Author Archives: Michael

Great Life in Recovery Free Teleseminar May 16, 2012 at 3 pm ET, Noon PT “How to Sterilize a Room”

In May, join moderator Justin Phillips and her guest Melissa Killeen, in a discussion on “How to Sterilize a Room”.

 

As a recovery coach, Melissa Killeen is often called to clean or ‘sterilize’ a client’s residence, from addictive substances. To ‘sterilize’ a room means to search it thoroughly, find any drugs, alcohol, or other contraband, record it, and destroy it. This process is drawn from procedures used by law enforcement for searching crimes scenes.

 

Melissa will guide the listener from the  point of entry, through the methodical steps of searching a room, apartment or residence to discover contraband. What do you do with what you find? She will explain the legal requirements surrounding the destruction of the recovered contents.

 

Who:  Melissa Killeen

What:  How to Sterilize a Room

Date:  Wednesday – May 16, 2012

Time:  3pm Eastern, Noon Pacific

Phone:  1-760- 569-7676  Access Code: 135766#

Back up Phone Line:  1-712-775-7100 Access Code: 452450#

Melissa Killeen is a recovery coach, since 2006, with training in executive coaching. She owns MK Recovery Coaching and works with executives, entrepreneurs, and small business owners that emerge from treatment and find themselves returning to the same life that  contributed to their addiction, in the first place. Melissa works with clients to rebuild their life in sobriety and to repair the effects the disease has had on their business and family. You can contact her at melissakilleen@mkrecoverycoaching.com. After the presentation, a copy of the presentation will appear on her blog, at  https://www.mkrecoverycoaching.com.

 

Wondering what is Recovery Coaching. Are you interested in networking with other coaches? Do you need a Recovery Coach? The Great Life in Recovery Special Interest Group is the right place to start. We provide platforms like this tele-seminar for coaches to learn more about Recovery Coaching and to network with other coaches. Please join us…all are welcome.

 

Check out Recovery Coaches International at http://www.recoverycoaching.org. We are a growing community of coaches who support recovery from all kinds of addictions.

Subscribe to the Recovery Coach Listserve by sending a blank email to: RecoveryCoaches-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

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20 questions to finish your 8th and 9th step

The 8th and 9th steps are the most challenging part of your 12 step journey. This blog is about making it as straight forward as possible to complete.

By the time you get to steps eight and nine, as J. Keith Miller suggests in his book Compelled to Control you have let go of your deep aversion to revealing any reality that may be perceived as less than perfect. By step eight, the walls of denial have begun to crumble. You need to see more clearly what happened that bruised the relationship with that certain person you need to make an amends to. At least with me, the beginning of the eighth step process was filled with projecting my denied anger, need to control, justify onto the other person. I was ‘willing’ to make an amends and I knew I didn’t want it to be all about what the other person did to me.

So, after facing all my shameful stuff from step four, I had to revisit that process in preparing to make amends to this certain person. I HAD TO LET GO. I had to let go of all the things I thought this person had done to me, I had to stop taking this person’s inventory, I had to realize I wasn’t responsible for what other people did. But I was still asking ‘How do I do this?’

Enter Cinnie Noble. Cinnie is a conflict coach from Toronto, Canada. Every week she writes a blog on how to handle conflict. A couple of weeks ago she posted the perfect eight step blog, without her really knowing it! So, I thanked Cinnie for her wisdom and borrowed the first 10 questions from her blog Reconciling Differences . I renamed her post to ‘Letting Go’ and posted onto my blog last week.
As I began answering Cinnie’s 10 questions, I could feel the release of my projection, denial, anger, need to control, justify and thoughts of being rescued around this situation, as well as many other disputes.

Do you need to complete an eighth step? Sit down and answer these 10 questions:

1. What specifically are you not letting go about that specific dispute?
2. Using the answer from #1, what is particularly significant for you about that specific
thing or things?
3. What is the impact on you about not letting go of a specific thing or things?
4. What impact do you think this (not letting go) has on the other person?
5. What are you gaining from not letting go?
6. What are you loosing from not letting go?
7. If you think or feel it’s not necessary to let go or you don’t want to forget or the memory remains for other reasons, what are you holding onto about this matter?
And for what reason(s)?
8. What would letting go of that thing (or those things) be like for you?
9. What impact would letting go have on the other person?
10. In what ways does the memory you have of this situation reflect something you are not letting go about a previous situation (or situations) too?

