“This is where they keep the freakin’ maniacs”

The abuses that I went through growing up that scarred me both physically and mentally, just seem to add up. We have to ask ourselves;

I meet l plenty of people who are struggling with alcohol, struggling with life struggling with addiction and they are so quick to tell their story. They say;

Often times we live our lives in the shadow of our stories. What does this mean?

This means that the stories we tell ourselves and the meaning we give them, keeps us locked in a cycle and unable to grow.

 

The reason is because we have our stories, we say; 

This is what was done to me.

This is how I was treated.

I was abused

I was neglected

I had all these stories, these narratives I went through in life.

I had memories, pieces of memories.

I had fragments of ideas and fragments of memories.

 

I thought was done to me, I thought I did, all this stuff lined up and created a life that I had to escape from. The only thing I knew how to do was escape through drinking.

The reason I needed to escape wasn’t just because these things happen.

Because they happen…

They were in the past!

 

The problem is they are coming into the future, they are coming into the present, they are coming into the now, because of the meaning I gave to my stories.

What meaning are we giving to our story?

 I might say this is what was done to me. I deserve this. The fact of the matter is I was just a kid and I never deserved that stuff.  I went through life. I didn’t deserve it.

How can someone do this to me?  I looked at all these stories of what happened. What was done, as something that happened to me? I said this person hurt me, these people neglected me…

I gave the meaning to these stories, saying;

“Well, I do or do not deserve this.”

I went through my life carrying this badge, saying;

“Well, if I deserve this, what else do I deserve?”

I went through life saying;

“Well if this is how I was treated then this means:

 

I am unlovable, I am unwanted, and I am a reject or loser

The secret of life is the fact that when you’re young and these things happen to you. You do not deserve it; you did not bring them upon yourself.

We have to say past abuse from our childhood and from our life doesn’t need to have meaning because if there was a different person in the picture, the same thing would have happened.

The problem is, we look at life as something that happens to us;

The fact of the matter is, if you take yourself out of the picture, there would be someone else on planet earth getting the same exact treatment, the same exact stuff now.

This happens for such a long time that we get indoctrinated…we get conditioned!

Chances are that person would end up with the same kind of ailment, the same kind of things that you’re dealing with right now, that you feel you need to escape from because this happens at such a young age and happens for such a long time, which is why they call child abuse, child a child abuse because of the effects that it brings.

Our very personality, our very thought process gets molded by these things. We start to tell ourselves stories and give meaning to these stories, but the fact of the matter is;

If there was another kid that my parents had, they probably would have done the same exact thing.

 

If there was another person that my step parents had, there would be the same thing that happens regardless of what the person was like tall, skinny, fat or short.

 

We look at this and we’re like this stuff is going to happen anyway, life happens.

It’s like the Bible says, “it rains on the just and the unjust alike.”

God’s rain does not have any singularity, it doesn’t have any purpose to get one person or another, and it rains on the whole town.

There’s an ebb and flow to life.

There are bad people that do bad things.

There are people, like that I grew up with that had bad ideas.

“Hey, let’s send one kid to the alcoholic grandma who almost killed him and let’s keep the other one safe.”

Why did that happen?

 I don’t know. I could go and say, I deserve this. I’m a bad kid. I’m not lovable. Maybe I’m terrible, I’m unwanted.

Or;

 I could look at this and say the adults are pretty fucked up in this situation. It has nothing to do with me. I don’t need to give that meaning.

We could simply look at it as an event that happened in life. And we could start to heal by saying;

I don’t need to escape from this because it doesn’t mean to me as a person.

I am not the sum of what has been done to me.

I am not the sum of what has been done to my life.

My existence, my person is not an accumulation of all the things that happen to me.

I am not my stories.

I am not my abuse.

I am not the neglected one.

I am not these things. I am something much more something different.

The problem is we don’t know how to cope with these things.

Many people say you need to get over that!

Well, you never get over something.

You move through it by understanding, we don’t need to escape.

You move through it by saying, I don’t need to tell my story, to get people to   understand  me.

I  need to accept  the key to keeping sober, if you have this kind of stuff going on, is to let go of the meaning that you’re giving your stories.

You might be keeping a memory of the past because letting go of that memory might let my abuser or my attacker off the hook. It doesn’t let them off the hook that still happened, they’re still bad, but it’s putting them in the place where they belong. Not, this happened to me because of something with me, but this happened to me because they’re messed up.

When we start to let go of the stories, a lot of times maybe it’s a story about you.

Maybe, I’m a failure because this didn’t work.

You just tried something and it didn’t work, that’s the end of the story, but the problem is we carry these stories as a badge of honor and we’re willing to tell them to anyone and there’s all this emotion just like it’s the day it happened, because the healing process hasn’t started yet because they haven’t accepted this as what is so.

Acceptance that life happens, it happens to good, it happens to bad people. When we start to accept and say this is what my story was and stop giving it meaning, then we could start to heal and we could start to become sober.

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Thanks again I’m Marcus from talksober.com

“I really hope this helped you out it’s something I’ve struggled with for years. I didn’t get past the meaning, I gave my stories till I was about 35  years old and I started to understand that this stuff happens and I started to build a life and I started to build the story that I didn’t have to escape from.”

Hey guys, Marcus here from TalkSober.com.

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For today’s lesson, we’ll be discussing something that’s a bit more different from the rest of the other topics that I usually do. We’re going to discuss alcohol recovery and what you can do to start sobering up! 

Disclaimer: Marcus is NOT A DOCTOR. The information in this lesson only serves as a resource and shouldn’t be solely relied upon when it comes to treatments and diagnostics. If you are looking for professional help, please seek individuals who already have professional academic certifications and years of experience in the field.

So the two main objectives that we have for this lesson is:

1. How to maintain sobriety – I’ll be giving advice on how to stay sober.
2. How to reduce relapse – We’ll also be looking on how to reduce the chances of going to older patterns and habits.

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Here are some facts that you need to know when it comes to alcoholism:

1. We have to be aware that alcoholism is actually not just a problem in itself, but is also a symptom of another underlying problem. One of the doctor’s opinions in Alcoholics Anonymous says that if people were really willing to help battle their habits, then they would be able to control it mentally. It’s not just a problem of mental control.
2. In most cases, the underlying problems and symptoms are the reasons why people would relapse and drink. If a person has a problem with self-pity and resentment, these are major factors that can lead to the person drinking.
3. One of the reason why people go back to drinking right after the first drink is that once a person starts relapsing, their thoughts are already being clouded by the alcohol which opens up to more ideas of drinking.

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So is an alcohol a disease?

In a sense, it is a disease in a way that in impairs several functions of the human body – specifically your thought processes and your ability to choose.

The question that we have to ask ourselves is: Do we have a defense against the first drink?

What can we do to fight it?

1. We have to get sober– In order for us to think in a rational manner, we need to rid our body of alcohol which could impair our logical processes.
2. Think about all the consequences– Regret will always come last. The best way to solve problems in your life is to first acknowledge that those problems do exist and that we have to take the initiative in solving those problems!
3. Train your mind to think differently– Drinking is a coping mechanism, but as a coping mechanism, it doesn’t really get people anywhere since problems aren’t solved by actively avoiding problems.
4. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals– Having an honest and direct communication with your friends and loved ones who will help you on your journey will remind you of your strength and that you can do it! We’re social people!

Just remember: We always have the power to choose. Strength comes from how we are able to control ourselves!

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Be sure to get more of Marcus’ Sobriety Tips at www.TalkSober.com! It’s free!

If you want to know more methods in sobering up and living a more wholesome life,

CHECK OUT TALKSOBER.COM

 

 

 

 I remember the day as if it happened yesterday. Thoughts racing through my mind as I effortlessly complied with everything asked of me by the police, as I was being cuffed and placed in the back of a police car in front of those peering eyes, hidden between the openings of my neighbor’s window shades. These neighbors have all they need to make fun of me and call me whatever they want. Now great! What else can I do to make this day any worse?

This was the day I would be placed on an involuntary psych hold as they call it in California which basically means that the state thinks I am too dangerous to myself to be able to have any normal human rights for 48 to 72 hours. This is not my life. I thought to myself I was a good daddy. I was a caring person. What brought me to this? I was successful. I had everything I said I ever wanted. I had done everything I was supposed to do. I was even a gospel preacher for four years, preaching in the streets, getting hit spit on in, yelled at for the name of God.

Doesn’t that count for something? I mean aside from the occasional speeding ticket; I was a pretty upstanding guy. I followed the damn rules. What else do you want from me?

This day is taking forever. I thought to myself as we pulled away from my beautiful home in Northern California with my wife sobbing uncontrollably, standing in the front door, watching me Bob back and forth in the back of the police car. Unable to keep myself steady. I sure I’m glad the kids were at school already. The last thing I would want is for them to see all this. We were planning to move across the country in about a week and we’re just finalizing the sale of our home here in California. Aside from making a bunch of money online, no one knows it but I’m really flat broke. The sale of our house in Northern California is the last attempt to secure a home in Florida and pay off the bills that I racked up over the last few years.

And just a few days ago we got word that we needed to double our down payment which left us with pretty much nothing to move. With the thought of being without a place to live for my family was terrifying, not just one of those little scares but the kind that hurts your bones and makes your head twitch.

WHAT THE HELL HAVE I DONE WITH MY LIFE? I made over five million dollars online and now I have to think of what life would be like if my kids had no place to live. What am I thinking? What the hell is wrong with me? One of those moments where you can see a glimpse of the fog through the stress hit me like a ton of bricks. What was I doing to my family? What did I become but a blithering mess of a man who can’t even provide for his kids. No wonder life seems better off without me in it. Oh hell not this hospital.

The car pulls into the emergency lane of Vacaville is notorious ripoff hospital. I’ve been there before and I tell my story to the sympathetic police officer who listens as I go on and on about how to pay 64 bucks to pee in a cup and take a blood test here about three years ago. If they’re gonna get another penny out of me this whole fucking thing is a joke. Ripoff hospitals, insane taxes. Who’s going to look out for me? I mean I’m the good guy here.

All the while the cuffs are digging into my wrists and I can’t get comfortable and this fucking anxiety is going to kill me. Have you ever had anxiety so bad that you wanted to either piss your pants, run away, die or just about anything to get away from it? That’s how I was.

I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t think. I wanted to run away fast. My mind was racing a million miles a minute and I couldn’t stop it. I could never stop it. It just goes and goes and goes which is pretty good for business ideas but bad for normal functioning life. All I could think to myself is damn I’m sure I’m glad. I had those wine boxes hidden in the garage. There wasn’t for downing. Those I wouldn’t make it past 9 am. It was now 10:35 in the morning. You see back then, I drank every morning to take the edge off and because I had to on the outside, you would think I had it all together. People used to tell me you’re the wise one. You have everything together. My friends and colleagues came to me for advice. They called me the centered one but on the inside I was a total mess, crying myself to sleep, read that. Sobbing had become a normal occasion. I had plenty reason to cry, that’s for sure. My alcoholic grandmother who almost killed me twice, my aloof mother, abusive stepparents and totally narcissistic father who can’t help but talk about himself all the time, who moved me out at the ripe old age 16, of with absolutely no life skills whatsoever. I had to take care of my older brother too. Not to mention I have an overbearing wife yelled at me and the kids all the time. Even my therapist was a whack job who stopped charging me because I was quote-unquote helping her more than she was helping me.  So she stated.

I was plagued by my past, my present and lack of a future. I could believe in and in my darkest hour of need, no one was there to help me. I couldn’t even sit and finish a meal in public because I was abused with food so bad that my throat would bleed often from having Forks shoved down it. I was afraid of damn near everything getting pushed around in school, for ten years will make anyone like that especially when you’re only five feet tall, full grown. I think it was like four, eight or something during high school.

I remember one time when I was in PE class sitting on the grass, depressed with my head in my hands and all the sudden, Wham some kid starts kicking at my head. I got up after having pissed my pants out of fear, hoping no one noticed and the damn teacher sends me to the office telling them I should be kicked out of school for getting kicked. Nothing happened to the kid who kicked me though, so I just left that school. Never mind visiting y’all and that was the last time I took school seriously.

That’s how life was for me. I was a victim and I had every reason to be. Life had dealt me an unfair hand and I made good on it. I did what I was supposed to and this is the thanks I get, handcuffed, can’t get my own pants, taken involuntarily to the rip-off hospital. I mean come on when I first met my wife for the first time and got her pregnant, I didn’t run like my dad said, I should. I stuck it out and I took the little hundred dollars I had in my account and made over five million dollars online. I could have ran but I made good on it. This can you take my cuffs off, please I won’t hurt myself or anyone else. I’m not supposed to but you seem okay. Click the chair.

After about six hours of sitting in the hospital, having no idea what’s going to happen to me, where am I going to live, what the hell is going on. Finally, the ambulance arrives. Seriously an ambulance? What’s this going to cost me? Whoever thought it was a good idea to take a suicidal person and pile up a bunch of bills for medical expenses is more delusional than I am.

I’m the one being strapped to this stretcher thing. So full of anxiety. I can’t even sit still. I begged them to let me walk out but it’s against policy sir. Perhaps they wouldn’t be able to charge the 151 thousand dollars they eventually tried to charge me if they couldn’t put me on the stretcher. Seriously, 151 grand for one ride in an ambulance. I could buy an ambulance for that much. I could buy a fucking helicopter. I could pay a doctor to live in my house. There’s a lot better things I could think of to spend my hundred and fifty thousand dollars on, than a seven mile ride in a cramped ambulance shit. At least let me sip on the morphine or something well.

The good part is that these straps holding me to the bed are not as uncomfortable as the cuffs were and I got to walk outside a bit at the hospital. I could have left but you know where would I go. I feel like there’s nothing left of me. I’m starting to regret not killing myself sooner. When everyone was gone to me, my life was worth less than my life insurance policy.

At that time, all these thoughts going through my mind as the ambulance speeds and bounces, making anyone who isn’t got sick, ready to throw up everything they ever ate. Not to mention, you have to look out that little window backwards shit. What if someone sees me in here? What if they recognize me? I mean at least a million people online have seen my videos. This could be really bad. Breathe Marcus breathe. We’re almost there, almost where I have no idea where we’re going or what to expect. For all I know, they could be taking me out to the desert to throw me in a hole. Then we arrived. The ambulance turns around and the two doors are opened to this concrete building with two doors and no windows. Just a fence. A big huge fence. the doors open and all I see is the chair.

