If you have been thinking about attempting to recover from your addictive behaviour, it’s possible that you have not even considered what approach you will be taking. The medical model of addiction has become so prevalent in our (western) culture that you may be assuming that it is both the correct view of your ‘condition’ and the only way to bring about a recovery. I am here to tell you that there is another approach, and it may work much better for you!
So let’s be clear from the start. I’m not saying that your addiction does not fit the criteria of an illness. Much cleverer people than I have concluded that it does. Things like recognisable symptomatic behaviour and typical physical emotional and mental patterns lead us to this idea of ‘illness’. What I am saying is that, like any other ‘condition’ that is attitudinal and mental in its presentation can also be usefully viewed in other ways. I have been working in this field professionally for well over twenty years and I want you to know that what neuroscience has discovered in the last ten has changed the game forever.
Understanding your behaviour relationally
Imagine, at least for a minute, that all the problems you are experiencing have originated because your brain is working very well! Not because you are ill or broken. I know, this is a radical idea, right? You may be in so much trouble as you read this that the idea that you are operating well seems like a sick joke. But stick with me for a minute and see if I can’t convince you to give this approach a try.
The first thing I want you to do is separate ‘pre’ and ‘post’ difficulties. What this means is that you need to recognise and separate problems that originated with your vulnerability and problems that have developed because of your vulnerability. They are quite different and need to be understood that way. Take the typical alcoholic drinker. They start drinking because of their vulnerability to alcohol and the effect it has on them. But once the habit takes hold, post problems develop because they start lying and covering up their habit and spending etc.
Step two would be to see the post problems as a consequence of the ‘pre’ problems. This will help you to understand that post problems will simply dissolve once the pre problem is dealt with. I know that some of you will be reading this and realising that you are spending all your time dealing with post problems since things got worse. But suddenly it seems obvious that this is getting you nowhere since the pre problem is not even getting a look in. But the size and nature of the post problems are convincing you that you must be really ill or spiritually sick.
Or you may have been trying for ages to overcome your ‘sickness’ using various forms of ‘cure’. I won’t go into these forms here because my assumption is that if you are reading this, it’s because they are not working for you. Well, be encouraged. There is an alternative. It is based on the latest findings of neuroscience and the practice of IFS therapy. It is a relational approach and the first relationship to work on is the relationship with yourself.
The Relational Approach
When a person has a vulnerability towards alcohol, drugs, or behaviours, there is always an accompanying difficulty in the relationship with themselves. Just think about the way you talk about yourself to yourself. You know, that stuff that goes on in your mind that no one hears? If you work on improving your relationship with yourself, your relationship with everyone and everything else will automatically improve.
Essentially, neuroscience has shown that the two separate parts of you (your mind and your brain) can either work together harmoniously, or they can be in conflict. The first hurdle you will have to get over is to understand that this difference within you is perfectly normal! The medical approch has trained us all that this difference between our parts is indicative of an illness, and that is why you have never herd of this apprach, until now!
The second hurdle to get over is to be able to accept that your brain is not going to change until you provide evidence for that change. In other words your brain will continue to offer you solutions that you have trained it to offer you, until you produce evidence that you would rather have something different.
The best example of this comes from your own experience. How many times have you told yourself that you did not want to drink again or do X ever again? But you did didn’t you? The decision to stop was conscious, in your mind. But the training was unconscious, in your brain!
Improve your relationship with yourself
The first and most important relationship to work on is the one with yourself. Ask yourself this, would you be happy if everyone could see what you say about yourself, to yourself? Would you talk to anyone else like that? In order to recover, you need to grow. In order to grow you need to learn. You will not learn much in a state of self loathing. Don’t poo poo this idea, it is going to take real courage for you to stop judging yourself and to stay calm and relaxed enough to learn from what just happened! Remember, the main comittment is to learn from everything that happens.
Your relationship with yourself will improve once you see a good enough reason to work on it. Well here it is. You need your brains agreement with your mind. You probably cannot force it, so you need to negotiate it. I have a three step process for this which will help you practice.
Improve your relationship with people
It is well known and universally accepted that people with strong family ties do better in life. Stability and solidity are generally improved by better connections with the living world. Of course there are some of you that need to break off all ties with your family. This is an exceptional circumstance which general comments cannot cover. For the vast majority of us, improvements with the family will result in improvements in your recovery. This is mainly because when we reconnect with our close ones, we are reconnecting with the living world. The idea of addiction and the dead world is a very powerful one. When you first started to practice any dependent behaviour you were escaping from the real world into the dead one. How many times have I heard addicts say that “alcohol is my only friend”.
