ACA Red Book Twelve Steps

“In the adult there lurks a child–an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and that calls for increasing care, attention, and education. This is the part of the human personality that wishes to develop and become whole.”
Carl Jung

Healing begins when, in spite of all the negative self-talk going on inside a person, that person feels someone caring and loving them for no apparent reason. This unconditional love comes in spite of attempts by the loved one to find a motive in the lover. Unconditional love means no judgment so no motive is found other than that the loved is indeed lovable. This love changes a person forever.

If you can help someone get in touch with the creativity inside them, you have helped a person discover the beautiful self he/she is inside. Our joy lives in our creativity which is the joyful, playful child inside. The self-esteem school of helping people requires living in the head. Getting in touch with creativity requires living in the heart.

When You Find the Buddha in the Middle of the Road–Kill Him is the wise title of a good book by Sidney Kopp. No one knows what is better for anyone but that person. We each have our own answers. Even those trained in counseling techniques can only see what is revealed. Tendencies may be seen and certainly personality indicators will be there. But the work of change is a person’s individual choice.

Should You Be in Therapy?

kberman — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:26:15 +0000

From Tom Rusk

Answer frequently, once in a while, or never to the following:

1. You have trouble getting out of bed in the morning?

2. You want to sleep all the time.

3. You have been thinking of suicide.

4. Nothing seems interesting.

5. You are no longer attracted to your partner, and you don’t know why.

6. Little things upset you more than they should.

7. You can’t find a job doing what you want to do.

8. You keep getting into fights with friends and breaking off friendships.

9. You can’t make up your mind about important things.

10. You’ve had a series of accidents or minor illnesses.

11. You go on buying sprees, getting things you don’t need.

12. Your allergies are getting worse.

13. You can’t sleep at night.

14. You’re eating (drinking, smoking, fighting, etc.) more than is good for you.

15. You burst into tears without knowing why.

16. You are afraid to be alone.

17. You find it hard to make new friends.

You should strongly consider therapy if you answered “once in a while” for ten or more of the above, or “frequently” for three or more.

About Stress

kberman — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 19:17:05 +0000

Some and even great stress can be beneficial. The added energy from stress helps us to more and better solutions for our lives. The High Energy Life Plan is aimed toward finding the repetitive non-productive stress that robs you of energy.

Since stress has been found to contribute to most of human illnesses, our program encompasses mental, physical, emotional, behavioral, social and spiritual reduction techniques.

To begin, list all the areas of your life that you feel are draining you of your energy. By working on one area at a time, you can begin to add positive tactics to dealing with your stress.

Your mind, body and emotions either work together to help you experience your life more fully or are each using energy in avoiding behaviors. The way to control your life is to control your thoughts and your words. So many of the techniques you will learn from the High Energy Life Plan will introduce you to ways to stop over-reacting or avoiding behaviors.

When we were children, we often had to learn self-defeating or self-limiting behavior often times to appease our authority figures. Many parents confuse discipline with punishment. To avoid punishment, we often learn ways of avoidance or delay that rob us of our true being.

We tell our bodies how healthy we want to be by the choices we make in using our energy. The High Energy Life Plan’s goal is for you to learn how to tell your body that you want to be completely healthy. By learning how to reframe your thoughts in order to choose positive thoughts, you are telling your emotions that you want to be healthy.

By learning convenient and easy ways to exercise, you are telling your body that you want to be healthy. By learning how to incorporate meditation, relaxation, visualization, and other coping techniques, we tell our minds and our soul that we want to completely healthy.

Part of a healthy outlook for our life here is to learn to blend all aspects of living together. Most people believe that his/her life is out of balance because of time constraints. Everyone has the same amount of time. So the trick to living a balanced life is to redo what we do with our time.

Photo credit.

To Build Your Confidence, Try Some of These Techniques

kberman — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 19:14:49 +0000

Every week choose a different area of your life to take a new risk in. Changing areas each week helps to insure that we aren’t overprotecting one area or the other.