This is the part where if you haven’t yet surrendered to the fact that you are batshit, crazy ass motherfucker, you’re going to right now because this chair is metal. It has hand straps, feet straps. The whole nine yards. I feel like I’m in some M night Shyamalan movie where the same person is about to go crazy because everyone tells him he’s crazy and they all make him so crazy. That now, he really believes it. But I’m saying, I think to myself as they remove my shoes and give me state-issued non-slip socks, take everything out of my pockets. I mean, what the hell, I’m not going to kill myself with my socks. Is that even possible? What’s with the Nurse Ratched over there in the corner looking at me and the chair is ready for me? This chair was the scariest thing I’ve ever faced.

Imagine you know you’re totally saying you’re fine and you’re about to be held against your will and strapped tightly to a chair. What if they give me some lobotomy or some weird jackoff drugs or something like Cuckoo’s Nest? Okay stop Marcus, breathe. You can talk your way out of this. A huge sigh of relief comes across me. I didn’t get strapped in the chair that time, instead I enter a room. There’s a dimly lit TV showing game. Shows a lady who hasn’t bathed in what seems like years who stares at you so deeply. You feel like any minute, she’ll jump out and poke you in the eye for no good reason. She’s talking to herself, clenching your bed. Met Leigha, she stares blankly at the TV. She’s not even watching it. It’s as if she isn’t even here.

What if they give me the shit that she’s on? What if I can’t take a shower? What if I can’t but what does they have me here for the night, a few nights? What if it’s weeks or months? I can’t take this anymore. I step outside for a breath to the super high fenced-in yard. It’s not much bigger than a small backyard and there’s a few people off in the corners. I find a place to sit and the Sun beats down on me as I contemplate what I had become out of the corner of my eye. I notice a lady about 45 years old crawling on the grass. She’s having conversations with every single blade of grass in great detail. She lasts with one and yells at the next. She scares me. What she comes after me? What if she tries to get me? This is like a crazy movie, only it’s real and I’m not crazy.

I hear a voice in the back of my head, it says, Marcus you don’t belong here. What are you doing? Then a small vaguely comforting thought enters my mind as if to touch me on the shoulder and say that everything’s going to be okay. It says to me, “Marcus this is exactly where you belong. Welcome to alcoholic insanity.”

Dear friend,

Over the next thirty days, I will be writing you each day to help you understand what an alcoholic is, how an alcoholic thinks, and what to do to stay sober.

These writings and insights do not come at a cheap price. As you heard from the story before, they almost cost me my very life and robbed me of my sanity.

Let me first start by saying that I understand how you feel.

 I understand how hard it is to accept that something so simple, so pleasurable at one time and so innocently used by other people can knock us down to our very core and cause us to wonder, what is wrong with me? Why can I not stop drinking?

On so many other areas of my life, it was easy to excel. I started a successful online business from just a simple idea when no one believed in me. At that time, I had nothing to my name, no fancy degree, no formal schooling and I barely knew how to use my computer.

Certainly, someone who can do that can kick something as simple as drinking or so you would think.

I used to pride myself on the ability to learn and talk my way out of any situation. This was a valuable tool at times or so it seemed. I was even able to talk my way out of staying the full 72 hours at that mental hospital I told you about earlier. Convincing them that I was saying, now the law requires a full 72 hours but I got out in four or the.

So many times people looked up to me for answers and advice saying wow, he seems like he has it all together. He’s so grounded and mature.

Yet deep down I knew there was something wrong, deeper than the alcohol, deeper than my outward appearance which was usually pretty presentable.

I was a functioning alcoholic. I ran my business. I took care of my family, cooked dinner every night and helped other people with their problems. I even had a therapist who stopped charging me because I was “helping her more than she helped me.”

But amidst the anguishing thoughts, daily guilt and shame and inability to shut my mind off, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what or how to move past it.

Could this little drink be what’s wrong with me, is there more? I would often wonder this as I searched the internet for ideas day and night. I would search for things like, “Am I an alcoholic?” and “What is an alcoholic?” Even things like, am I going crazy? Many sleepless nights I would stay awake researching and learning.

To no avail, nothing seemed to help. No one had the answer I was looking for. So I could stop drinking long enough to clear my mind and figure out what was going on.

In the spring of 2014, my life seemingly came to a crash.

I sold my home in Northern California, completely in a drunken fog and was about to relocate myself, my two kids, and my wife across the country to Florida for no other real reason than we really wanted to move to Florida. The houses were cheaper.

We had problems getting the house in Florida. My income wasn’t what I expected and I couldn’t run away from the fear and constant thoughts of impending doom.

My life was worth less to me than my life insurance policy.

At this point, my kids were afraid to be alone with me when I drank because I wasn’t able to tend to their needs and care for them like a father should.

My wife and I had our problems 14 years of them but all that faded in the distance when I could not stop drinking. That was all there was that consumed me and that consumed them.

Why can I not stop drinking?

Why can I not get past my past?

What the fuck is wrong with me?

These thoughts plagued my mind, day and night. I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t turn them off. The only thing that helped was more alcohol after a few weeks of serious consideration. I had decided that the best way to solve my problems and get rid of these haunting thoughts was to end it all.

I had plan to take my own life, seriously planned and thought out, not another one of those half-cocked plan that I came up with. This one was dialed in after all, if no one knows what the hell is wrong with me then it must be really really bad and I shouldn’t be allowed to exist anymore.

Perhaps you’re not as bad as I was or maybe you’re worse.

But I can tell you today that after being two-and-a-half years sober, I still have the desire to drink sometimes. Sometimes I just want the taste. It used to help me escape a tough situation or shut my mind off for a little bit.

In those times I find it helpful to remember where I came from…

To remember what it was like to wake up after a crappy four-hour sleep obsessing about what I did the day before trying to nervously account for every minute. Where was I? What did I do? Who did I talk to? What did I say? What did I think I did? What I thought I didn’t do?

Often times I’ve been tears over what my life had become and I didn’t want that back or to remember what it was like to have a drink.

When I used to have to down a few drinks, or cheap box wines or the bottoms of whatever was left over from the bottles the day before, just to calm my anxiety to function in daily life.

One time it got so bad, I couldn’t take a walk with my wife for more than yards because my legs gave in from anxiety and made me feel like my world was crashing in.

Other times I made excuses not to go to school functions because anxiety was so bad, I couldn’t sit still for over a year. I couldn’t attend church with my family because of this body crippling anxiety that would not go away no matter what. I was going insane. My therapist said I just needed exposure therapy or some other cockamamie shit they came up with for that day. I even took antidepressants to try to help.

Nothing worked. The alcohol helped at first.

Then it got to where it was needed for daily functioning. I drank all day every day in the morning at 4 a.m., lunch, night. I was in the grips of alcohol and it owned me.

The very thing that helped me cope had turned on me.

I hate you alcohol.

Why did you do this to me? What have I become and how can I get out?

These letters I’ll be sending you over the next 30 days are going to…

• Show you what’s going on with your mind and how alcohol is affecting you
• Teach you how not to drink even if things get worse than they are right now
• Give you the gift of sober thinking
• Help you understand how your mind got this way in the first place
• Reveal tools you can use to combat the unstoppable thoughts
• Inspire you to overcome down times and deep depression
• Put an end to the useless guilt that plagues you
• Calm you by showing you how to deal with anxiety
• Inform you of what an alcoholic is and is not
• Give you daily coping skills to deal with, just about anything,
• Show you how to get by without alcohol
• and of course you will start feeling better starting now.

I write these to you as a brother, a friend, someone who knows what it’s like to be where you are. You are not alone anymore. My words will go with you. Take them and use them.

These are the letters I wish someone had sent me when I was at the end of my rope and sometimes not.

You see, this is a tough mountain to climb.

Sometimes I was able to maintain my drinking. Sometimes I could stop for one, two or even three weeks at a time. I thought it had it all handled. I was at a drunk like those dudes in the park.

I had my houses, my cars, my businesses, my family.

Then I would look back wondering how I ended up drunk again. I was doing so well. Now I’m endlessly searching the Great’s under the barbecue, the sheetrock in my office, the boxes in the garage where I hid my $1 box wines, pining like a fiend for my next fi.

Trembling, afraid, anxious. I was fine last week. I went to hold three weeks. I had beer at lunch with my diet coke. I was good. I had a diet coke for crying out loud.

I was fine until I wasn’t.

I can’t tell you what took me from my diet coke and light beer, two bottles of box wine and vodka. I didn’t even tell you where I bought them or why it was as if some force above me was guiding me to the store and putting it in my basket.

My friend, you are not alone, and you do not have to do this by yourself.

I’ve walked this road before and I’m going to walk it with you for the next 30 days.

Remember, alcoholics drink. It’s what they do. Don’t look at yourself as a success or failure if you drink again. Do not trust your feelings when you’re hungover, sad, angry, or tired. Let these letters be your guide and I will help you.

Welcome to the first day of understanding your mind. Try not to drink today no matter what happens. If you can get through the next  hours and make it to my next letter, that will be helpful. If you can’t make it, go as long as you can and if you get the urge to drink or find yourself about to order one, read my next letter first.

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I love you and I can’t wait to share my life stories and experience with you.

I’m not writing this as an all-knowing enlightened son of a bitch who thinks he knows everything. I’m just sharing what happened to me, what got me sober, and what keeps me sober today. Use these words as a guidepost and make them your own. In them you will find what works for you, your friend Marcus.

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To download all 30 of Marcus’s letters to an alcoholic. Visit TalkSober.com/letters. You can download them free right now and get access to Marcus’s rehab notes to help you get and stay sober starting today.

 

 

 

There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m fine. What are you talking about? I haven’t had too much. Fine. I work perfectly fine and I find hay in my bills. I haven’t had too much. There’s nothing going on. Fine. No one can tell. Am I a functioning alcoholic?

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Hi there! I’m Marcus.

Today at TalkSober.com, what we’re going to be doing is talking about one of the most dangerous types of alcoholic. This is the functioning alcoholic.

You see on the outside, my life seemed perfect.

I had beautiful house, beautiful kids, beautiful wife. Everything seemed okay. But at night, I would often fall asleep passed out. Drink to excess. Deep down I struggled with identity. I struggled with depression. I struggled with anxiety, suicidal thoughts and everything like that. But because I was a functioning alcoholic and because I had this persona to share with the world as this money-making affiliate marketing guru, I wasn’t able to share this with anyone or so I thought.

And this is a very very dangerous thing to deal with, being a functional alcoholic.

So today what I’d like to do in this video is talk to you about what a functioning alcoholic is, how you can get help, and what to do if you know someone who’s a functioning alcoholic. So let’s hop over to the whiteboard and talk about what this is.

Now what we’re going to do is we are going to talk about what a functioning alcoholic is. And I have my notes here.

So what we’re going to do today is talk about what a functioning alcoholic is.

Now by definition, the health places talked about a functioning alcoholic for women having about three drinks a day or 21 drinks a week. A drink can be like a beer. It could be a wine. It could be a cocktail. Whatever it is there, just counting the alcohol content of something. Don’t get technical. I mean you know if you’re drinking 4% beer, don’t get technical. Now obviously seven straight up whiskey’s that you know 7% or whatever it is. It’s going to be a lot worse than having you know the 4% but let’s not deal with technicalities. Let’s deal with the problem at hand which is, “Are you a functioning alcoholic?”

For men it’s a little bit more rigorous. Although for men like me who are five foot one and 130 pounds soaking wet, unless I have a tic-tac, then I look like I’m fat but at any rate we look at this and ferment it’s a little bit different. Again, these are guidelines. Obviously I’m not the size of a normal. You know five foot, 180-pound man. So this stuff hits me quicker or doesn’t hit me quicker when I was drinking heavily.

But for men, it is I believe it’s four per day or 21 per week.

Now when we’re talking about this stuff, what we want to do is look at what a functioning alcoholic is because for me I laughed at these numbers. For me 21 was an average day.

Okay I would consume a box of beer, maybe even more. And the beer that I liked was you know I was up there. Some of them were 9% but no one of them was 11% but those were like nine dollars a bottle, so I didn’t get those too often. But at any rate, my normal day was 21. So here I was. I was consuming in the height. I actually had a keg machine in my backyard office.

This is my keg and it would hold like five gallon. It helped two five-gallon little guys or a seven and a half big guy or a fifteen gallon big big guy.

Now when I was really heavy drinking, we were going through the seven and a half’s like every week at least. Sometimes I refill them. Several times a week or three of those five-gallon guys. So I was drinking a lot. I was heavy but all this was going on 21 drinks a day. Drinking these kegs down, drinking wine, drinking heavy liquor, anything I could get. Even drank vodka, which if you know me I absolutely take it. I hate that taste of vodka. That’s why it’s all in these fruity drinks, because it doesn’t taste very good but I loved straight stuff. I love straight whiskey. I like straight bourbon. All that stuff I really enjoyed it.

And still to this day, I could say yeah you know I would like to enjoy one of those but the fact of the matter is I’m not going to because WHILE THE TASTE MIGHT BE SOMETHING I DESIRE, THE INSANITY IS SOMETHING I DON’T.

So here I was. I was drinking all this stuff. I helped down a job. I worked from home as an internet marketer. You could see a lot of my videos online about that. You can actually see the video the day I went in for help. The day the suicide threat and everything like that I held down the job. Money wasn’t an issue.  I mean I had my money issues because of my drinking but it wasn’t a big thing. It wasn’t like I was asking people to pay my bills and stuff.

So these are the things here. This is the normal definition is okay are you having more than three a day or seven a week? If you’re a lady or if you’re a dude, are you having more than for a day?

Now that pretty much encompasses anyone watching this video.

Even if you’re watching this for a friend, you might be saying, well I have for a day. I mean, is four beers really that much? I mean, a football game is two and a half hours. By the time you get through the football game, maybe you’ve had four. So you look at these. You say, well you know, is that a problem?

 

Now for me, we look at this and we say, what is functioning and what is nonfunctioning?

Nonfunctioning is like the dude in gutter, homeless, destitute, falling all over himself and this is what we look at.