Not considering your parts may be restricting your progress
After nearly forty years working in the field, I am in no doubt about the biggest difficulties you face when trying to make positive lifestyle changes in your life. It is not considering the complex nature of the human condition. You are complex, and you need to take this into account! Learning to understand this complexity and work with what we call your ‘parts’ will offer you the best opportunity for the growth and progress you have been seeking.
There are several reasons why you may have not considered your ‘parts’ when attempting to recover from addiction, dependence, or make spiritual, financial or relational progress in your life. Here are two of the most important.
You may not have heard of the idea
It’s not that long ago that Richard Schwartz developed the idea of taking what we knew about how to work well with families. Things like the dynamics, relationships, and struggles. And to then apply these ideas internally. That the same relational dynamics that existed in a family also existed within a person. The idea of Internal Family Systems was born when he discovered that these same principles relationships and pressures were also present internally, within each person. When he applied these ideas he found that they worked! As people developed better relationships with themselves they managed their ‘parts’ better and created more harmony and less internal conflict, just like we had been doing with families!
You may have thought you were ill or mentally strange
Because the medical model has had us thinking about ourselves as unified or ‘just one thing’, you may have been embarassed or ashamed about your inner ‘thought’ life. How you sometimes think, what you seem to believe. Especially when it comes to your behaviour and how it stacks up with what you see others doing. They may have seemed much better than you in the way they appear or behave. You may have proceeded on the asumption that there was something wrong with you and that you just had to put up with it, or, worse still, that you had to fight it. It is this failure to ‘beat’ this part of you that frustrates people the most. I want you to know you have been on the wrong track!
Your parts are a healthy and normal human component
The storing of traumatic and problematic experience in your brain is what we are calling your ‘parts’. It is your brains reactions to perceived threats and its way of protecting you. So there are essentially two hurdles to get over before this understanding can be useful.
Number One – This is normal and healthy! The activity in your brain that watches out for you and acts to protect you is not happening because you are broken or malfunctioning. It is hapenning because you are functioning well. You are not suffering from multiple personality disorder or have evil spirits living in you.
Number Two – This is useful and necessary! Imagine being in a dangerous situation without your brain acting to protect you! No fight or flight reactions! You would be very vulnerable to almost any danger. Your brain will always get you out of danger better than your mind will. For brain think reaction, for mind think response.
Your parts are constructed through your experience
So the problem is not that we have parts, that’s normal and useful. The problem arises when your lived experience trains your brain that certain things are a threat to you when they weren’t, or are no longer threatening. There are lots of things that feel threatening to a baby, a toddler or a young child, that would not be threatening to an adult. Let me give you an example. When I was about five or six, I remember standing on my Grandmas back step. She was washing clothes in the kitchen and getting on with her day. She didn’t seem to sense the danger! You see it was raining, hard! The rain was bouncing off the garden path and the puddles were growing visibly. I could see the rain across the feilds, for miles, and I was scared!
So what was the problem? At my age I did not have the experience to know that the rain was not a danger to us. I did not understand that it would stop soon and the water would drain away. In my childs imagination I saw the rain never stopping and everyone drowning. This type of thing is typical of childrens experience as they do not know the limits of the natural world.
Your parts are in sequence
As you develop your relationship with those parts of you that you have recognised, you may not remember exactly when and how they were constructed. What experiences shaped them and formed them. Don’t worry about this, this approach does not rely on psychiatry or even psychology. Think of yourself as an explorer rather than a detective. Your brain already knows everything about this, and will work with you as you make progress.
Having a sense of how old a part is is a good start, and give your parts names so you can distinguish between them ( and your self). Becoming curious about certain ideas like “what is this part protecting me from”? And “Is there anything I can do to give this part confidence that I can handle these situations”? Are good ways forwards as you develop better relationships with these parts of you.
One of the main ways to develop your understanding of the way your brain creates these parts is to realise that they are constructed in sequence.
Each part covering the one before
Just like the Russian doll set I have pictured here, your parts are covering each other. If you picture the smallest doll as your earliest moment of suffering or trauma, the next doll in the sequence covers that pain and protects you from the suffering of the first part. Being slightly older, each subsequent part offers a more sophisticated strategy or distraction in order to cover the previous issue. As the parts get older and bigger, there is more to cover and needs more and more radical strategies.