Practice using the reframing technique on the current upsetting things in your life. The reframing is done by you by shifting your thoughts from negative to positive. You may choose to use a rubber band around your wrist of pinching yourself gentle. Snap the band or pinch yourself when you are recalling a negative event or what you believe was a negative event. Thoughts are called cognitions so this is called cognitive restructuring. Learn to ask yourself if you want to get involved with the surrounding confusion. You choose to join the confusion (the problem) or keep yourself ready for the solution.

Don’t project outcome on anything. Remember your subconscious mind doesn’t know time so is you project disaster, your subconscious will help make that happen. As you can see, we really are not our worst enemies, but also we are our only enemy.

Find a compliment that is sincere about everyone you meet.

Each month, practice a new skill, hobby, technique or activity. Remember the practice is what makes you good at something and not your initial experience.

Practice affirmations about your new choices to make the experience deeper and fuller in our inner mind, Do your affirmations in the morning and evening for 10-15 minutes at each setting. You may choose to record your affirmations on an audio cassette and listen to it. Practicing in front of a mirror helps the thoughts to enter your subconscious quicker.

Create visualizations of yourself incorporating the new activities you are experiencing.

When you are feeling confident, repeat to yourself

“I’m feeling confident.”

This will help to reinforce your confidence level. Some affirmations you may use to develop self-confidence:

I enjoy taking charge of my life.

I love to help others because it makes me feel good.

Why You Should Know Your Personality Labels

kberman — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 18:59:01 +0000

The field of therapy is the study of personality. To understand you or others better, invaluable tools to use are personality tests. The more we know of the labels for one personality, the better we can see these same traits in others. The Change maker Test Package offered on this site can be used for any number of different people. Because we each are unique, no one will have the exact same traits.

Does a personality label mean that a person will always act according to that personality trait? No! A label is only a personality indicator. For the Changemaker Test, as in most personality tests, in choosing your labels, go with your first choice. Don’t try to figure out the best answers. There aren’t any best answers. As we stated before, each label has positive and negative aspects. How we use our personality labels is our choice. How you feel about anything is your choice. No one can make you feel anything you don’t choose to feel.

On your road to self-discovery, remember to look for guidance among persons that are on their individual path of growth. If someone wants to tell you who to be, that person is not growing but is trying to avoid growth by “changing” you. Some people call this codependency.

About personality labels

Personality Traits Linked to Artistic Taste

Photo credit.

Create a Weekly Action Plan

kberman — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:11:30 +0000

Develop a weekly action for dealing with the reality of stress. Have a Sunday night review to plan for the following week. You may use a notebook or a dry eraser board.

A. Use creative visualization (also called guided imagery)-your imagination is a powerful stress management tool.

Changemaker will be including samples of guided imagery to get you started on using this valuable technique of visually creating the outcome you want in challenges.

B. Be continually aware of the outer world of nature and what I call the “little creatures” such as birds, frogs, butterflies, squirrels, etc.

C. Become aware of negative self-talk.

D. Include relaxation techniques; such as, autogenics, progressive body relaxation, deep breathing, or meditation techniques.

E. Be sure to get enough rest and exercise.

F. Accept those things you can’t change or move away from them emotionally.

G. Be honest and express your feelings when appropriate.

At some periods in our lives, we tend to experience more stress than at other times. During these periods of change:

A. Learn to “gentle yourself” through these days.

B. Gauge your reactions to future events by asking yourself how you fell about this and listen to your feelings. Feelings aren’t right or wrong, good or bad, but are appropriate or inappropriate. So let your feelings be.

C. Many times we use our energy to try to change or stop what change is coming. Learn to “read” the change that is coming and make early decisions about which part of the change you can accept.

D. Bless what there is for being and let go of the rest.

E. The “blame and shame” game is a total waste of time and energy. The way to evaluate this is to ask if finding the “culprit” solves the problem. Generally, the answer is no, as the rug still needs cleaned, the door is still locked, the work is undone. Ask yourself if you’d rather be right or be happy.

