Tim Mullins
Primary Therapist
Second Nature Print

There were two important tasks that I’d left undone. The first was a brief overview on an aspect of spiritual psychology as it relates to 12-step recovery. The second was to write this blog for our website to let people  know more about me and my work. Knowing that I wanted them both done yesterday, my anxiety level was rising and I realized that I have to practice what I preach. So I begin a calming practice. Breathe; I notice that my breathing is shallow and quick. Take another deep breath, identify where the anxiety is in my body. Right in the pit of my stomach, there is a knot there that seems to be twisting around down, getting tighter. I visualize the knot and give it a color – purplish red. With successive breaths, I begin the process of unravelling. That’s better. I witness the thoughts that arise and label them, judging, sensing, classifying, judging again. After a short while, the thoughts slow down, my breaths lengthen into a slow and steady rhythm. Now, I am almost ready to begin. I began this journey of psychotherapy first as a patient. As a young man I had a lot of problems, so many in fact that my parents were completely stymied by my erratic and self-destructive behavior. I was always uncomfortable in my own body. Riddled with anxiety, troubled by existential questions that no one else seemed to care about and generally out of sorts, I started using any substance that I could find to ease my discomfort. Eventually, I became an addict. The substances worked so well for me that the anxiety and restlessness were replaced with a need to medicate most of the time. I went to several psychiatrists and therapists over the years, but until I found a way to stay clean and sober, all of my other problems, the anxiety, the depression, the insomnia and the discontentedness that the professionals called dysthymia, never went away. Then, one day two years without substances, I found myself full of gratitude, gainfully employed, looking forward to being in the life that I was living. A miracle had happened.

My personal recovery from alcohol and drugs is coming up on seventeen years this coming February. My story is not unlike many other people in recovery, I went to therapy, got very involved in daily twelve step recovery, worked hard and played harder and before I knew it, my outlook on life and my problems had completely transformed. What my recovery taught me more than anything is to be aware, to recognize my wild emotions and recurring thoughts, see them for what they were, challenge the irrational thoughts and then refocus on the next thing to do (like this blog). I didn’t know that this was cognitive restructuring at the time – a technique used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Therapy (RET). I connected those dots together later in my master’s program.

Though, I haven’t had the desire to use a substance to change the way that I feel in a long time, I still notice my addictive personality coming out sideways with eating habits, with shopping and more subtly in other areas. The point here is that helping others to gain awareness of their repetitive thoughts and rampaging emotions is something of which I have first-hand knowledge. I like working with addicts, with people struggling with anxiety and with clients having existential crises about where they want to go with school, career, and relationships because I have spent a lot of time in those very same struggles.

I’m calling my approach to addictions and co-occurring disorders, Wild Recovery. It combines Mindfulness based CBT with yoga (I started teaching yoga eight years ago), existential therapy (who am I and what is the meaning of my life), meditation and other approaches into an integrated framework.  Most importantly this therapy happens in a wilderness environment where clients are taken completely out of their habitual patterns and learn how to slow down. Wild nature is a remarkable place to gain awareness.

I’m just now finishing up my first quarter of a doctoral program in psychology at Sofia University. The program is about integral approaches to treatment. The other bit of writing that I am in the middle of completing. Right up my alley. In retrospect, I see that my life has taken on a very consistent path as far as recovery and career is concerned, though it seemed chaotic and happenstance in the process. My problem became the focus of my studies and now I want to share what I have found with others. This a process known as forming the therapeutic alliance- the therapist and client work together to address specific problem areas. This manifests as highly individualized plans for each client dependent on their needs, personal goals and presenting problems.

A current client is struggling with attachment/ adoption issues, insomnia, anxiety, heroin addiction, cultural identity and family problems. He feels overwhelmed when trying to plan for the future, finish his college education or focus on a career path. In Wild Recovery, we will address all of these issues in a very intentional and direct manner. The integral approach will have him getting into his body and use calming practices like breathing and visualization, we will surely do some existential work around values and philosophy, bibliotherapy and group work around attachment and an individualized approach to addiction recovery where the client will be able to honestly self-evaluate. I believe passionately in the work and how I use it to work with my clients at Second Nature.