights that, up until now, you have only dreamed of. Isn’t that something you want for yourself?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: finding peace, freedom from forgiveness, freedom of forgiveness. forgiveness, inner peace, living sober, living with serenity, peace, serenity, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Overcoming Despair in Sobriety

February 10, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Face of Despair

Perhaps the hardest thing we have to do in sobriety is to overcome despair. It is a most debilitating feeling, and if we are “down” enough, we might be feeling this despair.

Despair is a loss of hope. To be without hope is devastating, a bleakness beyond belief. Often, we drink heavily over our despair, and this only serves to compound it.

The sound of despair is that of a wail, a keening. If you have ever been there, then you know what I’m talking about. Have you ever been there? Are you there now?

If you are there now, there are things to do which may be helpful. At least, they helped me to dispel my despair.

It pays to understand why we are in despair, and that is what journaling can help to uncover. It also helps to get professional help from a therapist. At least, those actions worked for me.

But the thing that helped the most with my despair, was to discover that my life had a purpose. Once I discovered that purpose, my despair went away and it has not returned. For me, discovering that I could help others by telling my story, combatted my despair. I discovered that my life of misery and woe and hardship was worthwhile because it could be of use to others.

What is your gift that you can bring to others? How can you be of service in the world? When you figure this out, see if that doesn’t begin to rid you of hopelessness, of despair.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Sober Living Tagged With: finding peace, hope, hopeful, hopelessness, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Dealing with Sorrow in Sobriety

February 9, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Agony of Sorrow

Sorrow refers to the deep, often long-continued mental anguish caused by a sense of loss or disappointment. Grief implies a more painfully intense anguish, usually of shorter duration. Whether our grief and sorrow are of short or long duration, when we get sober, we must first deal with the loss of our friend alcohol.

We have a, hopefully, brief period of mourning the loss of our familiar life. My sorrow and grief over the loss of alcohol in my life was pretty short, because I was thrilled with the lack of hangovers I experienced.

You see, for seven years prior to my quitting, I drank myself into oblivion every night, and the hangovers from that were horribly difficult. So, to not be experiencing hangovers was freedom.

We also will find ourselves possibly mourning the loss of friends we had during our drinking and partying days. Often, we have to give up these friends because to be around them is too tempting to us… we may want to pick up a drink. At the very least, we may need to take a vacation from them until we establish our sobriety.

Then, as we continue along our course of sobriety, we look at our history, our wounds and scars from earlier days. For me, this meant looking at my childhood. I found myself experiencing grief and sorrow over the fact that I never had a happy childhood. I had to grieve that loss before I could move through my sorrow.

It is an agonizing feeling, sorrow is – searing in quality. We are tempted to ignore it or shut it out, but we must feel it to continue along our course of sober living. To repress it will only prolong our recovery and may even lead us back to the drink. I found that journaling helped me to deal with the sorrow I experienced.

When we have dealt with our sorrow, we are ready to move on to other emotions. And, sorrow may not hit us until we have been sober for a while. In that case, we are prepared when it comes.

What is your sorrow about? Have you taken the time to acknowledge it, to really feel it? Allow yourself to do that and your sobriety will be stronger. You will be stronger.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, Sorrow

Getting Past Feelings of Worthlessness

February 8, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Corner of Worthlessness

Do you have feelings of worthlessness over which you drink? Have you thought that your worth lies in the help and service you can give and be to others? Think about it, for there is a lot of merit in the thought that your life has had a specific purpose all along… that of healing from your wounds so you can help others heal from similar ones. Does that help with your feelings of worthlessness? I hope so…

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: feelings of worthlessness, Law of Sobriety, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, worthlessness

Getting Past the Fear of Sobriety

February 5, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Webs of Fear

Today, we will begin a new journey through my book Openiing the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. We will be going through the process I went through to reach peace in sobriety.

It takes some guts… getting past the fear of sobriety. If you’re like I was, I knew at a deep level that I had a drinking problem, that what others were saying to me about needing to quit was true. But I was terrified of life without my best friend.

Fear… False Evidence Appearing Real. F-word Everything And Run. Both were me, and especially the latter. My drinking was an escape, a numbing out of all the pain I had experienced in my life… the rejections, the belittlement, being told I was worthless, and on and on…

Of course, I didn’t know at the time that I was numbing out. I had to be sober for quite some time before I realized that. The thing about getting sober and living without alcohol and drugs in my life is that it is a beautiful and peaceful way to live, once the healing occurs. Yes, I still experience fear, but it is something I can recognize and deal with.

The advantage to being sober is, I can feel the fear, and move forward anyway. I can choose to see that the fear is false evidence appearing real, gain the courage and take action. Fear is a natural reaction to many situations, and once we establish that the fear is not telling us we are in danger, we can move forward.

So, what are your fears of getting sober? Living the rest of your life without alcohol and drugs? Remember, it’s just one day at a time. You only have to live without alcohol one day at a time. After some time, the days just accumulate, you have completed healing work, and life looks pretty grand.

To get past the fear, think of it as a life style change of great beauty. Going from many situations in your life that are unmanageable to a life of peace, without all the headaches, without the hang overs, without the arguments, is something to experience.

Be willing to move past the fear, for it surely is nice on the other side. Join me, if you care to. You will be pleased. You will enjoy getting past the fear of sobriety.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Sober Living Tagged With: fear of sobriety, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Shame and Humility – Humility – Part II

December 29, 2011 by muz4now 2 Comments

Welcome to my blog. Yesterday and today we welcome guest blogger Stan Stewart, who is talking about humility, the next topic in my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.

…continued from yesterday’s introduction…

Besides fear, for me the most immobilizing feeling is shame. At least it feels that way.

When I feel shame, my most common expression of it is to hang my head and do nothing. Well, “doing nothing” is relative. What I do is judge myself or distract myself internally — usually with numbness.

I’m sure that shame could have kept me from embarassment or worse when I was younger. Suffice it to say that as an adult, shame does me no good.

When I re-discovered humility in spiritual readings recently, I had an epiphany that being humble looked similar to shame in some ways — at least on the surface. Both are about how “OK” I think I am. The step to humility is about realizing that I don’t need to think of myself as great in order to be okay.

The major difference is that shame and blame are so often tied together. If I think I’m being blamed (or judged, questioned, etc.), I may respond by feeling shame. This means that there is an external connection that I’m making to the catalyst for the shame. Ironically, while thinking that I’m being blamed, I then blame that same source for shaming me. So shame is other directed.

Humility, on the other hand, has an internal source — and I’m thinking that “internal” can include self and divine influences. I am humble when I determine that I do not have to puff myself up in a situation or I am inspired (i.e., spirit has a hand in it) to address a situation with whatever I can bring to it, but without assuming that I am what the situation needs.

Said another way, when I come with attentive patience, I am humble.

My realization allowed me to see shame and humility as opposite sides of the same coin. When shame threatens to numb me out, I can invite humility as a spiritual practice to keep the questions internal, remove blame and accept responsibility. Time will tell how well I will be able to embrace this humble place.

May your shame be engulfed in humility in a way that comforts your inner child and welcomes the fullness of your adult to engage in the world.

*******************************************************************************************

Guest blogger, Stan Stewart, is a musician, teacher, and technologist. As a certified InterPlay leader and lover of improvised music, Stan teaches and seeks integration of the whole self — experiencing body/mind/spirit as a whole rather than split parts of self — in the present moment.

He says, “What is happening for all of me right now is what I have to work with. I do my best to seek the kind of awareness that will allow me to experience and use all that’s available to me in this moment; and that can inspire me creatively and in my service to the world.”

Carolyn and Stan met on Twitter and now take their connection to the blogosphere with this guest post.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: doubt, humility, living sober, shame, Sober Living, Stan Stewart

Feelings Are Energy In Motion – Humility – Part 1

December 28, 2011 by muz4now Leave a Comment

Carolyn and Stan met on Twitter and now take their connection to the blogosphere with this guest post.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about “translating fear into creative energy“. It probably would have been more precise to call it “translating fear energy into creativity”. In that post, I said that — for me — feelings are energy in motion. This energy can then be used/ translated/ transformed into either positive or negative output (behavior).

Carolyn kindly commented on that post and expressed concern that calling for transformation of the emotional energy could be seen as calling for getting over the feeling. I fully understood her concern, so I started to reflect more on how to allow the feelings to “be” while also not becoming stuck in them.

I would definitely say that feelings should not be ignored or denied. They should be felt and acknowledged. For me, transforming them is a way of being attentive to my feelings.

Since my knee-jerk reactions so often turn emotions into what I later would label negative behavior, I proposed a way to help produce a positive output instead. I’ve had some success with this method and that’s why I wanted to share it. I also prefer creative over destructive outcomes, so I shared it for that reason as well. Part of the backdrop of my post is that I have a judgment that I — like many creative people — can become stuck in fear — or other emotions, like shame — and that this stuckness is not the optimal place for creativity. Creative work requires movement.

…more tomorrow…

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: creativity, fear, living sober, self-appraisal, Sober Living, Stan Stewart

Dealing with Doubt

December 26, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Shadows of Doubt

“I am mired again in the shadows of my doubt, my fear. I circle and circle and circle around the stones of my heart, caged, unable to pass through to the place where my heart is bathed in light.”

Today, we are dealing with doubt. Specifically for me, it was the doubt of a power greater than myself, doubt in the existence of God. Yesterday, we talked about belief in a higher power when we talked about trust. But our discussion can relate to doubt of anything.

For example, perhaps you doubt that sobriety is the route for you to take. You are the only one that can make that decision. If you doubt that you need to quit drinking, look at how it’s affecting your life.

Maybe you are functional, and still able to work, able to function in life. If that’s the case, then look at your private life for signs that alcohol is not working for you and, in fact, is causing strife in personal relationships or in your emotional life.

It is tempting to say, “That relationship is bad because they did this or that, they are this or that…” If that’s your excuse, it’s time to fetch yourself up and look at your own behavior. Do you drink and then have experiences which lead to another doing this or that? Perhaps they are reacting to you in your drinking mode. Look at it honestly. We’ll discuss honesty in more detail tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you have doubts that sobriety is for you, let me just say that most of us who have gotten sober were so beaten down that sobriety was the only answer. In other words, those of us who have gotten sober had no doubt that sobriety was needed because we’d lost everything. Perhaps, if you look at it closely, you can elect to get sober without having to lose everything in your life.

When doubt arises, allow it to become conscious, and look at it as objectively as possible. Realize that it is normal human behavior. But keep your eye on the light beyond the gate, where the stones are bathed in light. Look at the part of your heart and soul where shadows lurk.

Make the determination that you don’t wish to live in the shadows, and pass through to the side of light. Perhaps, you notice your shadows in your heart, your spirit, your soul. There is a way out of that. It’s called sobriety. After a few years of being sober, I was able to dispel the shadows in my heart, spirit and soul because I had healed emotionally. That healing was a direct result of becoming and staying sober.

You, too, can heal your emotional wounds, your personal relationships, and live in the light. The choice is yours. I wish you well in that decision.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: doubt, God, power greater than yourslef, sober, sobriety

Getting Past Sorrow and Despair

December 22, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. Today I will deal with getting past sorrow and despair. In the book, they are separate topics, yet, today I am combining them as they often go hand-in-hand.

