This morning I woke up very early with a brainstorm of thoughts.  I had to get out of bed and journal them which I've decided to move down below this review so that I can make sure and take my inventory.

We made it to mass on time this morning but not before a feud broke out between my oldest son and my wife.  He then had an outburst of defiance and threatened not to comply with our directives.  This began to escalate and I had an insecure and potentially critical moment when I almost got very angry and didn't know what to do.  I managed to stumble through it and throttle back and let his anger diffuse without over-punishing him and having a fit of rage.  He eventually did comply and only minimally expressed resentment afterward.  On the way to mass, I had to catch myself from getting anxious over the kids.  I seem to have been blessed lately with a new level of resilience there.  I was grateful for the resourcefulness to be able to systematically handle the issue with my son and the minor infractions at mass.  We had a behavior review afterward and the kids accepted there consequences so that we were able to go on and have a good day.

Today my wife and I had good communication with an especially productive discussion about how to handle their exposure to culture that we don't approve and how this affects them.  This after a Justin Bieber party for a six year old.

Today I felt like a person in recovery again and found my interest in it renewed.

I was most grateful for a sense of spiritual renewal today from mass.

Thanks be to God!

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We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us...AGH!

Acceptance - Let go of my will and accept God's, "Thy will, not mine, be done."

Gratitude - Think not of how I wish it were better but, how grateful I am that its not worse.

Humility - Admit that I need God to come into my heart and restore me to sanity.

If this does not work, apply step four.

The Twelve Step program is a set of epiphanies and a therapeutic process to  change thinking, behavior, and character.  The first three steps are a set of 9 epiphanies, 3 for each step:

Addiction is a problem rooted in a contradiction of value motives.  Each area of life function has a motive force value, e.g home - 10, relationships - 10, job - 9, car - 8, health - 10 , hobbies - 9.  Chemical use or the illicit behavior (of a compulsion) has a motivational force value also.   If used normally, it is just another 1-10 number less than these and not supersede them i.e. 7.  

Perhaps one could take a snapshot of this much like an x-ray of cancer.  

One could assign a bottom line value for the number of times it takes for the behavior to interfere with life functions and that would equal the value of the life function.  For example if drinking 3 times a month will interfere with relationships then 3 = 10.  Then determine how many times one has drank per month on average for a time leading up to the intervention.  If it were 8 times then the value would be 30 which when compared in a ratio, 30/10 would show that degree of power of the motivational force over that of the life value.

This is why the twelve step program is so effective, because it provides a motivational force power. or "Higher Power" to counter that which is driven by years of learned, compulsive behavioral motivational force power.  Human will power is limited because the force needed to overcome them is difficult to achieve.

This evening I had a re-framing of the powerlessness part of step one.  I have always seen it as physical allergy, mental obsession, and mental blank spot.  But this to me never completely seemed right as mental blank spot seems as though it might actually be under mental obsession.  I also realized that the chronic progression isn't adequately included in that model.  Therefore I think it should be physical allergy, mental obsession, chronic progression.