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The Sweet Spot of Centered Living

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Every day presents a new set of circumstances and issues in addict recovery. Some days go smoothly without major conflict while other days are challenged with triggers, cravings, and stress that create feelings of insecurity, impatience, and overall struggle. There is no necessary rhyme or reason. It is the common thread of issues that addicts in recovery grapple with in order to remain sober. For sure, staying sober is a battle of resistance with the forces of life that tug and pull to numb out with a cocktail of addictive processes. 

Addicts in recovery learn to create a sweet spot which represents a center of balance in life to respond to life’s provocations. In racquetball, the sweet spot on the court is the space maintained that gives the best vantage to respond to the opponent’s shot. The sweet spot in recovery is the space that an addict creates that offers the best possibility to engage tests and temptations from an empowered position and with poise. Trauma professionals sometimes refer to this space as a window of tolerance. This is a place you are able to self-soothe. You are able to maintain emotional self-regulation. It’s the position that you are best able to access resilience and flexibility. In the midst of everyday fray, you are capable of being connected to your mind, body, and emotions anchored in the window of tolerance. 

Some days just don’t play out in the sweet spot. You scramble to keep up with a busy schedule. People criticize you for shortcomings. Life throws you one curve ball after another. The harder you try, the “behinder” you get. It’s just one of those days or one of those seasons in life. The build-up of stress with physical and emotional fatigue triggers cravings that push you to the precipice of relapse. It’s amazing how quickly you can be right on the edge of disaster.

This experience is what trauma professionals refer to as flooding which can be hyperarousal (fight or flight) or hypo-arousal (freeze). Addicts must pay attention to the warning signs to avoid the pitfalls of relapse. 

Triggers are the memories, core beliefs, feelings, and body sensations which are connected to past traumatic experiences that have the potential to move you out of your sweet spot in recovery. Addicts benefit when they do the homework of identifying mistaken beliefs that block intimacy and monitor those beliefs daily. Rather than going all out to eliminate the belief, simply paying attention with a skillset to shift out of the mistaken belief that enervates and empowers addictive response, and shift into an intimacy-abling belief is all that is needed. It is important to become aware of life situations, relationship challenges, and mental states that fuel mistaken beliefs and address them daily. 

Flashback memories of old experiences are just that! They are not reality in the present moment no matter how powerful they seem. They trigger maladaptive responses and require the grounding skill of “acting as if”, meaning that in spite of the felt struggle, you commit to act doing the next right thing regardless of feeling. It may require ritual breathing, keeping your eyes open, and grounded conversation. It doesn’t mean I must act out in old destructive behaviors. 

Triggers can activate hyper arousal response including building anxiety, impulsivity, reactivity, anger, rage, nightmare, rigidity, and hyper-vigilance. You may notice difficulty in concentrating, obsessive-compulsive thoughts or behaviors or panic, and becoming easily irritated.  Many addicts do program work without ever paying attention to these critical signs of hyper arousal that take them out of their sweet spot.

A hypo arousal response is also a sign of flooding which pulls you from your window of tolerance. This response includes depression, fatigue, not being present, dissociation, feeling numb, going on autopilot, and disconnecting from feelings. You may experience increased aches and pains and not be able to think very clearly. 

It will be important for you to evaluate your typical response to the trials and tribulations of recovery living that pull you from your sweet spot. Managing your ability to return to the sweet spot in recovery requires that you discipline your awareness to recognize the warning signs of flooding. 

Do you most likely respond with freeze or fight/flight given the description of both responses? Many clients have told me that their body experiences periodic aches and pains without ever considering that the source of this discomfort might trace back to a hypo-aroused response to the stressors of life that pull them away from their window of tolerance. Others think medication is needed to quell the anxiety and panic that dominates them every day. Still others are stupefied wondering why they are having nightmares, being so reactive with anger and rage. One reason you may find yourself emotionally eating is because of the fight or flight response to the stress and tension that exists within your life. You may need a prescription to alleviate the intense edge of anxiety that triggers a rageful response. It can be helpful to attend an Overeaters Anonymous group to stop destructive out-of-control eating. Yet, for sure, it will be critical to recognize the warning sign that triggers the emotional flooding. You will need to address the stressful situation and recognize the flood in your life which pulls you out of your sweet spot in recovery. Consider these steps:

1. What expectations do you have in your life and your recovery? Be clear and specific. Are your expectations realistic? We all begin with enthusiasm and a lot of fire in recovery. It will flame out if your recovery goals are not realistic. Be clear and accountable for your bottom lines. A contract without accountability has no bite to it. 

2. Examine the Data. Project out a few weeks. When you get to a certain point in your recovery journey, evaluate if the results are what you intended. Like plays drawn up on the chalkboard at halftime in a football game, the way it works out on the field of recovery may be quite different than what you planned. Look at what you intended when you made your commitment to improve your behavior with your sponsor or in a recovery room. Are your results what you meant to be reality? Be honest, practical, and realistic in your assessment.

3. Make adjustments. This is key. Returning to your sweet spot will require that you work out of your rigidity and become flexible. Things never work out just the way you plan. What you thought would be easy will sometimes be hard. This is the way it is in life, not just recovery. Your working recovery from the sweet spot will require that you be flexible and make adjustments.  Embrace a sweet reasonableness about your expectations. Know when to apply the strict letter of the law to your recovery life and when to be gentle with what you expect from yourself and others. This is a practiced art form. 