Face of Despair

Sorrow is defined by Webster as a mental suffering or anguish caused by loss, disappointment, or regret. It can include grief, which is a more intense anguish related to a specific misfortune or disaster.

When experiencing sorrow and/or grief, one’s thoughts can get to those of despair, defined as being without hope, being hopeless. All of these emotions are quite debilitating and, in my case, were accompanied by depression.

Sorrow and despair left me with no will to live and, in fact, I was praying to God to let me die, as I felt there was no purpose to the pain I had endured during my life-time, that my experiences were just a torment to me.

When one feels these emotions, it is a common tendency to want to numb the feelings by drinking, eating, shopping, or various other activities that we do obsessively. This only enhances the sorrow and despair.

In my case, I felt the sorrow and despair into my sobriety, up until I was about five years sober. At that point, I had an experience that dispelled both of these emotions. I had the opportunity to discover my purpose in life, and I felt needed, valued, and that my experiences were valuable to others.

Quite by accident, I realized I could help others by relaying my story. Suddenly, my life had meaning and purpose. I no longer felt that deep hopelessness that is characteristic of despair. I no longer felt sorrow and grief over my life.

I was not able to do this alone. I sought counseling, took medication for my depression, and joined a support group to deal with my drinking issues. Then I set about the arduous and scary task of looking at my emotions and dealing with them. I started to take responsibility for my healing.

If you are feeling sorrow and grief from a loss of something or someone in your life, know that there are stages you will go through before you gain peace. Allow those stages occur; don’t fight them. Know that you are working your way to eventual peace.

It may be frightening for you to face your emotions; be gentle with yourself as you look. Most importantly, get help. Talk to someone – a trusted friend, clergy, a therapist.

As you deal with your sorrow and it lessens, despair will also diminish. Most of all, stick with it through the tough times, for your life has value to others in your world. We each have value in one way or another. It is up to you to discover what your value is. This will happen naturally as a result of dealing with these difficult emotions.

I wish you well as you deal with getting past sorrow and despair. Remember that your life has value. Know that eventually you will get to the bottom of your emotions and life will begin to turn around. Commit to yourself to stick with it, and ask for help from others and the divine forces of the Universe. Remember, you are working toward finding inner peace.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Sober Living Tagged With: despair, despairing, finding inner peace, grief, inner peace, loss grief, peace, Sorrow

Feelings of Worthlessness

December 21, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 9 Comments

We move through the book to the second topic – feelings of worthlessness. Webster defines it as to be without worth or merit, useless, of no value.

To have worth, it is your quality that lends importance, value, and merit. It is measured by the esteem in which you are held by others.

Corner of Worthlessness

Feeling worthless is not a comfortable place to be. When I used to feel that way, I felt like a pile of rubbish in a corner… a heap of debris.

Why do we feel worthless? It comes from being told so or shown we are not valued. In my case, I was repeatedly told I was not worth anything, so I began to believe that.

Perhaps the actions of someone in your life translate to you that you are not valued, have no merit. As much as is possible, do not let their actions get you down.

It is hard to get past feelings of worthlessness, yet, it is possible. One way is to do esteem-able acts. Do something nice for someone else. Not only do they appreciate it, but you will feel self-worth for your actions. Keep doing that, over and over.

Reflect on how you came to feel worthless in the first place. If it was because of being told that, then consider the source and what they were experiencing.

For example, I realized that I did the very same thing to my boy friends that was done to me. I used to get drunk and scream at them that they were worthless. When I remembered that in sobriety, I was horrified! I realized I was saying it because I felt that way about myself.

Hmmm. Perhaps the person that told me I was worthless said that to me because they actually felt it about themselves. That was the corner I turned to start to come out of feeling worthless. Still, though, it is one thing to wrap your mind around a “cure” and another to get your heart and soul in alignment with what your mind is telling you.

What really cinched it for me was the discovery of my purpose in life, or what I consider to be my purpose. Once I figured that out, I felt worthwhile, I felt I had something of value to give others, and my feelings of worthlessness dissipated. Very occasionally, I go to that place when things are discouraging for me, yet I don’t stay long in that space because I remind myself of my purpose and why I’m here.

I hope that you, too, can conquer these feelings of worthlessness. Maybe the examples of how I recovered from feelings of worthlessness will help you.

It is not necessary to feel them and the fact is, we are each valuable and worthy in our own way. Believe that for it is a Truth. Each of us has a unique gift to give the world. It is just a matter of finding it. I wish you well.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: esteem-able acts, feeling worthless, feelings of worthlessness, Sober Living, sobriety, worthless, worthlessness

Have You Found Inner Peace?

December 17, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

A Promise of Peace brings us to the conclusion of the book. And I quietly wonder if you have found inner peace, any at all, by going through the book with me this last 42 or so days. I really hope you have…

Promise of Peace

Peace. How do you know peace when it finds you? For me, it is the all-inclusion of everything we have been talking about into my senses, seeing with the eyes of my heart, and feeling a great deal of love for all beings on this Earth.

It is promised to us, if we go through the process that is defined in my book, because in doing so, we learn to love deeply. There is no desire to be in conflict with others. When really in-tune, that includes inner conflict as well.

Does that mean we go through life in this glow? Hardly. That doesn’t happen because we’re human beings and, as such, are a caring and feeling species. Given the ever-constant changes in our lives from day-to-day, and the fact that we react with feelings and emotions, we slip temporarily from that space of centeredness and peace.

So, what is there to do when this happens? Lament the loss of our peaceful existence. even if it was only for five minutes? No, we merely start in by looking at the situation, feeling our feelings, examining our response to situations that have arisen.

Case in point, I am in the middle of something which has the potential to affect how I conduct my life in the future, and I was stunned to realize I was playing the victim role! Wow! I thought I was past that, but it showed up very subtly. So, I am in the process of doing more self-appraising to see what is going on with me that puts me in that mindset.

At the same time, I am feeding myself positive affirmations. These tasks equate to ” taking action,” as we discussed in previous posts. Slowly, I am becoming able to see glimpses of my terror over how this new information could affect my future. How much will I get out from behind that terror to affect my own future? That is the key.

We can affect our own future by the actions we take today, in this moment. What do we do with the fear? We can recognize and feel it, acknowledge that it exists, then walk away from it and take action, and, as needed, allow a glimpse of it again later.

We repeat this again and again until our fear subsides. I believe these issues get raised for us, so that we can take a look at core beliefs, and to heal from the destructive ones. While we do this, we remember to be gentle, kind, and tolerant with ourselves and the others around us. And the result is, we find our center again. We find that peace again.

We even can go to it among the turmoil by distracting ourselves with a favored and cherished activity, one in which you get lost. Your peace will return as a reprieve for what you will again visit to sort out. That’s how it works for me. Maybe it will work for you, too.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Sober Living Tagged With: gentle, Gentleness, kind, kindness, peace, promise of peace, self-appraisal, tolerance, tolerant

Why Such Harsh Judgement, Judgment of Others and Ourselves?

December 1, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

The next topic from my book Opening the Gates of the Heart, A Journey of Healing is absence of judgment.

Absence of Judgment

“Why do we judge others so harshly for being who they are, if their actions and behaviors feed their spirit and are not harmful to themselves or others?” This is the verse from the book.

Judgment: an opinion, criticism, or censure. Certainly, we are continually assessing those around us to determine that we are safe in the world. In that capacity, we make a judgment.

That is necessary and yet, that is not what I’m referring to here. I am referring to harsh and critical judgment, the kind that is damaging to another’s soul, the kind that is back-stabbing, putting another down, demeaning of another.

So, I repeat… why do we persist in such harsh judgement judgment of others if what they are doing feeds their spirit and is not harmful to you, others, or themselves?

Is it fear? Fear that they could harm you? Is that well-founded fear? Or, is it merely being critical of another because they are different than you.

Do we criticize because you we are feeling small and “less than?” I know that’s the case for me when I criticize and judge others, and even myself. I am feeling not-so-good inside.

And what about the ways in which we judge ourselves? The way you judge yourself? Are you harsh and critical? Do you have that inner meanie, that voice of shame? Many of us do. That critical part of yourself serves no good, it destroys your spirit, your soul. It degrades you and prevents you from being all you can be.

How do we dispel that voice that criticizes others and then turns that inward against ourselves? Perhaps, one way is by taking note of and appreciation for another individual, showing them respect for their differences. Ah, yesterday’s topic. That includes taking note of your differences, and celebrating them, by the way.

Perhaps, it is nothing more than noticing when we are critical and judgmental. If we shine the light upon our thoughts or words when we are so harsh, we may realize we are doing it more than we think, and, perhaps, we can cease.

Perhaps, it involves looking at ourselves and our habits, and realizing they could be considered strange to an outsider, worthy of critical judgment. When looked at in that light, perhaps we are more tolerant of other’s differences.

I invite you to go forward in your day and notice how you judge yourself and others, and think: why such harsh judgement judgment of others and of myself?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: critical, criticism, harsh words, judgement, judgment, self-judgement, self-judgment

Building Self Confidence by Accepting Yourself

November 25, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Today we’re going to talk about building self confidence by accepting yourself. This is the next topic in the book, and the verse is:

Acceptance of Self

“Have we really changed throughout the years, or do we merely hold within our heart and mind and soul the essence of who we are, while our physical form changes?

Can we recapture the delightful being we have always been, as we allow and celebrate our strengths, our flaws, our spirit?”

You start out as a delightful being, delighted yourself with the world and your surroundings. Over time, you are hurt by others, perhaps told in one way or another that you are not good enough, that you are worthless. You are belittled, criticized. These things erode your self confidence.

You start believing all the negative things you have been told or been shown about yourself, and you start putting yourself down. You are not what someone else wants you to be, so you begin not accepting who you are.

These things are all crazy-making within your heart, your mind. You end up being a confused and hurt person, lacking confidence and wanting to be someone different than you are. This is damaging to your soul.

What if you were to start over and reclaim yourself and who you are? Re-examine the delightful things about yourself and applaud them. Identify your strong points, just as you identify your weak points needing improvement.

Accept that it is all who you are. No need to be ashamed for your weak areas, your negative behavior. Accept that that is who you are and be willing to change those things, but know that that is who you are in the moment.

The more you run away from who you are at this very moment in time, the less likely you will be able to accept yourself and to reclaim self confidence. Seriously, accept that you are that generous, kind person, just as you are a selfish, hurtful person sometimes. Own it – all of it.

If you do not identify and accept who you are at the current time, if you are always denying your bad points, you cannot make changes in yourself. It is in correcting your bad and weak points that you can help grow your self confidence.

When you do your self-appraisal, have the courage and humility to admit to the good that you are and that you do. Go ahead. Praise yourself, pat yourself on the back. Allow seeing your positive points to add to your self confidence. Stand tall in who you really are. Be honest with the world.

Remember to be humble, though. This exercise is not meant to emphasize your superiority, but to enhance the way in which you see yourself so you can raise your self confidence.

Do good for others. This will raise your self confidence immensely. There is nothing like seeing the look of appreciation on another’s face when you do something kind and giving for them.

