Archive for How it works

Missed your window

By Drew | Published December 7, 2011

Yeah, what if you missed your window, woke up too late? You could start over. You could push through and yes, start again but a forty year old man isn’t suppose to be waiting on his peers, he’s suppose to be blazing his own trail and blah blah.

My generation is full of nihilists and definitely not capitalists and stuck behind the cushion of life’s couch. I managed to squeeze out but I’m still picking crumbs and lint from my hair.

When I meet someone and they seem uncomfortably hard to be around, they are probably a lot like me. I’ve also noticed there aren’t that many general personality types, behavior-wise and it is possible to predict people’s reaction more readily than I thought it would have been.

Growing up is putting aside childish things and that is true when I consider my growth, at this late stage, and how immature certain aspects of my behavior were as an adult.

I have a chronological age: 42. I also have an inner child/emotional age that I can always check by just asking myself and listening to what that inner voice tells me (the first number that pops into your head). Everyone has this ability and the ‘inner child’ knows this and will give you that number. When I was 32 and started redoing my personality, my inner voice would answer ’13’ years old. I was an emotional 13 year old.

After 10 years of good therapy and rebuilding I have hit about 28.

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Head talk and will power

By Drew | Published February 23, 2010

Foster a good relationship with your inner self. There is a lot we don’t understand about head talk but one thing we do know is that the head talk is what leads us to decision making and if that talk is flawed, negative and angry (derogatory) then willpower will be diminished.

I went through a lot of new-ish recovery the last 10 years and can tell you from experience that if you clean up the head talk and eliminate the negative talk, habits will change quicker and easier.

I created a third person (healthy Gary) to talk to and be the parent to the scared voice and the negative voice in my head (negative is my mom and dad – scared is my true sad self) – slowly but surely I negotiated, very lovingly (lovingly even to the negative voice) the stuff the voices were saying and developed a dialog that helped create a sense of safety for the weak voice and a sense of love for the negative one.)

And my weak voice began to feel more safe and protected, changes started happening at an incredible rate and will power grew as well. With my inner voices all on the same page, I made deals with them all to get things done: Little (weak) Gary would do exercise because he wanted to meet girls. Negative Gary turned into ‘warning Gary’ as he realized he was just going over the top and we would listen if he toned it down.

I created a safe place for my voices to thrive. I know this sounds silly but this shit works like no one’s business. It helped me grow my internal age from about 13 emotionally to about 27.

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Unilateral Contract #001 and #002

By Drew | Published May 6, 2009

I need to explain myself and what is going on with me and in doing so I beg of you to just hear my words and understand it isn’t anything you did. It’s all my doing and all my stuff.

It has been really special for me to get to know you again (for the first time) and with that I am seeing how cool you are and good and sweet. It has also made me realize how much of our past issues was sprung from my childhood issues. So much of the pain I cause our friendship and our love was due to my applying of things my mom did to me to the people in my life – I am realizing with your wonderful help, how I inject her into my current life.

I see now how I attributed things she did to things you did, unfairly. Recently those things sprung up with a friend who is like a family member, a sister, so as we got closer my drama would start and get on her as well. So I finally could see what part was really me.

1. One of those issues leftover from my mom is feeling used. When I was young, I was my mom’s surrogate husband, hanging out, being best friends, always together but then she would fling me aside for weeks at a time when she made up with my dad or got a new friend and basically it felt like I was being used – really the truth was was that i had no business being her friend and really should have been out playing. But putting me in this position she was putting a child into the shoes of an adult – but I couldn’t deal with it.

Fast forward to adulthood and our relationship, and I misguidedly assume that everyone is trying to use me instead of just realizing that people do ask for favors (especially me). So thus, as I have gotten better, I am very careful not to let my childhood imagination go wild. When people ask me to get them some stuff, I always have to reassure myself that this isn’t my mom using me, this isn’t my mom using me and that I LOVE to go get for people I care about. So there is no problem.

And you are my friend so, I know you aren’t using me. But the struggle continues and I will have Victory over this ‘unilateral contract’ – remember that?

I know now, in my heart that it isn’t you, it’s me!! And that makes it go away.

2. Secondly comes the double whammy. My other worse thing I still carry around from childhood is my awful fears of being left behind. Mom used to always do that to me. leave me behind – see I was, in my mind, an adult and how dare she go out at night to a bar without me (I know it sounds so ridiculous, cuz I was fucking 8!)

But this is what I am finally facing. My poor friend sometimes dares to NOT go to lunch with me cause a friend will ask her to go and she gets a grumpy me for her troubles

She has helped me learn that these are not things that are really happening, just an 8 year olds perspective.