Now this definition stops these people from getting help because for me, I was like, dude I’ve made a bunch of money. I’m an affiliate marketer. I got a big house. I don’t have to go to work. Everything’s okay. Everyone seemed to like it.

NOW THE PROBLEM WITH THE FUNCTIONING ALCOHOLIC,

HIS PEOPLE ENCOURAGED HIM. 

You look at all the things like Charlie Sheen and stuff like that.

It’s like, dude I make a hundred million dollars a year on my movie. I drink as much as I want. I fall down who gives a rip. I’m “winning” and the problem is a lot of this stuff is measured in stacks of cash.  

Stacks of cash have nothing to do with an alcoholic.

I don’t care how much money you have, if you got a stack of cash whatever and we’ll get you over here. So you can see my stacks of cash. If you have stacks of cash, doing okay. You’re doing alright.

I remember this. My dad looks at it this way, it’s like okay if you make money then you have arrived. That is winning.

But are you really winning?

Are you really winning?

Are you functional?

Are you happy?

Chances are, if you’re watching this video, you are not happy. Chances are, if you’re watching this video, something is about to break. No one can consume the amounts that I was consuming and be okay.

According to the health people, no one can consume this much without being okay because what happens is it leads to brain issues.  So we have brain issues. What happens is the alcoholic. The functioning alcoholic has all these issues and they’re piling up. They’re piling up over and over and over.

You might have money issues to start. You might have family issues. You might have real in chip issues. You might have health issues. You might have hangover issues. You might have a depression. You might have anxiety. You might have suicidal thoughts.

All these things start to pile up but no one says anything, because you seem okay and you’re supposed to have this persona of, “I’m Marcus and I make money. And I’m a functioning alcoholic.”

What that is, it’s stupid. 

While all society might say, “Well you know Marcus is winning, Marcus is doing good.” What’s happening is all these things are piling up. All these things are piling up and the person seeks no help. Why do they seek new help? Because they’re not like this guy falling in the gutter.

So what has to happen is something has to give, something has to change, and this person is going along, going through all the stuff. Not talking to anyone because everything on the outside seems okay but he is a functional alcoholic.

Let’s take a look at some of the signs that they say functional alcoholics have. 

1. You might joke about alcohol or talk about it. Like oh maybe I have a problem, maybe whatever.
2. You might miss work or job. I don’t put job because sometimes you’ll miss projects.
3. Next a huge one, he needs alcohol to relax/ feel confident.
4. Another one, drinks in morning. The morning drinks are like a big one because most people don’t start their morning that day but alcoholics do.

That was one thing I had to have. I was sitting there. I have my coffee cup half full of vodka because it masked coffee pretty good or whiskey or something like that and no one knew. But I would drink there.

5. Another big one is drink or drunk when not intended.

A lot of people think that alcoholics like to be drunk. For me personally, I did not like to be drunk. I hated being drunk. I always accidentally got drunk. I liked to be buzzed. But when we look at this, they get drunk when not intended. Which pretty much happened for me all the time.

6. Forget what he did while drinking.

This is one thing where you obsess about it. It’s like, are you having blackouts? Are you forgetting about this stuff?

7. Deny drinking or hide it.
8. Cause people to worry.

Are people starting to worry? Are people starting to say but you know you okay is it six enough I mean you’re gonna be alright. Here you like acting like an idiot and you don’t know it because this is the thing.

Now the big thing about this, the main thing about all of this is the fact that THE FUNCTIONING ALCOHOLIC DOES NOT BLAME ALCOHOL.

This is a big thing whether you got a loved one, whether it’s you. The functioning alcoholic does not blame alcohol. He blames all these other things, whether it’s a relationship, maybe if my wife was nice to me then I wouldn’t drink. If my husband was not a jerk then I wouldn’t drink. If I had $, where I could pay the IRS, pay my house off then I wouldn’t drink. I mean if that wasn’t there, if I wasn’t anxious all the time then I wouldn’t drink.  If I had more of this, if I had this.

They are waiting for this magic to happen.

They might play the lotto like I did. I was like okay maybe one day I’ll win dollars and everything will be solved. My wife will be happy. She won’t worry about this stuff anymore. I’ll have all the money to pay all this stuff. I won’t have to work anymore. Then I can settle down, relax and drink like a normal person. We look at this and the problem with the functioning alcoholic is he’s always looking for this. Even if I got that million dollar jackpot or whatever was, I would have still had a problem because the problem is inside of me. The problem is me and alcohol.

 

A lot of people don’t look at this but all these problems we’re about alcohol. I look at it now. I’m two and a half years sober. Has a lot changed. Well I sold my house while I was drunk and I was able to get another house, two and a half years later. Two years later which is cool. So I’m kind of in the same position. My house is a little less now than it was before because we moved across the country but nothing really changed.

None of this stuff changed.

My wife didn’t say, oh well you’re sober. Now I’m gonna treat you good or you know people didn’t say, hey yours over now. Yeh let’s give you money. Let’s treat you like a king. No it didn’t happen.

 

What happened was I realized that alcohol was a lot of my problems.

It was a lot of my depressive problems. There’s a lot of my anxiety problems. There was a lot of my personal relationship problems.

 

It was a major problem but the alcoholic, the functioning alcoholic has a blind spot.

They cannot see that this is causing the problems. They can’t see it. I don’t care how much you pointed out to them. They’ll say, well I was always kind of anxious and that’s true but now it’s a lot worse. Now your brains overcompensating for all this liquor you poured in it to feel better.

So what’s happening is there is a blind spot and we’re going to talk more about the blind spot in the next video. But what I want you to do now in this video is go over to TalkSober.com/function. On that page, there’s gonna be a little answer quiz thingy that you can take to figure out if you are a functioning alcoholic. But really quick if you’re having a lot of drinks. You’re worried about it and you can’t stop. Chances are you’re functioning alcoholic and while people might encourage you on and say, Wow man that dude really can hold his liquor, this stuff stacking up and you need to do something about this now.

 

So go to TalkSober.com/function. Take that test. Check out the next videos that appear after this video. We’re going to talk about what to do when you decide to get sober, how to do it safely, everything like that.

What to do if you’re a functioning alcoholic and how to straighten your life out over the last two and a half years. I’ve learned more than I learned in the previous  years of my life. In those first  years of my life and if you can’t do math, I’m now in those first years of my life. I went through life as if everything was happening to me. The IRS stuff happened to me. The drinking thing happened to me. All this stuff happened to me. Life was happening to me. And it wasn’t good. Why does all this bad stuff happen to me? I lived my life as that.

Now I learned some new ways of living which I’m going to show you on this channel. So subscribe to my channel. There’ll be a little subscribe button somewhere and follow me on YouTube and we’re going to go through this stuff.

I’m going to teach you how to stay sober and live a life that is more meaningful because we’re going to deal with all this stuff. We’re going to deal with this stuff.  We’re going to deal with anxiety. We’re gonna dream to deal with mental problems. We’re going to deal with your past. We’re going to deal with whatever is plaguing you.

---

So subscribe to my channel. Hop over to TalkSober.com/function. Take that test and I’ll see you in the next video.

If you’re functioning alcoholic, please get help.

Even if everyone says that you don’t need help, listen to your voice of reason. There’s somewhere in you that knows that this stuff is going to pile up. It’s going to spiral and I don’t want to see you spiral out of control as bad as I did and have to be drug to a mental institute and deal with 24/7 anxiety at a rehab, unless you have to. If that’s what you got to do, that’s what you got to do but I’d rather see you get better on your own and get better now by realizing this. So check out my next video the blind spots in the alcoholics brain.

 

Go over TalkSober.com/function. You’ll get that little quiz about functional alcoholics. I can’t talk today but you’ll get that quiz and I’ll put a link to the video about the blind spot. So thanks again. TalkSober.com. I’m Marcus. Have fun, enjoy and let’s start getting better.

 

We’re going to talk about something very important that you’re going to hear in a lot of alcoholism recovery type philosophy. What is a dry drunk?

And

We want to take a look at this, because a lot of people look at this and they say;

Is a dry drunk someone who just wants to drink again?

A dry drunk is someone who has only taken away the component of alcohol. That means nothing in their life has changed other than giving up drinking. A lot of times it gets confused with a term called wet brain.

Wet brain refers to people that have the symptoms of being drunk even though they haven’t drink.

A dry drunk as I mentioned is someone who has just taken away the alcohol component.

 

It’s kind of like the idea of; if I could give up alcohol then I would be X.

• Then I’d be more productive.
• Then I’d be healthier.
• Some people think they would make more money and things like that.

What they’re saying is, if I could give up alcohol, these things will change in my life. Now while that might be true, we want to look at the foundation of why people are alcoholics in the first place.

 

A lot of 12-step literature and recovery literature talks about drinking as a symptom of something bigger.

Is drinking something bigger or a symptom of something else?

A lot of 12-step programs will say; there’s a thing called “stinkin thinkin”.

We look at this and we say;

We have this idea of drinking as a symptom.

We have this idea of stinking thinking

meaning we’re thinking poorly.

We have drinking, as piling up of something

 

If we just take drinking out of the equation we might be a little more productive.

“Of course we’re going to be healthier we might make more money because the drinking is out of the way and will be more productive.

But we want to look at the underlying issues, I see this all the time there’s people who have been in recovery for years but they’re miserable and they treat people poorly. This is what’s known as a dry drunk they have not given up the attitudes, feelings and behaviors that they had when they were drinking

If we follow along with what most literature says, “If drinking is a symptom of something else” then we look at it we say well “drinking might be a symptom of something bigger.”

Drinking might be a symptom of what’s making your life miserable now!

In a lot of literature, you’re also going to see what is known as the fourth dimension.

The fourth dimension is where they say;

“Drinking might be a symptom of what’s making your life miserable now!”

You are going to get the fourth dimension of living which is like a whole new life. If you were to look at it religiously it would be like being born again. Your life changes, your thoughts change, your behaviors change and your attitudes change. This is known as someone who is recovered or in recovery.

My life is starting to change now, one of the things that I didn’t realize when I was first starting to get sober. While I

was dealing with that year and a half, I felt like if I could just

get rid of the drinking then I’d be more productive, I’d be healthier, I’d make more money, I wouldn’t be as depressed.

I thought that the drinking was the only problem that was stopping me from

reaching the fourth dimension.

But as it were, that wasn’t the only problem. I found out that every time I put the bottle down without fixing the underlying problem, which was my life as a whole. All I was doing was setting myself up for the next relapse.

 

So, I want to ask you a question, Are you setting up for the next relapse?

Because every time I stop drinking, no matter how long it was whether it was a day or a month before I put the bottle down I was setting myself instantly for a relapse.

 

That’s why relapse is so common because the thoughts attitudes and behaviors do not change.

What needs to change here is a fundamental shift in life philosophy because often times we

Drink as a symptom of something bigger. We drink;

Because we don’t like our life

Because feel like life is happening to us.

Because we’re just responding to whatever happens

Because we feel like we are getting the short end of the stick

Because of what happened in our past or what’s happening now

We look at this and say; these attitudes, behaviors and feelings are setting us up for a relapse.

 

What is leading us to a relapse?

A lot of people say that an emotional relapse happens long before drinking.

What does this mean? We take a look at this and I want to put all this together for you because I want you to understand what’s going on. The problem with me for the year and a half that I couldn’t get sober was the fact that I didn’t understand, what was going on. It was eating me alive.  I was like;

Why can’t I just quit?

 What is the deal?

 Why do I keep going back to this like a moth to a flame?

 

We look at it we say well a lot of it has to do with the fact that drinking is a symptom of something bigger.

We also have something to do with the fact that we were setting up for the next relapse.

And the fact that I thought when I stopped drinking all this stuff was going to start to get better.

What I didn’t realize, I was a dry drunk because my feelings, my emotions and my behaviors did not change. The only thing that changed was taking away the alcohol.

What happens in life is, if you are drinking as a symptom of something deeper. When those things start to creep in, it’s very easy to go back to what worked in the first place.

Drinking was a solution to a lot of your problems.

Drinking was a solution to not being able to emotionally respond.

Not being able to deal with your stinking thinking or your depressive thinking.

Not being able to deal with your life.

If you want to get to this fourth dimension,

It is just a way of .life where you take responsibility for your actions.

Your lot in life;

I am responsible for where I am, where I am in life is the

       Culmination of the decisions that I’ve made.

Little decisions every day lead you down the path.

 

Just like if you decide to drink today you might say well “it’s only one it’s not going to hurt me.”

“It’s not going to be that big deaI. I got to have one at the wedding” or whatever it is.

 

You’re going to look at this and what happens is you start to change over time. This is how things creep in. the same thing happens with emotional relapse, when you have those negative feelings creeping in;

• You might have anger.
• You might have guilt.
• You might have resentment.
• You might have depression, grief, loss.
• You go we might also have jealousy.

All these things start to creep in. if you don’t deal with them right away, what’s going to happen

Is going to lead to an emotional relapse. Emotional relapse is reverting back into the negative emotions

 

Looking at it saying;

Hey, look my drinking is a symptom of all this negative stuff!

 

So this negative stuff needs to change now. The best way to change this is by changing your life philosophy, changing the underlying belief that governs your life.

You might not know it because you might not have thought about it, but everyone has a life philosophy. You got to look at what is governing your life

• Is it feeling like you’re a victim of all the things that happen to you?
• Is it feeling like you are getting the short end of the stick?
• Is it anger because everyone else is stupid or wrong?
• Are you angry, feeling guilty, resentment, depression, grief loss or jealousy in your life?

 

You want to take a look at your life philosophy and say what I believe about life right now.

Do I believe it’s hopeless or hopeful?

Do I believe it’s down or up?

Do I believe it’s positive or negative?

And when we start to change our life philosophy, everything starts to change. We get into this fourth dimension.

But what I want you to watch out for emotional relapse.

I want you to look at drinking as a symptom of something bigger.

 

This is why in so much literature, they say:

You got to work on yourself.

You know go to therapy!

You got to take care of you.

You know you got to do these steps.

 

Because a lot of people believe that it is a symptom of something bigger. We want to look at this because we don’t want to end up a dry drunk.

We want to talk about how to change your life philosophy.

I want you to go over to talksober.com/life check out that page we got some videos on, “How to understand how to make a new life philosophy.” We also have some worksheets and stuff that you can go through so that you don’t fall into the trap of being a dry drunk.

