MKRecoveryCoaching.com

Category: Addiction

  • Getting through the tough times

    Getting through the tough times

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    As a recovery coach, I often see my clients need some help getting through the tough times, without using drugs, picking up a drink or acting out. Recently, I personally encountered some rough patches in my own life, so I went to my library of recovery books. Reading books on recovery is an import tool I use regularly in my practice. Several years ago, I was curious about Buddhist recovery, so I became an avid reader of the books by Pema Chodron.

    Pema Chodron Celebrates 80 Years

    Pema Chodron, is a Buddhist nun, she was born in 1936, in New York City, and is celebrating her 80th year. After a divorce, in her mid-thirties, Pema traveled to the French Alps and encountered Buddhist teacher Lama Chime Rinpoche, and she studied with him for several years. She became a novice Buddhist nun in 1974. Pema moved to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1984, ­­­to be the director of Gampo Abbey and worked to establish a place to teach the Buddhist monastic traditions (waking before sunrise, chanting scriptures, daily chores, communal meals and providing blessings for the laity). In Nova Scotia and through the Chodron Foundation, she works with others, sharing her ideas and teachings. She has written several books, and in my time of deep spiritual need, I went to her book “When Things Fall Apart”.

    Drawn from traditional Buddhist wisdom, Pema’s radical and compassionate advice for what to do when things fall apart in our lives helped me. There is not only one approach to suffering that is of lasting benefit, Pema teaches several approaches that involve moving toward the painful situation and relaxing us to realize the essential groundlessness of our situation. It is in this book, I discovered a simple breathing exercise I can use during these chaotic times so I can move into a better space. Pema advocates this tool as a breathing exercise, although this exercise could also be considered a mindful meditation.

    I use Chodron’s tool whenever and wherever life hits me below the belt. I share this tool with my clients. It is all about breathing and consciously repeating words to yourself to accompany the breathing. Since we breathe every day, it is indiscernible whether you are using this tool as you travel on the bus commuting home from work, in a conference room with your boss, or when you are feeling low and want to curl up in a ball and die.

    Breathe

    Pema explains in her book, when things get way too complicated; step back and breathe. When the force of the world, the politics of the U.S., Great Britain or Italy start weighing heavily on your mind, breathe. When you look at all the pain around you and feel powerless to do anything, breathe.

    Pema explains, inhale and say silently to yourself breathe in the pain, then exhale and say breathe out relief. Then, inhale, and say silently to yourself breathe in the relief, and exhale and say breathe out the pain. I find I need about 15 minutes of conscious breathing in this way. After doing this, I find I have new energy or something else crosses my path to move me into a different space.

    If I continue to be in that negative space of worry or feeling powerless, then absolutely nothing will be accomplished that day. I know we all have something to accomplish every day, whether it is just getting out of bed, taking a shower and brushing our teeth or running a Fortune 500 company, this exercise gets us from zero to ten in fifteen minutes. Chodron’s exercise moves me to the space I need to be in, so I can function. It is what I need.

    So, I invite you to try this simple exercise…and remember…keep breathing.

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  • A new ER resource – recovery coaches

    Melissa
    Melissa Killeen

    In Rhode Island, more than 1,000 addicts have been brought from the edge of death due to opioid overdose, thanks to first-responders and emergency room workers using the new lifesaving drugs Narcan and Naloxone. When patients are overdosing, first-responders or ER nurses administer these new drugs, which reverse an opioid overdose. The ER staff members use it so often it’s become a verb, as in: “we Narcaned him.”

    In 2015, a pilot program to train law enforcement officers to use Narcan and Naloxone prefilled syringes or nasal spray was started in the New Jersey counties of Monmouth and Ocean. It has been successful in reversing over 400 potentially fatal overdoses. Narcan kits are now available in police cars, ambulances, public transportation centers and even at your local CVS. But the growing number of overdoses has stretched the emergency room doctors and nurses to a breaking point.