YESTERDAY: But then all in one feel swoop I get a call from you asking for me to get some stuff so you take on a birthday camping trip I’m not going to. Needless to say, I hit the wall hard. this is what I do to all my friends – I even do it to Doug and he has learned to question me and make me think.

So I got upset and felt like I was being left behind. Silly huh?

So I say this to just reassure you that if I do get grumpy it isn’t you, it’s old habits that die hard – BUT DIE THEY WILL

I will be victorious over this ancient drama and I will strengthen my resolve to value and cultivate a wonderful friendship with you – a person that I am really coming to realize is a wonderful special friend.

So to summarize: I have these old things that I let surface and sometimes they hurt my buddies and I don’t want them to be hurt. I soooo appreciate all you have helped me with and love you very much.

Please understand you did nothing wrong and that I am sooo fucking happy that I can see this stuff happening and that with your beautiful friendship i can overcome!!!!

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What is depression?

By Drew | Published January 13, 2009

“What is depression and how does it relate to me?” Someone asked me that the other day and this is what came dribbling from my slap-happy brain:

– Depression is normal and signifies our bodies and mind don’t like something that is going on, ‘time for change’.

– Some people never learned how to deal with depression and how to act on their own behalf when depression strikes and the things that need attending to don’t get attended to.

– The person can’t fix the depressive issues so the inner-self (our little kid) feels unprotected and feels that there is no way for them to fix the issue.

– with the inner-self feeling that the outer self cannot help them, the depression becomes deeper and becomes *Dread*

– Once the inner-self feels dread and feels like there is no one to help them, suicide becomes and excellent alternative.

– Until the outer self learns to take care of the depressive issues, the inner self won’t trust the outer self and the sickening dread will continue.

– If the outer self learns to be the parent, take care of the issues that the inner self (the child) needs help with, then the dread goes back to its normal level as just depression or sadness and finally goes away when the issue is resolved.

– so the key for so many many of us (especially Gen X and Y) many of which did NOT receive the skills in childhood that show us how to be our own GOOD PARENT.

– A lot of people these days (me me!) have gone back and learned how to be their inner-self’s own GOOD PARENT.

So here’s an interesting pamphlet from a great text book from some amazing therapist and doctors at UCLA – and especially helpful is the GOOD PARENT MESSAGES – a list of 15 mantras that can help get at the specific issues that lead us down this road of normal sadness becoming depression and then becoming dread and the end.

I put it out there and then let go – this PDF is worn and hard to read but wonderful for helping those that feel there is no help:

http://zombiepsychic.com/WordPress/?page_id=206

click on the PDF of Good Parent Messages.

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Osho on facing Change in your life

By Drew | Published December 11, 2008

Osho is amazing:

This is my observation, that one should never make an effort to change anything because that effort is going to make things difficult rather than easy.

Osho has to be my favorite philosopher because he takes the best from all disciplines and only seems interested in finding the ‘right’ answer as opposed to the one that works within his personal ethos or religion. He is infamous for going against the grain of his own disciplines to find the way to help human beings learn how to live.

When I read it it hearkens back to all years I spent undoing the damage of my childhood and redoing the subtle lessons that add up to make us the persons that we are. But change that’s as old as the person can be difficult especially when it comes to changing those ancient habits. Osho explains:

Your mind is attached to something, and now the same mind tries to detach itself. At the most it can repress, but it can never become a real detachment. For the real detachment to happen, the mind has to understand why the attachment is there. There is no need to be in a hurry to drop it; rather, see why it is there.

The mind cannot just ‘let go’ or ‘forget about’ the thing that you want changed. That’s not how this impressive organ in our skull works. The person looking for change must first figure out WHY their brain harbors such an attachment to the habit to begin with.

Just look into the mechanism, how it works, how it has come in: what circumstances, what unawareness has helped it to be there. Just understand everything around it. Don’t be in a hurry to drop it, because people who are in a hurry to drop things don’t give themselves enough time to understand them.

For example, let’s take my drinking. I could have just stopped drinking cold turkey and gotten into AA and quit. Instead I got into therapy and consumed book after book on what made alcoholics tick. I examined my family life and found all the reasons that my personality type is drawn to booze. After learning all I could and examining my motives in therapy I was able to see why I was so attached to drinking:

Sober 7 years.

Once you understand, suddenly you see that it is slipping our of your hands; so there is no need to drop it.

