recovery

Grappling with mental, emotional, and spiritual health issues

In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a martial art most well known for specializing in ground grappling, the goal is to pin and control your opponent and then submit them with either a joint lock or a strangulation. John Danaher, who many consider the sport’s greatest coach, describes it as “The art of control that leads to submission.” Greg Souders, another prevalent voice in the sport, describes jiu-jitsu as “The game of immobilization as it leads to strangulation and breaking.” 

However one chooses to describe it, the general idea of jiu-jitsu is the same: take your opponent to the ground and, using superior angles, positioning, and leverage, make it difficult or impossible for them to escape. Then, isolate and attack their arm, leg, or neck, and apply sufficient force to either break said arm or leg or cut off the blood or oxygen supply through the neck until your opponent taps in submission. 

Of course, this is all easier said than done. Every advantage must be earned when dealing with a fully resisting opponent or training partner. The person you are trying to pin and submit is also trying to pin and submit you. It’s a constant struggle. It’s a battle of wills as much as it’s a battle of skill, pride, strategy, and athleticism. Everything in jiu-jitsu matters, and nothing in jiu-jitsu is easy. That’s one of the reasons it is such a rewarding practice to participate in. 

With this in mind, a shared joke in jiu-jitsu is to yell, “Just stand up!” When someone is pinned and struggling to escape, it’s simple advice but often quite difficult to act on, especially against a resisting opponent and the force of gravity working against you. For this reason, “Just stand up!” is often said with sarcasm and received with scorn or laughter, depending on the recipient’s mood. 

Much like “Just stand up!” in jiu-jitsu is absurd advice to give someone who is pinned under a resisting opponent, “Just get over it!” is ridiculous advice to give to a person suffering from grief, depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, or some other psycho-emotional ailment. While it may seem like helpful advice from the onlooker’s perspective, it is often less than useless for the person struggling with whatever issues they are experiencing. These usually well-intentioned comments can even exacerbate the recipient’s mental, emotional, or spiritual health issues by diminishing their seriousness and making it seem as though it is merely a lack of effort that is preventing them from being overcome. 

Like jiu-jitsu, our mental, emotional, and spiritual health is complicated. Many forces are working against us as we try to persevere through this thing we call life. While those of us being pinned by another jiu-jitsu practitioner would love to “Just stand up!” and those of us grappling with mental, emotional, and spiritual health issues would love to “Just get over it!” there’s usually more to it than that. As hard as we are fighting, our opponent is also fighting back, and sometimes we are outmatched. 

Sometimes, our opponent is bigger, stronger, faster, or more skilled than us, and we cannot escape our difficulties alone. Sometimes, we need help. This is true in both jiu-jitsu and in life. No one ever became a jiu-jitsu world champion without a coach, or several coaches, and a variety of skilled training partners. If you are struggling with mental or emotional health issues, don’t assume you can do it alone, either. 

When I was at my absolute lowest in my addiction, I had to come to accept that I could not overcome my problem by myself. I needed help. My parents helped me get into rehab. The rehab facility helped me get into a halfway house. The halfway house helped get me in touch with people who could lead me out of addiction and into a spiritual experience that would solve my problem. It took the proverbial village to raise me from spiritual, emotional, and psychological death. 

Likewise, many years later, when I finally admitted that I was struggling with anxiety and depression, I didn’t simply “muscle my way out of it.” I couldn’t. I couldn’t “Just stand up!” and “Just get over it!” I couldn’t do it alone; once again, I needed help. I needed my wife’s support to work through my issues; I needed friends who had been through similar problems and who could recommend good therapists; I required the therapists themselves, and finally, but most importantly, I needed God to guide me through all of this as I found my way back to him. 

Whatever you are grappling with, whether it is another person or your demons, know that you are not the first to struggle with this issue; you won’t be the last person to do so, and you are not alone. Countless other people have had whatever problem you are having and are willing to help you. Don’t waste your time trying to “Just stand up!” or “Just get over it!” You can’t. I couldn’t. We can’t. 

We all need help, and we all need each other. I love you, and we love you. Please do not give up. You are truly not alone. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Fumbling into spirituality

When I was first getting clean and sober over twenty seven years ago, I was told that I had an illness for which the only known treatment was a spiritual experience, a complete personality transformation through the development of a conscious contact with a higher power. Up until this point, I’m not sure I’d ever even heard the word spiritual before, let alone understood what it meant to have a spiritual experience. I did have some concept of God from going to church as a kid and I knew about religion in a general sense, but spirituality was entirely new territory for me. 

This newness may be one of the reasons I was attracted to, or at least not opposed to, this idea that felt revolutionary to me. At that point in my life, religion scared me and I had rejected the idea of God as a teenager, but I was willing, mostly through pain and desperation, to take a shot at this thing called spirituality. And I feel very fortunate that the person helping me at the time, my spiritual director, so to speak, never pushed his own beliefs on me. Rather, he introduced me to a variety of spiritual and religious ideas, books, and teachings, and encouraged me to find my own way. 

