How Anastasia’s GRAD Theory Offers Hope In These Troubled Times

Do you wonder, these days, how we, as Americans, are ever going to get through these troubling times with Donald Trump in office?

It would be hard to be fully present to what is going on around us, day in and day out, under Trump’s administration and be completely at ease. 

But I am here to tell you, with all my many years of experience working with individuals, couples, families, groups and organizations, added to more than forty years of research and strategic intervention development, based on what Watergate taught me, that we, the citizens of the U.S.A., our Congressional representatives and our courts, are on the right and proper track.

Do you want to know why I believe this, so wholeheartedly, even though I, like yourself, am struggling most days to remain “tranquil”?

The bottom line for me can be found in the almost bottom line of my GRAD theory.

Interpreted it goes like this: The Dark Side (i.e. addictions and/or any other manifestation of the RSC) cannot hide out, indefinitely in a community. Community life will not sustain it!

The reason being:  Over the long haul the character aspects (of the Dark Side Warrior) are antithetical to community life – and – humans are, by nature, communal animals. Thus, in a democracy, to go against that which builds and sustains communal life cannot sustain itself, indefinitely. The weight of the majority will not tolerate it.

Trust in this! And, do your best to be the best you can to be a part of the healthy whole!

To the end of strengthening your resolve  -- and – your efforts to hold on to your hope, your highest ideals and your everyday commitments, today I am editing and adding to my description of the GRAD theory to provide you with highlights and guidelines to help you navigate this challenging era.  

The Power of One is what I am stressing, added to the power of the many.

Please use what I am offering! 

Apply the tenets laid out, as best you can. And contact me at: SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com, if you need further assistance.

Together we can weather this storm, as people are doing, this very day, in surviving Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

Leaving The Dark Side Behind

My collection of "Leaving The Dark Side Behind" articles are all about "what to do" rather than the "what not to do" path of the dark side.

Donald Trump and Company are wonderful gifts, if you can allow yourself to open to that possibility. Every day they are depicting themselves as extreme and perfect examples of "what not to do," if you want a truly beautiful life.

Here is a post, Beyond The Darkness, that I just wrote that has guidelines on "what not to do" and how to achieve that gorgeous state of Dark Side LIBERATION!

Good luck with it.

"Draining The Swamp": An Interactive GAME Of Personal And Collective Transformation

How we transform the Dark Side at New Horizons and guide you on the adventure of a lifetime!

Whatever is wrong in Washington, you/we don’t need to keep it going! 

“Draining The Swamp” Is One Of New Horizons Unique Interactive Games

Based on “old” New Horizons "signature" program --

The Truth or Dare GAME

(originally the “Discount Derby” as created by Martin G. Groder, M.D.)

“Draining The Swamp” is an interactive game based on more than fifty years of New Horizons evolving community development principles and practices to create the most up-to-date group dynamic  strategies.

Do you believe that our Congressional representatives ought to --

• Learn how to work cooperatively with one another, at least to some degree;
• Learn how to establish some degree of win-win intention on behalf of American citizens;
• Find elegant solutions to the collective challenges facing our nation?

If these ideals make sense to you, are you willing to develop the necessary skills, to practice, in your own life, what you preach?

If you believe as we do, that greater unity is a way to a healthier future -- then New Horizons “Draining The Swamp” interactive game is a great place for you to start taking some next steps!

The objective of New Horizons this “Draining The Swamp” GAME is to help participants clear away personal cobwebs that obscure the clarity needed for people to solve small and large social problems. “Draining The Swamp” aids players in developing enhanced communication and conflict resolving skills to help move beyond power struggles and abuses. It also facilitates participant’s development of strengthened community bonds.  

Our “Draining The Swamp GAME” might even assist some folks in developing artfulness in helping to reweave the fabric of our society and politics?

Date: TBA 
Next Day Long Program 

New Horizons Harpers Ferry Retreat Center

Bring snacks and a bag lunch. Stay for potluck dinner and campfire storytelling.

Space will be limited! 

Register early!

Fee: Donations encouraged. $100 suggested or --

Pledge time, talent or treasures to ---

New Horizons Coffee House Conversations Project

Contact: Anastasia 240.409.5347
Email: SuperSleuthDSW

One Golden Key Fits All Doors

One golden key – and – only one can unlock the door of each and every portal to higher consciousness and optimum personal success on the adventure of a lifetime this site introduces and guides you to attaining.

Many Doorways

It is the “Do You Have A Survivor/Addict Personality?” inventory.

Its close companion is the Survivor Driven Behaviors Catalogue.

A third tool that can be extremely valuable is the Exploring Your Dark Side piece linked here.

Our one golden key unlocks each of the six portals illustrated below. 

If you choose to bypass using these, particularly the “Do You Have A Survivor/Addict Personality?” inventory, remember I suggested otherwise -- and -- travel here on your own design.

All are welcome! No one size fits all. No right way when we get down to the root of it all.

Design and supporting theories introduced by Martin G. Groder, M.D.

Transactional Analysis After Eric Berne

edited by Graham Barnes, published by Harper’s College Press, 1977.

Happy traveling!

Through The Doorway of Intellect: Knowing The Force

Murat Yagan, Beloved community development mentor of New Horizons, in his profound monograph, Transformati0n And The Seven Ways To Knowledge, instructs us that the first level of knowledge is through the intellect. Murat, also, teaches that knowledge at the pinnacle of transformation is attained through an expansion of consciousness in the human mind along with an increasing subtlety of human energies.