When we get to the larger, older parts we tend to see the typical startegies of addiction, dependence, gambling, affairs and control. It is these startegies that are so confusing to people, given the radical nature of the behaviour and the disastrous results. When first trying to understand the strategies of these older parts and to separate them from your true or authentic self, always remember that these strategies will be radical, naive and immediate.
Basically, this means that the future will not be taken into account when developing these strategies. It also means that they will not be wise or caring in their construction. It also means that they will be extreme in what they have you doing. It is from this perspective that you can start to understand your drug taking, drinking, gambling or poor relationship choices. Once you understand that your brain has no sense of time ( it’s always ‘now’ in your brain) then it’s easier to understand why it develops ideas that seem to help in the moment but are often disastrous within a day or two.
Your parts are protecting you
In order to make the most of this approach it is essential that you understand this key idea. Your parts are trying to protect you! Take some time now to consider what ideas you are going to have to let go of before you can approach your parts from this perspective. Let’s look at two of the main ones.
You are not ill
You will have to let go of the idea that you have some sort of mental illness and that this is why you do these things. How long have you been fighting this apparent illness or ‘spiritual malady’? How long have you been fighting with these tendencies as if they are your enemy? How much have you hated yourself for being ‘flawed’ this way? It should come as a relief to you that you can now let this idea go.
You do not have an evil spirit
You will also have to let go of the idea that you have some sort of evil spirit that is controlling you and making you do these things. How long have you been seeking spiritual guidance on how to rid yourself of these things that came from outside of you, that attacked you, that hate you and are damaging you? How long have you been wondering why others seem to have improved whilst you are still the same? It should come as some relief that you can now let this idea go.
Appreciating your parts
Once you let go of these ideas, you can start to work with yourself instead of against yourself. You can start to appreciate your parts for what they are trying to do, rather than just keep lamenting the results. Your parts are doing the very best they can with what they have. Imagine asking a six year old what to do about an adult issue! What do you think you will get? Now you see where the radical, naive and immediate comes from.
Also remember that the ‘self’ they are trying to protect is not the grown up you, it is the younger self that they first saw. They do not know what happens after them, they only know what happened before them, the smaller part that they are covering.
How does understanding help us to work with our parts?
The main shift you will make with this understanding of what neuroscience has shown us, is that you will now start to work with yourself instead of against yourself. One of the main ways you will do this is to understand that you are in charge! Think of your self like a family car, Your family is in the car with you. They all have ideas and motivation, they all have ideas about what should happen next, and they all have ways of protecting the family. But there is only one steering wheel!
No matter what ideas are emerging from the back of the car, or even from the passenger seat right beside you, you have the steering wheel. It is ultimately up to you which road you go down. The main difference now is that you will be explaining you reasoning to the others in the car differently, since you now know they are just parts of you and that they are trying to help.
Working with overwhelm
Here is only one time when having your hands on the steering wheel does not help you. This is when you are ‘overwhelmed’. Anyone who has suffered with addiction or compulsive behaviours knows this well. It is the moment when you are going to do something you should not, when you are going to do something you do not want to. But you cannot seem to stop it! There are two versions of this moment, one is where you go ahead and there seems to be no other opinion present, it’s almost like you have decided to do this, even though you have probably said quite recently that you never would again! The other version is where there is another opinion present but it doesn’t seem to have any strength to it. You may have heard yourself saying “why am I doing this”?
The difference between these two versions is that the first one is a complete overwhelm, whilst the second version is where there is some core self present but not in any strength that can influence behaviour. These two versions are both examples of the strength of your brain and its ability to ‘take over’ your body. You will still get the results you want, even in these cases, if you are patient and understand that your brain is following the training it has been getting for years. Remember, this part of you believes that it is protecting a younger self. Ask yourself this, if you believed that you were protecting a younger sibling from danger, would you be talked out of it?
Learning to work with your parts
The approach with overwhelm is to work in advance as much as possible. Remember that there is no timeline in your brain (the neuroscientists say that the amygdala cannot tell the time). This means that your brain doesn’t see much difference between when you think about these difficult times and the real thing. This is why we have real feelings even when we are watching a film. Even though we know in our minds it’s just actors. lighting and scripts, with a little music thrown in.