By keeping the same beliefs, keeping the same feelings and keeping the same behaviors, change can happen and it can happen fast. But it starts with changing each individual thing.

Once you start to realize that, you stopped being a dry drunk and you start to realize life is what it is.

I need to change my thinking get out of emotional relapse.

I need to realize when these things come in because feelings are like barometers.

We don’t have to trust every single feeling.

We just listen and say that might be useful that might not be useful.

 

We’re going to talk to you on;

How you can be better, how you can learn, how you can understand, how you can stop being a dry drunk, stop setting yourself up for the next relapse and dive into the fourth dimension of living. Where you take responsibility, you take charge and you start to understand what’s going on in your life in your emotions, in your mind and your thoughts.

We’re going to understand this together,

I’d like you to go over to;

talksober.com/life

Keep on guard if you keep on guard and you start to understand that feelings and thoughts don’t   just happen to you. They are a result of what you’re putting into your mind and what you dwell on. You have these patterns and we’re going to start to change them and we’re going to get to that fourth dimension of living and say life can be different

 

Go over to

talksober.com/life

Get our worksheets and

Let’s stay sober together one day at a time

 

 

Hey guys! It’s Marcus here with a special update!

As many people have been asking and emailing, I am still alive. The last video that you guys got from me was probably a little disturbing but kind of eye-opening to the problems that I deal with.

 

About a month ago, the video that I sent out that you can see on the blog was all about my current condition. We were about to move to Florida and change our life and things like that. A lot of you guys have known that for some time now I have been dealing with a drinking issue and that drinking issue is due to mental illness and all kinds of different things that have made me kind of not so good at times and have some bad thoughts.

In the last video, you guys saw was all about that being rushed to the hospital and going to rehab and things like that.  That’s basically where I had been for the last 30 days. The last 30 days I was in rehab and going through and learning how to live life sober.

So if any of you guys out there struggling with alcohol and don’t know how to stop or can’t stop, definitely get yourself some help and ask for that help and get the help that you need.

When I went into rehab, I probably look like this guy here- just completely scared to death not knowing what to expect but I knew that I needed some kind of help. I knew I needed something that was outside of myself. That’s why this video is entitled what to do when willpower isn’t enough.

You see I was freaked out about the rehab and everything like that but I actually found out that in addition to being clean for 30 days and dealing with that stuff and learning how to be clean for the rest of my life and understanding the fact that I do have an issue here, I also learned a lot of things about life, about psychology and about people.

 

Naturally being the teacher that I am of internet marketing, I want to bring that stuff to you. I want to show you some of the things that I learned and help you get the results that you want online. Whether it’s making a bunch of money making enough to you know pay your mortgage or whatever it is that you want, whether you want to you know make a whole ton of money, whatever it is you want I want to help you get that result and I want to help you understand what to do when willpower isn’t enough.

Because a lot of people come to me and they said, “Marcus you know I’ve tried a lot of different things. I’ve tried tons of things but nothing seems to be working.”

Now a lot of people are very very very big on willpower as I was with my drinking.

I wanted to stop. I needed to stop. I knew that something had to give, something had to change but when it came to me I wasn’t able to do it. The willpower wasn’t enough to get me where I wanted to go. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’ve been trying this internet business and you feel like nothing’s working the way that you want it to or it’s not working as fast as you want or as good as you want or you’re just not where you want to be. You’re not “getting it.”

Very very important.

 

Because over the last six weeks or so, I’ve learned a lot about human nature on top of what I already had thought. I’VE LEARNED THAT SOMETIMES IN LIFE, WILLPOWER JUST ISN’T ENOUGH.

 

Here’s what to do when willpower isn’t enough because obviously I wanted something very bad and I couldn’t do it. So one of the things that I learned when willpower isn’t enough:

 

Number one, I need to follow the path of those who have the result that I want.

 

Just like these little ducks here following the big duck, what you want to do is you want to find the person who has the result you want. So in my case let’s go find someone who hasn’t drank for a long time who struggled. Someone who is where I was and has where I want to be.

 

So you would want to find someone who has struggled and made their way in online marketing much like myself where in the beginning it wasn’t completely easy. It wasn’t handed to me. I didn’t start with a bunch of money. I started off just learning as I went and looking at what was out there.

But I realized another big thing about human nature. That is if you are unable to get the result you want just on willpower alone, like people who want to diet and people who want to do these things, the steps are there. Oftentimes it’s really easy and it’s within our grasp yet we just can’t do it.

Right now some people would say this is because you’re weak willed or you don’t have enough power or you don’t have enough information or whatever. And a lot of people come to me and they say, Marcus when it comes to this internet marketing stuff, when it comes to doing all these things, sometimes I feel like I’m just not getting it or I’m dull.

Now what’s going on is something a little bit more deep and that is that you just have a blind spot to the solution.

 

We’re going to cover this a little bit more but you have a blind spot to the solution. Just as I thought the only way to handle my problem was by sheer willpower. It’s because a lot of people who know me say you have a strong will.

You go after what you want you make it happen yet this one thing was something that I couldn’t do on my own. The reason is that I had a blind spot that I could not see.

So I want you to think for a minute and entertain the fact that perhaps in your internet marketing and in your life in general there are blind spots.

 

There’s simply something that you are not seeing that contains the solution that you’re looking for.

 I don’t want you to think about this all at once because what I’m going to do is I’m going to help you to see these blind spots.

 

I’m going to work with you personally to go through these and say, okay what is it that you’re not seeing that if you saw you would be able to be successful? That’s why oftentimes we see people who seemingly have overnight success. It’s because something that they did was in the realm of the blind spot that a lot of other people have.

Very very very important because it only goes down to two different things.

Number one is either you really don’t know the answer.

Perhaps you don’t know the answer to the thing like what is the answer to making money online. Maybe you don’t know what it is but you know if you’ve been on my webinars in my videos for a while, I’m sure that you do know the answer but one of the other things is that you might be unable to recognize the solution.

Let me say that again. It’s either you really don’t know the answer or you’re unable to recognize the solution. Very very very very important.

It’s because the way that our minds work is we look for solutions and we look for things. We look for them in the realm of our experience. That means if I tell you something new, you go back through your experiences and try to fit it to something that already exists.

Very very very interesting to look at because this leaves blind spots to information that you do not currently have.

So you look at it and you say, the information that Marcus has obviously has made him successful and it’s made him able to make money and in many many many different markets and make a bunch of money seemingly pretty pretty simply. Right and we look at that. We say, okay well what’s the difference? Either there’s an answer that I have that you don’t know or there’s a solution that I have that you are not recognizing as the solution because it’s not being put into things that you already know.

We’re going to get into this a little bit later as well.

 

So what I want you to realize is that what you have done so far has not given you the results that you want.

All up until now, all the thinking and all the work that you’ve done up until now has not worked the way that you want it to. Is that fair to say I want you to answer that for yourself right now and say,

 Has what I’ve done given me the result that I want?

Am I where I want to be am I making the money that I want to make?

Have the things that I’ve done worked the way that I want them to work?

 

If the answer is no, I want you to keep watching this video. Very important.

If it’s yes, watch it anyway because it’s a training and we’ll have some good stuff for you at the end as well.

So what we want to do is we want to look at that and say, okay well what have I done and why hasn’t it worked because up until now you have a lot of proof of what doesn’t work. You think about all the people who struggle with internet marketing and have all these things and don’t work and buy all these things and it just doesn’t work for them. You think about it and say, well that could be just a big waste of money or waste of time or whatever let’s all give up or you could say, hey look those people have figured out successfully how to not do internet marketing. So if I could follow what they’re doing and take that out of what I’m doing then I can be successful.

 

That comes to our next point which is the ability to turn our challenges into opportunities.

Very very very very overlooked.

 

It’s because we want to look at this and we want to be able to turn our challenges, turn the things that are struggling us right now so you might be saying, well my challenge is learning how to build a website or my challenge is learning how to find a niche market or my challenge is the technical stuff or you know buying ads or getting traffic.

Whatever your challenge is we want to look at it, not throw the 10,000-pound weight at our computer but we want to look at this and say, how can I turn this to something that I can use as an opportunity. Very very overlooked concept. I want you to really look at this because all the stuff in this video is going to be part of my training that’s coming up that I’m going to show you in detail how this works.

 

I want to show you that you can turn challenges into opportunities.

For example, one of the things with us is we’re not moving to Florida. That was kind of a big blow but you know I understand. It’s like yeah we shouldn’t move across the country if I have a drinking problem. I should probably get that solved first because a problem with moving to Florida is I’m still going to be there and I’m still going to be me. I’m still going to have this struggle but I can turn the challenge into opportunity.

 

For example, I went and had the challenge. It was very scary to go to the rehab and go through things but now I have tons of notes and tons of things I can help people with it.  It was pretty much crazy selling our house but now I have something I can use as an opportunity to build a product. Now I have something I can use as an opportunity to help other people and it gains new insight and you can turn every single challenge that you have into an opportunity. Perhaps you don’t know how to build a website and that’s your big struggle. What if you were to go learn how to build a website and document it and show other people?

Just in the same way that we sold our house on our own without a realtor and we documented everything so that we can help other people do it and save a lot of money. Same thing when you do a repair to something.

 

Everything you do, whether it’s small little miniscule knowledge seemingly so simple to you that no one wants it, chances are people want it. That’s what the Google AdWords tool teaches us.

People want these results much in the same way that you come to me looking for a result or internet marketing and learning these things.

 

People are turning to the internet to find solutions for their problems. The good thing is, you can make money by turning your challenges into opportunities and helping other people get the results that you’ve gotten or the results that you can help them with.

Very very very key to making money!

 

We are here to help people and I know a lot of people struggle with this. They say, well Marcus I want to do something online that’s ethical and helps people. Guys you’ve known me for a long time and you know that I always try to be as ethical as possible while making money because we are in a business. We are here to profit and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with profiting while doing something and then while helping people. It’s definitely good. It’s definitely hand in hand.

Very important that’s why people get paid for things.

 

This is why we want to learn this and we want to be able to take things to these people in an ethical way.

I’ll show you how to do that.

I can show you how to go to bed at night completely happy about what you did for your work during that day. Turn your challenge into opportunities.

We’re going to go into this a little bit more as well.

 

Let’s take a look at this so we could turn our challenges into opportunities. One of your challenges is you’re not getting the results you want and you’ve probably spent a good amount of money trying to learn this stuff.

 

I want you to look at the stuff that you’ve learned so far and just kind of put it on the back burner.

I want you to turn this seeming challenge because right now you have a seeming challenge, and the challenge is that you’ve gotten these things and you spent money we tried to learn this business.

That is the big challenge and the big opportunity.

 

I want you to look at this quote and this quote is from my rehab counselor.

 

He said, “A smart man learns from his mistakes. A genius learns from the mistakes of others.” So what can you learn from the mistakes of you yourself and the mistakes of other people who have come before you and tried to do things? As Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues and nothing succeeds like success. That is the best thing out there!

We look at that and we say, what are the clues, what is it we can do to look at this stuff and reverse-engineer it?

Back to our topic of what to do when willpower is not enough. You might want this really really bad right.

I want you to take a minute and think about how badly you would like to have a site that makes money or be able to be successful internet marketing business.

I’m going to steal one of the lines from what I heard and it’s that,

“This is not for people who want it. Wanting it isn’t enough. It’s not even for people who need it.” There’s plenty of people out there who need extra money.

“It’s for people who do it!”

 

You quite simply have to do it. Notice it says to do it and not think about it, not speculate about it, not grind it till you understand every little thing but it’s for those who do it!

I want you to realize another thing that I see as a big flock. It’s over the last six weeks even though I haven’t been here teaching you, I have been thinking about you and I have been learning things and saying, hey I wonder if that can help my student actually learn more.

So one of the things was, don’t be too busy to get stuff done!

 

It’s because a lot of people are out there doing busy work and up until now the way that we get paid was by going to work and doing busy work and we get a check.

Now in entrepreneurship, it’s a little bit different because we have to make our own way. We have to do our own thing. We don’t get paid for busy work. We don’t get paid for setting up a website for ourselves. You might get paid for setting one up for another person but we got to sell it to them. You have to do the things that get you paid.

So don’t be too busy learning or doing things that are not profitable to actually get things done that are profitable.

I want you to learn to follow a few simple suggestions and steps even if you don’t know every exact detail at the moment you start. When I go and start like right now, I’m a little bit overweight and my wife’s cleaning out the garage. She’s gonna bring the weight thing in here. I don’t know exactly how a pull-up helps me get buff or whatever. I don’t know how it works chemically or muscley or whatever right. I don’t know how it works but I know that if I do it, it works! I might not know how to do the perfect pull-up like the guy on TV with the arms the size of my house but I can do them and get a result. So the idea is to learn to follow a few simple suggestions even if you don’t know every detail of how it works at the moment you start because you can learn as you go along.

If I get up there to do a pull-up and after a week I say this isn’t working maybe I put my arms farther apart or closer together or you know maybe I put weight on my feet or something, whatever it is that helps me get a different result. But the fact of the matter is that I started something in the right direction. I knew I would get some kind of result now all I have to do is improve it! Very very important.

Another thing that I learned that’s very big is sharing versus giving advice.

This was a very very very very interesting thing to me because I have always been the kind of person who was around people in my family that gave advice. They were all experts with my business. They were all experts with my life They were all experts with my kids and my dog.

As I learned, one of my rehab guys said everyone’s an expert with someone else’s dog. They’re all an expert. They’ll teach you exactly what to do with your dog. You know what you should do with that dog, here’s what you do. That is advice giving.

When you give someone advise, it leaves you open for criticism. Let’s say, oh hey this didn’t work but if you share your story it’s completely different and it’s easier to sell. It’s because all you’re doing is saying, hey guys I’m Marcus. I wanted to sell my house and get an extra X amount of money by not paying a realtor. Here’s what I did. You want to learn it? Cool! I got this product that’s going to show you how to do it and it’s a hundred and fifty bucks. I hope you get the same results I did. It’s really cool! There it is. That’s the end of it. That’s all we’re doing.

That is how we empower others. We empower others by giving them options.

