Why Consider Recovery?
Recovery addresses most of our relational human needs.
How?
Through appropriate connections:
In Recovery we learn how to accept help and support from others. We also learn to avoid unhealthy dependency.
In recovery we gain freedom as we learn to recognize and exercise personal responsibility for our own attitudes and actions.
In recovery we learn self awareness as we become honest and accurate in examining both our strengths and our personal flaws and limitations.
In recovery we gain purpose through giving back.
We gain resilience and new perspective as hidden parts of our life takes on new meaning and hope springs from what in the past may have only been experienced as wasteful and hurtful and suffering.
Accepting relationships based on candor and honesty foster healthy personal growth:
In a sense, Recovery can be viewed like a re-parenting process of the self in the context of a support group.
As children, if we experienced healthy parenting;
We were encouraged to express our struggles to caring supportive people in honesty and candor.
We were encouraged to identify and admit to our limitations and yet optimistically trust that healing, growth, acceptance and maturity are natural and can happen for us.
We were encouraged to accept consequences and make amends for harm we had done to others and to put past hurts behind us through actions like evaluating our responses, exploring appropriate confrontation and forgiveness and release of control and examining the effects we experienced.
We were encouraged to accept the hard realities of life and find meaning, purpose and growth in the process.
With success we are expected to help others to achieve these same goals as we parent or mentor the next generation.
From the Recovery perspective, these are lifelong endeavors.
The Goal of Recovery is balanced maturity:
We were encouraged to express our struggles to caring supportive people in honesty and candor.
We were encouraged to identify and admit to our limitations and yet optimistically trust that healing, growth, acceptance and maturity are natural and can happen for us.
We were encouraged to accept consequences and make amends for harm we had done to others and to put past hurts behind us through actions like evaluating our responses, exploring appropriate confrontation and forgiveness and release of control and examining the effects we experienced.
We were encouraged to accept the hard realities of life and find meaning, purpose and growth in the process.
With success we are expected to help others to achieve these same goals as we parent or mentor the next generation.
From the Recovery perspective, these are lifelong endeavors.
The Goal of Recovery is balanced maturity:
It is to accept ourselves and our present life just as it is, and to grow toward functioning at our highest potential in spite of disabling setbacks. It is to work to authenticate and integrate, each area in our life and to find our meaningful place and purpose in family and community.
So who needs it?
All of us could benefit since all of us have faults and shortcomings, and each of us experience stress, and struggles in life. Without support life can easily become overwhelming.
Have you ever surprised yourself with the intensity of your own emotions and reactions? Have you ever acted in ways that are completely opposite to your values or goals? Do you find yourself isolating with fears or secrets, or preoccupied with compulsively seeking control or comfort?
Most of us, when we struggle, try to isolate the problem to limit its negative effects. This often leads to concealing that area and keeping secrets, sometimes even from ourselves. This is called denial, and is often driven by shame. This is the opposite of experiencing support.
Escalation happens when we fail to secure what may seem like positive goals, but actually are attempts to control the beliefs, attitudes and actions of others. When we fail, we may attempt to bolster our own sense of emotional control through comfort or compulsive actions like overeating, overspending, overachieving, drinking to excess, drug abuse, inappropriate sexual behavior and...you name it....
Faulty life management:
Compartmentalization is a common way that we deal with stress. In an effort to simplify life we separate areas of activity, roles, and expectations to meet the needs of the moment. It is the process of breaking the complexity of our personal lives down to the many individual roles we find ourselves playing. It is much like breaking a large overwhelming project down into smaller more manageable pieces.
From infancy, our family, caregivers and peers either help or hinder us as we shape ourselves to effectively adapt to the many different roles we will play. After childhood, roughly every 7 years throughout our lives we encounter significant times of transitioning. These are usually times of increased emotional intensity, and vulnerability.
When we transition successful, we become equipped to deal with varieties of challenges without loosing our core sense of self and our core values. Optimally our many roles work together in a way that is congruous and mutually supportive. This is called integration. Together they provide a broad base for inward emotional security and outward social ease and acceptance by others.
If however, we fail in one or several of
these areas, this stability is jeopardized.
Consider the following illustration of the "Unsinkable Titanic."
Imagine each of the bulkheads (area between the dark lines) as a role such as, son or daughter, friend, associate, peer, employee, husband or wife, father or mother, partner, church member, one of the guys, or girls, teammate, e.t.c.
(on phone, double tap picture to zoom in and back arrow to return to reading)
Theoretically the bulkheads on the Titanic were high enough and strong enough that even severe damage to several sections would not cause the ship to loose its floatation. Unfortunately the compromised sections in the front failed so severely that they affected the adjoining section, which affected the next, and the next, … eventually sinking the "Unsinkable Ship."
Similarly when we have an area in our life that becomes out of control, it can drag down other areas, causing our lives to flounder for a time, and possibly shipwreck in a similar manner.
Breaking Shame and Isolation:
The structure and encouragement offered in Recovery challenges us to connect with others to both give and receive support as we complete a moral inventory. This entails examining each area of our life, in honesty and candor from birth to the present moment. Here we admit to God and to another human being the exact nature of our faults and shortcomings. Together, we process our past actions with their outcomes as well as examining our present choices with hopes for better future outcomes.
In a sense it is to go back through the compartments of our own Titanic and assure that each of the compartments are intact and providing floatation both for ourselves and for those around us. It is to review the past from the present perspective and assure that our voyage is currently on course and progressing toward its' designated destination. The other steps help assure it continues on schedule and remains on this course.
Does everyone Need recovery?
As chaos decreases stress also decreases and most of us will return to a more, "normal experience," but for some of us, things will progress to a crisis. The crisis is what usually motivates a person to consider Recovery, sometimes even by recommendation of a judge in a court order.
Most commit to recovery when the pain of negative life consequences, exceed the fear of being labeled as, "irregular."
I guess the real question is, “How much pain are you willing to endure or inflict and how long are you willing committed to hiding it?
again I ask...
WHICH CAT IS LIKE YOUR HABIT?
IS IT SAFE AND FRIENDLY
in the box under your control?
OR IS IT CORNERING YOU?
and those you care about?
The Attitude of Recovery;
The attitudes of recovery can be summarized
in the original Serenity Prayer below.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is;
Not as I would have it;
Trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy
in this life
and supremely happy
with You
forever in the next.
Amen.
--Reinhold Niebuhr 1943--
THE LINK BELOW IS AN
AUTO-PLAYLIST EXPLORING A
VARIETY RECOVERY TOPICS
It starts with this brief intro...
Letting go...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGWuhuGFyY4&list=PLc7nB8Z7S2L-_fKC4npRUQZDMZpFnyOa_&index=1
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