The sweet spot for recovery growth requires gardening. Utilize your quiet time each day to recenter your focus. Know your tools for regulation and how to use them. I encourage addicts to create a plethora of recovery tools that are placed on the shelf for resources like a woodworker puts her tools on the shelf of her garage. Practice what you know. It will help you to return to your window of tolerance. It is the sweet spot that propels long-term growth and serenity.

A Worn Road Less Traveled

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“Two Roads diverged in a wood,

I took the one less traveled, 

And that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost

An addict contemplating recovery sees only two options. It is either use or die with craving. Addicts don’t usually die with cravings but they habitually succumb to acting out. In the beginning days of recovery, addicts are poor at creating options. They come from an either/or, black/white world. They either use or obsess about using until the craving has subsided. 

People live with shame and pain. They live disconnected from their inner self. Most of us long for connection. Mindlessly, we listen to the radio or to a podcast when driving. Aimlessly, we scroll texts, emails, and a host of social media platforms disengaged and lost in the spectacle of it all. For an addict, any reason is a good reason to use. In recovery, creating options to using requires that you take the road less traveled. There are no shortcuts. There is no room for perfection. It requires a willingness to endure painful moments, relentless perseverance, and a commitment to being a little better today than you were yesterday. 

Along the road, there will be a dawning that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. This will transform your struggle into sacred meaningfulness. This awareness is hallowed throughout 12-step rooms across the world. Carl Jung once concluded that what chronic addicts needed was a spiritual experience and ongoing communal support. 

Most addicts in recovery settle for sobriety. Certainly, it beats the hell out of wallowing in the pain and distortion from a life lived in the agony of addictive behavior. Yet, few engage the worn road less traveled. Once you have put the cork in the bottle, what is next? Are you willing to go deeper? Are you willing to explore what is missing? Are you curious to understand why the addiction? Why the pain? Do you want to address that feeling in your gut that you are not good enough? These questions and more represent the gateway to a worn road less traveled. To those who have committed to sobriety and who are no longer content to rotate the object of addiction, I offer the following road markers on the worn road less traveled.

1. Adopt a mindset for recovery: Practice brainstorming more than one option for every challenge you face. Breakthrough the either/or mentality. Change your language about how you see yourself and the world around you. Dare to dream about creating the kind of person you want to be.  Figure out what your song is and sing it. The expedition in recovery truly begins when you earnestly are willing to truly change your mindset about addiction, yourself, and the world around you.

2. Become a Sponge: What has helped me to be successful in my world of endeavor is that I became a sponge to learn everything I could to be the best I could be. I was a minister in a church for over 25 years. During the beginning days of my training, I worked for three years for free, with whom I thought was the very best.  I asked so many questions that the lead pastor asked me to stop asking so many questions. Today I am proud that I learned to be a sponge in ministry and as a professional counselor. That said, it saved my life in recovery. Early in recovery, I adopted the mindset of learning everything I could about recovery. It is one of the fundamentals that has projected my personal growth during the past 33 years in recovery. Be a sponge!

3. Learn to fail forward: People who embrace a healthy recovery mindset create a paradigm shift in their thinking about failed behavior. They make it exciting. They realize that within their failure are lessons to learn that will help them become a little better today than they were yesterday. Rather than wallow in the mud of shame and negative thinking, they practice conditioning themselves to pursue a better way to live. They learn to transform the word excitement from a necessary feeling to a committed action of exploring what went wrong and doing something different. 

4. Practice Playback: This road marker is related to the previous one. When an addict relapses, it is common to admit the destructive behavior and then get back on the horse and try again. It is often brushed off with the idea that “I’m an addict” and what needs to happen is that I just need to bear down with my recovery skills. Sometimes, they commit to going to 90 meetings in 90 days or start again doing the 12 steps. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. When addicts admit their failure to their support community, what is left out is why they relapsed and what happened. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. It is crucial to go back and unpack what happened and where the breakdown was. A golfer will learn to improve his/her swing by watching videos of past swings. A basketball player will learn where they were out of position and how to correct other mistakes by watching past videos of performances. A recovering addict needs to do the same. Go back and fastidiously review triggers, build-up behaviors, and mistaken beliefs that dominated and then practice over and again replacement behavior that corrects what broke down. We never become perfect. But playback will help you become incrementally better than before. So, practice playback and pay it forward with an incremental positive change that over time will make a profound difference. 

5. Protect your imagination and get outside your comfort zone: It is counterintuitive for an addict to embrace discomfort. Running from emotional and physical pain is at the root of why addiction grows in the first place. Though contraindicated, in recovery an addict learns to lean into the pain and sit with it. Recovery requires that you get outside your comfort zone. Only when you do this, are you able to give birth to the person that your destiny is pulling you toward. The worn road less traveled demands that you live outside your comfort zone. This is where the problem is. Once sober from the hectic helter-skelter life of addiction and within the warm and friendly confines of a 12-step community, an addict is asked to push toward living outside of his/her comfort zone. It requires sensitivity to the support of the community while pushing forward to dream and realize your destiny. In doing so you must protect your imagination from the negative messages of “you can’t” or “who do you think you are.”  You must protect your imagination from the impact of your personal failures or others who subtly want to pull you back into an old mindset. It is a road less traveled for those who live outside their comfort zone. Laying it on the line and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone will require a commitment to being the best person you can be one day at a time. Sometimes you will take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps backward. Everyone slips even as they soar. Overcome your setbacks by doing the next right thing regardless of how you feel. You won’t think your way into acting differently. You will act your way into a different way of thinking. Don’t abandon your quest to fulfill your imagination. Stop flogging yourself with negative messages. Every positive thought and action will move you closer to your desired transformation. The worn road less traveled requires that you protect your imagination and live outside your comfort zone. 