That’s one of the things that I’m doing today. I’m giving you the option to learn how to change your life with an internet marketing business. I am showing you the options to not have a job. The options to be able to work from home, be able to set up your life the way that you want it where you could go to rehab for six weeks and not worry about anything.

We look at that and we say that’s how we help. We empower others by giving them options. I want you to think about how many options you can give to other people in different walks of life. Are there ways that you know how to save money on a car, or a house or ways that you can help people lose weight faster or a way that you’ve done something?

I want you to start to look through all of your life experience and say, hey has there been a time when I said hey you know what I had that similar issue and here’s what I did! If you can say yes to even the simplest thing, you can empower others, make a ton of money and live the life you dream of online with a profitable business.

What I’m doing is I’m putting together all the stuff that I learned in a step-by-step course based on the system that I learned at the rehab where you’re going to go through, you’re going to learn life stuff, you’re going to learn business stuff, you’re going to learn a ton of things and you’re going to walk out saying, that is the best course I’ve ever taken for my life, for my finances for everything because we are going to show you exactly what you need to do!

This isn’t about willpower. It’s not about willing yourself or doing more things or buying more stuff or getting more junk or more knowledge. This is about changing the way that you look at things. This is about seeing the blind spots in your mind, seeing the blind spots in your life to be able to make money online.

So if you want to start feeling better about your internet marketing business and feel good about what you’re doing and make money in the process, some of you make a bunch of money, some you know maybe just enough to pay the rent or whatever, I’m here to show you exactly how it works.

One last thing I’ll leave you with before we get to the next video, and that is to turn your challenges into opportunities!

You either turn your challenges into opportunities or you remain a victim the rest of your life. We could sit here and we could say well the reason.

I’m not making money is because of Google, the Google Panda that sells a lot of product by the way, or the reason I’m not making money is because the affiliate network won’t accept me, or I can’t get enough traffic, or I don’t have enough money or this or that or this or that.

You could be a victim the rest of your life. I have plenty of them in my family who it’s all the government’s fault and it’s all this guy’s fault and it’s all that guy’s fault and they have no responsibility at all, they’re just victims.  What I want you to do is I want you to change that and take a stance for yourself and say, you know what I am deciding right now to turn my challenges into opportunities, make a bunch of money and live the life that I want and not be a victim. The downside is that you really have no one to blame if you take that stance. You have no one to blame but yourself but on the bright side, you get to live a life that you are happy about, you get to make the money that you want to make in the way that you want to make, when you want to make it in a really really cool type of business and feel good about what you do.

---

Again, I’m Marcus! You can get me on live chat or you can email me at marcus@blogprofitnetwork.com.

If you are interested in working with me on this project, I’m not exactly sure how everything’s going to go. I’m not sure how we’re going to set it up or the pricing or anything but if you start talking to me we’re going to get some stuff going.

If you put some comments below about this video, if you enjoyed this video if it helped you understand some things, please put your comments below.

If you are interested in working with me also put that in the comments below. We will have that in there, you could just type out your comment, hit submit and it’ll go up on the website and everything like that.

So really good stuff. If you guys are interested in working with me which I know you definitely want to because I got a lot of good stuff to share with you and I learned how to teach. One of the big things that I learned is that I don’t teach you anything. There is nothing that I teach you. You learn and learning is an active process. You are going to be active in your learning and you’re going to take steps to look at the things that will make you successful.

 

So again, I’m Marcus. I’m glad to be back with you. I’m excited to start talking to you and I’m excited about this new course that we’re going to go through. It’s going to be a very intensive course so for those that really want to make money online, you want to do this and we’ll make it to where you can get involved. Somehow, some way we’re going to make it for you because we want to get you involved and make it work for you! So let’s turn our challenges into opportunities and make money online.

Again, put your comments below, hit me up on live chat or via email at marcus@blogprofitnetwork.com and I will see you in the new course that is going to show you everything you need to know.

If you like this video, there’s a lot more where that came from. Thanks again for watching and I’m glad to be back with you in your internet marketing life.

 

 

When I was a teenager, I remember going to the AAA meetings and the rehab meetings for my grandmother after she had a serious fall and hit her head real bad. She was in the intensive care and the court mandated that she go to rehab because this was a product of drinking – slipping and falling. While she was there, they had the family day and everything like that and I was a teenager. I remember going to those meetings and I hated it. It was very uncomfortable very weird and I never thought that years later, I would be going to those and my family would be going to them with me.

 

I remember going to these meetings and I remember how weird it was thinking about the serenity prayer. They talk about their life; they talk about their issues; and out of the blue, they all hold hands and talk about the serenity prayer.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

My question today, that we’re going to be addressing is –

What’s the nature of this prayer?

Can it help us stay sober?

I’m Marcus from TalkSober.com

If you’re new here and you have not yet subscribed make sure you click the little subscribe button and the bell icon so that you can stay in touch with me and stay sober with me.

I want to talk to you about the serenity prayer:

How does this help us stay sober?

You got to remember that the AAA recovery culture of today’s modern world started way back in the 1900s. Back in that time, they equated recovery with Christianity and with the Bible – with spiritual stuff like that. They looked at a lot of different prayers.

The serenity prayer came from Reinhold Niebuhr and it was back in the 1870s to the 1950s. This prayer is actually very old but the roots of the prayer are actually older than that and have nothing to do with Christianity.

We have to look at where it really roots from. It roots from ancient Greece with Stoicism. It starts with the Stoics. The Stoics were very big on a topic of taking a look at your life. You take a look at your life and you look at everything as a whole.

Oftentimes in modern culture, everything gets fragmented.

• We got ourselves in our job
• We got ourselves arguing
• We got that thing on Facebook posts
• We have this thing
• We have our addiction
• We have all these things going on in our brain

The Stoics recognized that this was happening as well. These Stoics were smart guys, they came up with a lot of good stuff that has actually helped me today. Helped millions if not billions of people. The Stoics broke things up.

 

Life is complicated – there’s a lot of things going on.

There is…

…Arguments

…Business

…Life

…Feelings

…Emotions

…Religion

…Spirituality

There’s all this stuff going on so how do we make sense of it?

Let’s separate things into things that I can’t change.

We got to face it as addiction – addicts and alcoholics.

 

We have to look at it and say

What are the things that we can’t change?

When I was active in my addiction, I was a little bit more narcissistic than I am now. Back then, I thought that I could control everything. I sat there and I said…

“I can control money. I can make people think the way I want. I could make people see my point of view. I could share my ideas down people’s throat. That was the way that I looked at things.”

I said these are the things that I can change. I can change everything.

I can change everything… I thought I could change everything. I was a control freak!

The first person who called me a control freak was my addiction counselor.

I was trying to get sober and she’s like…

“You know what your problem is? You are a control freak.”

And I thought to myself

I’m not a control freak. I’m not one of those people!

But I actually looked at it deeper and I realized that I was.

I was trying to control every aspect of my reality!

What are the things that we cannot change?

• I can’t change other people. The best I could do is ask for their cooperation.
• I can’t change other people.
• I can’t change the weather.
• I can’t change my health.
• I can’t change a lot of these things.

We start to realize that there’s a lot in life that we cannot change.

There’s some things I can change

• I could change my business
• I could change my direction
• I can change the way I look at things
• I can change my perspective

Perspective is the number one thing that keeps me sober today and it got me sober back then. That is because it changes the way I look at things. Instead of having to get inside every argument, having to deal with everything as it comes, I could step back and I could say…

• What are the things I can’t change?
• What are the things I can change?
• Can I have the wisdom to know the difference?

This Is A Key In This Prayer – The Key Is

The Wisdom To Know The Difference!

Back when I was drinking, I thought that I had to change everything. I thought I was in control of everything. A lot of Western thought – a lot of our current culture believes that we need to go out there and we need to deliberately change every single thing. We are the masters of our destiny. We are the creators of our world.

We manifest our thoughts and all this kind of mumbo-jumbo that really doesn’t work.

The current thought process of Western culture is the idea that we control everything. What it’s going to do is – it’s going to control everything until you’re digging yourself out of a ditch because you have to realize what you can and cannot control.

 

About this word – SERENITY

God grant me the serenity…

You’ve heard this over and over.

 

What does this mean?

Does this mean we just need to be calm and collect, that we need to chill out?

 

Or is it a life process?

I believe it’s actually a life process because the funny thing about this prayer is the fact that serenity comes by recognizing what you can’t change and what you can change and knowing the difference.

It is in saying what can I do.

I want you to examine your life because there’s things in your life that’ll make you drink.

I know what it was like – I used to have to drink, I’d say “Today, I’m not going to drink”

Someone would argue with me…

Someone who cut me off in traffic and make me pissed off…

I was living my life as if life happened to me.

As if I was the only person in the world and these things happen to me.

I can’t believe…

…this happened to me

…this person did that to me

As if everyone was revolving around me.  

But we have to look at this and we have to say

• Is life really happening to you?
• Is it happening to everyone?
• Are these things that are coming at you, things that you can rise above?
• Things that you can look at and take in stride?

And say…

“You know what? The guy on the freeway would have been pissed off if I was there or not. He’s just pissed off. That’s just his baggage. That’s his thing – I can’t change that.

What’s the point of getting argumentative?

What’s the point of stewing about it?”

It’s like the old story – the Zen story.

There’s these two Zen monks and they’re walking along. They come to a river and there’s a lady at the river. She’s afraid to cross. It was a rule of the monks – never to touch a woman.

She was there and the monks saw her.

One of them said “You need to get across the river” picks her up and carries her across the river, sets her down and says “There you go” the lady says “Thank you”.

The two monks go walking off. About an hour later, the monks were walking. The monk that didn’t carry the lady across, turns to the other monk and he says “I just gotta get this off my chest. Do you realize how many monk rules you broke by carrying that lady? Touching that woman and carrying her across the river.”

And he replied “You know, I do realize that but the lady needed help and the funny thing about it is… I left the lady on the other side of the river. You’ve been carrying her the entire time we’ve been walking.”

• What are the things in life that we can’t change – that we carry with us?
• What are these stories that we carry with us?
• What are these irritations?
• What are these things that cause us to not be serene? And not be calm?

• Why are we carrying them with us?
• Why do we continue to keep these things going on?
• Why do we continuously torture ourselves with things that we can’t change?
• Or with the things that we can change?

We’re torturing ourselves over and over, instead of doing something about it.

If we can’t change it, I can’t do anything about it.

If I get sick, I give something that I can’t control.

I can’t do anything about that. I can’t do anything about your response.

 

There’s people on Youtube and they respond terribly. Actually, I have a channel where I teach marketing and I thought that would be the one with the mean comments but, surprisingly, it’s the addiction one.

People put mean comments all the time and tell me terrible things. I could look at it and I can carry it – sometimes I do…

Sometimes I’m like…

“Man… Maybe that guy’s right…”

Or I could say…

“You know what? Let’s look at the thousand people who are being affected. Let’s look at the thousand people who are being changed.”

I can’t control the thoughts, actions, beliefs, motives, desires, words,

outcomes of other people.

 

 I can’t do that.

All I can do is control what I do.

All I can do is control my response.

 

When you realize this, you say to yourself…

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change.”

I can’t accept some people in my family and their opinions but I can accept them as a human with their own beliefs, their own ideas. I don’t have to agree with it but I sure as hell can’t change it.

You see all these things

I used to do this, I’d go on Facebook and I argue about politics with people. I’d argue about this and that with people – it’s gotten even worse today.

I used to argue with these people

…as if an argument was ever solved on Facebook or Twitter

…as if people even wanted to hear my opinion

These are the things I can’t change, so why even bother?

Why get all frustrated?

Why risk going out to drink again over some guy’s opinion that you haven’t even met online?

Why deal with something you can’t change?

…like someone gets a promotion at work instead of you

You can’t really change that.

What can you change?

You could do your job better and you could get promoted next time.

That’s something you can do but you can’t change the past.

You can’t change the past, you can’t change what you did in the past.

You can’t change who you were in the past, but I’ll tell you right now…

You’re a different person.

Right now, I’m a different person. I can’t change what happened back then but knowing that I can’t change it makes all the difference because it changes the way that I think. It changes my perspective. It says “I’m going to be okay, right now”

Let’s look at this and let’s see how this can help us stay sober.

You look at the Stoics and they were chill. They were calm and they said

“You know, these things happen.”

They were in a bit of an oppressive government but they looked at it and they said

 

“How can we change?”

or

“How can we realize what we can’t change?

How can we live a life that gets results?”

Right now, you could be looking at it and saying…

“Well, I stew about things. I get mad about things. I can’t change.

I get irritated by things. I can’t change.”

You could say to yourself… “Well, that’s alright.”

That’s what we’re going to do. I got to ask you how is that working for you?

If you’re still drinking over every little bump in the road.

If you’re still like that monk carrying the thoughts of what happened

two hours ago or years ago.

• How is that working for you?
• Is your life working?
• Or are you drunk?

Do you have to drink to make it through life?

If you do, it’s time to change your perspective – change your perspective of things – that you cannot change, things you can change.

Get the wisdom to know the difference.

Start to understand it – start to pause and look at everything and say

“I’m going to wait 15 minutes… I’m going to start to think about what I can and cannot change about this situation”

I guarantee things will start to feel a lot better for you the more you do this.

The more you train yourself.

I’d like to thank you for watching this video.

I hope it helps you understand how and why that serenity prayer is used – how it can help us.

It’s not like the be-all, end-all…

But it is something that helps. It will help you calm down.

You say it to yourself and you know, maybe you’ll get some results.

Maybe I’ll start to help you realize what really matters – what’s really important.

That is your sobriety and your sanity, which are hand in hand because if you break your sobriety, you’re probably going to break your sanity too. That’s the reason that I don’t drink today.

You know, I say to myself

“Hey, I could probably handle a beer. It’s been three years – one little Bud Light.

It’s not going to hurt”

But then something goes off in my head and I realize that that’s something I can’t change. I can’t change the fact that one little beer might tweak my brain enough to send me on a spiral – it’s not about the one beer, it’s about the starting of the mental insanity because I can’t control. If you drink, you can’t change or control what happens to your mind. Your body just happens.

There’s a point where you can control a little bit. That’s right now.

But that comes to a point where it affects the way you think…

 

That’s why I’m an alcoholic. Because alcohol affected the way that I think.

That’s something I can’t change.

