Complete Recovery: An Expanded Model of Community Healing - Hardcover

Picucci, Michael, Ph.D., M.A.C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0965038017 ISBN 13: 9780965038010

Publisher: Mombaccus Publishing, 1996

About this title

About the Author

There are few people better equipped to facilitate, guide, and inform the healing process than Michael Picucci.

From a childhood of abuse, loss, abandonment, and continuous uprooting, Michael reached his teens already addicted to alcohol and drugs. By the age of twenty, he had lost a wife to cancer. By the age of 30, he had worked successfully in printing, as a policeman, and in advertising. He had wrestled with and resolved his sexual orientation, achieved a measure of prosperity, and nurtured his addictions to full bloom. Then, at 32, after beginning psychotherapy and losing his job, "he made a conscious and deliberate decision to recover" from those addictions.

It soon became clear to Michael that putting down the drink and drugs and joining a recovery community were not enough in themselves to bring him the serenity and self-actualization he was seeking. Impelled by the strength and focus of his intent to heal he addressed physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, sexual, cultural, economic, and historical issues as they presented themselves, making use of whatever healing modalities, both conventional and alternative, seemed best suited to the need.

In 1983, Michael was diagnosed with a fast growing lymphoma, now recognized as an AIDS-classified cancer. From this, as well as the two years of grueling chemotherapy, the resulting suicidal depression, and a near-death experience, he also healed.

Having healed himself sufficiently, Michael resolved, with the same clarity and determination he had brought to that task, to help others heal. He went back to school, earned his counseling credentials and then a doctorate in psychology, and began to find ways to fuse, formulate, and make available to others what he had learned in the course of his own eclectic and somewhat miraculous recovery.

Today, Michael carries his 51 years - and the magnitude of his vision - lightly. As well as being a long-term survivor of HIV, he has endured the deaths of two life partners, countless friends, and a recent heart attack. When a friend joked, "Won't anything kill you?" Michael replied. "Not till I'm done."

Michael has founded a number of institutions and organizations concerned with recovery and related issues. He has published widely and presented workshops across the country. In 1993, he founded The Institute for Staged Recovery to support those in recovery and to provide a psychoeducational training and certification program for those wishing to facilitate tht process. Fundamental to all of Michael's work, both personal and professional, is the unshakable conviction that healing is more efficient and more thorough when undertaken with the support of a like-minded and educated community.

That Michael has survived at all is remarkable, a testimony to a fierce determination. That he has survived to live a life he now calls "blissful," one that fulfills him both personally and professionally, speaks of something more, a courage and a commitment to living well. But that he has survived to dedicate his life to helping others toward the fulfillment that he has achieved, and that he is able to articulate and transmit - as well as embody - this healing process as passionately and effectively as he does, speaks of vast resources of knowledge, talent, and skill, and most of all of his love.

If in these complex times there are heroes, if some are chosen to lead, to cut a path for and hold the hands of those who will follow, Michael is one of those.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Wisdom of Complete Recovery

Unconscious Forces "If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you can find it inside you. The interface between God and man is at least in part the interface between our conscious and our unconscious. To put it plainly, our unconscious is God." This has been true for me. The more I have "permissioned" or allowed my unconscious to become conscious, the more I feel connected to forces and experiences that are highly spiritual in nature.

Cultural Pain "Cultural pain" is pain that has its roots in cultural dimensions. Full recovery cannot take place without its due process. To accomplish the delicate work required here, we must be highly sensitive to the struggles of all oppressed minorities in our society. This includes all racial, ethnic and sexual minorities and the prejudicial subsets that lie within. It includes the internalized effects of sexism, homophobia, racism, classism and other forms of underprivledge.

The Yearning for Wholeness We recovering people are often impatient in our attempts to attain our desires. Our quest for gratification, juxtaposed with an inability to clearly define inner needs and feelings, often results in self-flagellation. We have cause to be impatient, since we have often lacked emotional fulfillment for a very long time. Simultaneously, we intuitively know something is missing - something that would make us feel whole. Recovery is the yearning for wholeness and the gradual fulfillment of this profound human experience.

The Sexual-Spiritual Split The sexual-spiritual split has its roots in the early internalization of the ideas that God, love, and family are supposed to be good, and sex is dirty, bad and unspeakable...We all have our own version of this internalization. With such a deeply embedded, dualistic concept, how can one possibly bond in love and bring shame-based sex into relationships? The unconscious sends up powerful, though often deceptive, barriers that prevent a fulfilling merger...Most adults in recovery do not realize that they have incurred this psychic split, nor do they remember its origins, but they certainly experience the results. Once bonding occurs in a relationship, either love or sex must be abandoned.

Separating Adult Needs From Childhood Needs What is a natural need for a child may not be an appropriate need for an adult. I have heard many recovering people jokingly say, "I'm looking for someone to take care of me." This is often not such a joke. The unconscious can cloak a powerful, needy force that wants to be taken care of. This is not a healthy adult need. It is a charged remnant of unmet childhood needs. It is okay to have it, neediness is not bad. But we need to take responsibility for it so it does not unconsciously sabotage our best efforts....We need to realize that we cannot wait for good feelings to come from outside. By taking responsibility we become less dependent on being praised and loved, or rebelling against that dependency, because we are able to give it to ourselves.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mombaccus Publishing
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0965038017
• ISBN 13: 9780965038010
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224