Even though you are refuse to disclose your status as a mother Robyn,

Even though you are refuse to disclose your status as a mother Robyn,

(If you missed my earlier post "How I apply a
Life of Voluntary Simplicity to My 12 step Work" and want a copy write
me.)

Yes, spiritual concepts are hard to define Robyn, just as the source of
the wind is hard to define.

Even though you are refuse to disclose your status as a mother Robyn, I
will go with the notion you do have some children. And even if this
post falls on barren ground, it may help another parent here. We all
have a responsibility to help others Robyn.

Even though you are refuse to disclose your status as a mother Robyn, I
will go with the notion you do have some children. And even if this
post falls on barren ground, it may help another parent here. We all
have a responsibility to help others Robyn. The business of humanism is
'all our business' if we with to live life at peace. You are not
obligated to do anything I say, but I am obligated to at least say what
I believe is right. Rage and kids is so common nowadays. We all live
stress filed lives it seems. So if you do have kids Robyn, I hope you
can break the chain of rage and work to recover from this sickness.

When we learn to think about others and the spirit as well as our own
needs and we can then see we are all interdependent and not independent
with all. Once you see this balance you will realize that we all share
the same breath and no need to practice hatred or develop ill will
towards others. It is much better to develop compassion for others. For
as we develop compassion for others we develop peace within.

Yes, spiritual concepts are hard to define Robyn, just as the source of
the wind is hard to define. We can describe spiritual concepts, but it
is impossible to put our finger on it all exactly. Spiritual growth is
a journey that is a never ending, imperfect process in this life. But
just as we can see the effects of the wind while being blind to its
source, We can most definitely see the difference in people that live a
life devoid of any spiritual values whatsoever to those people that
incorporate spiritual values in their lives.

I read about some familles and single moms on the recovery lists being
in turmoil from troubled kids. The feeling of hopelessness and despair
is in many of these posts. Recently, I discussed the range of options
of what to do with problem children with a professional in that field.
She responded with many choices that are available for the parent that
is ready to self-destruct. I've included these options below. A big
problem can arise when the parent that is not a kid person has kids and
learns too late that they are not cut out for that job. The danger
point for the parent and the child is when the parents sinks to
hopelessness and sees no escape other than death for themselves or the
kid. Personally, I like kids, but I am low capacity in this area and
have a very real limit when it comes to dealing with stress from kids.
I have no patience to coddle and breast feed kids. I usually do better
with older kids than screaming infants. Screaming infants give me the
feeling that someone is sticking a knife in my brain. I accept this and
work with it and not against it. This is the foundation of accepting
and living within ones comfortable means which I will go into below.

I've heard from a few moms that feel shy about discussing such troubles
in public. They feel ashamed that they lack the capabilities to be
"perfect moms." We can see a large range of comfortable abilities when
it comes to moms. One mom can raise twelve kids without breathing hard,
while another mom can't raise one kid and in the end even ends up
killing off the one kid. Is the person that can raise 12 kids a good
person and the other person a bad person? No, they just have different
comfortable abilities and capabilities. What separates the two moms? In
a word - Naturalness. One mom works with her nature the other mom works
against her nature and is living a "forced" life. (If you missed my
earlier post "The Concept of Forcing Things" and want a copy write me.)


If you are a stressed out single Mom or have a high maintenance family,
be pointed in the direction of removing stress and problems in your
life at every turn. Get the kids involved as well as the hubby with
removing some of this stress. Make it clear to the entire family that
life cannot go on the same way that it has been going. I marvel how
people that are already sick from a complex and stressful life keep
adding more complexities at every turn instead of taking the path of
simplicity and less stress. If you make stress reduction your foremost
purpose in life, you will be successful at reducing your stress load
and thus increase your inner peace. You may not do this perfectly, but
you can do it more perfectly than not if you did not make the effort at
all.

Food plays a big part in the lives of troubled kids. Many kids eat a
diet of crap, highly salted crap at that. My own kid had high blood
pressure at 14. I had it as well before we became clear on the sodium
issue. Once we developed clarity, we found out that my son was eating
6000 to 7000 mg a day of sodium. Besides generating high blood
pressure, sodium is a great corrosive that eats at our joints. Sodium
in excess really agitates me, gives me headaches, restlessness and
agitation. Corn syrup, sugar and artificial chemicals also work to keep
kids agitated. Many of the parents themselves don't eat healthy, so how
can they give away what they do not have themselves? Some of the
parents I talk with say they do not have the time to cook healthy foods
and eat right. No time to live right? They never heard of "first things
first" I guess? Sounds like they need to apply a life of voluntary
simplicity? What is the essence of voluntary simplicity? In a nutshell
it brings your awareness to the fact that if you can't keep up - you
scale back until you can. (If you missed my earlier post "How I apply a
Life of Voluntary Simplicity to My 12 step Work" and want a copy write
me.)