Now, you have become willing to do the ninth step. Feel it? Acknowledge it. Breathe into it.
Next, think about the disconnect or the reason you didn’t communicate on the same level with this person you want to make an amends to. What were other factors that made you step away from the situation, relationship or person you ‘think’ you could make an amends to. Think about the ‘disconnect’ and answer Cinnie’s next series of questions:

1. How may you describe the disconnect between you and the other person?
2. How may you describe the disconnect within you?
3. What does that feel like for you? What do you observe that the disconnection is like for the other person?
4. How badly do you want to be reconnected on a scale of 1-5, 1 being very little and 5
being very much?
5. About what may the two of you still be connected?
6. What will connection look like when you achieve it?
7. What do you need, right now, to reconnect?
8. How do you want to feel about the other person when this occurs? How do you want
him or her to feel about you?
9. How do you want to feel within you and about yourself?
10. How may you salvage these connections in the future when you begin to disconnect
from yourself and the other person?

Do you think you are ready for the ninth step? Jot down some brief notes about what you have discovered about yourself, not the other person. Maybe, include all of your answers to the last 20 questions.
Engage in a conversation about your experience answering these 20 questions with this person. That’s what I did! I miraculously did a ninth step and gained much more knowledge about myself than I ever expected.

Thank you to J Keith Miller, author of Compelled to Control, Facing Co-dependence and Hunger for Healing and many thanks to Cinnie Noble and her blog on Conflict Resolution that appears on http://www.cinergycoaching.com and her book Conflict Management Coaching: The CINERGY™ Model

Melissa Killeen is a recovery coach for executive and entrepreneurs in recovery; interested in repairing the damage their addiction has had on their work-life, business and relationships. Her web site https://www.mkrecoverycoaching.com features weekly blogs on the recovery process.

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Letting Go…..

This week’s guest post is by Cinnie Noble. Cinnie is the founder of CINERGY™ Coaching, a division of Noble Solutions Inc. in Toronto Canada. She is a lawyer-mediator, a certified coach and a former social worker, who has studied and practiced a range of conflict management services, for over 20 years. The CINERGY® Conflict Management Coaching Blog – is for coaches, mediators, HR professionals, ombudsmen, leaders, lawyers, psychologists, counselors and others who work with people in conflict on a one-on-one basis.

Intertwined with the notion of resilience and moving past the feelings and thoughts that emerge from our disputes is whether we can actually forget about what occurred. Can we let go?

Or do we store the emotional impact and the impressions we make about the other person and ourselves. Unless we unpack what happened for us in our interpersonal disputes we will carry that ‘baggage’ around with us for a very long time.

The starting point is that it is unlikely that we totally forget the interactions that offend us or in which we offend others. Some conflicts unfortunately leave indelible marks that make it difficult to forget about the pain of the interaction. Others of course, do not leave marks as deep. In either case, what we do hold onto in our hearts and minds is significant and the feelings and thoughts that remain commonly show up again in situations with the same person or with others when similar dynamics arise. It is also common that when we agonize about what remains unresolved, we misplace or displace our emotions on bystanders or issues that are not relevant. In any case, it helps us to focus on what we remember as an opportunity to develop our conflict mastery about how to lighten the load about the things we don’t want to let go of.

Ask yourself some questions about an interpersonal dispute which you are not forgetting:

1. What specifically are you not letting go about that specific dispute?
2. Using the answer from #1, what is particularly significant for you about that specific thing or things?
3. What is the impact on you about not letting go of a specific thing or things?
4. What impact do you think this (not letting go) has on the other person?
5. What are you gaining from not letting go?
6. What are you loosing from not letting go?
7. If you think or feel it’s not necessary to let go or you don’t want to forget or the memory remains for other reasons, what are you holding onto about this matter? And for what reason(s)?
8. What would letting go of that thing (or those things) be like for you?
9. What impact would letting go have on the other person?
10. In what ways does the memory you have of this situation reflect something you are not letting go about a previous situation (or situations) too?

What insights do these questions provide?

 

This week’s guest post is by Cinnie Noble.
You can contact Cinnie at:
http://www.cinergycoaching.com/about-cinergy/cinnie-noble/

Toll free (in Canada & US): 1-866-335-6466
Email: cinnie@cinergycoaching.com
Twitter: @CINERGYCoaching

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