6. Choose your support community carefully and elevate those around you: One of the biggest challenges for an addict is to create an environment that fosters sobriety and personal growth. Most addicts have not surrendered to recovery behavior and hang around old friends who either influence them to return to addictive behavior or who thwart their vision of fulfilling their destiny. Like the old saying, “Hang around the barbershop long enough and you will get a haircut”, many addicts can testify to the reality of this powerful truth! The worn road less traveled in recovery will require that you weed out those who bring you down. You will need to distance yourself from the dream crushers around you. Don’t let them rent premium space in your mind. Foster a web of influence that will inspire you to achieve and transform yourself and hold you accountable to your imagination. Build an environment where half-assed efforts are unacceptable. Cultivate your brilliance by choosing a support community that expects greatness within. Create a support system that you can solicit counsel from those who will inspire you. Always know that on the worn road less traveled, life transformation is a team sport. 

When I wrote the book Dare to Be Average, Cultivating Brilliance in the Commonplace the emphasis was the opposite of half-hearted living. Rather, it is about taking the worn road less traveled and embracing the common everyday moment—even those that provide emotional discomfort—and mining meaningfulness from each one. This pursuit of meaningfulness is required in recovery for those who choose the worn road less traveled.

Nine Thoughts that Shape Recovery

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I have been in recovery from addiction for 31 years. I have been reflecting on the 9 thoughts that have shaped and governed my recovery life. I want to share them in hopes that perhaps I can offer hope and strength to those who struggle with maintaining sobriety today.

1. Attitude is your greatest stock-in-trade. Sometimes people think they have to pay an exorbitant price to work with the best-known inpatient facility or a perceived guru in order to address addiction. Sometimes this attitude wreaks of entitlement. They have the money so they feel entitled to demand the best. One time this guy came to see me and said I heard you were the best and I want to only work with the best. I responded by saying “Why do you need the best therapist, you are not the best client.” What is far more important than finding the best therapist is to bring with you the best attitude you can manifest. When I got into recovery, I did not have any money. It took some time but I created a great attitude about recovery. My wife and I decided to embrace the mantra that we would “hock our socks” and do what was necessary to be healthy and sober. We found many resources that were free including 12-step programs which offered free cassette tapes and books. I learned to look for what would help me develop and grow my sobriety. I found individuals in 12-step rooms who were serious about living a sober life. I would sit or stand in the parking lot talking to them about recovery life. When confronted by others in 12-step meetings, I did not always receive helpful feedback. I learned to latch on to what was helpful and let go of what was hurtful. It was a good attitude that helped me to keep coming back again and again. Thirty-one years and over 3500 meetings later, the number one reason that I am sober is because I learned to live with a good attitude toward growth and recovery. I have to work on it every day. The greatest investment I ever made was not for a therapist or an inpatient facility. It has been my determination to be coachable and have a good attitude. It serves me well.

2. Be hungry. Let the world be your library. What does it mean to be hungry about recovery? Literally, the physical craving for food is a motivation to satisfy the need for nourishment. It’s not different in addiction recovery. When you don’t have a white-hot intense hunger for sobriety, serenity, and recovery, you miss out on what others get. Some people think they only do recovery when they attend a 12-step meeting, do the steps, or sit in a therapist’s office. Not me. I have learned that recovery is all around me. I have greatly appreciated the different therapists who have helped me throughout my journey. Yet, if I limited my resources to identified recovery sources I would have stunted and stifled my recovery growth. Being hungry for recovery growth means that you bring this mindset to all that you are and all that you do. I have gained great insights from the imagination of children and the persistence that I have observed from people who live a hardscrabble existence. I have walked alongside very wealthy people and have learned recovery principles. I have experienced even more wisdom from the poor and homeless. I have learned spirituality from my depression, impatience, and dire failings in my life. Emotional and physical pain have been great teachers. Recently, sitting next to Sequoia trees in California helped me to keep my vision for change to extend beyond my own time and onto future generations. When you are hungry for insight and understanding, you find it all around you. Let the world be your library to stretch yourself and grow.

3. Tell on yourself. The hardest thing in recovery I have ever had to do was to get emotionally honest at a deep level and tell on myself. That meant to tell on myself about times I was insecure and unsure. It meant that I needed to learn to live with being “emotionally naked” to those who I identified as support. This is much easier to write about than live. It meant that in order for me to show up at a 12-step group, I had to be honest and lead with the last thing I wanted people to know about me and let that be the first thing I said. I have pissed people off, said things I wasn’t comfortable saying, and put up with blowback from others because of what I said. I don’t do this everywhere I go. Yet, when it comes to recovery groups, the only way I have been able to always get something from each group is for me to show up and tell on myself. This mentality has conditioned me to cultivate deeper intimacy with my wife and those I care about and who I have invited to be close. Practice telling on yourself.

4. Do the next right thing no matter what it takes. We say this all the time in 12-step work. When you screw up, make a relationship mistake, or act out, the hardest thing is to face the consequences and do the next right thing. You feel shitty about yourself and getting up out of the mud hole you created for yourself is really hard. Sometimes it feels impossible. It requires that regardless of how you feel, you have to force yourself to move in the right direction, not perfectly, but you’ve got to move! While the voices are screaming that you can’t do recovery, give up, just numb out, and get high, you have to take yourself by the nape of the neck and do the next right thing. This move is not spectacular and there is no glory in it. The war with addiction behavior is hammered out when you drag yourself from wallowing in the mud and pick up the phone, tell on yourself, and go to a meeting. You can never get away from doing the next right thing no matter what it takes.

