Normal & Perfect (Wisdom of the 12-Steps)

Bottom line: Let go of negative and unhelpful self-judgment.

I’m not talking about judgements about inappropriate behavior here. I’m talking about the nah, nah, nah and the unreasonable expectations we carry in our heads. I'm talking about the quality of our esteem of self and others.

As a treatment staff member in an adult drug/alcohol residential treatment facility some years ago, I often heard clients say they wanted to be normal, meaning like normal people. I usually responded that normal wasn’t what it's cracked up to be, and they should stay focused on healing themselves and avoid comparing themselves to others. I understood the majority of the general population likely considered themselves normal. But I knew humans aren’t perfect. I knew perfection is an ideal, a concept . . . an illusion. I knew full well the idea of normal was some vague notion of the general collective other, an imagined average of their characteristics, a construct we create in our heads.

Take heart. We’re all fallible humans, warts and all, dealing with life as it unfolds in its unpredictable way, which is beyond our control. We’re left to react to multiple events as best we can, while learning as we go. And that’s okay.

Just as some of us fall into the trap of striving to be normal, that ideal that lives in our heads, we should let go of the notion of achieving perfection.

British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott termed the phrase “good enough mother” in his famous book Playing and Reality. His point being that no mother, nor caregiver or father I’ll add, needs to be, nor likely can be, perfect for their child. And who can determine what is perfect over time, much less in a given moment. It’s a cumulative, on-going process. As long as the mother, or any caregiver, exhibits compassion, caring, empathy, and, most importantly, what we call unconditional love, the child can adapt, experience and learn to deal with challenges in a healthy manner. As well, the growing child needs to face some difficulties to properly develop into a cooperative, socially appropriate individual.

Our collective and individual hope, of course, resides in the fact that we humans are malleable, flexible, and adaptive. We are capable of adjusting, improving, forgiving, and, most importantly, achieving redemption. If the mother can’t provide what’s good enough, then other caregivers, a father, a grandparent, an aunt or uncle . . . or any number of members of the extended family, may be able to fill in the gaps. In a real sense, if a family can be defined as dysfunctional, not all of its members are dysfunctional to the same degree, nor all the time in their interaction to every other member.

Our challenge should be to do the best we can, be willing to fail and learn, be open to communicate, reach out for help, and willing to rely on others. Over time our connections to others will sustain us and allow opportunity to unload our individual burdens by sharing our secrets and expressing ourselves honestly without judgement.

If you don’t have friends or family you with whom you can do that, Twelve-Step meetings are a safe place. So is counseling/therapy. Years ago, I reached out when suicidal thoughts threatened to consume me in undergraduate school.

So, reach out and connect with others. Unburden yourself of your secrets. Learn to trust others. Drop the public mask you hide behind and let down your walls. Learn to love, accept yourself in spite of your warts and imperfections. There are others out there that not only can relate, but who are willing to listen.

I leave you with this: “You don’t need to save me, you just need to hold my hand while I save myself.” Attribution Unknown

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Spirituality (Wisdom of the 12-Steps)

Bottom line: There are many paths to spirituality.

Aristotle said man is a social animal. I say, in addition, man is a spiritual animal. As such, each of us has an inherent desire to answer the bigger questions of our existence.

Ever ask yourself how so many religions came to be? My answer, culture and man as spiritual animal. Each culture or society (group of people) grapples with the fundamental existential questions to which every human seeks an answer. It all boils down to where and how we, individually and collectively, fit in to the bigger scheme. I’m including many and varied questions here, such as, What happens when we die, Do we have self-determination, and How did life begin?

The need/desire to answer some or all of those questions has driven the development of religions, which then serves the spiritual needs of its followers, though each reflects the values, practices and beliefs of the culture from which it sprang (springs). And as every individual has fallibility and blind spots, so do cultures, and thus religions. As a result, no one religion has the corner on spirituality. By that I mean every religion potentially can lead an individual to the same place, if only. . . . If only the cultural blind spots don’t inhibit that person. If only the individual can work their way through the weeds, the labyrinth of rituals and practices that create that religion’s blind spots.