Nonetheless, the Doorway of Intellect, begins our adventure.

Martin G. Groder, M.D., the psychiatrist mentor of my close association for close to a decade and one-half, did not quite recognize this process of ascension, at least not in the time of my apprenticeship with him.

As a result, the New Horizons Support Network model for personal and relationship transformation, community development and violence prevention, by necessity, required a merging of the teachings of these two mentors of mine to complete the philosophical position that came to underly all of its programs, projects and the workings of our board of directors.

How to convey such an intricate design as this, more than forty years in the making, is no easy task.

I feel quite up to the undertaking, however. So I intend to proceed on this monumental endeavor by taking heed of Murat’s organizing system for sharing the bounty of that which my life and the gifts of my two brilliant mentors, Murat and Marty, taught me by “telling” you what I know as comprehensively as I am able.

In other words by my providing Level One, the “telling,” according to Murat’s design.

How to guide and assist you with the process of personal and shared transformation beyond this I do not yet know. The how remains to be revealed to me as much as to you.  This will be one of my challenges on this shared journey of ours.

Taking the opportunity, nevertheless, that this site provides as a platform for the “telling,” you can look forward to my “telling” you about the power of the New Horizons approach, at whatever pace I can manage, by presenting the entirety of my collected works.

Look forward next to “The Prologue”of Surviving (Adrenalin) Addictions (1991). With this piece I will also invite you to expand upon my “telling” by your doing some personal application exercises of your own.

A journal for recording the knowledge you will gain through my “telling” and your contemplations on what I offer here, plus whatever personal applications you choose to take up from what I offer can be of immense benefit.

Good luck to both of us.

Anastasia, The Storyteller

The Many Doorways To The Force

My former mentor, psychiatrist Martin G. Groder, M.D., was a brilliant man. A bit arrogant, a bit grandiose, he was, nonetheless, a man with an exceptional capacity to see life, in general, and the people within it with a vast comprehension.

Out of this astute understanding, Marty was able to interweave complex, interlocking elements into a working system for personal and societal well-being and transformation.

The Groder-Rosen Addiction Development (and Transformation) Theory (GRAD) upon which this blog site is set represents this capacity of Marty’s, augmented by my own contributions to his original thinking and my expansions of it.

Among the intricacies he identified, Marty recognized an array of portals through which contact with the Force could be reached and transformed from the Dark into the Light.

In an article he wrote, published in Transactional Analysis After Eric Berne* (see resource below), Marty identified these doorways as –

• Emotions/feelings;
• Behaviors/doing;
• Body/physicality;
• Thinking/intellect;
• Social Systems, and
• Spirituality.

In a manner of thinking not readily grasped these days, Marty also cultivated the perspective I have passed on to hundreds, if not thousands, that the central playing field for the integration of these elemental, gateway energies for well-being is the community.

Later, when my years of training with Marty had passed, Murat Yagan,** who then became my spiritual guide and New Horizons’ community development mentor, presented the almost identical template for human transformation. Again, community was spotlighted as the essential learning laboratory.

The major difference, for me, between these two, somewhat different in terms of fundamental principles, yet markedly identical perspectives was that Marty’s approach offered a map out of survival-driven living (i.e. the life of the survivor/addict) and Murat’s showed the way to grow and develop beyond that mere subsistence baseline, ascendancy to the highest realms of human life and consciousness.

When, as a result of massive changes in my own life, I came to combine these two ideologies into an integrative whole for myself, especially professionally, I came to view Marty’s methodology as being one of focusing on the “what not to do in life” and Murat’s as the “what to do.”

In other words, one might say that Marty’s work was about wrestling with the Dark Side while Murat’s was with reaching for the Light. Simply, yet not simple at all, two sides of the same coin – the workings of humanity; operations that are far more about process than product, ongoing experiential learning not mere achievements.

Learning by living is how the Inner Warrior gives birth to itself in its highest regard; the potential for the Dark lifted into the Light; the Force being the working ingredient of human alchemy.

This is not an adventure that can be laid out for you in a simple formula. It is an adventure that calls up every facet of your being and doing; body-mind-emotions-spirit, interpersonal interactions, economics, politics, education and more – in the service of the higher good.

Activated these can become the Force for good and better in you and all of humanity. Used in negative, self and life-destructive ways they are the doorway to the Dark.

Visit New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project blogs for stories,  philosophies and hints on reaching for the side of the Light.  And, further stories of a more personal narration on Anastasia The Storyteller.

Today's assignment 

Check yourself out –

How is the balance in you and your life, presently, among these elemental portals?

Emotions/feelings; Behaviors/doing; Body/physicality; Thinking/intellect; Social Systems, and Spirituality.

Try journaling your answers – and – creating a sharing community for this adventure. Remember community is an essential part of the journey!

(Always feel free to share your adventure with me, Anastasia, at SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com.)

We’ve only just begun! 

If you care to read more of and/or from  these two Masters of human development and beyond it, here are several resources –

*Groder, Martin G., M.D. – in Transactional Analysis After Eric Berne,  Edited by Graham Barnes, Harpers College Press, 1977.

**Yagan, Murat – Ahmsta Kebzeh: The Science of Universal Awe,Volumes I and II, Kebzeh Publications.