So when you think about the next time you are likely to face a situation where you will be overwhelmed, talk to the part that will be protecting you. You will probably find that just thinking about this time will ‘trigger’ the part to some extent. This is the best time to speak to it. The process is ‘appreciate, educate, request’ and the more you practice, the better it will work. Ask your part to trust you. Assure your part that you are willing and able to deal with this situation.
Be patient – go for the long game, not the quick fix
As you practice this more and more, you will notice yourself reacting differently to situations. Not because you demanded it of yourself, but because your brain has rewired itself to the new training. It’s always a good idea to congratulate and celebrate such moments. Even though this can feel a little ‘over the top’, it is really good for retraining the brain to build new pathways. These neural pathways lead to behaviour and are often where the overwhelming experiences come from. When you celebrate these ‘different and better’ experiences, you give valuable information to your brain that you like this new way of understanding things. Your brain is brilliant at picking up new learning, so give it all the encouragement you can!
You will soon be experiencing different and much better reactions to circumstances which used to floor you. As you learn to work with yourself the inner harmony you create will produce a state of calm clear confident courageous compassion towards yourself and especially your younger parts. Thanks for taking the time to read this today. If you want to know more about this approach or discuss the idea of working with me personally, please contact me at info@davecoopercounselling.org.uk
It always amazes me when I see art reflecting the deeper things in life, particularly in film. Patterns and themes that can often take therapists years to learn and recognise are often portrayed by artists with no training or apparent expertise. These themes and traits are often included in their work primarily as observations from the life of the artist themselves and are all the stronger for that. In this post I am going to take a look at the main theme of my work, which is the family pattern of addiction and reverse addiction. And the way I see this reflected in storylines of Films and TV series. Particularly in the way people caught in this pattern, attract each other, live with each other, affect each other and frustrate each other.
Addiction and reverse addiction as relationship patterns
Years before my own recovery, it was obvious to me that certain people would react to me more favourably than others. Whilst some would clearly be affected by some form of empathy around my ‘problems’, others would be unaffected (I thought they were cold) and would say I had a ‘chip on my shoulder’. I also noticed a tendency to ‘flip’ or change my personality depending on who I was with. When I was with someone who was very giving and generous, I would tend to take advantage, whilst also developing a state of hoplessness. On the other hand, when with people who acted more selfishly, I noticed a tendency to feel responsible for their welfare, even down to shopping, cooking and cleaning
Although I did not understand it yet, and was still some years away from my own recovery, I was experiencing part of the pattern of addiction and reverse addiction. Years later, after I had recovered from my own addiction, I studied and became a therapist. This led me to an understanding of narcissistic tendency and co-dependence as medical terms. However, being trained as a systemic therapist, I did not see these things as conditions. Instead, I learned to use communication theory as a way of recognising patterns and themes around the way people engage in relationships.
Moving away from simple medical diagnosis
Using my own experience as well as my training, I learned to see issues as things co-created in relationships, rather than immutable personal traits or conditions. In other words, that the way we are is, at least partly, contingent on who we are with. It is from this perspective that we can relate the positions of addiction and reverse addiction more closely together. As opposed to unrelated ‘conditions’ such as addiction and codependency.
As I started to develop these ideas in my practice and rehabs I worked in, I started to notice a great deal of consistency in the way people were attracted or repelled by each other. So this started to make sense to me based upon their history and tendency. For instance, an addict that had been extreme in their behaviour will tend to attract an extreme reverse addict. Whilst a more high functioning addict who has no history of drifting into chaos, will tend to attract someone with a milder form of reverse tendency. In other words, there is a form of unhealthy balance here which is unconscious but extremely consistent.
My main aim in this post is to look at the examples of this pattern in film and TV. There are many examples so I will restrict myself to three, one film, one TV series and one book. Finally I will look at the greatest example the world has been given, which is the story of the Prodigal from Luke 15 in the Bible. The purpose of introducing these ideas through mainstream media projects is to help you to see the patterns more clearly for yourself, and to use this understanding in your own recovery. There is no better way to gain a better understanding of something than to see it as part of a story. Let’s first look at a very current series Happy Valley, with the amazing Sarah Lancashire and Siobhan Finneran.
The purpose of introducing these ideas through mainstream media projects is to help you to see the patterns more clearly for yourself
Happy Valley
The pattern of addiction and reverse addiction is strongly present in the BBC series Happy Valley. There have been two seasons already produced with a third due to be aired on January the 1st. In the story Catherine Cawood (played by Sarah Lancashire) is a Police Sergeant in a small Yorkshire Town. Her Sister Clare (played by Siobhan Finneran), lives with her along with her grandson Ryan (played by Rhys Connah).