In short, reclaim that delightful spirit that you are. Take responsibility for your flaws. Do good for others. Most importantly, find kindness, gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness for yourself.

How have these actions helped to raise your self confidence? Have you accepted who you are in both your darkness and your light? Has doing esteem-able acts helped you with your self confidence? Leave a comment. Let us know.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: acceptance of self, compassion, courage, forgiveness, humility, kindness, self-appraisal, self-confidence

How to Find Forgiveness

November 24, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I spoke about how forgiveness found me. It was quite by accident. Now, I know how to recreate that for myself and I thought I’d share it with you how to find forgiveness.

Tiers of Forgiveness

It happens in tiers, or stages, over time. There are many emotions to deal with, and the original anger and resentment will resurface for you to look at. It gets easier if you apply the following process.

Identify the original anger. Recognize it as hurt and let yourself feel that hurt. Be willing to feel it.
Don’t get into how justified you are about your anger. Allow yourself to hurt.
Take a look at yourself and determine if you may have done something to provoke the other person. Be really honest about that, even if it is embarrassing to admit. Better to know this up-front. Be willing to look honestly. Be willing to be responsible for your own actions and words.
If you did do something to provoke the other person, perhaps an apology is in order. Drop your pride and apologize if you were the one who set the ball in motion.
If that is not the case, then look further at yourself and examine whether you have ever done the very thing for which you are angry.
Chances are, you have in some form or another. Think about how you felt about yourself when you did that. Were you feeling badly about yourself and took it out on another in some way?
Have compassion for yourself for how badly you were feeling about yourself when you did that act, or said what you said to be hurtful to another. Really hold yourself and give yourself comfort. Be willing to show yourself compassion.
Now, think about the other person and consider that they most likely were feeling badly about themselves when they did what they did to you.
Now, try to see them with the eyes of compassion for the wounded soul they were at that moment that they hurt you.
Don’t condone the hurtful actions. Forgiveness is not about condoning the hurtful actions or words of another. It is about freeing up your heart from the resentment you harbor. It is about clearing your heart.
Once you see with the eyes of compassion, try to bring forgiveness into your heart.
Know that they were doing the best they could at that moment, just as you always do the best you can in any moment, even if you are hurtful to another.

Try this series of ideas for one with whom you are angry and resentful, one whom you are unable to forgive, and see if it is helpful. See if it shows you how to find forgiveness.

If it is yourself you need to forgive, the same stages of self-examination and compassion apply. If you try this method, let us know the results. Leave a comment with your success, or let us know if it just didn’t work.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: anger, compassion, forgiveness, how to find forgiveness, resentment, willing, Willingness

How I Found the Gift of Forgiveness

November 22, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There was a definite advantage for me in finding the gift of forgiveness. It is a gift for you, as it frees your heart of the resentment, anger, and hurt which you harbor. When you forgive, it adds a great deal of inner peace to your life.

According to Webster, to forgive is to give up resentment and the desire to punish someone, to pardon them, to overlook one’s transgressions. This is not to say you condone what another has done. Yet, you give up the need to punish them with your silence, or scorn, or anger.

Tiers of Forgiveness

Forgiveness for me happened in tiers. And it involved many years of tears. There was a period of years in my life when I endured much physical and verbal abuse; the details are not important.

What is noteworthy is that I was told repeatedly during those years that I was worthless, no good, and would never amount to anything. Needless to say, I started to feel very worthless.

I went on with life, resenting this person who had bestowed the extreme physical and emotional hurt upon me. I seethed inside. I made snide comments to punish them, or withheld my love and attention as a way to further punish.

Then I became sober. I had to look at what was done without having alcohol to numb the pain, and it was excruciating to do so. I did it because I had no choice but to go through the pain if I wanted to heal. And I wanted desperately to heal.

I was doing a self-appraisal one day, looking at all my relationships with men that I had had over the years. I realized that for each of them, I would get drunk and scream at them how worthless they were, that they were no good, and would never amount to anything.

I was horrified to remember and to admit this to myself! What a horrible thing to have said! I realized I did not mean it, that I was feeling those things about myself, and just took out my anguish on them.

Suddenly, I wondered if the person who said those things to me felt the same way – felt worthless and no good about themselves, and that is why they screamed those words at me. I saw myself with compassion, knowing what extreme pain I was in at the time. This allowed me to believe that the person who abused me was also in great pain at the time, and I was able to feel compassion for them, also.

This didn’t excuse my behavior, and I have since apologized to these men, but the psychological and spiritual damage was done. Yet, by acknowledging how I said these things, and applying compassion to both myself and the person who abused me, I was able to forgive myself, and the person who had said them to me. Years of anger and resentment slipped away. I have since gained peace from years of abuse.

What are the ways in which you are withholding forgiveness? Is it getting in the way of your peace of mind? Tomorrow we will look at ways you can learn to offer forgiveness, so you can gain peace, too.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: anger, compassion, forgive, forgiveness, physical abuse, resentment, verbal abuse

Discovering Awareness of the Possibilities in Your Life

November 7, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There comes a time in all your feeling of the difficult emotions that you begin discovering awareness of the possibilities in your life beyond those unbearable emotions.

Discovering the possibilities of awareness in your life

Birth of Awareness

For me, it happened because I tapped into my ability to persevere past the despair, through the gate to my passions and desires, to the things in life to which I connect and delight. This began my aha! moment.

It was ever-so-slight, just like the opening of the gate pictured here. I began to notice the people around me who seemed to be happy in their lives, and I wondered why I couldn’t be also.

As the verse in the book says, “I allow myself my grief and sorrow, my sadness and anger. Then I turn my attention to the lushness I see beyond the opening… I decide to walk through the gate.”

You, too, can walk through your gate of sorrow and grief, your sadness and anger. It is a matter of hurting so much, that you believe there has to be something else in the world around you to which you can connect and delight.

All it takes is choosing to be aware of the little things in life that bring you joy, or that once brought you joy. Can you remember those times? Or that time? Think back. Certainly, there is something about you or your life that is a good memory. Focus on that.

Focus on those flowers in the garden that are so beautiful, on that delight shown by the older couple laughing, holding hands. Focus on that beauty, on them, on their happiness, not your sadness, and be happy for them. Believe that there is something out there in the world that can bring you happiness, too.

Learn to be aware of the world around you and the things that bring beauty into the world. Think of just one such thing a day. Then, after a week of doing this, add one more thing you notice that delights you, that brings you happiness. You can begin to change your beliefs.

You can begin the process of discovering awareness of the possibilities in your life. Use your imagination, that place deep within that wants to be happy, that wants to connect to the world around you, that wants to delight in something. Then, continue focusing on that… Can you begin to see your birth of awareness? It is my sincere hope that you can.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: awareness of the world, connect to the world around you, discovering awareness of the possibilities in your life, joy, perseverance

Surrender the Pretense That All Is Fine

November 6, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“I put on a courageous face and move bravely forward, but I feel lost and displaced. My heart dies, one piece at a time, behind a gate that rusts away.” So does the verse begin that accompanies the next topic in the book, Surrender of Pretense.

Surrender of Pretense

Can you relate? Are you dying inside while you present to the world that everything is fine? Are you trying to numb those feelings of pain with alcohol and drugs, with shopping or food, trying to keep them at bay?

It doesn’t work, at least, it didn’t for me. It caught up with me big time and my drinking drove me to a horrible emotional bottom.

There is a solution. It is to surrender the pretense that all is fine. It is as simple as letting go of the facade and asking for help from others and from the powers that be.

Easily said… let go… and difficult to do. Yet, the energy it takes to keep you from showing yourself and your pain is no doubt taking its toll on you.

Another way to say let go, is to say give up. Give up trying to prove that you’re strong, that all is fine with you.

Go ahead, try it. You will find that people are there with open arms, willing and able to guide you through your journey to healing. They will not think you are less than, or a failure, or a weak person. Oh, no. Instead, they will admire your strength.

So, go ahead… surrender the pretense that all is fine behind your gate of false bravado. Let go, give it up and see what magic appears.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: giving up, letting go, pretense, surrender, surrender the pretense that all is fine

How to Combat Despair

November 5, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Face of Despair

Moving on through the book, our next topic is despair. This is kind of like all the rest rolled into one. It is the feeling that nothing is right with you and your life, nor will it ever be. It is the feeling that your life has no purpose. For me, it was the point at which I began to pray to God to let me die.

I had been in sobriety for five years, and I didn’t know why I wasn’t feeling better, but I wasn’t. It was like all that I had endured in my life was for naught. I saw no purpose to my life.

Then it got better. It happened one day when I was at a support group, listening to a man share about the very pain with which I had been dealing.

Afterwards, I talked to him for quite some time, relaying information I had learned, the authors I had read, which had helped me through the pain he was describing. I even was able to refer him to a psychotherapist.

He was so relieved and appreciative, he almost cried. As I walked to my car, I realized I had been useful to him, only because of the experiences I’d had in my life, because of the pain I had endured. I realized that my past DID have a purpose and that was to help others who were dealing with the pain of their past.

In an instant, my life had meaning, the pain of my experiences melted, as I saw why they had occurred, why God had allowed them to happen. I realized those experiences had happened so I could heal from them and then help others to heal from them by speaking up, by sharing my experience of healing. Just like that, my despair vanished, never to return in the six years since this occurred.

To you who is dealing with despair, my heart goes out to you, for I remember how excruciating it was. In the gentlest of ways, I suggest you try to make sense out of the experiences that are bringing you despair by finding a way to make that experience of use to another person. Just one.

Look at that pain, and see how you can help another who deals with that same pain. Find authors who have written about the same experiences you have endured and read them to get a deeper understanding of your situation.

Above all, don’t negate your pain. Allow yourself to feel it, and to grieve about it. The more you squelch it, the more it will haunt you. Numbing it out will just prolong it and make you miserable in the meantime. Conversely, the more you deal with it head on, the more quickly you will heal. Recognize and allow the five stages of grief that I blogged about yesterday.

If you find just one person with whom you can share your steps to healing, you may feel what I felt – that your life has purpose. Once you feel your life has purpose, it becomes easier to continue, one step at a time. I wish you well on your journey of healing.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: despair, grief, healiing emaotional pain

Five Stages to Deal with Grief and the Agony of Sorrow

November 4, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Our next topic on which I wish to focus is the agony of sorrow. I am referring to the sorrow or grief one feels with a loss in your life – of a loved one, a situation, or a happy childhood. All of these things bring up the feelings of grief and sorrow.

Agony of Sorrow

This image, with its reddened hue in the shadows of the gate, depicts the searing quality of sorrow and grief. It is a feeling like no other, and is difficult to get past, yet, it can be done, given time and understanding of the process that occurs.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross defines the five stages of recovery from the grief from the loss of someone to death. But the same five stages happen with any loss that occurs in your life, whether it is death, a change in your life that involves a loss, or the lack of a happy childhood due to being raised in an abusive environment, for example.

These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It is helpful, perhaps, to understand these stages if you are experiencing grief and the agony of sorrow.

In denial, we are not able to look the loss straight in the eye. In the case of losing a happy childhood to abuse, you may deny that the abuse ever happened, yet, its occurrence will still have a lasting effect in your life. This may be a conscious or unconscious act, and it is perfectly normal.