5. As an addict, what you think is most important, seldom is. In my addiction, what I thought was so important never was. John Prine wrote this great song about Sam Stone who became a morphine addict in the VietNam war and lived out the rest of his days addicted. He wrote, “When he popped his last balloon… there was nothing to be done but trade his house that he bought on the GI-bill for a flag-draped casket on a local hero’s hill.” That’s always the result of addictive demand. There are times, even now, that I can be so damned insistent on wanting what I want when I want it. The next day it didn’t even matter. After the build-up of addictive craving and you too have popped your balloon, what you thought was so important on the other side seldom was.

6. Be your own guru. Activist Grace Lee Boggs wrote a book when she was 98 years old. In the book, she said “We are the leaders we are looking for.” This applies not only about our country’s destiny but is also true for those in recovery. I lead several groups of men who gather on weekends to work through addictive behavior. The tendency in groups of all kinds is to look to someone to be the guru. Usually, it is someone who has a way with words, is charismatic, or who just simply talks a lot. Guru is synonymous to being a teacher, master, or sage. The idea of being a teacher is great. However, it is common for group members to look to a teacher and build them up and put them on a pedestal. I find this very annoying! I can teach you and you can teach me. There is no need to pedestalize anyone. In religion, we make saints out of people. We do the same thing in recovery groups. Perhaps, out of insecurity, we put others on a pedestal and make gurus out of them. I find it detrimental to recovery growth. I suspect that this is done because we don’t want to grow ourselves and become our own guru. Recovery growth in my life has required that I become my own guru.

7. Addicts change only when the prospect of not changing is more painful than the change they are facing. This has been said by many regarding the change of behavior. It certainly has been true for me. Only when the pain of remaining stuck in old behavior—addiction, procrastination, lack of exercise, healthy eating habits, etc, became intolerable did I transform myself around these behaviors. Many talk about change. It will require that you increase the pain of hurtful behavior to an intensity that change is less painful than remaining the same. Personal growth throughout the rest of your life will demand that you make decisions around this experience of tension.

8. What is more important than sobriety is bringing yourself back to center. Sobriety is sacred. It is hard won by all of us who experience it. However, throughout the years I have learned to value the skill of bringing myself back to center to be more important. No one does sobriety perfect. In the world of sex addiction, few have ever put down the addictive process and never returned through relapse. Even among those who do, lapses into high-risk behavior is common. Bringing yourself back to center is a way of managing your humanity. You will make mistakes. You will need to cultivate the concept of velvet steel if you intend to maintain long-term sobriety. When – not if – you blow it and make a big mistake, you will need to know how to bring yourself back to center with humility and gentleness. You will need to know how to assert necessary firmness and resolution that will ground and help you to be true to your heart.

9. Be who you are – don’t try to be someone else. Musician and poet Van Morrison wrote, “Live the life you love and it will bring the blessings from above”. So many people try to be someone they are not. It is not necessary to try to live life through another’s persona. It’s an impossible way to live and extremely painful. Recovery flows and is rich when you commit to being your authentic self. You will never remain lost in your recovery when you practice being true to yourself.

Polarization

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Polarization is a problem in the world. Us versus them is a mentality that has always existed.  The criteria for who is in and who is out are determined by those who have the power.  Historically, the criteria for acceptance has been tragic. Jewish people were rejected by the Third Reich in Germany, who determined that the entire race should be exterminated. African Americans were once considered only 3/5th human in America simply because of the color of their skin. Racism, sexism, patriarchy, ageism, etc exclude some and include others because of someone’s definition about who is acceptable and who is not.

When I was a kid I tried to hang out with only Cub fans. If you liked the St. Louis Cardinals, there was something wrong with you. My dad was a blue-collar worker and we were Democrats. We prayed for those who were Republicans and wondered why! We thought that the Pope was the antichrist. There were 3 areas of our town: Elm Ridge, where the rich people lived; Grant Park, where the poorest lived, and then the rest of us. We learned to categorize people by their address. We looked up to the folk in Elm Ridge as successful. They were the “haves.” We fought to keep our address out of Grant Park where the “have nots” lived.

Judgmentalism has separated people throughout my life. There was the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the 1950’s. Famous people like Paul Robeson, who was a great black athlete and actor, was ostracized and accused of being Communist because he refused to bend to popular opinion. There were Christians who thought the world was going to end in a ball of fire in the early 1960’s. They were scoffed at by scientists and ostracized as Holy Rollers. Now, scientists push the alarm of a catastrophic global warming, and many of those same Christians scoff and ostracize the scientists.

Polarization is a challenge to recovery. Healing requires integrating both the best and the beast within each person. In community, us versus them undermines the healing process. Judging others’ social status or recovery progress paralyzes the potential for transformation. It requires each person to recognize their own dark behavior in order to have compassion for other people’s struggle. It is by recognizing compassion and identification that transformation occurs. 

No one escapes childhood unscathed. I have learned that working through abuse requires the acceptance of a victim/victimizer dynamic that exists in those who have suffered abuse. When you have been victimized it is important to face ways that you have victimized others, perhaps not in like kind but in like principle. 