So true. As I learned more and more, the fear attached to drinking and quitting drinking became less and less severe. The more I learned the less bite my need to drink had and the less I actually longed for a drink. It was like knowledge and honesty take all the power out of habits.

Nothing is there for any other reason other than misunderstanding. Something has been misunderstood; hence it is there. Understand it rightly and it disappears. All that is creating trouble is just like the darkness. bring light to it – and simply light, because with the very presence of light, darkness no longer exists.

Brilliant. I’m telling you it works. A habit, no matter the size, the veracity or the subtlety can be fixed or changed just by shining light, being understood, being examined- in this way you can stop trying, stop fixing and stop shoving to stop yourself from doing something. All you have to do is learn everything you can about the habit then watch it slip away like a dream.

Posted in Adult Children, How it works, Uncategorized, Zombie Philosophy | Comments Off

Holidays hate me

By Drew | Published December 1, 2008

Holidays can go fuck themselves. They don’t like me much and I don’t like them.

This is my karmic reprisal for cleaning up on Christmas as a child. My mother hated my father and would often spend obscene amounts on me for Christmas just to piss him off and boy did it ever. He would stare with his mouth agape, jaw scraping the carpet and eyes bulging as I would plow through a massive pile of goods on those mornings of December realizing that all of his hard-earned cash was now going into my toy box.

So I accept the karmic slap down but do so with a heavy heart. I mean, I have really done a lot of work in the last half-dozen years on myself: quit drinking, smoking, stopped carrying on with damaged women and re-did my life based on strong central morals and honesty! You would think that I’d have broken past this karma-pain a while back, but no, not yet.

These days the holidays are lonely as hell. Los Angeles, with its 18 million people- it shouldn’t be so easy to be alone and have nothing to do but I find a way. I find a way to be utterly alone, I find a way to not see anyone for several days; I find it easy as pie to float through this new born life like the invisible man or a ghost.

And what I really hate is having to answer the dreaded question of “how were your holidays?”, knowing that they sucked and not necessarily wanting to lay a heavy guilt trip on some fucker that had a joyous time, I have to lie – and I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t blame others that had a good time as they aren’t at fault.

I could blame that I quit drinking and have yet to figure out how to make friends and find love without being hammered.
I could blame that I am more mature and have higher standards for myself
I could just suck it up and wait for times to get better

But I don’t wanna be alone all the time, anymore. I used to as a defense mechanism, constantly be alone but now that that part of me no longer needs such a devout protection system, I want to be with people and be in groups; listen to people talk; blather endlessly about politics, cry about injustice and smile when the weather gets brought up.

No more self-pity, no more hiding out, no more fear and no more waiting for others to do my life. I am my own change and I want a better holiday season this year.

Ready?

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Adult Children: a subreddit

By Drew | Published September 25, 2008

Reddit is my favorite website on the planet. It is a social-news and cool stuff aggregate that allows the users to submit and control (by up/down voting) the content of the site:

reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web — personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you’ll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is submitted and voted on by users like you.

Once on the site you will notice that the links to stories are categorized through Subreddits, my favorite being Politics:

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/

The site has a great user base and the comments are sometimes better than the actual stories they link to. Just by creating a username you can get involved, start voting and feel a part of this social web of information and entertainment.

But my new favorite thing is that anyone can create a category, a Subreddit and grow it into a thriving community. I have created one that you will recognize as one of my favorite topics: Adult Children:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AdultChildren/

So far it is slow going but already I have 35 subscribers. I will take my time and grow this little community carefully and with love and compassion.

I am the moderator of this subreddit, I am username garyp714.

Posted in Adult Children, How it works, Rave | Comments Off

Emotional maturity

By Drew | Published June 11, 2008

It is a sign of spiritual maturity when the individual experiences for
him – or herself a powerful urgency to evolve.
A sign of maturity, in a spiritual context, is knowing how precious
every moment actually is.

Andrew Cohen

www.deeshan.com

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My little boy

By Drew | Published May 19, 2008

Everybody has a place in them, a voice in them that represents our inner child…

My little boy used to be in charge more than not, driving my ‘mental’ bus and he shouldn’t even have been driving but I was asleep at the wheel or back talking to the passengers unaware of the looming crash that was happening. That boy, he didn’t want to be in charge but I would dissociate into the ‘place’ I go when things get too strong or emotions become too hard and he would be left to deal.

He also used to ‘drive’ when we ate until at a certain point in my recovery, he and I came to an agreement that suited both of our desires. My rational brain wanted to be healthy, to lose weight and to stop eating potato chips all the time. My little boy wanted to look cute and thin for the first time in his existence so we agreed to stop eating potato chips. I drive that bus a little more now and he is very grateful that we look so svelte (although we both miss potato chips.)