Once you traverse the denial stage and admit the abuse happened, anger crops up. Using our example , you become angry that the abuse itself happened, angry that you never got to experience what other children experienced, and/or angry at the effects it is having in your life now.

Certainly, you are angry at the person who doled out the abuse. You may also be angry at yourself for letting it happen, when in reality, there was nothing you as a child could have done to protect yourself.

Once you have gone through an anger phase, you are ready for the bargaining stage. Again using our example, this may look like a bargain with God to remove the effects of the abuse. Generally, in this stage, you are not yet ready to forgive.

Depression is the next stage in the recovery from the agony of sorrow and grief. This is often an acceptance with emotional detachment and signals the first inkling that you are accepting of your past experiences. Often, you feel sadness, regret, and, perhaps, shame.

Once you have grieved the loss of a happy childhood in the manner described above, the final stage is acceptance. In this stage, you accept that you suffered abuse, and that it has lasting effects on you. Yet, you often accept, too, that the perpetuator was a sick individual and may be able to forgive. Or not. But at the least, you can accept the occurrence and the effect it is having upon your life today.

This is a brief run through of the recovery stages from grief and the agony of sorrow. It is a process that takes time, and is different for everyone in the length of time it takes. Loss due to death of a loved one is especially difficult, but, with time, can occur. There are other things that produce grief and sorrow which can also be grieved, as I have shown.

What are some of the things you have grieved and did you go through the five stages of grief? If not, how did you get past it? I would love to hear from you about your experience.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life

Overcoming Feelings of Worthlessness

November 3, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

As we move along in the book, we come to the second topic, that of feelings of worthlessness. These first four topics are accountings of the difficult and challenging spaces in which I lived, prior to moving forward in my journey.

Corner of Worthlessness

I have learned, and feel quite certain, that it is necessary for me to acknowledge and feel those difficult emotions. It allows me to then grieve them, and to move forward in my heart. Such is the case with my feelings of worthlessness.

Many people do not feel this emotion, which always amazes me, for much of my life I felt worthless. I thought it was something everyone experienced. I believe it stemmed from the many messages I received that translated to my worthlessness, not being worth anything.

I say “stemmed” because I no longer feel worthless. But, as the verse that accompanies this photo says, I felt like “a heap of broken debris in the corner.”

How did I overcome those feelings? First, I got sober and began to feel my emotions acutely. That was very painful and difficult, but I stuck through it anyway, anxiously awaiting the day I would feel better.

Second, I thought about the messages I had received and from whom I had received them. Not to be judgmental, but I realized that that person was emotionally and spiritually sick themselves, and I asked to be shown the way to be useful to them. This led me to compassion, which then led to forgiveness.

So, I had to honestly consider all the ways in which I was told or shown that I was worthless, and objectively consider their truth. What I realized was, the messages were an assault to my Being, not true at all.

Even with that knowledge, however, I still had the feelings of worthlessness. Over and over again for quite a while, I told myself that what I’d been told were lies, not the truth, that they were the words of a sick individual.

For me, it took time and continual awareness of those feelings of worthlessness cropping up. With the awareness, came the consciousness of their falsehood, their slight against my Being. I reminded myself again and again that is not who I am, that worthless does not describe who I am.

I began to write in my journal about my worth, with my left, non-dominant hand, and all sorts of things poured forth in support of my worth. I kept reminding myself of these points when I slipped back into feelings of worthlessness.

Then, one day, I just stopped feeling worthless. I began to feel I was worth something, shyly at first, but worth something. That feeling has grown slowly and hesitantly over the past few months, until one day, I could say aloud, Carolyn, you are a person of great worth! What a freeing realization that has been for me!

So, I say to all of you who have feelings of worthlessness that you are actually a Being of great worth and value. You may not feel convinced, yet, over time, perhaps you can discover that it is so. If you’ve healed from feelings of worthlessness, what worked for you? Please share it so it can be useful to others.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Sober Living Tagged With: feelings of worthlessness, I feel worthless, worthless, worthlessness

Tips For Moving Through Fear

November 2, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yesterday, after describing how the book was created, I talked about the two year time period when I dealt with the fear of exposing myself and my deepest journaled thoughts to the world by publishing my book. It took slow and steady coaching by someone who has grown to be a dear friend. What follows today are the ways in which I moved through that fear.

When you present yourself to the world in whatever manner, it is not unusual to experience the fear of exposing yourself. Perhaps you are afraid of being judged, rejected, ridiculed, or belittled in some way. The reality is, one or all of these things may happen, especially judgment or rejection, and it is easier to handle them if you are prepared.

How do you move through that fear of letting others see who you are , knowing of the possible consequences? It is helpful to focus on loving and serving others, instead of focusing on the fear and possible consequences. Focus on the fact that what you have to share is valuable to others and that you are depriving them to live a full life by withholding your light.

I recently learned in a seminar that in the first three to five seconds, we are judged on eleven points. This is just human nature. To get through the fear of encountering these judgments, understand that the judging will occur. So might rejection. Accept this. Allow your desire to shine in the world be stronger than caring what others think of you. Focus on the tips I mentioned above.

Accept that what others may think of you may not be who you are at all, and find the courage to proceed past the point of fear. Focus instead on your message, on what you want to present to your world, and the use it will have for others. Concentrate on that as you take action, but take action. You may find that once you begin to move forward through the fear, it is not as bad as you thought, and you will likely gain strength to keep on moving.

In the case of being ridiculed or belittled, move away from those that would do this to you. You do not need to tolerate belittlement or ridicule. No one is deserving of that behavior from another. Move away, hold your head and heart high, and keep moving forward into your Being.

I am hopeful that you are able to get the courage to show the world who you are. If you have been having difficulty letting others see your Being, letting them see who you truly are, and you try any of these tactics, I’d love to hear how they worked for you.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: courage, fear, judgment, plan of action, rejection, ridicule, serving others

The Birth of a Book – Moving Through Fear

November 1, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yesterday, we finished with the topics in the book and today we are starting at the beginning of the book and going through each topic, one-by-one. We ended in joy, serenity, and peace, and it’s nice to know that that’s where we’re eventually headed.

Webs of Fear

The book begins with fear. Interestingly enough, it was the verse for the picture on the right that led me to realize I was writing a book. Up until that point, I had no idea I was creating one.

“Over here,” I was photographing these great wrought-iron gates, and “over there,” I was journaling every day to sort out my feelings and emotions, and to preserve my sobriety.

One day I wrote in my journal, “I have spent a lifetime spinning webs of terror and shame between the spires that stand as sentinels to my heart.”

I immediately stopped, flabbergasted, because I had just titled the image above “Webs of Fear,” in preparation for showing it in a gallery. These words I had just written gave voice to the photo far beyond the visual element.

Well, this prompted a search of all my journals and soon I had found prose that fit about 25 gate photographs. It was at this point that I realized I was creating a book. For the next six years, I gathered together the prose and photos, ending up with a book with 42 photos, prose, and titles. During that six years, I also spent time gaining the courage to present it to the world.

And that is the story of how the book was created. Tomorrow, I’d like to deal with the fear you experience when you step into your Being, when you step up for all the world to see you. This is what I experienced when I started to get my book published. It stopped the process for two years, as I dealt with and overcame that fear. I’ll relay some tips of how I was able to bring my book, and myself, out in the world.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: fear, fear of exposing yourself, joy, peace, serenity

Using the Power of Choice to Heal and Grow

October 29, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Celebration of Choices

Let’s move on in the book to the next topic… that of choice. The little man with a top hat on, to the left, is celebrating with his arm raised in the air, because he has discovered he has choices. His heart is full.

I can also celebrate the fact that I have choices, too, for I do, with everything I do, everything I feel. Up until about five years ago, I got angry when people said I could choose to be happy. I couldn’t. I needed to heal from my emotional wounds first.

The magical thing I learned is… I always have a choice, even then, when I wasn’t healed. Before I was healed, my choice was to take responsibility to heal. I was choosing not to do that, but I was doing the best that I could at that time.

Once I took action to heal from my wounds with such things as therapy and getting sober and sticking with it through the horrible emotional times, I began to heal and I began to be grateful for little things in my life. With that small amount of gratitude, it grew into more gratitude.

I realized I always had a choice when I began to learn to be grateful. Once I learned how to choose gratitude, I was able to choose to be happy, to see the bright side of my life. This does not negate my need to have mourned and grieved my life to that point; I needed to do that first.

But even that was a choice, as opposed to being stuck in the misery in which I was stuck. And I was really stuck – always blaming others for my sadness, my wounds. When I made the choice to become responsible for my healing and to stop blaming other people, places, and things, it all began to change, although I wasn’t aware of it yet. It was learning to be grateful that changed my perception of choice in my life, as I described above.

Being consciously aware that I have choice in every matter in my life was extremely powerful. It still is empowering. I use my choice to get out of bad situations and relationships. I use it to choose how to take care of myself, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I choose when to speak up for myself, and when to remain quiet. I consciously choose how to go about each day.

There are consequences for every choice I make and it is my choice to accept the consequences of each and every choice. Sometimes, they are negative, and I make another choice. That’s the thing about choice… I can always choose again.

Do you see that you, too, have choices in your life? Or are you stuck, staying in that dead-end relationship out of the fear of being alone? Or, continuing to drink when your life is hell because of it and you’re dying inside? Do you see you have a choice to heal? I hope you see the choices in your life, for knowing that you have choice brings great freedom and peace to your life. At least, it did to mine and I hope it does to yours.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being responsible for self, choice, choosing to heal

Absence of Moral Judgment

August 6, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Why do we judge people so harshly for being who they are, if their actions and behaviors feed their spirit and are not harmful to themselves or others? Is it because we are afraid of them and their differences, and/or is it because we’re not feeliing okay about ourselves?

As it turns out, I am grateful to have become an alcoholic, because I was forced to learn how to assess myself pretty honestly. I did not feel good about myself. Lots of assessment and healing later, I began to see how my negative thoughts about others were very morally judgmental, in response to my fear and esteem issues.

It was through the process of self-appraisal that, as I began to feel better about who I was and took responsibility for my thoughts, the less I handed out moral judgment, the less I denigrated their soul. So maybe the more we love ourselves, the less we judge others negatively.

Absence of Judgment

I notice a whole litany of judgments running through my mind at any given moment, always judging another, as well as myself. First, I see myself noticing things about people and then judging them as safe to be around.

That is inate in all of us. It part of the automatic fight or flight mechanism – to continually assess our situation so we keep ourselves safe. We just do this, it just happens. It’s unconscious much of the time.

Yet, for me, the judgment takes on a tone of morality, sometimes indignantly, because I’ve continued my assessment, which includes deciding whether someone is good or bad.

By having these thoughts about someone, do I not set up an energy that they can feel on a soul level and it denigrates them as a person? In sobriety, I decided I wanted to stop denigrating people in my mind.

Initially, it was a conscious thought to go to that place where I said to myself, “Isn’t that interesting what that person thinks or is doing?” and leave it at that.

***** This only applies, of course, when the person is not being harmful to himself or others. That’s a whole other discussion…

Now I more automatically notice when I am judging someone, and this allows me to stop doing it. I find myself really enjoying what that person has to offer.

I have experienced the most beautiful moments with people whom I used to judge as bad. What an awesome discovery that was, and continues to be, as a result of my attempts at learning to lessen and negate my moral judgment.

Wow. What a long way to peace that would go if, once assessing that we’re safe, we stopped with our moral judgment of others. Would it be a world filled with more happiness and the experience of more wondrous moments?

And if we stopped with the moral judgment of ourselves, would we each experience more happiness within, leading to our inner peace?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, Gate Lady, happiness, inner peace, judgment, low self-esteem, moral judgment, Opening the Gates of the Heart, peace, peace of mine, Sober Living, sobriety, world peace

Do Your Resentments Serve A Positive Purpose?

April 16, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 4 Comments

Guest Post By: Sherry Gaba, Recovery Coach & Author

Please welcome Sherry Gaba, who has written the dynamite book, The Law of Sobriety.

Revenge, negativity, hatred, scorn are just a few of the emotions that an individual can be carrying around with them without even being aware of the impact they have on their day-to-day lives. Every person on the planet has had experiences that are less than pleasant, some experiences that could even be described as horrific and traumatic. A question that you need to ask yourself is what are you doing with these emotions that you are carrying around like chronic baggage?

Have You Faced Your Resentments?

When facing your resentments, have you ever taken the time to evaluate the exact purpose those resentments have in your life? Are your resentments living in your head rent-free? This is a popular saying in the program and it makes a great deal of sense. Every human being is given 24 hours in each day, no more and no less. Time is the one resource that we cannot get more of. Are you investing emotional energy in things that will benefit you or are you investing emotional energy by carrying around negative resentments? When you take the time to evaluate your resentments you may see how your choices aided in the outcome of situations that resulted with resentments.

Take Responsibility

The Law of Sobriety tells us that we need to take responsibility for the choices that we made in the past and the choices we will make in the future. When examining specific resentments, maybe towards a past romantic partner, a parent, an old friend, you will see where choices you made create a level of accountability. This is not to say that horrific things that happened to you are your fault, but it does reinforce that you no longer need to live in the land of victim. There are tools that you can use to help examine specific resentments with the desire of moving past that negative emotion that doesn’t serve you.

A Tool For Healing

Journaling is a great way to document your journey of recovery and can be used to let go of resentments. In your journal write a letter to the individual that caused you to have resentment. In this letter write down how you experienced the situation, what you felt and how this experience affected you. Use as many specific and detailed descriptions as possible to paint a very clear picture. While writing this letter try to express your accountability for your actions during this experience. Close the letter with a sentiment of forgiveness, even if you don’t believe it at the time.

The act of writing this letter and reading it out loud if desired begins the process of letting that negative energy go, releasing it into the universe. Continue to read the letter over time and you will find that you begin to believe the words of forgiveness and it is at this point when the universe knows that you have finally released that negative resentment that was taking up space in your mind and in your heart. Remember that if you are experiencing emotions that are negative, these emotions don’t serve you in a positive way. If something doesn’t serve you in a positive manner, you must learn to release those negative emotions to make room for emotions that will serve you.

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Sherry Gaba, LCSW, is a Life and Recovery Coach on Celebrity Rehab on VH1 and author of The Law of Sobriety which uses the law of attraction to recover from any addictions. Sherry can be reached at sherry@sgabatherapy.com for coaching packages, therapy, teleseminars, workshops, or speaking engagements. www.thelawofsobriety.com or www.sgabatherapy.com.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: anger, journaling, Law of Sobriety, recovery, resentment, Sherry Gaba, Sober Living, sobriety, Take Responsibility, tool for healing

Doubt

January 21, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 9 Comments

Shadows of Doubt

“I circle and circle and circle around the stones of my heart, caged, unable to pass through to the place where my heart is bathed in light.”

This describes what goes on inside of myself when I am in doubt. For me, it takes the form of doubt of self and then doubt in a higher power. I am struggliing right now with both of these issues, so let’s look at them further.

When I take action and that action is continually met with a closed door, i.e., things do not work out smoothly and easily, I begin to doubt that I am on the right track. Then I lose confidence in myself and slip into discouragement, and, if bad enough, despair.

I am dealing with discouragement about why people do not seem interested in my book. Requests to have it reviewed and to get newspaper coverage have been met with silence. Bookstores seem disinterested. The danger is that I lose my enthusiasm to present the book to the public. That enthusiasm is momentarily displaced…

How does one deal with doubt? Perhaps talking with a higher power is helpful for some. When one questions that such a power exists, it makes it more difficult. That is the current case for me. So, what to do?

Personally, I keep taking action, baby steps, doing the things I can do to move the book along that do not require speaking with others, such as creating a power point presentation. I look at the things that are going right, like being scheduled for two reading/signing events out-of-state. I focus on my gratitude for those two events, and soon, my attitude is changed and I am able to approach others with enthusiasm.

This is how it works for me. How about you?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, despair, doubt, gratitude, Opening the Gates of the Heart

Surrender of Pretense

January 9, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 3 Comments

Surrender of Pretense

Giving up, letting go, surrendering. In the case of the book, I was referring in this verse to giving up the pretense that all is fine with me when, in fact, it is not. It is a reminder to come out from behind my gate of false bravado, letting others see the pitted and rusted metal that is me.

For me, surrender is a release that feels freeing. It is interesting that I am given a true life situation in which I find myself having to surrender my pretenses, because the situation is not ok with me. It causes pain. Do I tell the other person? Or, do I swallow the hurt and just keep going on?

That is what I did all my life and it is not how I choose to be today because it led to a life of deep resentment. So, I am looking for an appropriate way to convey my thoughts and feelings, without attacking or blaming or hurting back the other person. I am looking at the issue of whether or not it’s even appropriate to speak about my feelings to the person who is involved in this situation. I just know that the old way of stuffing feelings did not work.

The trick is to not come at the other person with anger, trying to hurt back. For me, it involves realizing what is behind my anger and, upon looking at it, I discover what I’m really feeling is hurt and disappointment. I need to be honest and relay my thoughts. Once I identify the source of my anger, then I can move forward and talk about what’s really going on for me.

I am afraid to do this. It is new behavior for me. I fear the other person’s reaction. Yet, it feels like the mature thing to do, versus being passively-aggressive. So, I will surrender the pretense and come out from behind my gate.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement Tagged With: anger, Carolyn CJ Jones, disappointment, hurt, Opening the Gates of the Heart, surrender of pretense

Despair – Have You Been There?

January 6, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 5 Comments

Face of Despair

Have you been there… to that place of utter defeat, utter uselessness, utter despair? Perhaps praying to die because you just cannot seem to get past this. That’s what I experienced when I was in deep despair… the feeling that nothing was worth it, there was no purpose to my life’s sufferings. There was no purpose to my life.

For me, this resolved when, out of the blue, I discovered my life’s purpose. It was an answer to my prayers. The old way of thinking about myself had to die to make room for the new revelation. It happened like this…

One day, I had the opportunity to speak with a man who was suffering emotionally, who was dealing with some of the same issues I had dealt with during the course of my sobriety. Specifically, it was childhood issues. I let him talk and then he asked if I had any words of wisdom to impart. I replied that all I could do was relay my experience. So I did, including the names of authors I had read that were helpful in my healing.

He was so grateful, he almost cried. As I walked to my car, I realized that my life’s sufferings had been useful to another, that had I not endured what I had, I wouldn’t have been able to help this man. Suddenly, my life had a purpose and I believed it was to share my story with others. Specifically, it was to share my book with the world, to tell the story of my journey, the story of the book’s journey.

From that day forward, I have not felt despair. I have felt enlivened, with a deep sense of purpose that involved helping others, being useful. That experience allowed me to get out of myself and display caring for my fellow human being. There is nothing quite like feeling you have helped another in need….

Have you felt despair and gotten past it? What was that like for you?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, defeat, despairing, life's purpose, living sober, Opening the Gates of the Heart, sobriety, uselessness

Sorrow

January 1, 2011 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Agony of Sorrow

Searing pain is how I describe sorrow in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.” Webster defines sorrow as the deep, often long-continued mental anguish over loss, disappointment, sadness, grief, or regret. My sorrow was over the loss of a deep love I thought was a mutual feeling. It was not.

At the same time I was mourning the loss of a deep relationship with this man, and my extreme sense of loss and disappointment, I was dealing with the loss of a decent and happy childhood, for I, like many of us, did not have one. The pain I felt was all-consuming, raw. I was in agony with sorrow.

Then, over time, and with changes to my heart and mind, it released its grips. I cannot even point to the one incident that led it to disperse. I do know that through it all, I kept sober. Even though there were many times I didn’t think continued sobriety was worth it, I stayed sober anyway and found on the other side of sorrow that sobriety was and is absolutely worth it. It was my continued sobriety which allowed me to reach inner peace from the chaos and pain I felt.

Now, I look at the experiences with the man, or my childhood stuff – and I become grateful for them. How in the world can I be grateful for that which caused me such pain, you may ask? Well, without those experiences, I would not be who I am today.

And I like the caring and compassionate qualities which I feel and which I allow others to see. I like the life lessons I learned from the experiences, the ability to look into myself that I gained during the healing process, the grieving process. The journey to this place is what my book is all about.

The biggest thing for me was to allow myself to feel those feelings of sorrow for as long as they existed. I took responsibility to move forward in my growth, while still allowing myself to feel that sorrow when it arose. It took me five years to get past the unrequited love and the feelings of sorrow associated with that. If you’re dealing with sorrow, are you allowing yourself the time and space to feel it? There is a saying… “The only way past it is to go through it.” My best to you if you’re going through it right now.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, grief, loss, loss grief, mental anguish, Opening the Gates of the Heart, Sorrow

Feeling Worthless

December 19, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 9 Comments

Corner of Worthlessness

Do you struggle with feeling worthless? Of no use or value to others, to yourself? Do you hold yourself in low esteem?

This was me for most of my life… feeling useless to others and of no value, a self-esteem that was non-existent. I felt like a heap of debris in the corner, in the shadows. When it reached its maximum, it manifested for me as listlessness, inability to raise my energy to move forward, to work on projects, to eat. Often, I went from feeling worthless to feeling despair… what’s the point in living? At this point, I prayed to die.

I have struggled for years in sobriety with the issue of feeling worthless. What has worked for me when these feelings arise is to hold myself in positive regard, to review all of the ways in which I have been useful to others. Sometimes, I have to purposefully focus on my assets. I have needed help from friends and a therapist to do this, as well as the use of medication to treat my diagnosed major depression.

It took me a long time to be willing to take medication. That helped when I did. But the real thing which has helped in my feelings of worthlessness has been to help others when I am feeling this way. After I have helped someone, I feel more self-value, more self-esteem and I begin to feel like I am worth something.

We are all worthy as human beings, simply because we are here. If you are feeling worthless, there is help available. It might be beneficial to list out the ways in which you are good, things about yourself that you like. If you can find nothing, talk to someone and get their positive feedback about you. Second, there is help from a friend or therapist. Third, there is prayer to whatever or whomever you turn in times of need.

Whatever way you choose to get help, I applaud your efforts and wish you well. Remember, you are worthy simply because you are here.