    When Narcan patients come to the ER, they can be angry and disorientated, when upon waking they find their high is gone. Emergency rooms are handling a lot of overdose patients, and the work can be frustrating. These patients are combative, upset, demeaning, often yelling or physically acting out. ER personnel, not trained in detox reactions, are perplexed. They are being pulled away from the people who have more medically-critical needs.

    In a relatively short period of time, Naloxone and Narcan are emerging as very one-dimensional treatments. They are lifesavers, but don’t treat the real problem that brings the patient into the emergency room. Another similar one-dimensional treatment is using a defibrillator for a heart attack, it saves the life but it doesn’t treat the heart disease. Using Narcan does not treat the disease of addiction.

    As a result, emergency room physicians, first-responders and treatment experts across the country say the same thing, without a mechanism to connect the overdose patients to addiction services, Narcan and Naloxone only create a revolving door in emergency rooms. Some addicts have returned from the edge of death four and five times, thanks to Narcan injections or nasal sprays.

    In Rhode Island’s hospitals, and in hospitals throughout New Hampshire and New Jersey, ER doctors have called on a relatively new resource to help: the recovery coach. These coaches are not ER employees but are part of a new plan to assist ER personnel in dealing with the detoxing victims of an opioid overdose. These recovery coaches work with the detoxing patients, allowing the ER staff to continue with their tasks of treating others that come into an emergency room. These recovery coaches are peers, many of them former addicts trained to work with an overdose patient coming down from the opioid. These coaches are trained to move the patients into long-term treatment programs for their drug addiction.

    “The goal of the LifelineED program is to get individuals who were Narcaned into detox and treatment,” says Sharon Chapman, program supervisor of the LifelineED program at Center for Family Services in Voorhees, NJ. “Our Recovery Coaches and Patient Navigators work with each individual to help get them into a treatment facility. It’s important for these patients to know they’re not alone, we offer support to help the patients and their families as they go through the recovery journey.”

    These recovery coaches offer peer-to-peer support. There’s nothing like being approached by another recovering drug addict who can help you in your time of need, who knows exactly what you’re going through at that moment. Often, they use information and resources that the hospital staff might not have, such as a list of treatment programs, how to go through the intake process, as well as spending time to educate addicts’ families about the treatment process and how to recognize early signs of the addiction. Of course, the patient decides whether they will take part in treatment, but willingness is the strongest when the patient realizes they just have been given a new “lease on life.” Emergency staff acknowledge it’s helpful to have recovery coaches who can spend time with a patient, and can begin moving them into treatment. These coaches know the recovery terrain better than the ER nurses and physicians. Patients have the option to go to a treatment center, or if they choose to go home, they take the recovery coach’s number with them. The recovery coach or the patient navigator will follow up with them, and assists in helping the patient take the next steps towards recovery. Overdose victims are willing to let recovery coaches into their homes to talk about the program immediately after their overdose. Some need time to come to the realization that if they don’t accept the offer of treatment, there may not be another opportunity. Finding the time for a home visit is something that the ER staff could never do.

    Funding for these ER Recovery Coaching programs is popping up all over the United States, since President Obama and Michael Botticelli, the Director of National Drug Control policy, have requested over $1 billion dollars to be placed into the 2017 budget to fight this growing opioid epidemic. This funding request surpasses the $400 million amount Obama signed for in the 2016 budget, which was a jump of $100 million over the 2014 budget, all in hopes of addressing this harrowing epidemic, which has ravaged communities in all corners of the U.S.