That’s something I don’t want to mess with.

That’s something I can’t do. What can I change?

I can change not having the first drink. This is something that you can change. Something you do have power over – is saying

“No. I’m not going to take the first one.”

Now, if you take the first one, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

You might be fine or you might not be fine – is it worth it?

What has your track record shown?

Have you been fine before?

Chances are NO. Otherwise you wouldn’t be watching this video.

I want you to realize… Things you can change Things you can’t change

I want you to start to remember that the serenity comes in knowing this stuff because that’s what we want as addicts.

We don’t want to be locked in this trap.

We don’t want to be dealing with all this stuff – going crazy over our lives.

We want to start to be serene.

And say “I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s going to be okay.”

We want to start to look at that and we want to start to change our lives.

We want to start to notice this because as the prayer says…

God, grant me the serenity…   You don’t have to say God…

What can I change?

I can’t change the fact that when I drink, these things happen.

But I can change my response.

I can’t change other people but I can change my response to them.

 

Change your response

Stop trying to change things you can’t and your life will start to be a lot better.

Thanks again for watching

I’m Marcus from TalkSober.com

Go over to TalkSober.com

After you subscribe to this channel

And click the bell!

Check out some tools we have for you on how to get and stay sober,

one day at a time, two days at a time…

How to get sober – that’s the point.

 

We don’t want to drink anymore and want a life that works for us.

 

Hi there, it’s Marcus and welcome to TalkSober.com!

Today we’re probably going to break a record as the longest book review in all of history but I wanted to go through this book with you because I think it’s very important to understand trauma and mental illness and PTSD and everything like that in the realm of addiction because so much of this stuff is what I see people with addiction and alcoholism struggling with mostly.

 

This book we’re going through today is called

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE BRAIN,

MIND AND BODY IN THE HEALING OF TRAUMA

BY VESSEL VAN DER KOLK, MD.

This book talks a lot about TRAUMA which is something that I went through. A lot of people are talking about alcoholics and alcohol is the only problem and that’s the only deal and everything like that but for a lot of people it comes a lot deeper or goes a lot deeper I should say. When you’re facing trauma and looking at all the things that are going on in a person’s life, often times you hear people say that they don’t feel comfortable in their own skin; they don’t feel comfortable in their own body.

What we want to do is want to talk about this and we want to go through these things to help you because the goal is to help you be an integrated person so you feel comfortable in your own skin, you don’t have to drink anymore and the negative thoughts and everything just start to dissipate and we’re going to go through that.

So I want to take you through some of the things that he says in this book that go through and really helped and really spoke to me in terms of my trauma because I didn’t have it as bad as some people but I had it worse than others, I had a traumatic past, I had things go on and a lot of things happen I also had a brain injury when I was very young which probably explains a lot, I don’t know if it’s a brain injury or head injury, but it was something that a lot of people said it probably affected the way that I thought and everything like that. It was very difficult to go through and I went to the depths of my alcohol and my depression and feeling unwanted feeling, uncomfortable in my own skin and all these things just started to add up and I became suicidal and everything just went crazy and I was struggling with myself to understand what happened to me where it fit in my world, how to deal with it how to move past it and everything like this. I guess as I was drinking and trying to cope with the stuff I struggled with trying to fill in memory gaps and things like that.

This book I highly recommend it to everyone. It’s a very good book everyone should read it if they’re interested in this stuff or dealing with this stuff because it really really talks about this from a neuroscience perspective.

This guy went through and he talked to Vietnam veterans. He talked to people who were abused. He talked to people who were in and out of foster care and you know victims of rape and victims of violence and all kinds of things and how the body and how the mind stores this stuff and how it affects us later on.

Now he goes on in page 18. He says they felt fully alive only when they were revisiting their traumatic past. Now in this part he was talking about these veterans who have dealt with lots of things and this is not something that I’m perfectly familiar with because I don’t know a lot of veterans who went through this stuff but I know the trauma can be crazy and I know that trauma is not something anyone wants to deal with regardless of how you get it.

He was talking about how these veterans would go through their life and they were struggling with things and they were feeling just craziness you know they were like dead inside and suicidal and oftentimes very very difficult to get along in daily life but he noticed that when these people would go in a group and talk about their trauma amongst each other, they felt alive when they were revisiting that. So interesting point. We want to put that you know in a notecard in their brain for later because it’s very important to look at that okay.

 These people had trauma and a lot of times like alcohol. Alcohol and drugs they go and meet in groups and oftentimes a lot of these groups are nothing more than glorifying their old past alcohol or how bad it was or whatever and they feel alive talking about this but they don’t feel alive in the present.

We want to talk about how this affects us and how this makes us unable to cope with daily life and things like that.

He goes on here to talk about PTSD and things like that and he says they may deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues. A lot of times talking about our trauma and things like that is deflecting from what’s actually going on in our mind and actually going on.

He says this is where it gets into the good part, he says well the left half of the brain does the talking the right half of the brain carries the muscle or the music of experience. It communicates through facial expressions and body language and by making the sounds of love and sorrow by singing and swearing and crying or dancing and mimicking. So it talks about the difference between the different halves of the brain and how they go through and how they work together.

He says oftentimes these parts of your brain they react automatically. So while we’re going through life we might say well what is wrong with me, what is the problem and for me it was like okay what’s wrong with me I can’t do these things, I get anxious I have these struggles, what’s wrong with me. It wasn’t what’s wrong with me, it was what’s wrong with the way that my brain was programmed and it’s reacting automatically to these things and even just knowing that the stuffs happening doesn’t cure it as we’re going to find out and he says when something reminds traumatized people of the past, the right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. So it’s like it’s happening right now but because their left brain is not working very well they might not be aware that they are reoccurring and re-enacting the past. They’re just angry.

It’s like we said well what’s going what’s wrong with me, what’s going on right now, we don’t know what’s going on!

They’re Furious, terrified, enrage, ashamed or frozen. After the emotional storm passes they may look for something or somebody to blame for it. They behave the way they did because you were ten minutes later because you burned the potatoes or because you never listen to me. Of course most of us have done this from time to time but when we cool down we hopefully can admit our mistake.

Trauma however interferes with this kind of awareness and over time a research demonstrated wine.

It goes on to talk about the research he did which is very good and he says, the insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones which often happens in traumatic trauma patients and things like that include memory and attention problems, irritability and sleep disorders and he talked about how all this stuff goes on and you might be able to cope or you might not be able to cope and how the body continues to keep the score. Your body’s keeping the score. It’s really harnessing this stuff and keeping it in certain areas and sometimes that leads to disease, disorder, pain things like that. A lot of the stuff he looked at you know with people of that had dealt with car accidents they had back pain and no doctor could explain why and he’s like okay well it’s because your body is keeping the score. It’s keeping the pain there it’s keeping it locked in time and what trauma is, is memories trapped in time. They can’t get out and they’re there because they’re not being addressed and he says because the amygdala processes the information it receives from the thalamus faster than the frontal lobes- so the frontal lobes are like where you sit there moping what do we think about this, and the other stuff is like automatically happening and it’s processing faster than the frontal lobes- you’re conscious you know thought and it decides whether incoming information is a threat to our survival even before we’re consciously aware of the danger.

So it’s as if you’re sitting there and your mind thinks everything is like this tiger that’s ready to eat you up but your conscious brain isn’t sitting there saying wow I see a tiger there!

Your subconscious brain is just seeing that stuff out there and processing it as a fear producing adrenaline, producing fear and by the time we realize what’s happening.

Our body is already on the move so like with anxiety right before we even think about it even if we know why we’re anxious it doesn’t matter because your brain is just processing this so fast that you don’t have time to sit and think of what’s going on!

This is because of the stress hormones that your mind produces in your body including cortisol and adrenaline and adrenaline is a very very dangerous poison if you use too many times. It’s like a toxin right. He says on page 62, being able to hover calmly and objectively over our thoughts, feelings, and emotion and ability I’ll call mindfulness throughout this book and then take our time to respond allows the executive brain to inhibit, organize and modulate the hard-wired automatic reactions pre-programmed into the emotional brain.

So being able to intercept that and understand what’s going on first and second being able to calm down these things.

Being able to relax. It’s like if you’re out on the run and you’re afraid, you are going to have a much harder time calming down the way you feel than if you’re in bed and you’re thinking about a spider or you’re thinking about a traumatic event or whatever right, you relax. So it’s the state in which we feel these things that oftentimes determines the outcome.

He says however neuroscience research he says psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. So the behavior, alcoholism hitting whatever it is, is what they’re trying to manage.

However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding. This is extremely important because so many self-help books, so many things out there are focusing on do you have a defective understanding.

 

Are you depressed because you don’t understand something?

Are you anxious because you don’t understand something?

Is more knowledge going to help you? The answer is no. 

 

The answer is going through and reversing this in learning how our brain works is only a tip of the iceberg when it comes to dealing with the feelings. 

Oftentimes it’s a lot more because most of this originates in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. It’s almost as if you have been hijacked. Your brain has been hijacked by trauma and by anxiety and by these things that are causing you to not be able to function and live a normal life and integrate into your body and feel like you are whole and complete.

Page 67, not being able to be fully alive in the present keeps them more firmly in prison in the past. Now this is a theme he talks about which is not being able to be fully alive and then now.

I remember when I was starting to get sober and dealing with all these things or trying to, I had a guy try to teach me mindfulness. For me it was a concept I just didn’t get. I’m like what do you just sit there and not think about stuff. What am I gonna do, sit there and not think about not thinking about not thinking about not thinking? And it was just crazy and then people like Eckhart Tolle would talk about stuff and it’s good stuff but it drove me nuts because it didn’t get at the core of what was going on which was something deeper happening.

I couldn’t just sit there and relax because my part my brain was programmed to be on alert!

He says on page 67, intense and barely controllable urges and emotions make people feel crazy and I felt like I was going crazy and the alcohol compounded it and he says it makes them feel like they don’t belong in the human race or to the human race.

It feels like we don’t belong it’s like, “Who am I?” “Where am I?”, “What’s wrong with me?” and oftentimes we’re putting the attention on ourselves because that’s what we’ve been trained to do. He says as a result shame becomes the dominant emotion and hiding the truth the central preoccupation.

He says on page 69, yes you need to detect whether somebody is getting upset with you but if your amygdala goes into overdrive you may become chronically scared that people hate you or you may feel like they’re out to get you.

How often do you see people who feel like people hate them and you know they shrug it off but the people that are traumatized are scared that everyone’s like this. They’re scared that they don’t belong in that something bad is going to happen and he says trauma is the ultimate experience of this will last forever. Visiting the past in therapy should be done well people are biologically speaking firmly rooted in the present and there’s this theme of not being in the present not being able to live in the now because their memories are trapped in time their trauma is trapped in time and they’re feeling all the feelings they felt and thinking all the things they thought rather than going through life on a day-to-day basis.

He says the therapy won’t work as long as people getting pulled, keep Finnigan pulled. Try that again. Therapy won’t work as long as people keep being pulled back into the past.

Are you plagued by your past? I’ve read multiple books about getting past your past dealing with these things. Nothing seemed to work.

He says if they can’t shut down naturally, meaning shut down chill mindful whatever you want to call it, they may enlist drugs alcohol to block out the world. You look at so many people who struggle with addiction and so many of them have trauma, PTSD, depression, checkered past memories. They can’t get past and he says we must of all help our patients to live fully and securely in the present.

A lot of therapy and a lot of things, they don’t talk about the real goal.

They don’t talk about like how are we going to know when we’re better. How we know it is a bell going to go off? Are we just going to feel better what’s going to go on?

And the goal here is defined on page 73, we must most of all help our patients to live fully and securely in the present. How can you live fully and securely in the present?

It talks about the history of ho this stuff came to be the history of how it works and he says the standard medical focus on trying to discover the right drug to treat a particular disorder tends to distract us from grappling with how our problems interfere with our functioning as members of a tribe.

So here we have this idea and medicine has it has gone on and psychiatry has gone on to a chemical based model okay you got anxiety let’s chemically shut it down. That’s why they call alcohol self-medicating. You’re using your own medicine because you’re not a PhD or whatever and alcohol is hardly a medicine it’s more of a poison but you’re using this to treat the symptom rather than like focusing on being a member of the human race and understanding the human condition and understanding what’s really going on and dealing with the underlying issues.

He says in page number 91 that understanding the source of the impulse made no difference in helping or control it.

So here’s this lady dealing with all these things and all these impulses and all this stuff and understanding it right there’s revelation of boom here’s where it came from digs do jack to help her with it. All those people telling you that the root is just understanding where it came from and getting in touch with that is really not what’s going on here it’s deeper and PTSD people with PTSD often have trouble putting the picture together. They’re not able to put this whole picture together. They’re having these things go on and he says sometimes we use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. Sometimes they’re buying hides facts for fear of what’s going to happen or protecting ourselves or whatever.

That’s where this comes from.

 

Your mind is trying to protect itself because that’s what it learned right they learn to hide from themselves.

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their own bodies like they don’t feel safe. They can fill up a sense of fear a fear of fear itself and panic self-regulation depends on having a friendly receipt relationship with your body and most of us don’t have that.

He says without it you have to rely on external regulation from medication like in drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others. This is seen in people who are known as what’s called codependent.

He says on page 110, we could only conclude that for abused children the whole world is filled with triggers.

This breaks your heart and my heart because here’s these children going through life and because of abuse the world is filled with triggers!

How many times do you feel like the whole world is your trigger? No matter what you can’t get away from a trigger that takes you back to where you don’t want to go. That makes the feelings back what you don’t want to feel. The thoughts what you don’t want to think. The sad part is that when kids have this right they go through life and everything is a trigger then it’s coming adults and everything is a trigger and life is a trigger. They have an unstable sense of self, a self-damaging impulsivity including excessive spending, promiscuous sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating, appropriate and intense anger and recurrent suicidal behavior. 

The key here is to go to someone who understands this, see someone who can help you with it and he talks about disassociation which I was diagnosed with that DID and he says this association means simultaneously knowing and not knowing. It’s the ability of your brain to break off and put a segment that’s going to protect you and keep the rest completely unaware of it and he goes on to talk about this very interesting.

