Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I recently saw a banner set in place for Recovery Month that read: “Recovery Happens.”
My question is, “What is implied here?” Words have meaning, and when those words are
demonstrative of a process to behavioral change, people either simply disregard, are
motivated, or intimidated by what they perceive, think about the process. For this I call
for a Matter of Perspective.
Missing too is the appreciation of the human condition to seek, to need competence. It is
this very human condition that outcomes addiction. No one embraces the experience of
helplessness and hopelessness as they wallow in despair. In my 19 years of study and
practice, I have never met a person who experiences competence in their life way of
addiction. I have met hundreds who long for competence, a longing for competence to fill
a selfless void.
In many cases, despair is the foundation to substance and other abuse. Even so, like the
outcome of addictions, helplessness and hopelessness are outcomes to perceived failed
attempts, or as I suggest, “Sittings In The Shit”. For many, that is what they do, they Sit
In The Shit, don’t drink, and wait, hope, pray for “Recovery to Happen”. Recovery does
not just happen, people have to role up their sleeves, wipe themselves off and discover
what they are choosing, allowing to happen.
With the need to gain competence, control, people embrace the safety and comfort of
Sitting In The Shit. Experience this enough and it becomes familiar, and through
familiararity comfort zones are established. Comfort zones are boundaries to
expectations. Expectations not met are limitations, limitations to what a person “thinks”
he or she can’t do. Self-imposed limitations debilitate the opportunity to maximize
competence. Self-imposed limitations are platforms of defeat as experienced through a
haunting void of purpose, direction, substance. Ya, so let’s call Sits In The Shit (SITS)
the experience of substance-less.
The point here is humans are never satisfied, we are always wanting. The underpinning to
our wanting is our innate drive to need competence. There is a challenge here, and that
challenge is to convince me as to how continued growth can be achieved through the
continuous recovery of what once was as one expects change to happen?
It matters little if the goal is to achieve interpersonal skills, overcome what I call the In-
Group (e.g., In-security, In-adequacy, In-feriority, In-significance), or a fit from some
anchored, haunting trauma, people need to embrace competence. Competence is the
underpinning to all learning. With this, we all share a natural propensity to learn, and
with that propensity Discover. Discover compliments that natural progress of change.
Think about it, how many people do you know and have helped who continue to struggle
even though they have quit their addictions? For me, such clients are card-carrying-
members of the Grateful Dead. They are grateful for not drinking and will yell that from
the roof tops, but when it comes to living well, comfortable, confident, and inspired by
their life way, they are emotionally and interpersonally dead. This is not a good place to
be. This is not a good mind-set, for they are only one synaptic connection from relapse.
Dishearten, I know of sponsors within 12 Step Programs who are of this sort and actually
fulfill their need for competence through the power of control they experience over those
who they think “worse off;” kind of shadenfreudistic (i.e., getting off on other peoples
misery). They, as many others espouse and present themselves as the success stories to
recovery. The only success they experience exists in their fanciful fictional impressions
of change. What do you think: does Recovery Happen?