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The holidays are upon us and I want you to be aware that I am offering a holiday special on my book. Currently, through Jan 2nd, it is $25.00, including shipping and tax for California residents. Order from the website or call 415-883-8325 to order directly.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, esteem, feeling unworthy, feeling useless, feeling worthless, living sober, Opening the Gates of the Heart, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How To Overcome Fear – Conclusion

December 15, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Now it is time for amends… to myself and others. In this case, it’s not appropriate to tell others of the ways in which I may have harmed them – that would be more harmful. So, I make a living amends… I stop placing them in the role of rejecting me, judging me as less than. When those thoughts arise, I ask for them to be removed, I recognize them as harmful to another.

As far as with myself, I first apologize, and hold myself in compassion for having these thoughts. I remind myself I am a child of the Universe, equal to everyone else, with unique gifts to share with the world, just as all of us have unique gifts to share. I do a living amends by recognizing when these thoughts arise and asking that they be removed. I soothe myself.

Then I find the courage to go about doing what is right in front of me to do, in this case, it would be to send one email to one editor. I find the courage to do this through prayer. Low-and-behold, courage comes and I was able to send an email to all of the seven editors on my list. I was in the frame of mind that I was “equal to,” not “less then.”

The process of looking for my fears, and the harm to myself or others because of my fear, continues every day and I make amends when I identify the need. I continue with my spiritual practice. Then I find someone to whom I can offer help, perhaps someone who is in fear themselves, and I help if I can by sharing my story.

This is how I overcome fear. Do you have methods that work for you, or are you so consumed by it, that you are paralyzed?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, fear, living sober, making amends, Opening the Gates of the Heart, overcome fear, Sober Living

How To Overcome Fear – Continued

December 14, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

To continue with the previous post, we are at the point of taking action. I perform a self-appraisal, identifying the fear in my life, looking at how I react to it, at its origin. I talk over with a trusted friend or clergy, etc., what I have found on my self-inventory. Then, I become willing to have the Universe remove my fears, and I humbly ask for this.

At this point, I list out those who I have harmed by my reactions to fear. I may appear on this list, in addition to others, if for no other reason than because I most likely betrayed my soul in some way.

Here, let’s take an example. I am currently struggling with the fear of approaching radio and TV show hosts to try and get interviews so I can pass the word about my book. I am afraid to do this because I might stutter or not be able to articulate my thoughts and make a fool out of myself, or they may say no. Ah, rejection. I am afraid of rejection because I feel “less than,” not good enough. Ah, the heart of it.

On my list of how I’ve harmed myself or others because of these things, I may put that I am judging myself, being self-critical, that I am being dishonest with myself because I am equal to everyone else. I am being untrusting of the Universe to bring me what I need.

As far as how this harms others… I am depriving them of learning about the book, I am judging them as having a closed mind, so that’s character assassination, perhaps.

These are just a few examples of things to put on my harms list. Join me tomorrow as I talk about what to do with this list.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, living sober, Opening the Gates of the Heart, self-appraisal, self-inventory, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Overcome Fear

December 12, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 4 Comments

Webs of Fear

FEAR. Bleep Everything and Run. I was one of those that ran from my fear. I didn’t even realize how scared I was of everything and everybody. It consumed me… It controlled every action I took. Sometimes, I had the courage to walk through my fears, mostly for renovation projects I did, or traveling alone around the Western States and Baja in my van.

But what about finding the courage to let others into my world, to let them see who I really am? That has been more difficult. I’m talking about finding the courage to get past my fears that I will do or say something to make you mad at me, and the big one… that you won’t like me. This fear still continues today, although it has lessened a great deal.

So, how to overcome this fear? FEAR. Face Everything And Recover. What does this mean? It means I first develop awareness of my fears, I identify them. I admit I am powerless over them and decide to quit trying to manage them. I turn them over to the Universe for assistance. Then, I take action.

What does that action look like? Join me on Tuesday for more discussion about how to overcome fear….

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If you’re new to my blog, let me tell you that we are going through my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing, one topic at a time, as they appear in the book. If you like what you read here, you’ll most likely enjoy the experience of reading it.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, fear, living sober, Opening the Gates of the Heart, oversome fear, Sober Living

Happiness Is A Choice – Part 2

November 21, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I missed the tomorrow to which I referred in my last post, and now it is today. A good day for explanation.

I wonder if we, after experiencing any situation in which we are the object of abuse or trauma, are relagated to playing the victim for our lifetime. It has been my experience that that is not necessary. What I have found as necessary is taking responsibility for my inner world and that means looking at it -learning about the affects trauma xyz victims experience, and trying to find ways to heal from it all.

What was necessary for me was to heal the wounds of hurt, betrayal, and anger from the original trauma. This was quite difficult to feel, but it became very necessary as part of my becoming sober. I did a lot of reading – Claudia Black was best for me: there’s also John Bradshaw, Alice Miller.

From these people were suggestions about how to recover. I followed their suggestions, continued with my sobriety, and sought counseling. I wrote voraciously about my feelings. It was still all blaming until I looked at how I had treated my ex-husband. Now there’s where I saw that I was repeating behaviors I had endured earlier in life. I was doing the very thing that had been done to me.

Ah, a golden nugget of information. With that information came the realization that I said those things because I felt horrible about myself; perhaps the perpetrators years ago had felt badly about themselves, also. It didn’t excuse the behavior and actions, yet it allowed me to have compassion for them, for us both. From that compassion sprang forgiveness, given more time.

After forgiveness, came the ability to be happy and peaceful within. That has led to great joy for me. And the key was for me to take responsibility for my interior world.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Joyous emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Alice Miller, Carolyn CJ Jones, Claudia Black, forgiveness, Gate Lady, John Bradshaw, joy, Opening the Gates of the Heart, peace, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Deal With Self-Doubt

July 8, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 1 Comment

Shadows of Doubt

I am mired again in the shadows of my dount, my fear.

I circle and circle and circle around the stones of my heart, caged, unable to pass through to the place where my heart is bathed in light.

When we doubt ourselves, our actions, and our beliefs about who we are, we erode our self-esteem, our self-confidence, and our very soul. If we know that doubting ourselves leads to these things, why do we do it?

Perhaps it is a reflection, an indicator, of our state of self-worth, our value to self and to the world. With low esteem and confidence levels, we are not stable enough, not strong enough, in who we are to ward off self-doubt. It erodes our very being even further. We question everything we do, perhaps always looking to others for validation rather than to ourselves, or to a power greater than ourselves.

How do we conquer this, this insidious doubt? Perhaps it begins with a self-appraisal in which we identity the ways in which we doubt ourselves. If we can identify that, we then have a change to correct or change it. In doing the self-searching, it is necessary to be really honest with ourselves, to admit that the way we fell about ourselves is not honest. For if we were honest, we would see that we are delightful beings, fine just the way we are. We are enough as we are.

If, however, we see that we are doubting ourselves inappropriately, we can make the choice to change our beliefs. How do we do this? By recognizing and admitting each time we doubt, and examining if it is true. When we admit the doubt is false, then we consciously make the choice to change that doubt into a positive statement or affirmation about ourselves. Over time, with diligence, we begin to see our doubts diminish and our esteem and confidence rise. We begin to accept ourselves as we are, making changes when we feel it’s necessary. In this process, it is important to be kind, gentle, and compassionate with ourselves.

How do you deal with doubt when it arises? Do you see this method as being useful?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement Tagged With: acceptance, Carolyn CJ Jones, compassion, doubt, Gentleness, kindness, Opening the Gates of the Heart, self esteem, self-confidence

What To Do In The Face of Despair

June 22, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 6 Comments

Face of Despair

Can anyone hear my wail? Can I hear myself?

The utter hopelessness about everything in one’s life. To be without hope that an expected result will occur. Not even seeing a glimmer… To be despondent. It is an awful feeling, that of despair, one which blocks the sunlight of Spirit.

How does one get there to begin with? Perhaps, there are underlying feelings of worthlessness, shame. One cannot see any point in living; death seems preferable to continuing. That’s the type of despair I’m talking about.

What do you do in the face of despair? How can you deal with it? Recognizing it is the first step. Then, as difficult as it is, allow yourself to feel that emotion, to be with it. Drinking over it numbs the pain and delays the inevitable – that of looking at what is behind it. Is it a low self-worth? Have you been shamed in your life and, thus, feel lots of shame?

Counseling to assist with feelings of despair can be very useful, if one has a counselor familiar with these emotions and how to deal with them. Talking to a trusted friend, relative, or clergyman could be quite beneficial, as long as they are not the type to give advice and try to “fix” you. A person in despair doesn’t need fixing. They need a way to heal from the issues that brought up the despair in the first place. That is why trying to identify what has led to the despair is important.

Perhaps there is underlying depression or other brain chemistry issues that need to be treated medically, with medication. Again, a reputable and savvy therapist can refer to a physician for evaluation.

Many times, one deals with these feelings by drinking, numbing them. This only delays inner work that must be done. In sobriety, one will find the courage to look at these feelings. Shopping and over-eating are also distractions and an avoidance of looking at the despair, and although a welcomed relief, these are simply other avoidance tactics. Distract yourself and then come back to look at the feeling.

If one does a self-inventory or appraisal, one may discover what is beneath the despair. Looking inside for the clues can be very fruitful. Once underlying issues are identified, one can turn to Spirit and ask for help with these beliefs about one’s self, one’s conditions, and/or talk to a therapist, trusted friend or clergyman.

Finding one thing in your life for which you can be grateful is another step you can take. This is extremely difficult, but when done, allows you to focus on something positive. Then, it becomes easier to find others things for which to be grateful. This attitude helps dispel the despair.

But the key lies in willingness to look at the feeling and the feelings and beliefs behind the despair. To honestly look at oneself and be with what one finds… that is the beginning of what to do in the face of despair.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn Jones, carolyncjjones, courage, despair, gratitude, honestty, shame, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, worthless, worthlessness

Ways to Deal With Sorrow and Grief

June 17, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 4 Comments

Agony of Sorrow

I am consumed by the searing flame of my grief, my sorrow. It is too painful to contemplate. I cannot allow myself to feel.

Have you ever experienced sorrow so immense, it feels like you’re burning up inside? It starts as an aching that progresses so quickly to create a huge hole in your heart, your soul. And it’s a pain so intense, you can’t even look at it. To do so leaves you breathless.

Distraction of any sort does not even bring relief, but we engage anyway. Shopping, eating, drinking, gambling… Where does it lead? Often to destruction of self and others. Avoidance delays the beginning of the healing process, and yet it is often the only response able before one can confront the sorrow.

Recognizing and dealing with the distraction in which we are engaging, especially with drinking by getting sober, can assist in one’s ability to begin facing the pain, grief, and sorrow.

Sorrow is an intense anguish, often in response to loss or disappointment. It is closely related to grieving. If we choose to look at that sorrow, we can recognize the grieving process and allow it to occur. This begins the process of dispelling sorrow.

Often, talking to others about our sorrow is helpful, and allows the cleansing and grieving process to begin. Eventually, we are able to come back to center and to regain peace-of-mind.