He says that oftentimes people with trauma have a unique view of how the world functions. They have their own unique view. They don’t look at it like the rest of us which in some parts can be a great way of viewing the world but in some times it’s not. I found that when I was down that slope of depression anxiety and struggle and alcoholism, my worldview was not good but now it’s kind of unique in a cool way right so we have that to share with people which is that’s like the upside of the coin.

Maybe you have something to share and he says that one of the keys was helping them reconstruct their inner map of the world and that generally the rational brain can override the emotional brain as long as our fears don’t hijack it!

So what’s going on is fears or hijacking it protection mechanism is kicking in the fire alarm is going on even though there’s no fire. What’s happening is you’re activating old maps of your behavior because these memories are fragmented, trauma took it and put it all over your brain because it couldn’t deal with it at one specific thing and what’s at one specific time in one box.

What’s happening because it’s not in this box your mind is using everything saying it’s still happening but what needs to happen is we need to process this and say this is what happened back then I am living now. This is what was, this is what is and in trauma patients he goes on to talk about how that doesn’t always happen.

He says on page 149, sometimes if we mistake someone’s solution for a problem for me alcohol was a solution for some people there’s a solution that might be self-harmful but it’s the only solution they know to deal with this and if you don’t deal with it other problems are going to emerge.

He says the challenge here okay this is back to the gold stuff. The challenge is to find ways to help them lead productive lives right how can you lead a productive life without this stuff coming up.

He says on page 167 if you pay attention only to faulty biology and defective genes as the cause of mental problems, so you’re saying hey if you get like faulty biology, you look at a chemical stuff, you look at the surface level stuff right like it’s kind of like treating cancer as just the cancer rather than treating what caused it in the first place. Treating depression as just the depression Oh take this pill without dealing with the underlying cause. The underlying cause is always going to be there in the body he’s going to keep the score and that’s what this is about and that’s why you’re probably watching a video like this.

He says if you only pay attention to that and you ignore abandonment, abuse, deprivation you are likely to run into as many dead ends as previous generations did blaming it all on terrible mothers.

Another thing he says in program in page 169 is that the mind has been programmed by life itself.

Life has programmed you to be the way you are.

Forgive yourself say you know what these things aren’t bad they were good things that my mind came up with to protect myself but they’re no longer needed now because that was then and this is now.

He talks about how things like EMDR and desensitization or different things like that will help you with it. EMDR is a good one and also you know reconstructing these memories of the past and putting them in their place.

 

He also says that culture shapes the expression of traumatic stress.

Our traumatic stress is formed by culture as well. He says in page 173 this talks about dealing with the memories as long as a memory is inaccessible right a lot of times the disassociation splits that memory offenses here it is here and we’re not going to think about it but in our brain we’re going to be afraid of all the stuff as if we’re thinking about it and that’s what happens here. As long as the memory is inaccessible so as long as you can’t get to it the mind is unable to change it. The memory is such an interesting thing because often times it’s not concrete and it changes and when you recall something it’s not exactly how it was and it’s always your perception is how it was. This is not to negate or say something doesn’t mean what it means or wasn’t what it was it’s just to say that sometimes our memory is not always the solid thing.

He says but as soon as the story starts being told particularly if it’s told repeatedly it changes. The act of telling itself changes the tale.

He goes on to say in page 200 but I no longer see or yeah but I no longer think that I need to know everything in order to understand what happened. This is something that I dealt was so difficult. I thought that in my trauma I had to know every second of every detail of everything that went on in order to understand what happened.

It was very difficult because sometimes those memories are gone and distorted and the people who did them may not be accessible anymore or around anymore and here I am left with the pieces and I’m trying to put them together which is pretty much making me insane and sometimes we don’t need to do that sometimes knowing every little detail is not the process of healing. Sometimes the process of healing is just putting it in a box, putting it as the past thing, this is something that was, this is what is now.

He says however trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago.

It’s much more than that. Understanding why you feel a certain way does not change how you feel. He goes on to say this means that we can directly train our arousal system by the way we breathe chant and move a principle that has been utilized since the time immemorial and places like China and India and in every religious practice I know of but it’s suspiciously I to the alternative to the mainstream culture.

Now while a lot of people are saying medicines the way talks therapies the way which they do help thanks very good but he’s saying that learning how to breathe calmly and remaining in a state of relative physical relaxation even while accessing painful and horrifying memories and it is an essential tool for recovery.

So we’re going to put that in we’re going to say okay learning how to deal with this stuff in a safe environment, knowing that there’s no threat there, being able to feel what I need to feel, think what I need to say and have what I need to have in accessing this is what’s going to help.

He says a lot of mindfulness is really good but not in a way of mindfulness like oh you know just sit and sing Kumbaya but in getting touch with your body understanding what’s going on and he says yet avoiding feeling these sensations in our body increases our vulnerability to being overwhelmed by them. Very good quote talking about you know hey not feeling these is going to be overwhelming and that’s kind of what I look at what happened in my life you know I went through life at some point I stopped thinking about this stuff and I started thinking about like business and things like that and I put this stuff on the back burner but my body was keeping score and these things were building and building and building and unfortunately when I started to deal with them there was no real help that I had set in place and I wasn’t able to deal with them in a safe environment.

Putting the traumatic event in its proper place in the overall arc of one’s life. This is integration and that’s what he talks about as the cure to this is integrating it.

He says blocking adrenalin can help to keep the rational brain on line and make choices possible. Is this really what I want to do saying that you know a lot of times we’re hijacked and a lot of times we look at this and we need to integrate into what was and what is and how we are now.

Lack of this overreaching meaning encourages making things up like now this is talking again about memory right lack of like memory and the need to have all the pieces in place encourages us to make things up and lie and not understand things and whatever because we don’t we don’t know but the key here is accepting what we don’t know is what we don’t know sometimes we don’t know and sometimes we need to be okay with it.

He says that neuroscience research has shown that we possess two distinct forms of self-awareness:

• one that keeps track of itself across time,
• and one that registers the self in the present moment.

This system is rooted in language and it’s primarily based in physical sensations but if we feel safe and are not rushed we can find words to communicate.

He says that in trauma this doesn’t happen right there’s no distinction between life what was, life what is, we’re trapped and if you feel trapped I understand how you feel. It’s very very difficult to feel this way and to understand this and this is what’s going on and I believe that understanding this will help. Finding a responsive community in which to your truth makes recovery possible. Talking to others about it understanding and being understood and you know getting that metaphorical hug of someone else saying it’s going to be okay and this stuff’s not going on anymore.

He says page 249 generating the sense of being embody, the sense of actually owning yourself because a lot of trauma people then distant disassociated from their own person. They’re back in the trauma. These powerful feelings are generated deep with inside the brain and cannot be eliminated by reason or understanding.

You see these people traumatize the people like us. We don’t just feel on edge and I made unable to focus right that’s part of it. We have in a sense of imminent doom I think I said that right right the feeling that everything is going to crash at any given moment.

 

Inability to to put things in their proper place it’s like you get fired from your job and you think life is over right instead of just feeling okay well you know there’s another job there as a healthy person mentally would feel and he says that were trapped in frozen associations.

He goes on in Chapter 16 page 266 to say the body is being hijacked into uncontrollable anxiety.

Your body and mind have been hijacked and these things are in your mind and these things are unable to deal with because you don’t know where they’re coming from and the key is to integrate back into our body we’re going to talk about this in other videos as well if you like this stuff even though my videos super long today subscribe you know we’re doing these to help you out so that hopefully you can have a better a better experience of getting past your trauma than I did and understand what works.

As long as we maintain, as long as we manage to stay calm we can choose how we respond, the key there is staying calm and you know forcefully making yourself regulate and understanding these things, understanding that you can become and these things will be okay.

In trauma the self-system breaks down and parts of the self, become polarized and go to war with each other this is why we have the feeling of hating ourselves and stuff like that. Beneath the surface of the protective parts of the trauma survivors I’ll say that again beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma, survivors there exists an undamaged essence a self that is confident curious and calm inside of all of us.

No matter how bad our trauma is, there is that person that self  that is curious and calm and confident.

A self that is in shelf sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival.

That was a mouthful but what it’s saying is that along the way this good portion of yourself that part you know that is used somewhere right because we define ourselves as a you and it’s only one you it’s like this is the me. He’s going on to say well in trauma patients sometimes there’s the you that’s like this, you that’s like this, you that is angry, with you that’s happy, the you that’s miserable, the you that’s curious.

And we look at that we say well that’s still there like that playful kid that once was is still there and getting in touch with it and embodying that is the first step to getting better.

He says that in India I can’t talk as in EMDR the resolution of trauma was the result of her ability to access her imagination and rework the scenes in which she had become frozen so long ago. So a lot of its this reworking of the memory that’s embodying the person that was there before the memory.

He says although the structures involved dialogue psychomotor therapy does not explain or interpret the past instead it allows you to feel what you felt back then important visualize what you saw and then say what you could not say when it actually happened.

He’s talking about like acting out which was kind of interesting that’s why you got to read this book is really good specifically they did not generate the brain pattern way that helps people pay attention. So on trauma victims and people that have dealt with this stuff they are unable to pay attention because these parts of the brain are not online. These parts are not organized to pay careful attention to what’s going on in the present moment.

Traumatic stress is an illness of not being able to be fully alive in the present. This was a quote by Pierre Jeannette back in the 1800s and it is Insightful. He’s like okay it’s an illness of not being able to be fully alive in the present because they’re so stuck in the past.

Between 75 and 80 percent of patients who are admitted for detox and alcohol and drug abuse will relapse. This is in my mind, this can’t be we need to do better right we need to come up with something that is better. We don’t need to relapse into past stuff whether it’s alcohol or addiction or trauma or whatever and he says that traumatized people feel terrified. Traumatized people are terrified to feel deeply.

Are you afraid to feel? I was afraid to feel for years. I didn’t want to feel because I was afraid to experience my emotions because emotions led to loss of control.

I think came into this time where I said you know screw feelings. Feelings are overrated. Let’s not feel. There’s books about this topic I don’t think they’re recommended just because of the name of the books for trauma patients because sometimes that’s not what we want to do.

He says on page 353, as the AC II study has shown child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse and a significant contributor to leading cause of death which stuff as diabetes heart disease cancer stroke and suicide.

Guys this is serious that’s why I want to bring you this book because it’s like okay this is what’s causing these things.

This hands down is where the traumas coming from this hands down is where most addiction is coming from is these memories lost in time this trauma the stuff that’s going on and we need to treat the trauma rather than the symptoms because the symptoms obviously some people think the symptoms can be helped with you know drugs and alcohol and things like that but the fact of the matter is we need to treat what’s really going on and we need to feel alive in the present moment we need to learn to put the memory and the trauma in the past and understand where it’s at.

The cool thing about this book is he talks about the body keeping score and the bad ways that it happens but he also talks about neuroplasticity in the good ways because all the stuff that has been done can be healed.

You can start to heal.

You can start to feel better and these things can start to change for you.

 

I hope you like this book review wasn’t as long as I thought it was going to be.

I think there’s one last quote I wanted to go through here now that was let’s see maybe there is one last one yes he says very important one he says “being able to feel safe with other people defines mental health”.

Are you able to feel safe, chances are if you have anxiety if you have these thoughts if you have this stuff going on you don’t feel safe and feeling safe first in yourself in your own body is the first step to getting better and second feeling safe with others is another step and often times these can happen at the same time.

 

I want you to understand that there’s nothing wrong with you,

it’s just something that happened.

It’s just the way your program was or your brain was programmed by life and the way that you learn to cope and I think it’s pretty cool that your mind and your body did this and it’s time to put that back in the past and say thank you thanks for that!

I don’t need some of that stuff here but I can start to heal and I can start to get better.

I hope that’s helped you.

Subscribe to my channel if you like these book reviews.

Subscribe to my channel if you want to learn more about mental health alcoholism addiction to get better. 

Thanks again for watching!

I am Marcus from TalkSober.com.

Go to TalkSober.com to get some resources to help you with this stuff and find a good therapist do what you got to do, seek out EMDR or whatever it is or just keep watching these videos if that’s all you can do because we’re going to help you out with this stuff.

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So thanks again for watching. Here’s to getting better I really hope you get this book and enjoy this like 15 bucks and are usually cheaper than that but it’s well worth they go through it read each page devour it understand it and welcome to the road to recovery.

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Thanks again for watching! I have your best interest at heart if you have any questions or comments post them below make sure you subscribe and I’ll see you in the next video!

 

 

 

Hey guys it’s Marcus here and welcome back to TalkSober.com YouTube channel!

 Today what we’re gonna be doing is talking about what to do when those unwanted old feelings start to come back in sobriety. This is gonna be a very difficult video for me to make personally because this is something I’m dealing with right now like now ten minutes ago now and we’re gonna talk about how to stay sober when those feelings come up.

For those that have been following the last few videos I’ve been doing on this channel, you’ve been following along as I flew to California from Florida to take my brother up to a rehab and help him get sober and in the process I’ve had to deal with some difficult family members which is why the last video was about how to deal with toxic family.

Through that time, I have noticed I was talking to these people and trying to help us all get together to support my brother so that hopefully he can have a good recovery.

I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of things that happen with the family.

There’s a lot of things that happened with my dad.
There’s a lot of things that happen with other people in the family and for those that don’t know I came from an extremely dysfunctional and abusive home.

` It was very very difficult growing up and in those times like I talked about in the last video I didn’t know what life was like outside of this because I had always been growing up in this type of environment where we had a controlling dad who tried to control everything and control finances, control everything and this is the kind of thing we’re dealing with now.

Inadvertently I HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT MY SOBRIETY COMES FIRST because if I don’t have my sobriety if I blow it all for some feeling or something like that and then I don’t have anything right you know it doesn’t mean if you slip up it’s the end of the world but we got to look at this and say well what do we want to do and how do we work on this because I was talking to my dad and last night.

We had a family meeting via Skype and everything and it got really heated and I started to notice for the first time in many years these feelings creep up and it was like automatic it was automatic these feelings just started to come up these feelings just started to take over my body right and I started to feel these things that I used to feel that I used to have to drink to get rid of.