It is critical to confront behavior where you selfishly wanted what you wanted when you wanted it. It is important to face the impact of feelings and consequences that your behavior created for others and experience the gravity of their plight  because of your actions. Then, you focus on forgiving yourself which simply means to let go and not hold the behavior against yourself. It also means to stop the hurtful behavior. When you do this, you become less polarized from those who have victimized you. By accepting your own dark behavior you can create compassion for the dark behavior of others who hurt you with perpetrating abuse. Through common shared brokenness you can experience healing and forgiveness which can produce freedom from the abuse. 

Essentially, this controversial process can be framed as a way of getting out of an emotional prison that an abuser’s behavior created. Some have described it as a healthy selfish way of forgiving the son of a b**** who perpetrated pain and devastation in your life. You don’t have to be friends with someone who has hurt you. However, polarization is less likely because you have addressed in principle the victimizer dynamic in yourself that also exists in the perpetrator who has hurt you.

When this does not occur, communities remain fractured and polarized. Perpetrators, like sex offenders, are excluded from their communities. Some people think that if we segregate, isolate, or polarize people, then somehow we become a safer community. I don’t see evidence that this is true. 

Through my work at Psychological Counseling Services, we have witnessed transformation and healing by bringing victims and victimizers together. When sexual abuse is the issue, careful consideration of healing factors are assessed for both victim and victimizer before such integration takes place. Through 25+ years of engaging this process, I have observed and facilitated healing and transformation for both victim and victimizer. Regarding betrayed partners, we have integrated them with addict betrayers for many years. I have listened to partners who have shared that listening to the heart of an addict who is not their partner has been helpful to cultivate compassion and healing toward their own addict partner. On the other side of the coin, I have listened to addicts state that hearing the heartache of a different betrayed partner helped them to deepen empathy toward their own betrayed partner.  

When we face each other’s pain we promote healing and transformation and eliminate polarization. This makes far more sense to me. 

I do not think there is just one way to heal trauma from abuse. There are many alternatives. I do believe that polarization has splintered communities throughout our country. Judgmentalism through categorizing and labeling people has been detrimental to healing in our country. I suggest that we overcome judgmentalism and polarization toward others through identification of common-shared brokenness with shared accountability and consequences.  

Take time to be curious of someone who is unlike you or represents a position you vehemently disagree with.  Notice how judgment comes up and simply sit with gaining an understanding of another person’s plight and position about life. You don’t have to change your mind about how you think. But, you can find a way to connect with someone who sees things different than you do. A way to overcome polarization is to integrate common-shared brokenness through listening to a different perspective.  

The Compost of Community

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“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” —John Lennon

It is likely that most people are skeptical that the world will fulfill the vision that John Lennon crooned in the lyrics of “Imagine”. The world has always been in turmoil and uncertainty.  Today’s world is no exception. Yet. If we are to create unity and harmony with safety, dignity, and a sense of belonging it will happen in the context of community. 

We are people who need community. It is a setting that cultivates and composts ingredients for relational healing. It is a place to fertilize personal agency. It is a space to develop interdependence and to affirm individual autonomy. It is the locale to create a sense of belonging. Everyone needs to feel part of the pack. Community is the site to compost and mature personal dignity and respect. 

That said, many people have been hurt and betrayed in community. The impact of trauma and oppression makes a sense of belonging very difficult for some people. Addicts classically struggle with belonging. Some experienced traumatic abandonment. Others have felt a sense of exclusion or have felt judged as unlovable.

Healing requires that these hurts and betrayals be addressed. A 12-step community is a place to unpack the trauma of addiction and cultivate an embodied sense of belonging and security. 

In relation to others, it is an opportunity to develop the ability to self-regulate and form intimate connections as well as have separation from those with whom you are intimate. Cultivating community attachment underscores the importance of the concept that our bonds and connections with one another is central to personal development through the many stages of life. 

As you contemplate the importance of belonging to your community, it would be helpful to reflect upon who in your immediate or extended family is considered as belonging and who is not? Who do you think of that, by our broader social and economic systems, are considered as included and who is seen as disposable or as not belonging? Safety, belonging, dignity, and respect are critical composting ingredients toward building a healthy community.

In recovery, connection through community allows you to find meaningfulness in the average spaces of life. Millions in the world live disconnected from community. Unfortunately, without community, the likelihood of discovering your own personal brilliance dims. Everyday relationship interchange is the common compost that creates the healing power of community.

Mother Teresa once said, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.” Do you know someone you would describe as forgotten? When you drive to work, worship or play— do you notice the street people in your community? 

Not knowing what to do with misfortune, many look away from the homeless choosing to deal with discomfort by distancing themselves. What about the person at the grocery store who shuffles by with a blank stare on their face? Do you think of them as invisible? Folks warehoused in nursing homes across our country feel disenfranchised and forgotten. 

At this level of living, it really doesn’t matter what possessions you once owned, who you have known, or really anything else. Being unloved, uncared for, and forgotten is the greatest poverty among the living.

How this impacts you is that a fragmented disenfranchised world distorts and undermines the possibility of cultivating personal brilliance in everyday places of living. Whether you realize it or not, you are a communal creature who needs connection in order to understand the meaning of living. Isolation deadens connection like your cell phone when it is out of range. Community and commonality are important ingredients when composting individual brilliance.

A 12-step community is designed to be a cocoon and container. It is a container to express anger, overwhelming sadness, and all other intense feelings with total acceptance.  Healing requires a nonjudgmental space to unpack unwanted feelings that dominate and handcuff addicts from becoming all they can become in recovery. Community is a cocoon that provides protection from having to perform a certain way for others. It is a container that creates a space for you to sift and sort composted feelings. This is necessary for life changing transformation.  