Other times the parents say the kids wont eat healthy as they "Don't
like it." What I did was to prepare healthy meals and tell the kid,
"This is what's for dinner. If you want to eat diner then eat it. If
you don't want it, then skip dinner and I'll save it for you and you
can eat it for dinner tomorrow." I made it a point to stop buying a lot
of junk foods and keeping it in the house. Sure kids can get junk to
eat outside of the house, but I will not contribute to his eating it in
excess at home. We had treats and junk now and again, but the majority
of the food served was real, not fast foods or junk. Another area of
neglect in many homes is that of exercise. Sedentary lifestyle is on
the rise with a lot of kids. video games, computers keeping them
sitting too long. (If you missed my earlier post "The King and Queen of
Good Health" if goes into more detail about the balance of healthy food
and exercise - if you want a copy write me.)

A lot of kids seem to be starting young with addiction nowadays. When I
dropped my kid off at college yesterday I noticed most of the freshman
smoking cigs. Then there is all the stories of gambling, drunkenness
and drugs. If your kid is a young addict, get them going in 12 step
work. Better early than late. In the news was the latest rage with
teens - asphyxia or choking to cause an altered state of consciousness.
Kids find no shortage of ways to abuse the senses ... do they? When I
was young I did most of the same. "The road of excess leads to the
palace of wisdom" ~ William Blake.


Here is part of the professional's response as to what to do with
problem kids that are destroying a family.

(...) writes:

Counseling is available for all income levels through local mental
health services. But, in extreme cases if a child is causing
overwhelming problems parents can seek other options like:

1. Contact the children's services dept. of your local human services
agency they can take emergency custody for up to 30 days and you can
get the child back anytime you want during that period and help you
develop appropriate resources and strategies for coping

2. Temporary custody is from 30 days to a max of up to 2 years
depending on the state you live in, they make a case plan for
reunification including wrap around services to help you with the
reunification and they always look for family or friends of the family
for the placement first - it is a priority

3. If there is no change of circumstances and the situation remains
untenable, may be that the state takes permanent custody of the child.
Again this is the most extreme cases, but if you are contemplating
destroying yourself or the child, then that is a viable option

There are many good books and videos on parenting from the library fro
example:

The video and book called "1,2,3 Magic" and the books on parenting from
Foster Cline and Jim Faye there are several depending on the children's
ages
called "Parenting With Love and Logic "ie. 'parenting with love and
logic for teens' 'parenting with love and logic for grandparents'

(end of snip)

V writes:

Sometimes, just the threat of the kid going away for a "vacation" can
get kids serious about change and help them to think in a different
direction. Other times a vacation is needed for all concerned to get a
fresh start. In any case, there is never a need for physical harm
unless we choose the wrong path due to ignorance, hopelessness and
rage. So exhaust all means at your disposal for change and then and
only then work on acceptance. Here is an old post to shed more light on
this subject.

"Living Within Our Comfortable Capabilities"

It seems life gives us enough hassles for free, so we don't have to
help life by bulldozing more problems onto our own backs. It is a real
death trap people make for themselves when they try to keep up with a
hi-cap lifestyle with their low-cap capabilities. They are concentrated
on keeping up with others and forget to concentrate on themselves and
their own inner peace. The 12 and 12 writes about this on pages 122-125
when it mentions "staying right size." I feel there is nothing shameful
about being a low-cap person, the only shame comes from trying to be
something we are not comfortably able to be and killing yourself and
your loved ones from an ego driven, out of balance life. Learning
acceptance and being grateful for my comfortable capabilities was a
major key to being at peace with my capabilities. My self worth comes
from being the best I can be within MY comfortable capabilities and not
from trying to be something I am not comfortably, solvently,
abstinently, soberly and peacefully able to be.

Clarity about or actions is very important for those that ask the
question about living comfortably within ones means. I will say that no
one ever accomplishes anything great without pushing the envelope of
stress. If you want to climb Mount Everest you have to make yourself
uncomfortable. But, on the other hand, no one can force you to climb
Mount Everest and make yourself that uncomfortable if you don't want to
be. That choice is ours alone. The only question for the addicts to ask
themselves, if they choose to climb Mount Everest is this; are you
going to end up as just another one of the dead cadavers littering the
mountain or will you be successful with your summit.