If you're still with me here, I’m saying no religion has the perfect formula, nor a formula for everyone. As well, every religion changes over time as a reflection of its followers/cultural underpinning. No religion is the sole proprietor of spirituality. Moreover, no one religion is necessary to attain enlightenment/spirituality, nor any in that sense. Rather, finding and piecing together the commonality helps alleviate contradictions in any particular culture/religion and gets closer to the essence of spirituality.

Having lived a few years now, and been exposed to the 12-Steps, I consider those steps a good guideline, not only for those seeking relief from their struggles with destructive behavior, but a path to their spiritual development. I don’t see the 12-Steps as part of a cult nor a religion, though they can act as an adjunct to religion.

Though the 12-Steps originally incorporated the use of the term God, though higher power has supplanted that more recently. I’ve heard encouragement to newer members/attendees of meetings to consider a chair as their higher power, if that works for them. There is no dogma attached to anyone’s definition or determination of higher power, in whatever form.

The purpose of developing a personal higher power is to surrender one’s self in Step 2. That is, give up the idea that one controls and can deal with their problem(s) alone through their thinking and willpower. In psychological terms, I see that as putting the ego aside. The entire point of surrendering willpower is to give up on the notion of controlling that behavior which has been and is out of control for that individual. Imagine resisting drinking water when your dying of thirst! Most everyone attempting to overcome an addiction to a substance or destructive behavior can testify that they’ve quit many times, though never remained abstinent. Obviously, a significant focus of discussion in 12-Steps meetings centers around relapse, and the phrases, One day at a time, and, Easy does it, which are heard frequently.

Case in point: my father smoked like a chimney and stopped many times. Problem was he couldn’t stay stopped and succumbed to lung cancer.

Recently, someone claimed the 12-Steps and meetings were a cult. Here’s what I say about that. The Merriam-Webster dictionary includes several definitions of cult. To apply any of those to the 12-Steps or 12-Step meetings in any serious way becomes a considerable stretch, at least in any negative sense. The 12-Steps don’t extol a deity, nor the program have a leader. Instead, the steps point the way on a path that has worked and is working for others to avoid their destructive behavior. Absolute adherence to dogma isn’t required. Instead, recommendations are made and some best practices are followed, such as maintaining anonymity and utilizing a sponsor (a more experienced support buddy). The 12-Steps are voluntary, take ‘em or leave ‘em. Meeting attendance doesn’t require special clothing or tithing. There’s no hierarchical establishment, though there are fellow recovering members who have secured a meeting location, lead the meeting, purchase coffee and so on. Meetings can occur anywhere, wherever an organizer can arrange. Some meetings occur in a house of worship, though that isn’t a necessity and many don’t. The meetings are intended to provide safe places for attendees to share what they are doing that is working for them, unload emotional baggage, gain insight, and provide encouragement and support to others. The latter brings the steps full circle at Step 12: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs." (Substitute other destructive behaviors for the term alcoholics.) The meetings become a mutual self-help process utilizing the guidelines of the 12-Steps. I see this as a similar process to that of therapy/counseling, the final goals being the same or nearly so.

I believe answers to our existential questions are all around us. We are of them. We are infused with them. We are not, and have never been, separated from our spirituality, though we blind ourselves by creating walls within ourselves. And that if each of us listens and looks, maybe we can come to understand the above, arrive at an inner peace of grace and serenity, and live in the question without self-righteous judgment of others. Moreover, perhaps, we can abandon intolerance and the expectation that others follow our path.

Photo Credit: pexels - Adam Kontor

Isolation (Wisdom of the 12-Steps)

Bottom line: Like the sun's rays, human connection brings life-giving energy. So, reach for the light . . . hope waits there.

I recall an early morning, some years ago, which serves as a stark lesson for me.

I’d arrived on time, 6:30AM, before dawn had wiped away that winter’s morning darkness and the sun’s rays had chance to warm the air. My part-time counseling cohort had followed me into the Methadone Maintenance Clinic by a minute or two.