A 12-step community provides connection. The patron saint and mystic St. John of the Cross said that “the virtuous soul alone is like a lone burning coal that grows colder not hotter outside of the fire”. So it is with those who are isolated. When people or systems look to harm or control others, isolation is a key tactic. In prisons, war, and torture, the use of isolation and solitary confinement is standard practice. It also applies to situations of domestic violence. By isolating a person from their network of support and family, the perpetrator is able to break down, hurt, and control the partner being abused. It essentially sequesters them with the person harming them. Isolation is traumatizing in every situation. 

During weekend groups that I have conducted across the United States for the past 20+ years, I have witnessed men making courageous choices to be connected by being real and vulnerable. I have experienced men sharing the deepest pain with blood curdling cries of remorse, loss, and loneliness. Group therapy that becomes community is based on the mutuality of common shared brokenness. When people compete and compare themselves to others who have shared, the mutuality evaporates and group effectiveness no longer exists.

The compost of a healing community contains a shared vision, shared goals, and shared hope. There is the compost of healing power when a member courageously shares a truth that has not been told to another living soul and then receives back from the group with total love and acceptance. There is more healing compost when a member chooses to live in accountability and consultation with other group members. There is empowerment when a group member shares from his own experience, confrontation to another member who is struggling to face the truth about their behavior. This makes the group powerful like no other.

Self-empowerment comes through the embrace of authentic humility. The community becomes a safe space to confront ugly narcissism and the ongoing embrace of grief and loss. It is a place built upon cooperation, not comparison, or competition. It isn’t the common strength but the shared weaknesses that heals and promotes personal brilliance. In the context of shared weakness, men have set aside their judgment and anger toward a brother’s behavior and have extended compassion, identification, and care. The connection through the common bond of brokenness has cultivated excitement and rejoicing rather than threat regarding a brother’s strength and success. Shared weakness is the cornerstone of true community.

A 12-step community is a place to find your lost voice. Addicts lose their way and their voice to destructive addictive urges. A community of those who struggle with addiction becomes a place where an addict can find their lost voice. It is a place where you can sleuth the difference between aggression and assertion, victim and victimizer, and dependence from vulnerable interdependence in relationships. Finding your voice in community unlocks the door to going deep within your own reserve of brilliance and becoming your own guru rather than looking for one outside of yourself. Grace Lee Boggs said it right when she wrote, “You are the leader you have been looking and waiting for.” 

Healthy community offers support when you are needy. It requires that you ask for what you need and face the fear of possible rejection and abandonment. This is the common compost that connects you to others with the possibility of giving birth to your own personal brilliance. There is no greater space to cultivate and realize the healing of personal brilliance than in the context of healthy community. Community contains the compost of accountability to do the work of carving consistency from everyday challenges that lead to healing and accessing your own personal brilliance.

I Can’t Believe What I Just Did!—Relapse

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“Slowly I began to recognize that many of the boxes I found myself in were boxes of my own making.”— Melodie Beattie

Relapse isn’t a reality for every addict. Yet, for most, it has happened. Once sober you tell yourself ‘never again’ and you mean it. You’ve tasted the sweetness of sobriety and you shake your head wondering how did you ever think acting out was a better life? Yet, it happened! At first, it seemed like it was out of the blue. You had been doing so good. Then it felt like someone pulled the rug out from under you. Cravings hit you like a big Mac truck. It didn’t come out of the blue but it just as well had. You were not prepared nor paying attention to the details of your recovery life and there you were—acting out again!

The taste of acting out is bitter. There are times it makes your mouth dry as cotton. There is a sick feeling in your stomach. Sometimes you wonder how it could possibly have happened. Yet it did. There are cascading self-accusations that rattle in your brain like a machine gun. You feel overwhelmingly down and discouraged. The hangover from acting out leaves you feeling dull with brain fog. You walk through life activities hollow inside feeling dreamlike about the experience. You know you have to tell on yourself but you want to lie and keep it all a secret. How do I ever rebound from such an awful place?

Here are steps back to center that you must consider:

1. Admit the obvious. Addicts learn from their family of origin to embrace the improbable and ignore the obvious. They are great at pretending. When you relapse you must tell on yourself and be accountable to your support group including your partner. This is where you wobble. You can tell people in your 12-step group but my partner?! Are you kidding me? Secrets and dishonesty are breeding grounds for addiction behavior to flourish. Best to tell support people in 12-step recovery before you disclose to your partner so that you don’t minimize what you did in relapse. To do otherwise risks creating a disclosure disaster. Hold your feet to the fire and tell on yourself.

2. Do the next right thing. This is obvious but bears underscoring. The next right thing is to get yourself out of harm’s way. Address vulnerability to continue acting out by reaching out in a 12-step meeting and/or recovery friend. Lay it out in living color exactly what happen. Don’t piecemeal your truth. Let the love and acceptance of the group or support person become a shroud you wear. You have hurt yourself and are wounded. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to face consequences. It is important that you surround yourself with love, support, and genuine care in the presence of white hot truth-telling.

3. Do an autopsy on your relapse behavior. Once you’re out of harm’s way and surrounded by support, figure out how relapse happened. If you don’t, be prepared to do it again. Examine program neglect: (1) stopped going to meetings: (2) isolated—not telling on yourself to group/sponsor or support; (3) stopped doing the steps because of busyness; (4) procrastinated facing a truth that you don’t want to face; (5) wallowed in shame, resentment, loneliness, anger, hate; (6) marinated in mistaken beliefs that block intimacy and sabotage recovery. Do the work of unpacking how you put yourself in the box that led to your relapse. If you can figure out how you got into the relapse box, you can figure out how to get out.