Photo credit.

Using Breathing to Quiet the Mind

kberman — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:13:52 +0000

When I began my journey of recovery from alcoholism, I became interested in studying all types of spiritual principles. I am a Christian and I believe that there is one God. And I also believe there are many roads to one God. The God I know isn’t judgmental or punishing. Life is tough enough without having God against you, too.

I know God is always available to anyone–regardless of the level of perceived separation on our part. We were created to be joined to the God who gave free choice. Love is like a boomerang–send it out and it will return to you.

The first meditation technique I learned was learning to center myself. When you begin to meditation, find a quiet spot and practice breathing. With your eyes closed, think each breathe you take in. Say or think one thing for the intake breath like “Heal me” and something else on the breathe you expel like “Heal others”. With this practice you learn to breath deeper and fuller. Many believe that this proper breathing helps our bodies in countless benefits.

Deep breathing methods are generally similar. From one of the books in the Changemaker Library, Stress Control for Peace of Mind, deep breathing is included to bring on the relaxation response. Practicing deep breathing helps to make this response automatic when stress occurs. The author, Linda Wasmer Andrews, suggests the following steps:

Sit in a comfortable position.
Close your eyes. Place one hand on your belly, just below the navel.
Take a long, deep breath in. Try to make your hand rise slightly as you inhale.
Let the breath out slowly. Try to feel your hand fall slightly as you exhale.
Keep taking slow, deep, even breaths for a few minutes. Focus on the steady rising and falling of your hand.

She also adds, “If you have trouble getting the hang of belly breathing at the outset, try lying down and placing a book (instead of your hand) on your belly. Then concentrate on making the book move up and down with your breathing. Many people find that the visual cue helps at first. Once you’ve mastered deep breathing, you’ll be able to do it anytime, anywhere, in any position.”

Amazon link for Stress Control for Peace of Mind.

Photo credit.

Understanding the Change Process

kberman — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:13:12 +0000

Robert Bacal’s article (“Understanding the Change Process-How Individuals Change“) lists eight ways change can be managed in the workplace. His Ideas are:

Organizational change will succeed to the extent that individuals in the organization, themselves change.

Steps in the personal change process:

Contact stage
Awareness stage
Understanding stage
Positive perception
Installation stage
Adoption stage
Institutionalization
Internalization

Some of the other articles by Robert Bacal are:

Managing Change – Understanding How Individuals Change
Resistance To Change – How and Why People Resist Change
Managing Change – Step By Step Change Management For Change Leaders
Managing Change – Key #1 – Empathy
Managing Change – Key #2 – Communication
Managing Change – Key #3 – Participation

The Mind-Body Connection of Emotional Healing

kberman — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:11:42 +0000

Emotional health is directly connected to our physical health. Choosing healthy ways (exercise, meditation, centering, and deep breathing) to deal with stress go far toward our overall health. The mind-body connection is the way your body responds to how you think, feel and act.
Some of the physical signs that your body and mind may be out of connection are chest pain, headaches, back pain, extreme tiredness, high blood pressure, upset stomach, weight loss or gain, insomnia, etc. Many of these ailments may be as well treated by learning how to improve your emotions. Learn how to sort out the following emotions: anxiety, stress and sadness.

Too many of us have learned as children to stuff our feelings. The only emotional growth comes after we accept our feelings. Feelings aren’t good or bad or wrong or right. They are simply how we feel. Some people are helped by writing in a journal a short description of how they feel. After you accept your feelings, you can study healthy ways to deal with them.

Unfortunately, many people now believe that they have to continually “vent” all their feelings. In my opinion, vending feelings about the same situation does little good. If, once your feelings are known about a situation to all involved in the situation and everything stays the same, then learn new coping skills such as reframing to change the way you feel.

Remember, you can only change yourself—not others. If you still feel unable or unwilling to change—find out what your unhappiness is giving you. Holding on to old hurts only hurts us.

Photo credit.