NeuroTalk Support Groups - Do WE Need a 12 Step Program for PD?

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- - Do WE Need a 12 Step Program for PD? (https://www.neurotalk.org/parkinson-s-disease/52698-12-step-program-pd.html)

Do WE Need a 12 Step Program for PD?

I think....
(I snitched this from the "Feeling Grumpy" Thread)

We need a 12 step program for PD. There is probably not one person on this forum who cannot relate to the Feeling Grumpy thread. None of us has discovered the magic formula or manages to stay on the "sunny side" all the time. What happens is someone posts something like John's thread and those of us who do have our act together at that particular moment jump in with all the "fixes" or as close as we can come.

12 step programs really do work for the people who want to have sanity in their lives. It is nothing more than a pattern for regaining your sanity, and PD can certainly push our "I'm going to lose my mind!" buttons. The natural response is to want to lash out, but in the end that is not helpful. We have these high expectations of ourselves which we just cannot meet anymore and we get angry, or depressed or both and a lot worse.

Why don't we put our heads together and come up with a set of self management behaviours that we can fall back on when we fall into a hole.

I know some of the 12 steps.....How about this?

1. We admit that we have limited power over Parkinson's disease and our lives are becoming unmanageable.

2. We have come to a place where we recognize that only a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity

3. We will make a decision to turn our lives and our limitations over to the care of God, as we understand him.

4. We will make an honest and thorough inventory of what we are still capable of doing for ourselves and acknowledge the areas where we need help.

5. Calmly and graciously ask for help from those around us.

6.Willingly give up our feelings of diminishing self worth and the personal pride that is keeping us from feeling fully alive.

7.Humbly ask for strength for the journey from Him who rules the universe.

8.Live according to these precepts so we can help others who need our support, when they need it.

9.Ask forgivness from those who we have hurt out of our own self- centeredness and ingratitude.

10. Continue to monitor our own attitudes and stop to renew and restore our own spirits when we need to.

11. Seek through prayer or meditation or other spiritual practice to improve our relationship with God as we understand him, and strive to accept His will for us and allow His strength to carry us.

12.Having had a spiritual awakening through these steps, and coming to understand our individual worth as children of the universe, we carry this message to others and strive to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Well what do you think???
__________________
You can fill your mind with knowledge, but you really don't know anything until you know it in your heart.

Hey rosebud I'm headed out your way tomorrow morning. I'll be the first to order one. I'll pm you after I get there. I'm a little disorganized....my blackberry address book disappeared today. Has that ever happened to anyone? I'm just wondering.

paula

Quote:

Originally Posted by rosebud (Post 352563)

Thanks Rosebud, as a member of a 12 step program I have to say , you did a woderful job relating the 12 steps to parkinsons!
Thanks! "one day at a time"
BUZZZ

At the risk of crashing the server (historical joke):

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Jaye

I liked your perspective into the 12 steps..There contain some of the basic AA principles, plus youve added some of your own spiritual principles as well..I noticed in steps 3 and 4 you began them with "We will"..A little AA trivia, from the Founders of AA..When Bill W first drafted the 12 steps, he used strong directive words like "You must".."You will"..and Dr Bob and the first 100 members told Bill that he had to change those kinds of wording to a suggestive form, because they feared that alcoholics would balk at being told what to do, which isnt far from the truth, so he took words like "We will".."We must" out of the steps and replaced them more suggestive language..I dont know how parkies would react to directions vs suggestions..My guess is they would be more open minded than alcoholics

However, what I would do for parkies as it relates to the steps is to do what Al Anon, Narcodics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous have done with the steps, and left them as they are except for the word "alcohol"..and.."alcoholic", and change them to "Parkinsons and parkies"..The reason being, is because leaving out any of the basic principles might not lead to the desired spiritual awakening as a result of the steps, and leave a jig saw puzzle effect with a couple of pieces missing

1. We admitted we were powerless over Parkinsons Disease - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other parkies, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Step 1..Self explanitory

Step 2..Powerlessness is the problem..Power through Gods grace is the solution

Step 3 is basically making a decision to do the rest of the steps, because when I apply the principles of them into my life, I am actively turning my will and life over to the God of my understanding..The steps are Gods Will, and we make a decision to align the free will God gave us with His will

Steps 4 and 5..The reason why I would leave steps 4 and 5 as they are is because, the state of powerlessness and unmanageability that Parkinsons has caused in our lives may render some difficulty sorting our our problems, fears, insecurites, anxieties, anger, resentments, expectations, etc, alone..When we write our inventory, we need to share it with a PWP who has walked this path and found peace and acceptence

When I sat down with my AA sponsor and did my 5th step, something happened when I read my inventory, and heard the words come out of my mouth, and told another human being about myself..Alot of that stuff sounded good when it was rolling around in my head, but when it came out of my mouth, I could see the problems my shortcomings were causing in my life

Step 6..We found out the nature of our shortcomings in Step 5..Now we need to accept them and become entirely ready to have God remove them..We found out what our problems are..Are we now ready to begin living in the solution?