4. Fortify your commitment to recovery: Once clear about why you acted out, fortify taking the next healing steps. Create filters that will keep you from porn and acting out. Don’t just put a cork in the bottle, get rid of all alcohol in the house. These are examples of next right steps. How many times have I heard addicts confess to relapse with no plan for next right steps. When you fortify your commitment to recovery, next right steps become obvious.

5. Act on positive self-affirmation regardless of how you feel. When you relapse and feel like all hell has broke loose, it’s hard to take yourself by the nape of the neck and pull yourself from the mud hole you created. You can only do this with determination to act on treating yourself as you hope to be. It is painful but you must forgive yourself and let go of the negative feelings that accompany relapse behavior. These steps are always painful. As you act in the way your destiny beckons, the painful shameful messages will fall away in time. You will become congruent merging your behavior to positive beliefs about self.

6. Don’t let the little boy/little girl run your inner life. You cannot expect a small child to figure out addiction. Shame dominates in relapse behavior because we empower the little boy/girl to make adult decisions about recovery. Put in charge, the inner child will conclude that you are a piece of shit who is destined to never get it right so why try. This is because a little child is unable to navigate the narrows of addiction recovery. However, when you take the reins of responsibility and place them in the hands of the powerful adult in you, the results are dramatically different. As an adult, you can face consequences of destructive choices, choose to care for self, and hold your feet to the fire of bringing yourself back to center. It will require the adult-you to fend off the negative shameful messages and to embrace and act on positive affirmations that will fulfill the destiny of sobriety.

Relapse is always found in the box of your own making. Hopefully, these steps will help you step out of the box and take steps toward solid sobriety and deepened serenity.

A Five Tool Relapse Recovery Plan – Tool #5 Stalking and Refueling

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Relapse leaves an aftermath of hopeless discouragement and devastating defeat. Ringing in the ears of every addict who relapses is “I know I didn’t have to do it but somehow I just couldn’t stop!” Other addicts in recovery say, “I get it but there’s something about me that can’t! I am destined to fail!” Then there is the tide of thought that tells you to “Just give up!” The voice of shame says “Addicts like you are destined to fail! It’s part of your legacy to be flawed. You will never get it!” And so it goes.

The 5th tool in relapse recovery is well-known but sparingly utilized. Addicts in recovery know about shame. They have heard sponsors and therapists talk about shame reduction. Maybe they have listened to or read some of Brené Brown’s thoughts about shame. I have written about shame many times. Yet, shame continues to dominate addicts in recovery. 

Education about shame is important. The more written about shame the greater the insight and instruction about how to manage it. We live in a golden era of enlightenment. However, what is critical to shame management is consistent action. People won’t rid themselves of shame simply through insight and understanding. It requires taking consistent action steps to manage. Shame is a dynamic that every person must regulate. It is not a dynamic that goes away with maturity, recovery, or spiritual growth. It is a life experience to be supervised and maintained with healthy choices. 

Addicts who relapse find themselves in a gulf of shame. Negative cognitions pepper their brain like an unrelenting hurricane. Battered by a toxic chatterbox within, the likely choice is to continue the destructive acting-out behavior. At least, you will have some relief from the numbing experience afterward. Yet like the eye of the storm in a hurricane, the backside of the storm of shame is wicked and devastating. It ravages self-esteem while addicts wallow in the mud of misbelief. For some, this blitz of battering has ended in fatality. A category 5 storm of shame is serious business and requires an all-hands-on-deck approach to manage and regulate. Here are my suggestions:

  1. After you have relapsed, practice doing the next right thing no matter how you feel inside. Absolutely, force yourself to get back on track. Make yourself dinner. Finish the project at work. Go to a meeting. Make a phone call. Focus on one thing you can do that represents self-care. Tell on yourself. No matter what or how you feel, take one step in the right direction and then build on that. You will feel phony. There will be a tremendous war inside to wallow in self-pity. Practice taking one step uninspired. When your insides scream at you to quit, just take one more step in the right direction. Stay the course. It will get better. You will feel different in time. There will be no reduction in shame without this process.
  1. Cocoon yourself with affirmation. This is difficult when your inner chatterbox is telling you what a screw-up you are. That said, write out positive affirmations about your being, not so much about what you do. “I am an unrepeatable miracle of the universe”. “I am worthy of love”. “I am doing the next right thing” etc. Your negative chatterbox will want to swat you down when you affirm yourself. There will be a war inside. You must win the war by regularly training your brain with positive affirmations. Most addicts in recovery overlook the value of repetition and visualization of positive affirmations. It takes work. Greatness comes from consistency. This work will bring you back to center. It is the greatest tool I know toward establishing long-term sobriety. Don’t underestimate its power and efficacy. 
  1. Practice ignoring your inner negative chatterbox. You can sit in a room full of people and be very lonely. You can sit in a room full of people and be battered by your inner negative chatterbox and no one will ever know. This is your battle. To overcome your chatterbox, it is not necessary to eliminate the negative voices. What you must do is practice and train yourself to ignore its message. Right now I have a hundred different messages screaming hurtful, discouraging messages about my inadequacy, helplessness, and inept ability to create inspiration and positive outcomes in my life. The key is not to escape these negative cognitions. Rather, what is important is to practice ignoring what they have to say to me. There are times that I will need to address each cognition. However, throughout my day-to-day life, I practice ignoring their suggestions. It is similar to an athlete ignoring the negative booing or derisive catcalls that are screamed by fans in the stands. You simply ignore and focus on the task at hand by immersing yourself in the positive belief that comes from inspiring affirmations that you have learned to feed your spirit. 