And again, my little boy used to drive the ‘who picks the clothes’ bus until I made sense with him that we weren’t ‘putting on airs’ by dressing nicer, just projecting a finer image and it is this type of ‘conversation’ that has helped me to put a dent in numerous behaviors like smoking, drinking and other pains left to me as an Adult Child. Once the little boy felt he could trust me, he became much more amiable and agreeable that we both can come to decisions and come to a critical consensus that we can both live with.

And now it’s time for us to trade the wheel again and this time it’s the touchiest of subjects, so touchy he might not even let me bring it up without drifting off into Neverland: Females.

Rejection is a massive cognitive dissonance that neither me nor my little boy had any interest even broaching, but as he grows and I grow, there is an interest in sharing our life and times with love and companionship. Rejection is a natural thing and I have worked with my boy for years to chip away at the fear-based reaction that is so automatic in us, but rejection is only part of this inability to connect on an intimate level.

There is also the other part, the part where I didn’t get to play much as a child and would get dragged to work on the weekends and today, 30 years later, I still want desperately to play and have a secret motivation pushing against all social pursuits be they with a love interest or a platonic: I like to be alone and exceedingly want to stay inside and play with my things and be alone. I protect this time like a bus driver protects his bus, if his bus was made of diamonds and gold and beer flowed from the dashboard and steaks fried on the radiator. I want this time; my little boy wants this time and I will give it to him.

But I have to find the balance of having this time and being with people and I have to get my little boy’s help because he is the ‘make or break’ point of the entire endeavor. If I am to find a balance where I get to enjoy my coveted alone time as well as a wonderful and full love-interest relationship, then I am going to need all of his help.

And I’m gonna have to take the wheel on this one, little boy. It’s my turn for once and he couldn’t be more relieved.

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White House correspondent Helen Thomas and her flowers

By Drew | Published April 26, 2008

Last week a story hit REDDIT about Helen Thomas, one of the only White House correspondents that asks hard questions of this administration, had a telling quote in the daily briefing with White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino:

HELEN THOMAS: The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?

MS. PERINO: Helen, you’re taking liberties with the what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, have spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard, and it is — I’ll leave it where it is. The President is accurate in saying what he said.

Q That’s not my question. My question is, why did he state publicly, we do not torture —

MS. PERINO: Because we do not.

Q — when he really did know that we do?

MS. PERINO: No, that’s what I mean, Helen. We’ve talked about the legal authorities —

Q Are you saying that we did not?

MS. PERINO: I am saying we did not, yes.

Q How can you when you have photographs and everything else? I mean, how can you say that when he admits that he knew about it?

MS. PERINO: Helen, I think that you’re — again, I think you’re conflating some issues and you’re misconstruing what the President said.

Q I’m asking for the credibility of this country, not just this administration.

MS. PERINO: And what I’m telling you is we have — torture has not occurred. And you can go back through all the public record. Just make sure — I would just respectfully ask you not to misconstrue what the President said.

Q You’re denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?

MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.
Elaine, did you have one?

HELEN THOMAS (looking around the room at the other reporters) Where is everybody?

In the Video of it you don’t hear that last part but the transcript above says it all.

HELEN THOMAS: Where is everybody?

Well, the users over at REDDIT got together to get her some flowers to applaud her disgust with her fellow journalists. But not just ‘some’ flowers…(from Reddit user MicahFitch):

monday

the flower shop woman is very excited. she apparently majored in political science/history and goes to the same bar as Helen Thomas (and has spoken with her before/is a big fan!). as I am very overwhelmed, I told her to use her creative flowershop liberties, and she promised that we would get more than we bargained for!

there will be trickling deliveries to both her house and her office. at the house some plants will be delivered as well (on the suggestion of the flower shop lady) because they will last a long time! a single fruit basket/flower arrangement will be sent to the office and a corsage as well.

this order is to be $3000, leaving between $400 and $600 for either more flowers, some rolling fruit deliveries, or a weekly corsage (which I like best).

the reason this does not total to $4000 is that paypal charges about 10% in fees/donation. I plan on releasing a full record of the assets when this is over!

all in all I’m quite excited!

Not just some flowers…but a lot of fucking flowers, a symbol of the lavish passion we have that this administration, this corrupt government system and the complicit corporate media be HELD ACCOUNTABLE!

Helen Thomas is a hero to folks that have woke up and realize that out government, the press and the elites really are complicit in their corruption.

Thank you Helen Thomas. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…

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