Falling Up and Falling Down:
Embracing Autumn: The Season of Change
by
Terrence Shulman
Embracing The Season of Change by Terrence Shulman Change is ever-present, yet fall/autumn is known as the season of change. In about two months we will have an election and there will be dramatic change no matter what. Some of us are anxious about change, some of us are looking forward to change. Some of
us may feel–that the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
We’ve all heard the famous saying: “the only thing that’s certain is change.” While most of us know this, most of us still don’t like it and have trouble accepting change. I include myself! Change can feel particularly jarring when it seems to arrive not from our own conscious choices. Change can be frightening when we have to change our beliefs as well as our actual modes of operating. Real change can feel like death: death of our former selves. We need new paradigms for meeting change–individually and collectively–if we are to evolve.
We may have to change our ways of “doing business as usual”–in our actual businesses as well as in our relationships, managing our health, and in other dimensions of our lives. From a place of deep acceptance, from a total alignment with the way things are, grounded in love, rooted in the undulating breath. We have a tendency toward complacency and settling back into old routines, whether this is the case with addiction relapses or old ways of thinking. Even the word “fall” as in “autumn” conjures not only the image of falling leaves but, perhaps, of allowing ourselves to fall, or surrender, in order to rise, move forward, and grow. So, as we enter the fall season–the season of change–we may either be resisting change or hoping and praying for change. Or maybe a little of both. As summer fades and we naturally begin to turn inward with the fading temperatures, we might as well embrace or allow ourselves to “fall forward” into transformation.
After all, life is calling us forward…. not backward.
We have a tendency toward complacency and settling back into old routines, whether this is the case with addiction relapses or old ways of thinking. As we approach the 15th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, we might recall how–for a short period of time–we felt that event “changed everything.” Yet, I suspect for most of us, life eventually went on and we returned to the more trivial, mundane and essential concerns of our own particular lives.
We may either be resisting change or hoping and praying for change. Or maybe a little of both. As summer fades and we naturally begin to turn inward with the fading temperatures, we might as well allow ourselves to “fall forward” into transformation.
In Neale Donald Walsch’s book When Everything Changes, Change Everything (2009) Walsch talks about how change can feel threatening to our very notions of safety and security. However, change is also inevitable (“the only thing that is certain is change”). Change is how we grow. The only question is whether we evolve or regress. Sometimes it seems we need to regress before we evolve.
Walsch defines change this way: “Change is the shifting of any circumstance, situation, or condition, physical or non-physical, in such a way that the original is rendered not merely different from what it was, but altered so radically as to make it utterly unrecognizable and impossible to return to anything resembling its former state.”
Does this resonate with you? Real change can, indeed, feel like death: death of the former self.
Eckhart Tolle, in his books The Power of Now and A New Earth, uses the term “pain-body” to describe “a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind… and which has two modes: active and dormant.” The pain-body can be activated through stressful times, “in intimate relationships, or situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emotional hurt, and so on… The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, ‘become you,’ and live through you… Pain can only feed upon pain. Pain cannot feed on joy… You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently deny that you want pain.”
Tolle goes on to speak about how to approach dissolving or transmuting the pain-body. He states we can only do so by acknowledging its existence and by continuing to observe it and have compassion for it. This is true when we are dealing with addictions which are akin to pain-bodies themselves as they wrap themselves around us and trap us in fear and distorted thinking which leads to the relative inability to step out of our dramas to see the truth of who we really are and the options and choices we have. Indeed, the word addiction comes from a Latin word meaning “to imprison.”
Speaking of prison, one of the most dramatic ways in which we imprison ourselves is through living secret lives. Therefore, one of the most dramatic ways we can find new freedom may be to take a risk by sharing intimately with someone something we have previously kept secret. As author Brene Brown reminds us:
“vulnerability is actually strength”–not usually how we think or operate. In my counseling work with clients as well as in my own participation in recovery self-help groups, I regularly witness the struggle people have in “coming clean” about their history of stealing and/or overspending. I have been there myself. I just learned that a friend in longtime recovery still hasn’t told her spouse about her addiction history. While it is certainly her choice, I can only imagine the pain, fear, and shame she holds closely inside of her.
I recently counseled a married couple in coming “out of the shadows” and revealing the extent of their secret lives with their respective spouses. It was both frightening and liberating to them. They each expressed relief at feeling a load off their shoulders–and real change and transformation became possible.
One of my favorite sayings is “we’re only as sick as our secrets.” So, in what ways do you feel change beckoning you? Health? Finances? Employment? Relationships? Moving? New projects or goals?
Remember: we can delay or resist change–which just results in stagnation. Or we can do our best to welcome it and know that change is inevitable and is how we truly grow.
H9/11: 20 Years Later
A War Finally Ended
Remembering The Fallen, Remembering Ourselves
Where were you the morning of Tuesday September 11, 2001? Like me and most of us, I bet that’s a date
and time few of us will forget.
I was on the tail-end of a very difficult period of transition in my life. Earlier that year, I’d quit my job as the director of a counseling clinic to finish writing my first book Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery and to launch my own private practice. By mid-year, I was broke and having panic attacks, wondering what would become of my hopes and dreams.
Fortunately, I had returned to therapy and had reestablished some semblance of peace and stability when those planes hit those towers. I was working at the counseling clinic I had left and come back to. I can only imagine what those clients in early treatment and recovery must have felt as we turned on the TV and watched in shock what unfolded.
In those few hours, life as we knew it changed. Pearl Harbor must have been a shock but the attack on 9/11 was even more shocking. And as the 20th anniversary approaches, I feel called to remember the fallen–those nearly 3,000 souls who died in the attacks as well as the family and friends of those fallen. I weep for our nation,
I weep for our world. 20+ years into the 21st century, we still experience such violence and counter violence. A reign of terror and a war on terror over the last twenty years have claimed scores of lives and left untold trauma on us all. Now, here we are–on the verge of choosing a new president–politics as ugly and polarized as ever.
Here we are… wondering if we’ll be attacked again and, if so, how badly. We lost more than lives on 9/11, we lost a part of our soul. We came together for a short time and, I suspect, we’ll do so again to mark the 20th Anniversary; yet, it seems we have also met the enemy and it is us. We are in a sort of Civil War among ourselves in our politics and in our souls. May we remember the fallen… and that includes us all.
C.A.S.A.
(Cleptomaniacs And Shoplifters Anonymous)
Celebrates 29th Anniversary This Month
I’m proud to announce the upcoming 29-year anniversary of the C.A.S.A. (Cleptomaniacs And Shoplifters Anonymous) self-help group and the 21-year anniversary of the CASA-online self-help group (started in 2000 but reformatted in 2003). Our metro-Detroit area group, which I founded in 1992, appears to be the oldest ongoing self-help group of its kind. C.A.S.A. has four metro-Detroit area chapters which have meet weekly by phone since March 2020 due to Covid., We also have had about 15-20 other C.A.S.A. groups throughout the U.S. We have a ways to go before we have self-help groups in every state, let alone every major city, but we continue to hold the vision for this. If you are interested in either starting a local meeting chapter or contributing in some way to assisting this process, we invite you to read the books Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery and Biting The Hand That Feeds: The Employee Theft Epidemic… New Perspectives, New Solutions. Please contact us by e-mail or phone. Email terrenceshulman@theshulmancenter.com for information about self-help group meetings.