Take time to grieve your loss and refuel your visions. When failure is experienced most of us don’t take time for effective grieving. When you are in the middle of the intersection and a bus is barreling toward you, it is not the time to sit down and grieve. I am always amazed at how many addicts hunker down and let the bus run over them again and again. No, this is the time to get up and move your ass out of harm’s way. However, once you have gotten out of harm’s way, it is important to grieve. Anger, sadness, regret, misgivings, disappointment, and even despair are all hallmark feelings that characterize appropriate grief. Learning to grieve deeply is critical to refueling your dreams. There is a time to act and function and a time to grieve. There is a time to not mix the two together and a time to function while you grieve. Both are important. You don’t have to feel 100% to be 100% committed to necessary action and function. As you grieve, it will be necessary to step back and refuel your visions. Every mistake provides an insight for future destiny. Be gentle with yourself. Be determined that you will extract meaningfulness from every mistake in recovery you make. Transform your fear of abandonment and nagging self-blame to unconditional confidence that comes when you allow yourself to go down and grieve the losses. You will come back up. Trust this process. This is the place shame recedes, and unconditional confidence rules, not in control of outcomes but within your spirit. You will know that no defeat, no disappointment, will be experienced that you cannot come back up from with greater strength.

A 5 Tool Relapse Recovery Plan: Tool #3

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John Kennedy Jr. was killed in July of 1999 when he was caught in a deadly graveyard spiral while flying his airplane at night over the Atlantic Ocean. The official report suggested that Kennedy fell victim to spatial disorientation while descending over the water at night. 

For pilots, a graveyard spiral happens when you become disoriented, have no visual reference to the horizon, and happen at night when you cannot see. The pilot mistakenly believes his wings are level when they are banked left or right. When the pilot does not increase back pressure on the yoke, the plane starts to descend faster and faster in a banked descent. Pulling back on the yoke, without bringing the wings level, tightens the spiral and in most cases, increases the rate of descent. The harder you pull back, the tighter the spiral, dooming the plane to ground impact. 

Physiologically, the pilot can’t see the horizon. Most pilots are unable to feel the turn at the beginning of a graveyard spiral. When the pilot does not trust his/her instrument readings for whatever reason he/she is vulnerable to a graveyard spiral that quickly becomes fatal without course correction. Pulling out of a graveyard spiral requires that a pilot trust their instruments. 

Addictive relapse is a graveyard spiral. When an addict fails to trust the instruments of recovery, a crash-and-burn relapse is inevitable. 

Here is a list of instruments to be aware of that can prevent a graveyard spiral in recovery.

  1. Accountability: Responsible recovery is built on accountability through cultivating purposed vulnerability. Addicts want to isolate themselves and live life in secret. Accountability intercepts dysfunction because it insists that you develop the commitment to tell on yourself. The strength of a sobriety contract is your willingness to be held accountable to people in your support network for what you put in your inner, middle, and outer circles. When this breaks down the graveyard spiral begins. 
  1. Living in Consultation: The 12-step community is a space to cultivate connection. Addicts deepen sobriety and clarify values by living in consultation with a 12-step group. Addicts lose their way when they distance themselves from connection with others in recovery. Your best-isolated thinking puts you into a graveyard spiral that creates crash-and-burn through addictive behavior. Living in consultation is a proven lifestyle that helps you course correct and avoid graveyard spirals. Awareness remains keen to addicts who are open to the considerations and guidance of a sponsor and other 12-step support people. When addicts withdraw, become defensive or compromise consultation, the light of awareness dims. Addicts are not pathetic nor do they lack the capacity to make decisions. However, it is critical to recognize the need to live within limits and seek the guidance of a recovering community. Consistent consultation increases awareness and relapse is avoided. No one cultivates relational intimacy alone. Building a foundation of recovery requires consultation.
  1. Commit to telling on yourself. This tool is absolutely necessary to stay the course in recovery. Vagueness fuels the possibility of relapse. Checking the boxes in recovery is a setup for a graveyard spiral. Checking the box is doing recovery without connecting to heart. This happens when you engage the fringes of recovery community. It comes from a subtle shift in attitude. When there is an opportunity to be vulnerable and share discord and incongruence you gloss over the invite and remain at a surface level of communication. Recovery healing is only present when addicts tell on themselves. This vulnerability must be cultivated at every level of life. As an addict, when you are vague in your check-in, you are in danger of a graveyard spiral. Relapse doesn’t happen all of a sudden. However, when the conditions are right and mature, backsliding happens in an instant. Crash and burn happens quicker than any addict ever thought possible. It is critical to cultivate a resolve to tell on yourself about every aspect of living. Take time to reflect. Is there any level of life that you are vague or unwilling to discuss with your support community? You will know this by examining the stones in recovery that you have left unturned and not surrendered to discussion. Examine all the aspects of your life, your attitudes, your behaviors, and your decisions. If you are vague with yourself or others in your support community you may be in a graveyard spiral and not know it.  

Awareness is the third critical tool to add to your toolbox of relapse prevention. It is a skill that requires rigorous honesty with self and a commitment to open-hearted sharing of every aspect of your life with your recovery support community. Examine the congruence of your shares. Are you accountable for your hypocrisies? Have you accepted your inconsistencies as casual without answering to your support community? These dynamics fuel a graveyard spiral that leads to relapse. Awareness is everything. 

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