Initially not much is made of Clare’s addiction, it’s only later in the series (series two, episode two) that the complexity of the sisters relationship is exposed through the vulnerability of Clare when she is left at a funeral by Catherine for several hours. She gets drunk with the daughter of the deceased Anne Gallagher (played by Charlie Murphy) who is also alcoholic. This begins yet another chaotic night
Components of the theme
There are many recognisable components of the above mentioned theme present in this series. Notice that when Clare gets drunk, it is when she is left for five hours at a funeral because Catherine is so busy trying to meet many other obligations. This weight of responsibility for others, felt by the ‘reverse tendency’ is a strong component of the theme and one of the main ways that reverse addicts become burned out. There often seems to be no defence for the reverse addict against the consistent needs/demands of the addict., and the continual pressure of meeting others needs.
Familial construction
This pattern is primarily seen inside a family and we always remember that Catherine and Clares attitudes were both born out of the same family, the same parents, the same upbringing. Any dysfunction in the family tends to pressurise the children into one or other of these extreme patterns. The interesting thing is why do people in the same family tend to go in apparently opposite directions? Whilst Clare became a heroin addict and did not manage to make any progress in her career, Catherine grew up with the huge burden of responsibility for others. This led to a career in the Police force and an unhealthy pressure of responsibility to be looking after others.
In the series Catherine is holding down a difficult Police Seargents role in a small Yorkshire Town. Underfunded and unsupported from upstream, she has chosen to step back from her detectives role in order to look after her Grandson. Left when her daughter commited suicide. She is also housing her sister Clare who is volunteering locally but not yet secure in her recovery. You might ask, “who made Catherine responsible for everyone else”? What makes Clare sometimes give up on everything and return to the drugs whilst her sister cannot leave her post? It is this bifurcation along family lines that is not natural, they were not born this way. It is the effect of dysfunction in the family.
Relationship construction
How we build relationships, and who we build them with, form another strong theme. Addicts and reverse addicts are like magnets, forming very strong attractions and repulsions. Because of the subconscious nature of this attraction, the unhealthy aspects of the bond are often not apparent until much later. If you ask someone who struggles with these things why they do what they do, they will often answer vaguely or with a somewhat glib reply. Those of you who have watched the series will see this in Catherines responses. The moral sense that they are supposed to do something is a force that is present in the brain more than the mind and, as such, is not easy to get to grips with. The good news is that the brain can be rewired.
It’s also important to review how you think about yourself. If your thinking is built on ideas like “I’m like this” or “I’m too much like that”, then there isn’t much you can do. However, if you can start to think of relationships as the way of understanding yourself, then you are opening up all kinds of possibilities for growth and development. Think about who you are in this, or that relationship, and why. It’s very noticable in this series that Catherine is very different depending on who she is with.
The moral sense that they are supposed to do something is a force that is present in the brain more than the mind and, as such, is not easy to get to grips with.
Intensity explosions
Explosions often become inevitable in the intensity of such unhealthy, unbalanced relationships such as the Sisters in this series. What the reverse addict sees as caring, helpful and necessary, the addict eventually experiences as restricting, smothering and controlling. Notice in the drinking scene how Clare is desperate for Catherine to “leave her alone”. This pattern or theme naturally strangulates over time to become an unbearable tension for both. The more the reverse addict notices the addict’s problems, the more they act to help. The more the addict perceives the help as controlling, the more they attempt to be free of it, and so on.
Flipping as a relational phenomenon
Following the intensity of the explosion in the relationship, the typical way Catherine and Clare relate is itself reversed, in other words they can ‘flip’ or swap positions. It is part of the pressure of the unhealthy balance. So, following the explosion we would tend to see reflection on behaviour. The addict might be concerned about the extent of their selfishness, the reverse addict eventually cracks under the pressure of meeting everyone else’s needs. Flipping then, is something that happens not only within an intense relationship but also, as a natural consequence of who we engage with.
Only when I laugh
In the 1981 film “only when I laugh” adapted from the play of the same name by Neil Simon, Georgia Heinz (played by Marsha Mason) is recovering from alcoholism. The story covers Georgia’s return from rehab and her attempts to return to her acting career. There are many great observations in this piece and several themes are present.
Notice in this clip from the movie, how the friend and the daughter go from lively animated chatter to a kind of limp lifeless silence once Georgia has left the room.
