by Dave Cooper | Jun 3, 2014 | A2R
Hi. Thanks for taking the time to read this. We are on a journey of change from an unhealthy pattern of exits from our life to a healthier pattern of facing and processing difficulties. How do we do this exactly? Today I want to give you a better understanding of how we connect or construct the meaning of our issues. By the time you have read this you will have a better grasp on how your mind works and have a better way forward in your recovery, enjoy!
Let’s start with a question. When you think of your issue, drugs, alcohol, gambling etc. do you think of it as a problem or a weakness? This may seem trivial to you but let me explain. The chances of achieving a recovery from your issues will be greatly increased if you think of them as your weakness, not your problem!
I work with addicts of all sorts and I always encourage them to see things this way. Actually anyone who enters addiction counselling should soon discover this for themselves anyway because it should soon become very clear as part of the therapy. A typical example would be someone who entered treatment for alcohol and discovered as part of that treatment that their problem was their relationship with their Mother.
Now let’s look at the psychology of this idea. To do this we need to understand a bit more about how the mind works. Stick with me through this even if it’s not your interest. There is only one way to instruct the mind, yes that’s right, only one way. It’s all about attention, the phenomenon of attention, and it’s hugely important to human beings and their experience. Basically, you can tell your mind to give something attention or….. well nothing else really?!?
Think of it like being in a dark room with a torch, whatever you shine the torch on is the thing you are giving attention to, the table or the door handle, everything else is there it’s just that they are not getting any attention. So if all you can do is turn on the attention, or turn it off by giving attention to something else we can discount the positives and negatives! Hang on, what does that mean? It means that saying yes or no to your mind makes no difference!
If I say to you “don’t think about Micky Mouse” what comes into your mind? Exactly! You see what your mind heard was “think about Micky Mouse” or, even better “Micky Mouse” the instructions don’t really matter.
So, how does this help me stay sober, I hear you ask. Well, if you think of alcohol as your problem, well, a problem has to be solved doesn’t it? And to solve it you have to give it attention, don’t you? So remember, the though “I must not drink” and the thought “I must drink” are the same to your mind! One good way of understanding this is to think of your attention as being ‘stuck’ to your problem.
When we shift to an understanding of alcohol as our weakness and other things (that we have been avoiding) as our problem, we have a very different construction. Of course we need a lot of support to spend time thinking about our real problems (why do you think you have been drinking so much)? Let me refer you to the ‘AAA!’ blog posted on this site.
So what is a weakness? Well, in this context a weakness is something that offers you an ‘exit’. Because of your brain chemistry, or because of your background or your imagination, this thing has an effect on you that it does not have on other people. So we need to understand ‘exits’ a little more.
An ‘exit’ in this context is just what it sounds like. If the building is your life then the ‘exit’ is a door out of your life! Maybe only for an hour or two (sometimes longer) but the important part is that you get to be free of whatever it is that makes it seem very difficult to be you. This could be all sorts of things of course but we can generalise it as ‘your pain’. If your pain is very heavy, the exit will feel like putting it down for a while.
So I hope you are getting a picture now of the relationship between your weakness and your problem. Now that I have explained this a little, let me give you a typical example of what I see every day in my practice. A client comes to me with a ‘problem’ which they describe as ‘drinking too much’, they have been ‘trying’ around this problem but with no or limited success. At this stage they cannot see that this ‘problem’ is being made worse by all the attention it’s getting, nor that their real problem is getting no attention at all. In fact they are usually not wanting to see their real problem and spend a lot of energy trying not to give it attention, and when it gets too bad and they are feeling the consequences of avoiding the problem, which is often depression, or anger, they go for the ‘exit’ as a way of managing the pain and round we go again!
Clients are often amazed to find that we spend almost no time looking at their ‘problem’. I want to give their ‘weakness’ as little attention as possible, although there are often valid reasons for spending some time on it. What we do instead is get straight to the actual problem as fast as we can through the building of the relationship between us. This is basic counselling which tells us that no one is going to start talking about the real problem until there is a lot of trust in the room.
So, what have we learned here? Your addictive behaviour is a weakness, and you do it because it gives you an exit, which you need because you are not facing your problem! This is why we always start with raising awareness (see AAA! On this blog).
Hope that helped you. Please email me with any questions.
Thanks again for taking the time today.
by Dave Cooper | Jun 3, 2014 | A2R, Method
“Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.”
― Thomas Merton
Hi. Thanks for taking the time to read this. We are on a journey of change from an unhealthy pattern of exits from our life to a healthier pattern of facing and processing difficulties. How do we do this exactly? Today I want to give you a description and a definition of a process of recovery that I have called AAA! Or Awareness Acceptance and Action.