In response to understanding more about the need for assistance to work through sorrow, support bereavement groups are forming, in addition to those offered by a local Hospice organization. Support allows us to realize we are not alone. It gives us courage to face the pain, knowing that by sharing, it will help with that searing feeling, allowing us to regain our equilibrium.

Hello, and welcome to my blog. As a newcomer or even someone returning, I want to clarify what I am doing on the blog. I am talking about each topic of my book, as it appears. Together, the topics portray my healing journey, from great fear and worthlessness, to joy and peace. Thank you for joining the journey. We are currently at the beginning of the book, talking about difficult emotions.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: anguish, Carolyn Jones, carolyncjjones, grief, grieving, Hospice, living sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Manage Feeling Worthless

June 10, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 8 Comments

Corner of Worthlessness

I try and try to climb to the light of my being, yet, I cannot scale the wall of my worthlessness. So I collapse, again, in the shadows…

a heap of broken debris in the corner.

Feeling worthless. One of low self-esteem, loss of self-respect. The feeling that no one appreciates your efforts, that you do not matter to anyone, or to very few. Nothing you do is good enough, so why bother? Just writing about it brings an energy-draining feeling.

From there, feeling worthless often leads to self-pity, which can generate shame for having those feelings. Many numb these feelings with the use of drugs, alcohol, shopping, eating… In the most drastic cases, these feelings lead to suicidal thoughts and, sometimes, actions.

Where does it originate? Some say it stems from the early, formative years, if one repeatedly hears they are defective, not good enough. Yet, one can develop feelings of worthlessness if in a bad relationship, for example, where one endures continual put-downs, degradations. The words heard become adopted as our own and we continue to degrade ourselves; we don’t need others.

How would one manage feeling worthless? It is said that doing esteem-able acts is a way to increase one’s self-esteem, and thus, decrease or resolve those feelings. One might also discover their calling, whereby their actions are geared toward fulfilling an identified purpose. Often, one’s purpose is useful to others, which raises one’s self-esteem and self-respect.

Counseling of some sort to resolve those underlying feelings can be very useful and yield a positive self-esteem and self-confidence, thus, minimizing feelings of worthlessness.

Doing an honest inventory of yourself and your skills can lead to the realization that what was told to you was not true, that you do have many assets and many positive attributes.

Feeling worthless is so damaging to our spirit. It leads us to dangerous places in our mind and heart. The degrading things we were told or that we tell ourselves is not who we are. We are all delightful beings, each with specific skills and strengths. Learn those about yourself. Above all, be gentle with yourself as you heal.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement Tagged With: being honest, Carolyn CJ Jones, carolyncjjones, hopeless, self esteem, self-inventory, self-pity, self-respect, shame, worthless

Understanding Fear

June 5, 2010 by Carolyn CJ Jones 6 Comments

Webs of Fear

“I have spent a lifetime spinning webs of terror and shame between the spires that stand as sentinels to my heart.”

Fear. That emotion, that sense which warns us of danger, keeps us alert and in a fight or flight mode, when necessary. But fear can also be detrimental, can hold us back when moving ahead is in our best interest. In these situations, courage can be difficult to call forth, but it can be summoned to walk past the fear one is experiencing.

Fear can be paralyzing, keeping us from moving forward, from reaching our dreams, or even taking the first steps to reach our dream. Fear appears as concern that we will not be liked, that we are not good enough, that what we are doing is wrong. These fears often stem from low feeling of self-worth and feelings of being “less than.” As we strengthen our feelings of esteem and worthiness, these fears lessen.

False Evidence Appearing Real. Often, it is the anticipation of an upcoming event which takes us to fear. We imagine every negative thing that could occur, until soon, we have taken ourselves to great fear, sometimes to feelings of of impending doom. In these situations, we would do well to stop ourselves from imagining how an event will turn out and instead, open ourselves to the possibilities that can occur. This requires an attitude of openness, of willingness to see things in a new light, without anticipation. It requires that one be open to any outcome. One would do well to look within, rather than without, at that up-coming event, to locate any sources of unrest, of fear.

Understanding fear when it arises is useful, so one can choose how to handle it… Is it false evidence appearing real, or a truly dangerous situation? If we identify it is related to a low self-esteem, we can work on our beliefs and feelings about ourselves. If it arises out of the desire to follow a dream, one can summon courage and take the action anyway. Once we do this a few times, fear begins to recede. It becomes easier to call upon courage and to walk through the fear that arises.

To all of you new to my blog, allow me to acquaint you. We are blogging through my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing, topic by topic as they appear in the book. We are starting over today; we are at the beginning of the book. Join me as we travel the path from fear to hope to peace. Is that what you look for in your life? Peace?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, Carolyn Jones, carolyncjjones, despair, hope, peace, shame, worthlessness

Shadows of Doubt – The Plague of Self Doubt

December 14, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 3 Comments

doubt72

Isn’t it interesting that, on the verge of writing the portion of Shadows of Doubt on self-doubt, I am struck with a major case of self-doubt?! It occurs to me that this is a perfect opportunity to describe what the process looks like for me, for self-doubt is something I continue to deal with, even after some time as a sober person.

A friend wrote his thoughts about doubt. I compared myself to him… my words to his words, my thoughts to his thoughts, and judged mine as less than his. I became paralyzed to write the blog. My confidence slipped, which led to a lowered self-esteem. Then, I doubted myself even more, and the spiral continued.

While in the throes of musing about my words for the blog, I came to a realization. I realized that while I bemoan the fact that I compare myself to others because my father always did that to me, I don’t need him any more. I compare myself quite nicely, thank you, without his help. So, the one more appropriate to bemoan is myself.

I have learned to realize that I am powerless over the ability to stop comparing and judging myself, that only God can restore me to sanity. I make the conscious decision to let God help me. Then, I am asked to look at what is behind my habit of comparing myself. Is it fear that I am not good enough? Probably some of that, a lot of that, perhaps.

So I talk with someone about my feelings, my realization. Then I need to become willing to have God remove that habit of comparing myself to others, which involves becoming humble. Once humble, I can ask God to remove my compulsion of comparing myself. I realize I have hurt myself by doing this and I apologize to any I have hurt, including myself, and try to change my behavior.

Changing my behavior involves spot checking myself during the day to identify those times when the compulsion to compare myself crops up and I ask God to remove it at once. Over time, if I do this, God may remove this character flaw. But He removes things in His own time and it may not go away right away if, by sharing about my struggle, it may be of use to others.

Then, I continue to build my relationship with God, and I go help another. And this is how I have learned to live my life… with everything. It gets tiring at times. Yet, there are rewards to this process that are indescribable. And, I have had many compulsions lifted.

I came to the realization last night that my friend and I are writing about two different things. He is writing more generally about the topic, where it takes you, etc., while I am writing because I am telling the story of my book, which is my story. To compare is to compare apples and oranges. Suddenly, I feel free, and able to write my own darn blog!

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn Jones, Carolyn Jones Photographs, carolyncjjones, doubt, gates, gates of the heart, getting sober, living sober, self doubt, Sober Living, sobriety

Shadows of Doubt

December 9, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 3 Comments

doubt72

“I am mired again in the shadows of my doubt, my fear. I circle and circle and circle around the stones of my heart, caged, unable to pass through to the place where my heart is bathed in light.”

Such is the prose that accompanies this image, Shadows of Doubt, in the book. Interestingly, I wrote this prose in my journal several months before I selected and titled this image for my series, Gates of the Heart. The prose was not written specifically for this image. Yet, they fit together beautifully. That happened for most of the prose in the book… my journal writings coupled naturally with the images.

When I wrote this in my journal, I was riddled with doubt. I knew that “light” existed “out there;” I had heard others speak of it. But I could not get to it. I was running in circles in my mind, specifically, doubting the existence of a higher power… God, or whatever you choose to call that force. And, I was doubting myself… my abilities, who I was and especially my worthiness.

I could not seem to trust God, I kept having my doubts that He existed, because I didn’t feel as though He was helping me. This doubt led to mistrust. I would go only so far in trusting God, and then I felt I had to take over, had to watch my back. This became a problem for me, Because to maintain my sobriety,I needed His assistance.

Then I met a woman who suggested to me that I start noticing every time something happened that was for my own good, whether an event/experience or in my inner world. “Watch how it is better than anything you had planned,” she further said. So I started watching and acutely paying attention to the things happening in my life.

Sure enough, I soon began to see that things were happening in my life. Things like, feeling better about who I was, developing better relations with others, events occurring and people appearing to further the publishing of my book, for example. I concluded that God is and was working on my behalf, always providing me with opportunities to learn lessons, or to learn about myself and others.

My doubts about a higher power have waned, but as far as doubt about myself? That is an area that needs continual watchfulness and awareness. This is a topic all its own and I will deal with it in the next post.

Thank you for visiting and joining our journey through the book. Until the next time, what do you doubt? What has that been like for you? How do you overcome doubt?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn Jones, Carolyn Jones Photographs, doubt, gates, insecurity, living sober, sobriety, trust

Face of Despair – Five Ways To Dispel It

November 1, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 4 Comments

“Can anyone hear my wail? Can I hear myself?”

This is the prose that accompanies the image Face of Despair in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart. Welcome, as we journey through the book. You may like to discover the magic of the book by reading about its birth.

“To be without hope, to lose or give up hope,” is how Webster defines despair. I found this to be true every time I came to despair. I did not come willingly…

For me, despair was like falling off a cliff. It was a hard and difficult landing. I’d be walking along, functioning well and bam! I’d walk right off into the morass of despair – total and utter hopelessness. I was convinced I no longer wanted to live and prayed for my life to end because I could not stand it any longer. I became suicidal a couple of times. I became unable to function, listless. All I could while there was wail, literally.

Each and every time I went there and then recovered, I was bewildered about how I got there in the first place, about how suddenly it occurred, about how I just fell off the cliff.

What was my despair trying to tell me? I thought it was that life was worthless, that I was worthless. There was no use in continuing. Liquor intensified these feelings; once sober, I no longer had my numbing agent and so felt this emotion acutely. It was agonizing. Little did I know when it started just how rocky my journey would become before it got better.

I have not fallen into despair for almost two years now. I believe there are five reasons for that.

First and, perhaps, most importantly, a medication was prescribed in addition to my anti-depressive. This has had a major impact on my ability to stay free from despair.
I had a revelation. One day, I helped a man immensely, just by telling my story. I realized in a flash that perhaps my experiences in life and how I’ve dealt with them could be of use to another. So, I tell my story.
I took certain steps and did a lot of work on my issues of worthlessness.
I continued therapy to help me identify my feelings so I could learn how to think differently about myself.
I read a lot of self-help books about my issues, such as low self-worth.

These five things have made a huge impact on my despair. Today, I do not experience it. I find life beautiful and very worthwhile to be living. I look forward to each day, wondering what the day will hold in the way of experiences as my journey continues. It is a peaceful and joyful place to be and I am so very grateful for that.

Do you struggle with despair? How have you dealt with it?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: Carolyn Jones, Carolyn Jones Photographs, carolyncjjones, despair, Gate Lady, hopelessness, living sober, self-help, Sober Living, sobriety, worthless

Agony of Sorrow

October 28, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 1 Comment

As you may have read, I am walking you through my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart. Reading about the birth of the book may be helpful to gain an understanding of the book’s magic.