It was fascinating to me that in her interview with Bobbie Wygant Marsha confirms that she did not have alcoholism in the family, but had seen people who did not realise that they were embarrassing themselves with alcohol. Neil Simon grew up during the great depression and was said to have had a volatile upbringing with the family splitting up several times, but alcohol l was not the problem. So, again, they were derived from observation and human understanding.
Far from the madding crowd
I can’t finish this brief look at these patterns and themes without a mention of Mark Clark. A character most of us can recognise in our lives. In Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the madding crowd, he introduces the character briefly.
“True, true; it can’t be gainsaid!” observed a brisk young man–Mark Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for.
In Hardy’s novel this character is portrayed as somewhat more universal, as if he would have the same effect on everyone. And there are some that appear to have this effect, but most people have different effects on different people.
The Prodigal.
The greatest example of this family pattern comes from the Bible and is found in the Gospel of Luke. In Chapter fifteen we read the story of the Prodigal Son. Possibly the most famous story in the Bible. Along with Noah and the flood, Adam and Eve in the garden, the Prodigal is so well known that people of all faiths and no faith are familiar with it.
Of course the typical way this story is taught and understood is in the context of the Fathers love for his sons, and this is clearly the main idea, but there is another underlying theme here and it is so important that when I am teaching counsellors and Church leaders about how to help people in their recoveries, I say that everything we need to know about addiction, rock bottoms and recovery is in this story! It’s all there if we dig a little deeper.
So we see all the usual suspects in this tale. Isolation, selfishness, poor decisions, chaotic behaviour and wild living. Rock bottoms and repentance. Acceptance and reconciliation. But wait! There is also another theme emerging right at the end! Look at the way the older son is so angry at the reconciliation that he refuses to go into the house. The Father goes out to him but he will not be comforted. This issue is so serious that we do not even see the resolution of it in the story.
Learning from our greatest teacher
Well, what is the older brother’s complaint? What is the problem? Shouldn’t he be happy that his younger Brother is back in the family? Well, if all his work, contributions and commitment were genuine, he would be. But his issue is exposed right at the end of the story when he cannot contain his resentment. He did not get the outcome all his efforts were aimed at. So here it is again. Two siblings from the same family, with the same Father, the same environment and the same history. And yet they grow up in completely opposite ways! One trys to gain acceptance and success by following all the apparent rules and meeting everyones expectations. Whilst the other escapes into selfishness and thinks only about what he can get! Looking at this story again through this apparently ‘modern’ lens is fascinating. It shows us that this family pattern has been around forever and will continue to emerge wherever families are formed.
I really hope that this brief journey into art and the way it has reflected life has given you some food for thought, Especially if this is a subject you are struggling with yourself. Our aim in recovery is to improve all our relationships. With everything, and everybody! This means achieving a balanced position in relation to our boundaries with others. This can be very difficult and take time, so be patient with yourself. Take another look at this post for guidance on balance and what it looks like.
Thanks again for taking the time to read this. All the best with your progress.
Today I want to talk to you about the growth process and how it can sometimes go against our common sense. There’s a very good reason why we tend to start any change process from the outside-in. it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. We are more likely to try and change on the outside because that’s the part that other people can see. That’s the part of us that is visible to others. There are several therapeutic approaches that work this way. Generally we might call these behavioral approaches. I want to offer you a different way but let me first explain why I believe that inside-out is better than outside-in. Let’s start with a recovery principle.
No one has to do anything or say anything in order for you to recover.
That is one of the main principles of authentic recovery. if your recovery is contingent on what someone else does or says you are on the wrong track. So the best method is going to be based on you, not on others and the best place to start working on you is on the inside. If you stop thinking about behaviour as producing change and start to see it as evidence of inner changeyou’ll get the idea.
Making simple, powerful distinctions
No less an authority than Wittgenstein said that we need to make these “artificial tears in the universe”. In other words that clear and simple distinctions improve our thinking. These ‘artificial’ distinctions often help us to make sense of our world and give us a way forwards. So when we make a distinction between your inner world and your outer world we have a very effective place to start.
You are always working with what’s between your ears
Because we live in the ‘big wide world’ out there, we naturally assume that’s the world we are relating to. It’s not. As we experience things we construct a ‘little world’ in our heads. This ‘little world’ is our idea of how things are. It includes all the people we know and the way we think things work, etc. We could think of it as our ‘map of reality’. It is this ‘little world’ that we’re actually relating to. So in a very real sense we’re already working from the ‘inside out’, even when we don’t think so.