Step 7..If we are ready to begin to apply the solution to our lives, then we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings..This is where we are asking God to restore us to sanity..In Step 2 we came to believe He would restore us to sanity, and here we are asking Him to do so

Steps 8 and 9..The unmanageability pd has caused in our lives can cause some of us to be miserable, isolated, misunderstood, anti-social, angry, short tempered etc..We may have said and/or done things we regret to our family, friends, and those we rub elbows with in our daily lives..Our pd effects the people around us..It may have strained relationships, marriages, friendships, employment, etc..Here we make amends for OUR wrongs, not the wrongs done to us by others..After all..This is OUR inventory, not theirs..Confessing the sins of others keeps us down..We had to clean OUR side of the street..Amends differs from saying "Im sorry"..Amends means changed behaviors..We are sorry, and we WILL NOT do this again..This is the hardest of all the steps to do, but we swallow our pride and apply our humility, and we set the record straight..

Humility..Knowing who and what we are, and what we could become

Expectations..A pre-meditated resentment

Step 10..Anger, resentment, fear, expectations, envy, apathy, pride, procrastination etc, etc, etc, are going to come up for review occasionally..The 12 steps are ideals to live by..They will bring up peace and serenity, but they will not render us perfect..Here we can get back on track, and when wrong promptly admit it..With humility

Step 11..We cultivate our relationship with God through prayer and meditation..We also draw up an inventory balance sheet either literally or in our minds of our behaviors on the days activities before we turn in for the day..Maybe while we have laid down before going to sleep..How did we do?..What could we have done better?

Step 12..We will have a spiritual awakening as a result of the steps, and through the altristic giving, and unconditional love for our fellow PWP, we continue to grow spiritually, and emotionally..We pass our way of life on to another PWP who is suffering from the wrath of pd, and we forget about our own disease in the process, as well as feeling useful, and whole again..We apply these principles to our lives and practice them to the best of our ability in ALL our affairs

As a result of spiritual awakening via the 12 steps, we begin to expeience the 12 Promises coming true in our lives

The Twelve Promises*

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Thanks for posting the original AA 12 step program. Your quite right, Parkies are not of the same mind set as an alcoholic going through recovery. Alcoholics are much more entrenched in a lifestyle of their own making and can be so belligerent that any little word can upset their apple cart.

What Parkies need is just a set of guidelines to help pull them out of a black hole they fell into, and certainly not one they dug themselves. I have put a copy of this post in my word processing program and I'll play with it. I'll waitt a bit and see if anyone has any suggestions first though.

I liked the list of promises that was at the end. They were worth a second consideration and went quite well with my 12 step for PWP's.

Jaye...I think your back to holding the record for shortest post once again.
Always appreciate your endorsement:D

For strength: scroll down to you tube video on this webpage

http://www.keepthefaith1296.com/index.htm

paula

While I think of myself as addicted to PD drugs, it is not the same addiction pattern as those of alcoholism, et al. However, I feel that it's not right to compare ordeals and make the judgment that alcoholics are necessarily worse people because it seems they could have chosen better behavior. Many people are thought to have a particular genetic makeup that is different than others and makes them physically susceptible to alcoholic addiction in a way that I know I am not.

That said, Rosebud, Steve, all you guys, what a lovely idea about forming a helpful mental/emotional protocol to follow. I responded by - without thinking about it too long - listing my version:

1. I accept that love is stronger than death and fear.

2. I accept that life and the universe hold infinite possibilities and ways of healing.

3 I accept that somehow my body has become oriented to a biochemical fault pattern of some sort.

4. I accept that people, possibly including myself, have placed a particular judgment on my body and its future which may or may not have validity.

5. I accept that my course through this process is unique.

6. I accept that the reasons for my condition are as yet unknown, and could include environmental factors and/or inner emotional elements.

7. I accept that the medical world may not always have my best interests at heart.

8. I accept that I have to carry or actively disassociate myself not only from my own fears but those of the people around me.

9. I accept that healing is possible and that my body's nature is to want to heal, although the path to that healing may not yet be visible, but that my body holds absolute divinity within it.

10. I accept that others are suffering more than I am.

11. I accept that I will have times of weakness or sadness, but that the seeds of the opposite and change are always present in every situation.

12. I accept that the path to healing demands that I discipline myself to staying open to its possiblity, to understand that I cannot dictate its shape or the emotional outcome of my journey, and to accept that its meaning is as yet unrevealed but reflects my innate participation in the divine.

I would be happy to take 12 steps without stumbling or shuffeling my feet

Your twelve principles of acceptance are beautiful. We definitely need to refine our thinking and produce a document that we can read and ponder when we find ourselves feeling alone, or in any other way burdened by our load. Maybe even a small hand book of comfort and a reminder that there is hope.
Thank you for your thoughts and feedback.

Sorry Greg. the shuffle is our official dancestep!