We may have exchanged hellos, I don’t recall, but he soon launched into his news, “I found a guy laying by the tracks as I came in. Checked him out. He was cold.”

I hadn’t noticed anything amiss as I approached the front door. The clinic and railroad tracks ran along opposite sides of the intervening city street. But then, I’d made a bee-line in order to avoid the cold . . . and the street out front wasn’t lit.

“Dumped?” I said.

“Yeah, probably, after an overdose.”

“Somebody dropped him there, not wanting to be implicated in drug use?” I said. Hurriedly abandoned along a railroad track like a bag of trash, I thought.

“My bet,” he said.

Damn. “What a way to go!”

Working around opioid addicts struggling to get and stay clean, the facility treatment staff were all too aware of the frequency of relapses. Known as “recidivism,” many “patients” turned serial repeaters. Such is the nature of opioid addiction, one of the most difficult of addictions to overcome, as I understand.

I could only appreciate the withdrawal process, never having done it myself. “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” as is frequently said in recovery circles. But, I knew all too well the psychological and emotion difficulties in stopping a drug habit. I’d already worked in residential drug and alcohol rehab facilities for years.

Intense counseling coupled with utilization of 12-Step program meetings offered the best option for those in recovery, as I had come to believe. Once clients “graduated” residential treatment, they were expected to continue out-patient counseling, as well as attendance of 12-Step meetings. However, in the Methadone Clinic out-patient setting, the tenuous leverage we held as staff to drive home the import of 12-Steps program participation, the need for deep introspection and emotional work, became the weak link in the patient’s recovery potential. Most arrived before the birds awakened, got their “doses” of methadone and counselor contact, usually a session of nor more than fifteen minutes before they scooted off to join the morning traffic rush on their way to scattered locations across the SF Bay Area.

Sure, the titrated (decreasing) methadone dosing regime prescribed by the clinic doctor, helped minimize withdrawal symptoms, but even with staff contact and support, relapse was as common as trees in the woods. It wasn’t impossible for a patient to succeed, but many hurdles needed to be negotiated by each patient, such as their physical discomfort and “stinking thinking” when alone. In addition, they’d need to navigate—total avoidance, unlikely—their twenty-four hour, seven-days a week environment filled with the negative peer pressure of using acquaintances or pushers, as well as other daily issues and situations, which likely got them into their predicament in the first place.

Try changing an ingrained routine, even a “simple” one entwined with a deep emotional need, and in the face of a contrary environment.No easy task, “sweat equity” required . . . an absolute necessity.

The most difficult, and disheartening, aspect for me was the work with patients in relationships with other addicts. Picture two drowning individuals clinging to one another. Yet, in the face of their obstacles, their journeys needed to be taken, and I did what I could at each contact and learned to look at the long-term, as each individual’s progress could be slow and fleeting.

So, I wasn’t too surprised to learn that someone’s time had run out.

I wonder now—as I did then—about his life as a parade of questions cross my mind. What passed through his mind as he “nodded off” into oblivion? While sprawled on the cold steel track? My best guess? He’d hoped for, and welcomed, the release from his inner turmoil and psychic pain. Maybe, even longed for the permanent escape through death. I will never know, nor will any of us.

The whole situation quite sad, I wonder if he’d felt cared about or loved . . . or who grieved or marked his loss.

I’m thankful I’d reached out when suicidal, and taken my first step towards recovery from my brand of physic pain and inner turmoil. I recall that isolation vividly. I don’t wish to die enveloped in that isolation, and now know I won’t need to do so. And it’s not that I prefer people suffer my final departure, but expect that some will, contrary to what I say or think. For me, my connection to others and relationship with the universe creates the foundation on which I stand.

The 12-Steps bookend the issue of isolation, and step meetings help counter it. Step One establishes the need to reach out, while Step Twelve emphasizes the importance to continue to do so. All the while meetings, and sponsors, support and assist those in navigating their “stinking thinking” as they work through the steps. (More on sponsors, later.)

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