I work with people who find themselves unable to break a habit of spending hours on the internet playing games or watching unsuitable material. Or they find themselves high and/or drunk and wonder why or how it happened.
This process is one that will help you understand yourself better and help you to create more effective behaviour. That is our aim, to behave in more effective ways. You will notice that the process culminates in action or behaviour. So that is our aim. What we have at the moment is ineffective or unhealthy behaviour.
So here is my basic argument, the thing I want to use to inspire you to use this strategy. I believe that effective behaviour is created through acceptance of our true position and state. Through the process of ‘checking out’ (what am I really feeling/thinking at the moment?) we can then make a decision to accept ourselves as we are. This naturally leads to effective/healthy behaviour.
So if the key is acceptance then we have to start with awareness. We cannot accept what we are not aware of! This is a good time to remind ourselves of the primary function of alcohol, drugs and to be honest, just about every other ‘exit’ from our lives, whether it is gambling or obsessive cleaning. This primary function is to stop us feeling things! It is clear that if we have spent several years trying not to feel certain things it is going to take lots of commitment and discipline to turn and allow ourselves to feel everything. We need support in doing this but we also need a good reason for doing it. Well that good reason is here! As long as we keep our awareness low enough to protect ourselves from difficulty, we prevent acceptance of reality doing its job in producing effective behaviour! So the strategy of avoidance through exits which looked so attractive at first was never going to work. Let’s now look at what does!
AWARENESS – Starting with the first step, raising your awareness. This is easier than it sounds, actually you do not have to do anything! Like most of the ideas in recovery it is about stopping doing something. In this case it is about stopping the active process of denial and/or minimising what is unattractive to you. One of the ways I work with people around this idea is to help them disassociate more. Or put another way, to take things less personally. This way they learn to ‘sidestep’ their own internal injunctions. Whatever way you do this, the idea is to become more aware of what you are feeling, particularly the negative aspects such as resentment, fear, selfishness and dishonesty.
ACCEPTANCE – The next step is to take what you have become aware of and to accept it as fully as you can manage. So this is the opposite of what you have been doing. We are now running at the problem rather than running away from it! It helps in this process if you say it out loud. So if you can say out loud “just for today I am feeling ……………..” or “just for now I am thinking……………..” or if you are in a public environment just say it in your head. It is important to place this in a context of ‘right now’ or ‘today’ and not allow thoughts like “I am ………….” or “I am a ……………… person” which is not acceptance, this is ‘labelling’ which is very different and not always helpful. To place this thought or feeling in a context of ‘now’ it allows and includes the idea of change.
ACTION – This is the easiest part. In fact we are mainly just observing our new behaviour at this stage. It is this stage that should begin to convince you that you are on the right path with this, because it is so different! Remember it is the stages of awareness and acceptance that change the behaviour, not a conscious decision such as you may have made in the past. When we make decisions to change our behaviour without doing the preparatory work we actually make the unhealthy cycle stronger! Do not try to force better behaviour out of yourself, this is a form of fighting and this does not generally work well, producing a ‘conflicted self’.
Let’s look at the process from a different angle now. The angle of ‘realms’. It is this angle that might help you make sense of this process for yourself. Here is the process with the realms attached.
AWARENESS – MENTAL/EMOTIONAL
ACCEPTENCE – PSYCHOLOGICAL/SPIRITUAL
ACTION – PRACTICAL/BEHAVOURAL
So we are starting from the internal and moving outwards, when we try to force behaviour changes on ourselves “I am never drinking again” or something similar we are working from the outside in. Let’s look at the result of a typical episode in one of my clients lives (I cannot tell you how many times I have seen this in the last thirty years). An awareness of discomfort is present. This is followed by some form of denial or minimisation. This is followed by the action of drinking or using drugs (often with a sense of blaming someone else). What is missing here is the vital role that acceptance plays. By taking our difficulty into the deeper realms of our psychology and spirit we do something vital in all problem solving and conflict resolution, we own it! We stop saying, this is their fault or if they wouldn’t say that or do that I would be fine. You cannot produce effective behaviour without ownership. This is your issue not anyone else’s! As soon as we own it (accept it) we immediately begin to produce effective behaviour.
This is massive! It can mean the difference between drinking and not drinking! Between using drugs and not using. One last thing, you need support. You have been avoiding these truths, feelings, thoughts, for a reason! I would not try this on your own. At the very least find someone you can trust to share your difficulties with when they arise.
Well there it is, the basics of AAA! I hope this helps you understand why you have not been successful in the past and encourages you to believe that you can be successful in the future. Thanks again for taking the time to read this and please email me with any questions or comments.