To be totally honest with you, I wanted to skip this topic; it has been difficult to write. Yet, it is one of the emotions described in the book, so here we go.

Sorrow is an emotion you might feel in response to regret or remorse of actions, grief from loss, or disappointment. It may be sorrow over the cruel treatment of beings.

Whatever leads one to sorrow, what I am referring to that I experienced was intense mental agony, anguish – a searing, burning feeling. It was something I didn’t want to feel because it was so painful.

While still drinking, the alcohol worked to numb my feelings for a bit. But after a point, it fueled my sorrow. In sobriety, I started to feel my feelings without numbing them and sorrow became a major part of my recovery until I was about five years sober. I spent a great deal of time obsessing about my losses… mostly of relationships, but also of things I missed out on that could never be, and of great disappointments. I didn’t know how to handle any of these things.

When entrenched in my obsessing, my self-doubt increased dramatically. This led me to great remorse of things I had said or done. The net result was sorrow and the obsessing spiraled out of control. As a result of my self-doubt and remorse, soon my confidence was shaken and my self-esteem was in the toilet. I was unable to pass through the stages of grief.

In the best case scenario, sorrow runs its course and the stages of grief are experienced. A person is able to put closure on the issue which led to sorrow in the first place. As my friend Geoff puts it, “We cry. We mourn. We turn a new page. We start a new chapter. We reinvent ourselves. We replace loss with closure. We move on. We have an epiphany.” We heal and can see the good gained from a situation or relationship.

That is what eventually happened to me. In recovery, I slowly healed my wounds because I allowed myself first, to feel my sorrow and second, to grieve. I got counseling to help me with all of this, to help with my low self-esteem and self-worth. I have not felt sorrow for about two years now. Certainly, I still feel great sadness, disappointment and discouragement, but they do not develop into sorrow.

Have you experienced sorrow? What was it like for you? How did you resolve it?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: gates, sobriety, Sorrow

Feeling Worthless – 4 Steps to Moving On

October 22, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 3 Comments

I was going to move on from the topic of feeling worthless, and then got an email comment from a friend. He raised a valid point, which I would like to share with you.

First, however, I’d like to explain to those of you who are new to my blog what I am doing. I am walking through my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart, topic by topic, as each appears in the book. There are forty-two topics or titles for the images. All together, they tell a story - that of my personal journey through the gates of despair to joy and peace.

Each title/topic deals with a common human emotion, a principle of living or a way to treat others and myself.

I have preceded the title/topic discussions with six posts about how the book was birthed. It’s quite an amazing story and will lend new awareness to the story as it unfolds.

The point which was brought to my attention was that the gate, Corner of Worthlessness, is down the street from the Gate of Denied Approval. He went on to say that when we did not receive approval or unconditional love, it is difficult to dispel those feelings of worthlessness which arise from that lack.

Even though some of us, as adults, have wrestled with those feelings, and resolved them, they tend to arise occasionally to haunt us. He felt I seemed to have licked this problem. And, to a large degree, I have.

I used to have huge self-worth problems, however, which is why it appears in my book as one of my emotions. Some days, I slide into that morass. Usually these days, though, I don’t feel worthless. How is that, you may ask? I went through a process whereby:

I first identify that I am feeling worthless. (It has taken years to learn that that is what I am feeling…)
I talk to someone about these feelings; I let them out instead of bottling them up.
I ask the Powers That Be, the Universe, to take these feelings from me.
And, I remain willing for this to happen.

These days, that happens; I am freed from the feelings of low self-worth. It took a long time for this to happen, however, as first my esteem had to strengthen, as did my confidence. Perhaps it happened like that so my continued feelings could be of use to someone else. I don’t know.

So, on to the next topic with the next post. Meanwhile, you can view the photos in Opening the Gates of the Heart here.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions Tagged With: Carolyn Jones, carolyncjjones, despair, esteem, feeling worthless, Gate Lady, gates of the heart. esteem, hopelessness, worthless, worthlessness

Feeling Worthless? Pass That Corner Of Worthlessness

October 20, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 7 Comments

Have you had times in your life when you felt worthless? No? Then you are lucky, as many people feel this at least once in their lives. I did, and here is my experience of it.

“I try and try to climb up to the light of my being, yet, I cannot scale the wall of my worthlessness. So, I collapse, again, in the shadows… a heap of broken debris in the corner.”

This is the quote from my book Opening the Gates of the Heart. When I wrote this in my journal, I was at the height of my feelings of worthlessness. (Remember, I described in the Birth of the Book portion of this blog how I wrote the prose in my journal before I took this picture, “Corner of Worthlessness”.)

I felt hopeless and was depressed. I felt there was absolutely nothing redeeming about me… no good qualities. I felt like everything I did was wrong somehow, that I was a failure in every thing I tried. I was a mess emotionally.

How did I go from those feelings to rarely feeling worthless today? First of all, I had quit drinking, as this only further depressed me. Second, I sought out a private therapist who was well-versed in the areas with which I needed to heal and started seeing her.

Third, I listened to a friend, who suggested I get medical attention for my depression. To do this, I got a referral from my primary care physician and went to the local mental health center. I saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with major depression and who prescribed medication.

I allowed myself to take the medication the doctor prescribed and quickly noticed an effect from it. When I say I “allowed myself”, I mean that I allowed myself to believe it wasn’t “weak” to take medication, allowed myself to realize that the medication just brought me to a level playing field – to a starting place where non-depressed people were. I allowed myself to see depression as a disease in which my brain chemistry was not normal and which was in need of medication.

Over time, the therapy and medication regime have worked for me. I have been able to build my esteem and confidence and, thus, my feelings of worth.

Currently, I strive to see every person as worthy of respect and love, including myself, and this, in combination with my counseling and medication, has helped me to walk past the corner and through the gate of my worthlessness.

Are you feeling worthless? Can you walk through your gate of worthlessness? Do you need help to do this? Please, reach out. There is help.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: worthless, worthlessness

Overcome Fear – Walk Through That Gate

October 17, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

How did I overcome my all-consuming fear, my terror? I haven’t totally, but I have learned how to deal with it, how to walk through it.

I was many years sober before I realized how fearful and terrified I was of so many things. For me, it usually boils down to being afraid that I will do something wrong and will get in trouble, that I will not be liked, that I am not good enough or that others will get angry at me. These fears continue to drive me.

They are getting less and less as I become more and more aware of them. I put my attention toward these fears and talk my way through them. I pray to a higher power, the Universe, God – whomever you choose to call that Supreme Power which guides you in life.

I ask that my fears be removed, and often, they are. Sometimes, they only lessen, and I am given the courage to walk through the gate of my fear, whatever it may be.

I frequently recognize I am afraid to do something, and I purposely take action to walk through that fear. With practice and repeated walking through a fear, I find it melts away or becomes less and less.

How Fear Shows Up In My Life

My fear manifests itself as anger, hurt, defensiveness. When I recognize these emotions, I ask myself what is behind them. Usually, it is fear. Again, I pray for its removal and the strength to walk through the fear. Having been given the courage, I walk through that gate, again and again.

Fear is a normal human emotion and I do not think one is weak if one has fear. In fact, perhaps by acknowledging fear, one shows great strength and courage.

Personally, I have to determine when fear is False Evidence Appearing Real, and then go through the steps I have described. It is a method that works for me when I remember to use it.

Such are my thoughts on fear and it is time to move to the next image in the book. To begin at the beginning so you can discover the magic of the gates, scroll back. I would link it, but a link will only take you to one post…

How do you walk through the gates of your fear? What are your fears? How have you overcome fear?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Sober Living Tagged With: fear, gate, overcome fear

More Webs of Fear

October 12, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 4 Comments

Today, with More Webs of Fear, I would like to talk about a saying I saw recently. It was ” fear is the parent of cruelty”. If I think back on the times when I was cruel to others, not intentionally perhaps, I was, in fact, fearful… afraid… scared. Is this the case for others?

Are those who inflict cruelty on others afraid? If that’s the case, can I relate to their fear and have compassion for them, thus freeing me from my anger and resentment toward the one who has inflicted the cruelty, whether that be myself or another?

How empowering it is to see with the eyes of compassion! It is very freeing. That does not excuse the cruelty; it just lets one see the other in a different light. It allows one to act rationally, rather than to react with anger, which is never productive. It allows for forgiveness, over time.

Again, I do not condone cruelty from one human being to another. My heart bleeds when I hear someone being cruel to another, and especially a parent to a child.

But being able to see the perpetrator as perhaps a fearful person has somehow allowed me to see that person differently. It gives me some basis of understanding for their behavior. I do not see them as harshly as I once did, which, as I said before, has been empowering for me.

It has led me to forgiveness and that has led to more peace of mind. It has led to my willingness to get involved more, to talk about fear as I have experienced it, and to talk about the ways out that I have witnessed or experienced.

You ask what makes me an expert on fear? Only from my experiences am I an expert; only in relaying those experiences am I an expert.

You must become an expert of your own fear. We all have it. It is a normal human emotion. It is advanced more in some then in others.

Where does your fear take you? How do you treat others when you are afraid? Are you angry with them, abusive in some way, nasty, shy, quiet? Are you tangled in your own webs of fear?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions Tagged With: fear, more webs of fear

Webs of Fear

October 7, 2009 by Carolyn CJ Jones 4 Comments

Hello and welcome. Today I begin to walk through the book with you, sharing on each of the forty two topics and sometimes the prose. The topic will be the title of each image.

I invite you to join me as we move through my journey from despair to joy and peace. I invite you also to scroll back and read the tale about how the book was birthed. It is an awesome story.

“I have spent a lifetime spinning webs of terror and shame between the spires that stand as sentinels to my heart.” Webs of Fear, our first gate… Weaving webs was the only way I knew; breaking them down has been more difficult. It has involved, for me, the awareness of my fear and then walking through it with courage and faith. I do it even though I am still frightened.

There are so many forms of fear: justified fear, as when in a dangerous or unsafe situation, such as an armed robbery, fear for another’s safety and welfare, and self-absorbed fear, on which I’d like to focus.

For me, self-absorbed fear occurs when everything I fear relates to me somehow, that I will lose something I have or not get something I want. It is very “self” centered. It can be a nagging fear or full blown, so much so that I am unable to function, to move forward, to take action and I procrastinate.

What others call procrastination, I recognize as fear, although I have to remind myself of this when I procrastinate. When I am so fearful of doing something and the result is procrastination, I must really examine what the fear is that is holding me back.

Frequently, I find a lack of confidence because my self- esteem is low and under that is the belief that I am not good enough. Old stories, these are…

I do not find it helpful, as some do, to call myself lazy. That only reinforces my negative beliefs about myself. To raise my esteem, I nurture myself, pay attention to the fact that I am scared and then do something nice for myself and someone else.

Today I wandered through the topic of procrastination. Next time, more about fear and how it manifests, for me.

What are the webs that you weave? What is it about them that paralyzes you with fear?

Filed Under: Difficult emotions Tagged With: Carolyn Jones, carolyncjjones, despair, fear, Gate Lady, peace, self-absorbed fear

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