    If you are interested in learning more about working in an ER room as a recovery coach, here are some resources:

    https://providencecenter.org/services/crisis-emergency-care/anchored

    Holly Fitting

    Providence Center-AnchorED– 528 North Main Street, Providence, RI 02904

    Phone: (401) 528-0123 / Email: hfitting@provcntr.org

    Attn: Melissa Silvey

    311 Route 108, Somersworth, NH 03878

    Phone: (603) 516-2562 / Email: info@onevoicenh.org

    Sharon Chapman, Program Supervisor

    108 Somerdale Rd, Voorhees NJ 08043

    Phone: (856) 428-5699 x116 / Email: lifelineED@centerffs.org

    http://www.centerffs.org/programs/lifelineed

    http://evasvillage.org/recovery-center.shtml

    Attn.: Michael Santillo

    16 Spring Street

    Paterson, NJ 07501 / Phone: (973) 754-6784

    • Barnabas Health Opioid Overdose Recovery Program

    1691 U.S. 9, Toms River, NJ 08754

    Phone: (732) 914-3815

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  • I am most vulnerable when I am naked

    As a recovery coach, I approach my clients as a peer, as someone who has suffered the slings and arrows of addiction and emerged into a life of recovery, and sober from drugs, alcohol and some behavioral addictions. As a peer I have the experiential knowledge to help my clients walk the pathway to recovery.

    However, there are some clients, I cannot seek to help. These clients are the ones that identify as having eating disorders. That is because, (I have to be truthful here) I struggle with disordered eating. I am an overeater. Carbohydrates, dairy and processed sugars are my heroin and I have not overcome this addiction.

    I also spent my formative years, from age one until well into my thirties, in the grips of body dysmorphia. In Wikipedia, body dysmorphia is defined as Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), also known dysmorphic syndrome, a mental disorder characterized by an obsessive preoccupation that some aspect of one’s own appearance is severely flawed and warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix it. I saw myself as a fat person. When I looked in the mirror I saw a person three or more dress sizes larger than I really was. I thought I was fat, when all along I was a person with a normal sized body.

    What’s Underneath Project

    This blog post will not go into my years of body dysmorphia, but rather on a recent awakening: how to accept me as I am. Just last week, I was viewing a www.thefix.com article on Tallulah Willis, Bruce Willis’ and Demi Moore’s daughter and her recent stay in a treatment center. There was a link to a video of Tallulah that I clicked on. I was introduced to a whole new way of seeing myself, through the “What’s Underneath Project.”

    Seven years ago, Elisa Goodkind, a veteran fashion stylist, and her daughter, Lily Mandelbaum, a former film student, created StyleLikeU as an alternative to the fashion culture’s crippling status quo. Launched in 2009, StyleLikeU is home to a series of intimate video portraits that redefine our culture’s notion of beauty, called the What’s Underneath Project. These simple videos, show unapologetic individuals who are true to themselves in both their style and in their lives. Individuals, gay, straight, recovering from breast cancer or transitioning to their true gender, exude confidence in their own skin. And the viewers are empowered to discover that this same sense of confidence and beauty can be their own.

    As I was browsing through the videos, and I clicked on Olivia Campbell’s (a well-known British plus style model) video. I cried when I listened to her journey through bullying and sexual abuse. I came to the realization that I am still beautiful, even though I am over sixty, thanks to Jacky O’Shaughnessy’s video. I was transfixed that her story, was exactly my story, one of poor body image and how it affects my relationships. Jacky’s statement that she feels the most vulnerable when she is naked in front of a man, and she feels the most beautiful when she is naked in front of a man, was so honest. Because underneath it all, I felt the same thing.

    A Viral Phenomenon

    The What’s Underneath Project strips everyday people and celebrities down to their bra and panties to open them up, exploring the power of genuine self-acceptance as they undress. Since its launch in 2014, the response has been monumental. The videos went viral, and have received over 9 million YouTube hits, international press, while fan mail floods in from people wanting to help, donate funds and participate. The What’s Underneath Project has produced 70 plus videos, ranging from 5 to 15 minutes in length, and has posted them on YouTube.

    In November 2014, the What’s Underneath Project launched a Kickstarter campaign to support the production of a documentary film that will capture this viral video series. The campaign was a wild success and in just 18 days, exceeded the initial goal of $100k. By the end of the month-long campaign, the What’s Underneath Project raised a total of $135,655. The upcoming documentary film is in production and the What’s Underneath Project documentary film will be released in the Spring of 2017.

    The What’s Underneath Project is on the road to becoming a global movement for self-acceptance.

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