Right and so I have these feelings there and all this stuff coming up and I’m hearing all this stuff on top of it. I’m not getting sleep on top of it. I’m talking to people back in California on a different time zone and everything’s a mess and you know very few people are cooperative in this process and I look at it and I say to myself what do I do with these feelings and you can see on the board we have the notes from last night’s call. We got you know all kinds of stuff which is very similar to what you guys have seen in the last video like numbing things like that and we got to look at it and say well how do we deal with these because our normal go-to response when we have these feelings is to run to our alcohol to run to the thing that numbs us from these feeling and it’s so easy to do and that’s the first thought that crosses your mind.

 

Relapse Warning Signs

1. You stop doing what keeps you sober (i.e. taking care of yourself)
2. You start feeling and acting how you did when you were drinking (moody, irritable, angry, etc.)
3. You start thinking about drinking and feel fed up or done

For me being three and a half years sober I don’t necessarily think hey I need to go drink to deal with this stuff, however, it does come up like hey you know what it’d be easy to numb and easy to walk away from this stuff but what I find helps most when these unwanted thoughts and feelings and anxieties come in is to remember where I really live from.

Right back when I used to drink I LIVED FROM A PLACE OF FEAR.

 

I live from a place of you know just not able to stand up and say this is the end I had no boundaries right dad would call and say terrible terrible things that should be outlawed but nevertheless we have families we deal with this stuff and it sucks but what we have to learn is to set a boundary and to be okay with it.

A I learned when I was in early recovery…

someone had told me you know SAY WHAT YOU MEAN, MEAN WHAT YOU SAY AND DON’T SAY IT MEAN. 

 

Even though there are hurtful things said, even though things are thrown across the room and things are terrible and your feelings might get hurt.

Even though that happens we can still regain regroup and say what is the objective here and I could say what’s going on.

For example, one of the things that went on is one of the family members gave me some pills for my brother who’s an addict so first of all it’s like why are you giving us pills when we’re trying to get someone sober.

 

Second of all why are you giving your alcoholic family member pills anyway?

That’s like you know would you go to a guy who’s dealing with burns and light him on fire that would be stupid right you wouldn’t do these things and when I look at this it’s easy to say well you know what you piece of shit why’d you do this what the hell’s the matter with you but what I have to do is I have to regain my composure because that’s not going to do anything except get into a battle.

 

Another thing I learned in sobriety when dealing with difficult people and dealing with these emotions is that you can regain your composure and you can have the right to say what you want to say and YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SET A BOUNDARY right you have the right to say you know what.

You just are not going to talk to me that way anymore because I’m not gonna listen click or goodbye or whatever it is and you have to look at this and you have to say these are the boundaries that are set, this is the comfort that I need to do and my sobriety is first and when those feelings come up it’s best to just sit with them and think your way out of them.

Start to understand what’s going on. Say yeah my feelings are hurt because my pride is involved and your pride is gonna be the first thing like when you’re battling with people and when I fight with my dad or whoever else it is right we have these things and and our pride gets involved.

I want to say listen you POS don’t do this and he wants to say well you little fucker or you know whatever and I have to look at that and I have to say to myself well I can look at that and and I can say I’m gonna get mad about this or I could say you know what does it does it really matter I mean this is this is the way the guy’s always been this is the way he always deals with things and one of the things that I learned is that the best you can do in life is ask for someone else’s cooperation. 

I could say you know what Dad I’m gonna ask for your cooperation and nine times out of ten I’m not gonna get it but if I ask for it and then I don’t get it now that’s that’s what set that’s what is and as I wrote last night that is the thing to accept.

Right god grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change and unfortunately one of the things in life is WE CAN’T CHANGE OTHER PEOPLE.

All we can do is ask for the cooperation and I can’t change these people all I could do is focus on what I want do and what I know is right and what is good and sometimes I look at this sometimes you get in arguments and I have to look at it and say well is there something that I need to change right is there something with me okay and look at it objectively and say well am I being a dick, am I being cool, do I have any weird motives here and you got to look at that and say well do I?

Okay if the answer’s no then you got to look at the other people and say well I asked for their cooperation if I don’t get it I accept it.

For me I accept these people in my life the way they are.

Four years ago I had problems with my mom’s husband and just lots of abusive problems lots of trouble stuff that you know today is labeled child abuse and you know back then it was labeled but unfortunately the therapist we had would rather get paid than help people not all therapists are like that just the ones that my dysfunctional family decided to pick for us conveniently.

 

And so we look at this and we say you know I had these issues with him and I had to accept I have this accept this is what is all right and then I set a boundary I said I’m not going to see you anymore this is just not what I’m gonna allow in my family, I’m not gonna allow it in my life, I’m not gonna allow you people to do this to me anymore!

Now you are responsible for some of your feelings but you have to look at it like we talked about in the last video right you were raised in Plato’s cave kind of thing. You were chained to a wall metaphorically and all you knew was the stuff that you saw and you reacted and you had these feelings and now they’re automatic right.

Much like alcohol we drink alcohol and then automatically we don’t have to think about it. Our brain starts to salivate and crave the alcohol when these things happen and oftentimes when difficult feelings come in the way, we say well what do we do, right what do we do with this all I know how to do is drink this away and we have to say to yourself we’ll one we don’t really need to let them go away we need to just listen to them and start to understand because that’s when the healing begins.

 

Don’t Fight or Ignore your feelings. Listen to them.

When you look at things and maybe you had it better than I did, maybe you had it worse than it I did I don’t know but the fact of the matter is you can get through it.

These feelings are just telling us things and feelings are automatic and they’re kind of programmed and we have to look at it and say well is this something that’s going to be helped by drinking.

Nine times out of ten a hundred times out of ten right it’s not drinking is not going to help because drinking is going to exacerbate the feelings drinking is gonna make it worse.

Drinking is gonna postpone it and drinking is going to give all these people the excuse that they’ve been looking forward to say hey look you know this is your problem you have this issue and believe me my family still tries to do that to me today where it’s like hey this is your issue you’re the fucking drunk, you know when most of the time I behave pretty rationally you know obviously I had my fair share of bullshit and shenanigans and everything but the fact of the matter is we got to look at this objectively what they say, what’s going on, what do I have to accept, what can I change, what can’t I change?

 

I can’t change what’s going on, what I can do is change my response to my brother and my reaction to my brother and say hey look this is what we need to do but we need to get you away from the toxic family. We need to get you away from the junk. We need to get you away from everything that is keeping you stuck.

Because in life we have these things and WE GET STUCK and we don’t know how to get out of them and it’s a lot like a person who you know, say they want to lose weight and they know they could just go to the gym and start working out and boom right like me I can go to the gym I could be healthy I can stop smoking these damn things and we look at that we’re like those. Those are so easy on the surface right and it’s easy for someone like me to come in and be like hey look you know when you got these feelings don’t go drink oh yeah well thanks fucking professor Marcus you know that’s a genius thing there but the fact of the matter is it’s easier said than done because I know what it’s like to be in your shoes because I’m probably in them right now.

We look at it and again a lot of you guys had it worse a lot of you guys had it better but we have to look at it and say am I going to allow this to affect me and talk about it right now talking about this I’m starting to feel better already even though it’s kind of family to the Internet world right and not like a person therapist or whatever but talking about this stuff that starts to make you feel better as well because what you want to do is you want to diffuse it.

 

You got to diffuse and you got to buy yourself sometime because time is going to allow you to get distance.

Like just before I made this video I had a terrible day talking to family not getting the sleep didn’t get work done I was supposed to make a whole bunch of videos I didn’t do it it’s my first video today and it’s like 9 o’clock at night and you know it’s easy to get down on yourself and it’s easy to say well you know this is what I need to do but the fact of the matter is once you start and once you buy time alright I could say you know what I get in this argument I hate this person, let’s be angry, let’s be rash, let’s you know I’m never gonna see you again you fire or whatever and we have to pause and look at it and say well what what good is going to come out of acting that way if I could buy myself 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day a week whatever it is then I can diffuse it.

You know now that the feelings are removed or desensitized now I can act an irrational way that makes sense and hopefully gets more reaction.

It’s like you know you got to look at life in terms of in terms of not something that’s happening to you!

It would be easy for me to look at this and say all this family stuff is happening to me right all of it’s happening to me but the fact of the matter is it’s happening anyway I just decided to help someone that brought me into it again and brought those feelings and again.

 

It’s not happening to me I’m doing what I’m doing and

that’s the best I can do.

I’m asking for cooperation from those that that I think can help and if I don’t get it I say you know what then you’re not gonna be a part of this, you’re not gonna be in this.

Because a lot of times we’re gonna look at this and the easy thing is to say oh woe is me I grew up with a terrible dad I grew up with terrible stepparents whatever alright I grew up with this an it’s easy and you got to look at it and say well I choose not to be a victim anymore.

I’m not the victim of my dad’s words. His words might affect me because I’ve been trained to on the knee-jerk reaction but the fact of the matter is when I draw back and I look at it I say you know this doesn’t really change anything I knew this person was this way the entire time I knew that the response would be the way that it is and I know I can’t change things so what can I do well one I could take care of myself and my sobriety first because that’s the first thing right you got to get a level head, you got to get clean you got to stay clean and you got to have the upper hand!

Right it’s like when I when I was drinking I was down in the pit all right I was down in the pit fighting with family dealing with this shit I’d get angry and pissed off and I’d go drink and it was just a cycle and I was in the pit and  when I was able to get sober I was able to draw out a mic on this mountain now watching the pit right and sometimes someone will throw a rock out of the pit oh shit you know that frickin hurt me right but I’m able to say well you know that’s a rock from out of the pit I can just move back a little bit they won’t hit me anymore and now I’m able to look at it from afar without being entrenched in it.

That’s the key to making this work is not being entrenched in it whether it’s a family the spouse grandma dad whoever it is in your life brother that is causing you pain or has caused you pain right put yourself out on that on that metaphorical mountain and look down at it and say you know what this stuff it’s gonna affect me somewhat but I don’t have to live in it right!

You don’t have to live in those emotions anymore you don’t have to do well in those emotions anymore and more importantly you don’t have to drink those emotions away your feelings will not kill you drinking probably will and reactions to feelings can for some people and we have to look at it.

Say you know I’m gonna draw away I’m going to accept people for who they are and understand that those people in your life like I was talking to one of my brothers and it’s like oh you know my dad doesn’t love me my dad doesn’t love me and I said no that’s wrong!

Your dad loves you with the ability of love that he has to give and unfortunately it’s not much. They are giving you what they have to give that’s what they have unfortunately it’s small sad for them maybe sad for you but the fact of the matter is now you can accept it and say that’s what it is.

 

I can’t change you. I can’t make you different. I can’t make you love me the way that I think it should be right and that’s what keeps us stuck. 

The root of all suffering is desire for things to be different.

If you’re suffering about someone not loving you the way you want to be loved or someone not doing the things that you want it’s because you desire that but once you accept them the way they are and you accept take this is the baseline that’s what they have to give if it’s total shit I get away.

That doesn’t mean you don’t love them anymore.

 

You have the right to respond however you want you have the right to not have someone in your life if that’s what stops you. You have the right to make a response and say this is out this is not acceptable it doesn’t work now unfortunately there’s so many people and lots of people watching this video are like the people that were chained and watching the shadows on the wall and that’s all they know in life right like Plato’s allegory these people are there they’re looking at the shadow on the wall that’s all they know they think life is shadows.

You might think life is abuse.

You might think life is terrible.

You might think life is family bickering and hurt and pain but it doesn’t have to be right.

It doesn’t have to be those things might be normal like they were for me for so many years it was normal so much that I started to repeat some of the actions with my own family and I’m trying to forgive myself for that and we got to look at that and we have to say enough is enough, it’s time to get out, it’s time to take care of me and do what you got to do to take care of yourself.

 

Do what you got to do to distance yourself and cut the ties with the things that are bringing you down.

Cut the ties with the things that are bringing you down.

 

It’s like if you were in a boat and it’s taken on water right what do you do you get rid of the stuff that’s making you heavy he gets rid of the stuff that’s taking you down that’s what you got to do in your life you got to get rid of the stuff that takes you down. 

You got to understand with a sober mind. Talk to someone about it. Write to someone I mean forums or come on one of our live things talk about it and start to get some help and understand that you’re not alone and understand that you can get help and when those feelings come you don’t need to drink them away there’s nothing in life worth drinking your own life away for these feelings will pass being an alcoholic may not and we have to look at that we have to say today is a new day I’m going to accept whoever it is that’s causing me pain I’m going to look at things differently and I’m going to grow and work on your own growth.

Just like I do on a day to day basis I work on my own growth I start to understand things and I have to catch myself when I get caught up in those and say mark you’re getting caught up in those feelings again step aside right and that’s all there is to it step aside give yourself some time love yourself understand what’s going on don’t drink and set boundaries.

I hope you guys like this video.

It is kind of some rambling it’s just something that’s going on in my heart.

We’re gonna do some more videos like this maybe we’ll go into detail I don’t know but dealing with family can be difficult and when those emotions come in its best to not drink and it’s best to get distance and it’s best to pause and step back because everything and everyone in life can wait 15  minutes right you could take a pause you could say you know what let’s argue about that in 15 minutes gain your composure think about what you want to say and come at it with an objective mind and above all don’t drink don’t get caught up and start to take care of yourself.

I hope you like this.

I’m probably just talking to myself so when I watch this again it’s probably to help me but if you do like it put your comments in the boxes below and know that I’m human and I have struggles too and these things hurt me and that’s where this comes from that’s why I built this channel that’s why we’re here to talk together that’s what we’re here for and my goal is to make this one of the biggest sobriety sites on the internet sobriety channels on the internet and that’s the goal because I want to help those that need help and I want to help everyone understand what’s going on as much as I can.

And I want you to know that I’m not someone that’s above it all. I’M ONE OF YOU that’s how I learned this stuff right by being one of you and you know take care of yourself and understand that you can set boundaries it doesn’t mean you’re a dick if you set boundaries it doesn’t mean you’re a jerk if you cut ties with people right you don’t have to be it.

 

YOU JUST HAVE TO SET THAT BOUNDARY AND STICK TO IT BECAUSE NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT BUT YOU STAYING SOBER AND YOU KEEPING YOUR LEVEL HEAD!

Thanks again for watching.

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Remember when those old feelings come in, you are in charge of what you do with them you might not be able to control a body feeling but you can control your response.

Thanks again for watching I’m Marcus subscribe and I’ll see you in the next video!