So much of what we do is about changing our state, making ourselves ‘feel better’. Our brains are constantly picking up on these habits and patterns of thought. Once the brain establishes a pattern of thinking it helps us by ‘following’ that pattern for us. The neuro-scientists describe it this way, they say that
‘neurons that fire together wire together’.
The top three reasons we usually start from the outside
Let’s review what we have so far. Here are the top three related reasons why it feels like common sense to go from the ‘outside-in’.
It’s what people see – It seems to get faster results.
It’s how we manipulate others – If it’s important to us that others believe this change (and it usually is) then our behaviour is the fastest way of doing this.
The inside is not visible – Which is really reason number one turned inside out. Okay fine, you got me. But it still makes sense to include it as it appeals to our common sense not to spend a lot of resources on the things others will never see.
Behaviour as evidence of change – not the producer of change.
So far we’ve looked at the common sense reasons why we go from the outside-in when trying to produce change. Now we’re going to look at the theoretical reason for going from ‘inside out’. There is a ‘behavioural’ approach which says that if we do things differently we will then become different, think differently, and have a different attitude. More recent research shows that when we force ourselves or demand of ourselves to behave differently it actually produces inner conflict, which inhibits growth and change. This is basically because these traditional approaches don’t take into account the complexity of a human being.
Negotiate – never demand
I work mainly with addicts and helping them recover from addiction. So what I’m describing here is something I work with every day. When the addict reaches crisis point they often simply demand of themselves to stop. So they stop drinking, stop taking heroin. They stop gambling etc etc. The problem comes because we are complex and there is a part of them that does not want to stop.
There is a part of them that believes that the protection they receive from their addictive behaviour is what they need. So in demanding of themselves to change their behaviour they set up a massive inner conflict. Because they’re working from the outside-in they don’t pay attention to this conflict or really understand it. Often they just feel like they’re going crazy! I hear things like this everyday….
“I promised myself I wouldn’t do it anymore an hour later there I am doing it again”.
The problem is that they are not realising that the ‘I’ that promises they won’t do it again is not the ‘I’ that does it again! Being a human being is a complex thing and when we use the simplistic sense of ‘I’ all the time we miss the point. I ask addicted people to understand that when they say “I’m never doing that again” that there is a part of them that says “good luck with that”.
So let’s start by understanding that level of complexity. What it means to be a human being. Then you will see how your brain has learned to protect you in certain ways. You need to retrain your brain in order to produce better behaviour. In this way we produce inner harmony rather than inner conflict. We learn to work ‘with’ ourselves rather than against ourselves.
Behaviour is a product of beliefs, attitudes, and training
Think about how you feel right now. Aside from illness and damage from accidents, your feelings are largely a product of the future you think you are headed for (beliefs), the sense of value you have about yourself (attitude), and the way your life has gone so far (training). To simply demand that you ‘be different’ from now on is the worst thing you can do. Any approach that does not take into account your beliefs attitude and training just sets you up to fail.
Get genuinely interested in yourself instead of just demanding things of yourself. This often means developing a better relationship with yourself. Changes of the size you are wanting simply will never happen if you do not value yourself. If you don’t think of yourself as something worth being interested in, if you don’t think of yourself as having a future worth working for. If you have been trained that you are not of value then anything you do for yourself will be shallow and ineffective.
Learn to access the adult inside you
So, how do we start? You are reading this because you need to change. Even if you are only interested in change because your partner or your boss says you will be finished if you don’t. So take that desire to change as a starting point.
Realise that there is a part of you that wants something better and believes that you deserve something better. Accept that your past does not have to dictate your future. Accept that things that were frightening and threatening years ago will probably not be now. But your brain may still be protecting you from them. Once you learn to access this part of you, you will be working with the most grown up resources you have. Believe me this will be enough to bring about the shift in perspective you need.
When we ‘protected’ ourselves through addictive behaviour our brain learned that’s what we wanted. Our job now is to retrain our brain with a different Idea of what’s important. It may take time for your brain to learn this and this is where practice and commitment follow understanding.instead of fighting this part of you or dismissing it or denying that it exists, I want to suggest that you get to know it better and work with it because it’s part of you.
I want to talk more about this process, which is the most effective and authentic recovery process. But rather than make these things too long I’ll save that for next time. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