In the beginning, however, this all confused me, as I thought I had to construct a higher power for myself from all of the different source material I was studying. I tried to take a little bit from here and a little bit from there, keeping what I liked and ignoring or discarding what I didn’t. It was as if I was working on my own Create-A-God kit with the hope of coming up with a higher power I could trust and rely on. It wasn’t until much later when I realized that, if God is anything, he isn’t what I want or imagine him to be. He is what and who he is, beyond my limitations, expectations, and understanding. 

All of this to say, my first steps onto the spiritual path were clumsy to say the least. I was like a man fumbling around in the dark for a light-switch, bumping into furniture, tripping on the carpet, and knocking over lamps along the way. But the beautiful thing about the spiritual path, especially in the beginning, is that it is broad and forgiving, leaving room for mistakes, misunderstandings, and missteps, and I made many. 

In hindsight, I see that God’s grace allowed me this time of discovery. My curiosity and sincerity have always been rewarded by him with the love and understanding of a patient father, even if sometimes I tested the limits of this patience and he let me know it. But God is forgiving – it’s a good thing too because I have done and continue to do plenty for which I have needed forgiveness – and the longer I walk this path, the more I can feel the truth of this. All he asks is that, whether we call it spirituality, religion, or something more specific, we step forward in faith. If we do this, he will always be there to help us up when we fall. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Praying for courage

I’ve been a public speaker on and off in various venues for the past twenty seven or so years. Most of my talks have revolved around recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and the relationship with God that made my recovery possible. It’s a subject with which I have intimate knowledge and about which I am extremely passionate. And yet, I still get nervous before I speak.

I have spoken at countless venues in front of a variety of audiences, and it has always worked out. With the exception of one or two talks many years ago when my anxiety got the best of me, things have always gone well. Even in those rare one or two rare cases, I was able to pivot and pull it off.

Time and time again, my experience has proven that I have nothing to fear, I’m not an imposter, and things are going to be fine. Most importantly, however, my experience has proven that God will not abandon me, that he loves me, provides for me, and protects me. He has never let me down. And yet, I still get nervous before I speak.

I often wonder what it would be like to have perfect faith. That is, what would it be like to trust God implicitly, always, to fear nothing, and to never worry? While I do believe that this state of perfect faith is possible, if only because I believe that, for God all things are possible, I have a long way to go before I achieve it.

I have had brief moments of perfect faith. But like most people, I’m flawed and broken, impatient and untrusting, and I try to control things that are either out of my control or that would be better left to God. Precisely because of this brokenness, when I get nervous before I speak, and even when I don’t, I find a quiet space to pray. My fear is my own, but my courage comes from God.

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

I assume it was grace

Thirty days before my nineteenth birthday, I entered rehab. Looking back, I still don’t know how I found the courage to go. At first, I was willing because I had nowhere else to turn. I had no home to speak of. I was barely getting by, working at McDonald’s, making enough money to eat and get high. 

I had been sleeping on friends’ floors and couches for a while, and occasionally in my car that had expired tags to match my suspended license. My mom had let me back in her home for a short period because I was too sick to take care of myself, but I had worn out my welcome once again, especially as far as her husband was concerned. I was running out of options. 

One night, at a Pizza Hut, my parents got together for the first time since their divorce, sat me down, and told me I needed help. My dad’s insurance would cover me going to rehab and they were giving me one last chance to turn my life around. Of course, I was angry and belligerent. This perceived betrayal was more fuel for the fire of resentment and self pity that burned me from the inside out. I said I needed time to think about it and I left. 

I knew I was in trouble. If I rejected their ultimatum, I would have nowhere else to turn. With the exception of one or two people, I had burned all of the bridges that I had crossed. I called one of my last friends up, a girl I met through drugs and drinking, and with whom I lived for a while when I dropped out of school and ran away from home. She had just recently gotten out of rehab and, as soon as she was out, we were drinking and getting high together. 

I told my friend what was going on and she came to get me, or at least I assume she did because all I remember is the two of us sitting on top of Federal Hill, smoking weed, and talking about rehab, and I know I didn’t drive there. I told her my sob story, we commiserated for a while, and then she said, “It might be good for you to take a break for a little while. Go to rehab. It’s like a vacation. I’ll be here when you get out. But, if you don’t want to go, you can stay with me at my mom’s house.” 

Her mom lived in the city. We used to go there to get high with her and she would buy us alcohol, but she was into some things even I wouldn’t touch. She had a drawer full of pills and smoked crack from time to time. That stuff always scared me. Although, with the way I was headed, who knows how many of my “nevers” were really just “not yets.” 

My friend’s offer was tempting. It was a way out. If I accepted, it meant I had a roof over my head for a while longer. It meant I could keep running. But I was worn out. I was tired and beaten. I told her I’d think about it and she took me home. 

What happened next still baffles me. The next day, I called my father and told him I would go to rehab like he said. I guess I was done, but I don’t know how or why. I don’t know what it was that gave me the power to make that decision when I had another option. The only explanation I have is that it was grace. 

My father contacted his insurance company, they set everything up with the facility, and gave me an intake date. I didn’t fight it. Thirty days before my nineteenth birthday, I was driven to rehab and I was given a chance that many do not get. I was given the opportunity to start my life over and, even thought I’m convinced that it was some kind of divine intervention, I took it.