Eternally Optimistic

My name is David and I am eternally optimistic. That is how I used to introduce myself in process groups, and often how I would reply when people asked how I was doing. Why? I have found that repeating something over and over again has an ability to make it seem a little more tangible. Optimism seemed like something that I wanted in my life, so I try my best to act and speak as if it were true. Over time it has become true. Why am I optimistic?

Hi, my name is David and I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ who has been blessed with lots of difficulties in my life that I have learned from and that have made me stronger! That is how I introduce myself at the Celebrate Recovery groups that I go to. In that sentence are the reasons that I am optimistic. I will share each one of them with you.

I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ. Why am I grateful? I was raised a Christian, but from 5th grade to the age of 35 I was Agnostic. I became Agnostic because of the hypocrisy and judgemental attitudes that I saw displayed by the Christians that I knew. I struggled with depression and substance abuse. I tried everything I could to get through my depression and be drug/alcohol free and nothing worked. I tried rehab, medication, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, jail, prison and even suicide. Nothing set me free until I got saved. I have not used once since that day. I  know what it is to be hopeless, to feel that waking up without a hangover is the best my life would ever get. Now I know what it is to have hope, and I am grateful for that!

My life has been blessed with lots of difficulties that I have learned from and that have made me stronger. Wow, that is a mouthful. It took me years to be able to see my life that way. I was sexually abused for the first time when I was pre-Kindergarten by a baby sitter. My parents divorced when I was in 5th grade. I went to live with my grandparents. I was physically abused by my grandfather starting in 5th grade. I was suspended from school for the first time in 5th grade. I started doing drugs in 7th grade. I dropped out of high school. I went to jail for the first time at 17 and prison at 20. I attempted suicide at 25. My dad committed suicide when I was 35.

I got my GED in prison and started college at 29. I have gotten an Associates, a double Bachelors and my Master's in Social Work. I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I have been working in the recovery field for 5 years and have been a counselor for various drug courts the past 4 years. I have a 5 year old son who is amazing. I have an awesome wife that I am in love with. We have a 6 1/2 month old daughter who is the happiest baby I have ever seen. I am active in the recovery community, both at work and in my free time. I write a blog about my faith and recovery and am in the middle of starting my own non-profit, Better Life in Recovery, Inc.

As you can see,  I have had some issues. I have also had some positive things. I realize that if not for the negative things that have happened to me, I would not have a lot of the positive things. In my life I have had both positive and negative things happen to me. Part of optimism, which imparts happiness, is focusing on the positives instead of the negatives. Another huge part is finding the bless in the mess. That is the part that comes with time. Here are a couple of examples.

There have been issues with both of my children at birth. My son spent time in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), as did my daughter. I did not get to hold my son until he was a week old. My daughter had to go to St Louis to have surgeries twice before she was 2 months old and will have to have at least one more. Now I could focus on the negatives, or I can be happy that they were born. I have gotten to spend time with them. I might not have gotten to hold my son at first, but at least he was alive. My daughter still has at least one surgery, but she is always happy. If she can be, so should I. Be grateful for what you have.

I was abused, addicted to drugs, went to prison, can't count on one hand the number of times I have died and been brought back and all kinds of other stuff people feel are horrific to go through. Some of these I did to myself, and some of them were done to me. I cannot change them, no matter how much I want to. They are not the problem, thank God. If they were the problem, I would be in trouble. Why? Because they all happened in the past. You cannot change the past. You can change how you view the past. That is what I have done.

I have realized that I am good at what I do. I help people who are struggling. I help people who are empty inside, who hate themselves and who feel hopeless. I am good at it, too. I am good at it because I have been there too. I went from hopeless dope fiend to dopeless hope fiend. Going from where I have been and where I am now plus the college education I have received has given me wisdom, book knowledge and insight that many do not have. I use that to help people.

There are those who would argue against that. There statement is usually either "You don't have to have cancer to cure cancer" or "Would you want your psychiatrist to be Bi-Polar and Schizophrenic like you?" Those are good questions that are usually asked by people in the field who have not had the struggles. If what they say is true, then no one should ever do grief and loss counseling as everyone has lost someone. But I will take it a step further. Here is my scenario.

Imagine you are getting your butt kicked. You want to learn how to defend yourself, and there are two different people in your town that teach self-defense. The first guy has on his resume watching fights, reading books on fights and several friends who are fighters. The second on his resume has watching fights, reading about fights, growing up in gangs in south Chicago, being an Army Ranger with 2 tours in Vietnam and having multiple fights in the ring that he was won. Who would you want to teach you how to defend yourself, the first or second one?

I am not saying that someone who has never struggled with addiction cannot be an effective counselor. After all, there is an NFL coach that never played football himself. What I am saying is that it cannot  hurt. I had several counselors in my past, and the person that helped me the most was a counselor who was in recovery himself. I knew that he knew what I was experiencing and that developed a bond that the others had not been able to develop. When you combine overcoming struggles yourself in the past with an education in the field, I think that is a pretty potent combination.

So, that is why I am grateful for my past. It not only made me who I am, which is a father of two amazing children with an incredible wife, but it also gave me the desire to go into the field I am in and be pretty good at it (if I do say so myself). I realize that I have learned from everything I have gone through and in the end it either made me wiser, stronger, or gave me another tool. Generally it did all three of those things.

So in closing, I am eternally optimistic because I realize bad things may happen to me and I might make foolish choices on occasion. Those things may make me sad and they may impact me for quite sometime, maybe forever, but they will never lead me back to where I used to be. I will work through them clean and sober, and will come out of them both wiser and stronger for the journey.