Being uncomfortable is one of the top reasons why addicts lose
themselves in their addictions. It doesn't matter whether the point of
uncomfortability comes from resentments, stress, abuse, greed or kids.
It still boils down to wanting to escape life and pain though our
addictions. The concept of working within my limits and comfort zone
sprouted from my own clutter work. I found I could not keep a mantle
dusted when I had 20 things on it but could keep it clean when it only
had 3 things. Now, the 20 things were not cheap things by any means,
they were carved ivories, carved jades, antique oriental porcelain, a
19th century musical tortoiseshell clock and an 11th century stone
craving from India. Many, many thousands dollars on that mantle, yet it
was all turned into dusty trash because it overwhelmed my comfortable
capabilities to maintain. In fact, if there was a few square inches of
mantle showing through I would think on buying something else a to fill
that spot. Learning about the importance of numbers and how it related
to my recovery clarity brought me the concept of "living my life by the
numbers." (If you missed my earlier post "Living your Life By the
Numbers" and wish a copy of it write me.)

Once I learned this concept of "living my life by the numbers" I was
able to apply this numerical clarity to many other addiction areas
whether it be sex addiction, clutter, food, time management or kids. I
now use number to take ME out of the picture and put recovery in the
drivers seat and it all revolves around the question of "comfortable
capabilities." We all heard of HALTS, yet of us make little use of it
since we have no clarity of where our boundaries are. in a word we are
VAGUE. I heard of HALTS in the mid 1970's yet until I became aware of
the importance of my comfortable limits, measured within my program by
numerical clarity I seldom applied it. I guess it is just too general
of a term HALTS is. But with clarity and measurability HALTS came alive
for me and suddenly became a useful recovery tool. My Debtors Anonymous
program was my first exposure to using numerical clarity and thus one
recovery program helped another.

I first thought of the importance of living within my (stress) means
when it came to paying bills one day. I was overwhelmed with some work
and could not bring myself to pay the bills for a few days. My bill
paying routine was to sit in front of the TV and write checks. Anyway
you cut it, that is not much work to pay the bills in front of the TV.
But, to me I didn't care. It had nothing to do with money, as I had a
few thousand dollars in the bank more what I needed to pay the bills. I
just wanted to sit in front of the TV and veg out and didn't want to be
bothered with anything. Now when I feel that way or come home and don't
have the mental energy to make a sandwich for lunch this is a signpost
for me to take a look at my lifestyle. As I probably need to scale back
with stress and I'm headed down the wrong road again. What is voluntary
simplicity in a nutshell? If you can't keep up, you scale back until
you can keep up.

An overeater once told me that she became aware of a signpost that her
program was heading downhill when "The first thing to go is the
crudities" (referring to not eating her raw vegetables as a signpost
that she was headed in the wrong direction with her food program.)
There are many signposts that we can look for in our own lives to warn
us that we are getting too busy for recovery. This helps avoid a binge
if we can see it coming on and change directions. Working against our
higher power and praying all the while does little good. We need to
match footwork with mouthwork - we need to talk and walk in the same
direction. We all have another binge within us - but maybe not another
recovery? When I am too disgusted and tired to exercise, I'd better pay
attention to how I am living. (If you missed my earlier post entitled
"The Definition of a Miracle is the Suspension of Natural Law" it goes
into more details about footwork matching mouthwork.)

Each of us we all have different capabilities. Yours might be ten times
more of what mine is, or it may be ten times less. In the end, it
really doesn't matter whether it is higher or lower, all that matters
is you accept your own abilities and work each day to live within these
means. I do know that we all have boundaries or limits and once an
addict is pushed too far outside of the limits they are headed for
trouble. If they think they are immune to this just because they have a
recovery program they are wrong. If they were immune to slips they
wouldn't be an addict anymore would they? So, whether it be the spirit
is willing but the flesh is weak or the flesh is weak but the spirit is
willing, something has to give. So check out your comfort zone and make
sure you know the signposts of when things are coming undone in your
own life.

Recently there have been a couple of mothers in the news for killing
all their children. They were both home schooling mothers too. In my
opinion, these are two extreme cases of not living within your
comfortable means whether it is financial, energy, spiritual, mental or
ability means. I think if they were more in tune with their comfortable
limits and abilities their kids would still be around. These mothers
saw no other way out. Their ego or their husbands ego ruled and forced
them to such actions. When we work in unnatural directions, it is
usually ego driven. For if we let peace guide us, our actions become
natural, comfortable and sustainable.

It is almost an impossibility to be perfectly comfortable in life or
recovery no matter how hard we try. With families, work, sickness,
money issues and life in general we will get many opportunities to be
uncomfortable in life. Now, if we have no concern for our comfort and
just keep making ourselves uncomfortable, plus we add all the free
problems life gives us then we will be definitely overloaded. So, this
is the importance of being aware of our comfort zone and boundaries in
life - cut down on your problems and don't add to them.

"Remember, peace is just another name for the integrity of being which
enables man to respond to life without inner conflict. A mind which is
in pieces cannot be a mind at peace." -- B. Phillips




Take care,


V (Male)

Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher