Service and Gratitude as Lifelong Practice

Posted on by helpingsoul

Why Giving Back to Others and Acknowledging What You Have Received Are Foundational to Sustained Growth — In Recovery and Beyond

A substantial revision of an earlier 2014 post on the twelfth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. The principles are sound. The framing has been broadened to address recovery and growth in their many forms.

The twelfth step of Alcoholics Anonymous, in its original wording, reads: 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.

When I first wrote about this step in 2014, I was attending Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings as part of my own work. I was trying to understand my father, who has been in recovery for many decades, and trying to understand the legacy of growing up around his alcoholism. The twelve-step framework gave me one lens for thinking about the principles of sustained recovery — practical principles that have remained meaningful to me, even as my clinical work has expanded into other territories of healing.

What I have come to recognize, in the years since, is that the principles in this final step are not unique to recovery from alcohol. They name something true about how sustained growth actually works, for anyone doing meaningful inner work. The specific frame of AA is one expression of these principles. The principles themselves apply much more broadly. They apply to anyone in recovery from any addiction. They apply to anyone doing trauma recovery. They apply to anyone working through grief. They apply to anyone trying to live a more conscious life than they were trained to live.

This article is a broadening. The twelve-step community will recognize the source material. Anyone outside of that community can engage the same principles in their own context. Both readings are valid.

Recovery as continuing rather than completed

The original twelfth step recognizes that the work does not end when the immediate crisis is over. The recovering alcoholic who has stopped drinking has not finished. The work continues for the rest of their life. Maintaining the change is a daily practice rather than a destination.

The same is true for recovery from any meaningful pattern. The person who has done significant work on attachment trauma does not finish that work. The patterns may quiet. The reactivity may soften. New responses become available. And the underlying conditioning, formed across childhood, continues to surface periodically in ways that require continued attention. The work becomes a practice rather than an event.

This is honest. It is also, in some ways, freeing. The pressure to complete the work — to arrive at some final state of healing where the past no longer affects you — is a pressure that produces shame when the work continues to be needed years later. Recognizing that this is how sustained recovery actually works removes the pressure. You are not failing because the work continues. The work continues because that is what the work is.

Service as the natural extension of recovery

When someone has done significant work and arrived at greater stability, the question of what to do with what they have learned becomes meaningful. The original twelfth step answers this question directly: carry the message. Help others who are still in the early stages of the work you have completed.

In the AA context, this means becoming a sponsor, attending meetings to support newcomers, sharing your experience and strength and hope. The frame is specific. But the underlying principle is broader. The person who has done significant work has something genuine to offer others. The offering is part of what sustains the person’s own continued recovery.

This is not theoretical. There is research support for the observation that helping others produces durable benefits for the helper, sometimes more than the helped. The act of using your experience in service to someone else integrates the experience in a way that solitary processing does not. Telling your story to someone who needs to hear it makes the story more real, more integrated, more useful. The service is its own form of practice.

This applies regardless of the specific recovery context. The adult who has worked through their own attachment wounds becomes valuable to other adults doing similar work. The person who has navigated significant grief has something to offer others facing loss. The person who has come out the other side of any meaningful struggle carries knowledge that, shared appropriately, helps the people behind them on the path.

The service does not have to be formal. It can be the conversation with a friend who is struggling, where you share what you learned in your own version of that struggle. It can be the listening you offer when someone needs to be heard. It can be the patience you extend to someone earlier on a path you have walked. The service is whatever you do with what you have learned, in genuine response to what someone else needs.

Gratitude as the practice that sustains everything else

The other principle named in the twelfth step is gratitude. The recovering alcoholic, having received help, is asked to recognize what they have been given. This recognition produces a particular kind of stability. The person who can acknowledge what they have received does not have to carry the alone-against-the-world stance that often precedes addiction and other forms of struggle.

Gratitude, properly understood, is not a positive-thinking practice or a forced sunny disposition. It is the honest recognition of what is true. You are alive. Someone helped you. The conditions for your current state, whatever it is, include the contributions of many people, many circumstances, many fortunate alignments alongside the difficult ones. Acknowledging this is not optimism. It is accuracy.

There is also research on this. The work of Robert Emmons at UC Davis, who has been studying gratitude for several decades, has shown that consistent gratitude practice produces measurable changes in well-being, sleep, relational satisfaction, and physiological stress markers. Gratitude works in the body, not only in the mind. The system that regularly acknowledges what it has received functions better than the system that does not.

The practice does not require elaborate ritual. A short list at the end of the day. A specific acknowledgment to someone who helped you, given to them directly. A pause before a meal to recognize what is on the plate and who contributed to its arrival there. The simple acts, repeated, accumulate.

On the AA framework specifically

For readers who are themselves in AA or another twelve-step program, the original principles continue to apply. Sponsor someone if you are ready. Attend meetings consistently. Practice the steps as the lifelong path they are designed to be. The community offers something significant — the shared experience of others who have walked the same road, the regular practice of the meetings themselves, the structure that gives the principles their ongoing power.

For readers who are not in a twelve-step program but who are doing other forms of recovery or growth work, the same principles apply with appropriate translation. Find your equivalent of the meeting — the therapy group, the somatic class, the community of others doing similar work. Find your equivalent of the sponsor relationship — the mentor, the trusted friend further along the path, the therapist who has accompanied you. Find your equivalent of service — the role you can play in supporting others in their own work. The forms differ. The functions are the same.

I would also acknowledge, having written about this in other recent posts, that the language of the older twelve-step literature can sometimes feel harsh by current standards. The framing of alcoholism as disease, of the person in recovery as defective, of the surrendering of will to a higher power as the only path to sobriety — all of this works for many people and lands as shaming for others. Current trauma-informed understanding offers more compassionate framings of the same underlying work, recognizing the early conditions that often precede addiction and treating the addictive behavior as an intelligent if costly survival adaptation rather than as a disease to be cured.

Both framings can be held. Twelve-step community remains genuinely valuable for many people, even when the language sometimes lands hard. Trauma-informed framings offer additional language that some people find more accurate to their experience. The work itself, in both frames, is similar. The principles of service and gratitude apply to both.

Reflection questions

If you are doing recovery work in any form, the following questions may be useful for your own reflection.

Who has helped you in your work, and how have you acknowledged their contribution?

What have you learned that someone else might benefit from hearing?

Is there someone earlier on a path you have walked, with whom you could share what you know?

What does gratitude look like as a daily practice in your specific life?

How do you handle conflict differently now than you did before your recovery work began? What helped you develop the new capacity?

What is your relationship with the community that has supported your work, and how do you contribute to it?

When you imagine yourself five or ten years from now, what kind of presence do you want to be for others walking similar paths?

These questions are not a test. They are openings for reflection. The answers may come quickly or may take weeks to surface. Sit with them as feels right.

A closing thought

The principles in this final step, whether you encounter them in AA or in some other framework, are pointing at something true. The work of sustained growth is lifelong. The service to others is part of how the work sustains itself. The gratitude for what you have received is the foundation that keeps the rest of the practice from drifting into ego or fatigue.

Most of us were not taught these principles directly. We learned them through our own struggles, through the help of others who walked alongside us, through the slow accumulation of experience that comes from doing the work over years. Naming them clearly is part of what makes them transmissible — what allows them to be passed forward to the people who come after us on similar paths.

Whatever path you are walking, the principles apply. Continue the work. Help others where you can. Acknowledge what you have received. These three practices, held together, become the architecture of a life that does not need to escape from itself. The escape, eventually, becomes unnecessary. The life is the one you actually want to live.

Further reading: Alcoholics Anonymous and the broader twelve-step literature. Adult Children of Alcoholics. Robert Emmons, Thanks: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier. For the broader work on compassionate framings of recovery, see related posts on this blog including The Art of Detachment with Love.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

The Art of Detachment with Love

Posted on by helpingsoul
Your heart must become a sea of love. Your mind must become a river of detachment.

How to Stay Close to the People You Love Without Losing Yourself in Their Pain

A substantial revision of an earlier 2014 post. The clinical understanding has deepened in the intervening years, and the language has become more compassionate. This refresh reflects what I have learned since then.

In my therapy practice, I sit with the same pattern across many different lives. The adult daughter who cannot sleep when her elderly mother is having a difficult week. The partner who feels physically ill when their loved one is upset, even if the upset has nothing to do with them. The friend who cannot say no to requests, even when saying yes will cost her significantly. The father who feels personally responsible for his grown child’s choices, decades after the child became an adult. The colleague who absorbs the moods of everyone around her until she cannot find her own state under the accumulated weight of theirs.

These people are not selfish. They are not weak. They are not, as the older recovery literature sometimes framed it, sick with a disease called codependency. They are people whose nervous systems learned, early in life and for excellent reasons, that the only way to stay safe was to track everyone else’s emotional weather and respond to it before being asked. They are adults still running the system they built as children. The system kept them safe then. It is costing them now.

The work of detachment with love is the slow unwinding of this system. Not the elimination of caring. Not the building of walls. Not the cold disinterest the word detachment sometimes suggests. Something different. Something more nuanced. The capacity to stay present with the people you love, including their pain and their difficulty, without your own system collapsing into theirs. The capacity to care without absorbing. The capacity to remain yourself in the presence of someone else’s distress.

This is not easy work. It is also one of the most important capacities an adult can build, both for themselves and for the people they love. Loving from a place of separateness is more powerful than loving from a place of fusion. The fused love is exhausting. The separate love endures.

What the original language got wrong, and what is more accurate now

In 2014, when I first wrote about this topic, the prevailing framework was codependency. The word came from the recovery movement and was used to describe people who had become overly enmeshed with the lives and struggles of others, often originating in families where addiction or other dysfunction made the child responsible for managing the adults’ emotional states. The word was useful for naming a real pattern, and it gave many people a starting point for recognizing themselves.

It also carried, baked into its medical-sounding formality, an implicit shaming. To be codependent was to be sick. The pattern was a disease. The behavior was a defect to be cured. Many people doing genuine recovery work spent years carrying the felt sense that something was fundamentally wrong with them, when what was actually true is that they had developed an intelligent adaptation to impossible circumstances.

Current clinical understanding has moved away from the disease framing and toward something more compassionate. The behaviors that the older literature called codependency are increasingly understood as fawn-response adaptations, attachment patterns developed in response to relational instability, or somatic survival strategies that emerged when other forms of safety were unavailable. None of these terms is perfect. All of them carry more dignity than the older framing did.

Pete Walker, a therapist whose work on complex trauma has influenced contemporary understanding, identifies the fawn response as one of four primary survival adaptations alongside fight, flight, and freeze. The fawn response is what happens when a child learns that pleasing the caregiver and managing the caregiver’s emotional state is the most reliable route to safety. The behavior is not pathological. It is a smart strategy for a system trying to survive. As adults, people who learned the fawn response continue to run it long after the original conditions have changed. They please. They manage. They absorb. They take responsibility for the emotional states of others because that is what their nervous systems learned, decades ago, was necessary.

Pia Mellody, another clinician whose foundational work in this area still holds up, describes how the early experience of being made responsible for the parent’s well-being prevents the child from developing a clear sense of self. The boundary between self and other never gets fully established. As an adult, the person continues to experience other people’s feelings as their own responsibility. The work is the slow building of the self that was not allowed to fully form.

These newer framings are not just gentler language for the same diagnosis. They are more accurate to what is actually happening. The behavior is not a disease. It is a survival adaptation that worked then and is no longer needed now. The work is not to be cured. The work is to update the system, slowly, with patience, so that the adult can choose freely rather than reflexively follow the pattern.

What detachment with love actually looks like

Detachment with love is not coldness. It is not the building of walls. It is not the decision to stop caring. It is something much more subtle and much more difficult.

Detachment with love is the capacity to remain in your own body while you witness someone else’s pain. To feel compassion without taking on the felt sense of their distress as if it were your own to fix. To recognize that another person’s emotional state is not actually your responsibility to manage, even when your nervous system has been trained for decades to believe it is.

It looks like the daughter who can hear that her mother is struggling without immediately rearranging her own day to respond. The mother is struggling. The mother is also an adult with her own resources, her own support systems, her own capacity to navigate difficulty. The daughter can care. She can call. She can offer support if it is wanted. And she can also recognize that her own life is not on hold until her mother feels better.

It looks like the partner who can sit with their loved one’s hard day without absorbing the emotional weather and carrying it themselves into the next several hours. The loved one is allowed to have a hard day. The partner can be present, supportive, attentive. And the partner can also remain themselves, with their own state intact, even as they extend genuine care.

It looks like the friend who can say no to a request without rehearsing the response for an hour and feeling guilty afterward for half a day. The friend can have legitimate limits. The other person can be disappointed. The friendship survives the no. This is what mature friendship actually requires.

It looks like the father who recognizes that his grown child’s choices are the grown child’s to make. He can express concern. He can offer perspective if asked. He cannot live the life that is not his to live. The child becomes more capable, not less, when the father stops trying to live it for them.

Why this is hard

If detachment with love sounds simple in principle, anyone who has tried to do it knows it is profoundly difficult in practice. Several things make it hard.

The nervous system runs the old program faster than the conscious mind can override it. By the time you have noticed that you are absorbing the other person’s distress, your body has already done it. The breath has shortened. The chest has tightened. The internal weather has shifted. Updating this pattern is not a cognitive exercise. It is somatic work, done over time, with patience.

The relationships you are in have often been built on the old pattern. If you have been the over-functioning caretaker for years, the people around you may have come to depend on that role. When you begin to detach with love, the system around you may not initially welcome the change. There can be pushback. There can be guilt. The people who have been benefiting from your fused availability may not enjoy your separateness. This is not evidence that you are doing something wrong. It is evidence that the system was unbalanced and is now finding a new balance.

Guilt arrives as you begin to do this work. Sometimes overwhelming guilt. The voice that says you are being selfish, that you are abandoning the people you love, that genuine love would require you to keep absorbing. The guilt is the somatic signature of the old pattern protesting the change. It is not accurate information. It is the old nervous system’s report that the new behavior is unfamiliar. Over time, with consistent practice, the guilt softens.

And the practice itself requires staying present in your body in the moments when you would previously have left it. The body that has spent decades absorbing other people’s emotional weather has not built much capacity for remaining steady in difficult moments. The capacity has to be built. The work is slow. It is also genuinely possible.

What helps

Several things help in the work of building the capacity for detachment with love.

Therapy that explicitly addresses the underlying pattern. EMDR for the unprocessed early experiences that calibrated the system. Somatic work for the body-based components of the pattern. Internal Family Systems for the parts work that often surfaces — the part of you that has been the caretaker, the part that needs to feel needed, the part that fears abandonment if you stop fusing. Attachment-focused therapy for the relational template that filters all current relationships through old learnings.

Twelve-step support remains genuinely valuable for many people, even with the older language. Codependents Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics offer community, regular meeting structure, and a path that has worked for many people over decades. If the language of these programs sometimes lands as harsh, you can hold the language lightly while still benefiting from the community and the practice. The community is the medicine. The exact vocabulary used to describe the work is less important than the showing up.

Reading current literature in the trauma-informed space gives you frameworks that match what you are actually experiencing. Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving is a foundational text. Pia Mellody’s Facing Codependence still holds up despite the dated title. Richard Schwartz’s work on Internal Family Systems gives you the parts framework. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score for the somatic dimensions.

Practice in small daily moments. The slow building of capacity does not happen during dramatic events. It happens in the small choices. The pause before you respond to the text that has activated you. The breath you take before answering the call from the person who tends to overwhelm. The deliberate noticing of your own internal state in the presence of someone else’s distress. Each small moment is a repetition. The repetitions accumulate. Over months and years, the capacity becomes available.

And the recognition that this is a lifelong practice, not a destination. People who have done this work for decades still sometimes notice themselves slipping into the old pattern. The work is not to eliminate the slip. The work is to notice it more quickly, return to yourself more gracefully, and continue the practice. This is true for me. It will be true for you.

A closing thought

Detachment with love is not the opposite of love. It is what love looks like when it has matured into something the giver can sustain over time. The fused love that absorbs the beloved’s pain as if it were its own runs out. The separate love that cares deeply while remaining itself can continue indefinitely.

The people in your life do not need you to lose yourself in their difficulty. They need you to remain yourself, fully present, while they navigate their own. The presence of a steady, loving, separate other is more useful than the presence of someone who has fused with them. Your separateness is, in some ways, the gift you offer. The ability to remain yourself in their presence gives them the felt sense of being met by an actual other, not by an extension of themselves.

If you recognize yourself in the patterns described here, the work is real and it is worth doing. The pattern was an intelligent adaptation to conditions that required it. The conditions have changed. You can change with them, slowly, gently, with the patience the work deserves. And the love you bring to the people in your life can become deeper and more sustainable as you do.

Further reading: Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Pia Mellody, Facing Codependence. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score. Codependents Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics offer twelve-step support for this work.

April Wright, MA, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and Florida. She blogs about attachment, healing, and the courageous arts of becoming oneself at courageous-arts.com and sees clients at thecourageousself.com.

Principles of Prayer and Meditation

Posted on by helpingsoul

prayer-meditationStep 11 – Through prayer and meditation I seek to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for my life and the power to carry that out

The principal of the eleventh step of Alcoholics Anonymous is prayer and meditation.  Taking a few minutes a day breaking away from everyday frustrations, distractions, and multitasking’s for self-examination can change your life.  Spending just a little time each day consciously connecting with your higher power can directly influence your thoughts, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors.

For most people, serenity is far off in the distance due to those day after day interruptions, obligations, and disturbances that cause chaos and clutter. Making prayer and meditation a daily routine is your path to new hope leading to a more serene life.

Whenever you are feeling stuck, confused, need help, or don’t know what to do next, take a few minutes to talk to your higher power.  Ask for guidance and help.  At first, it may feel awkward talking to a force you can’t see or hear.  Stay with the uncertainty and within a short period of time you will see results.

There are many books, articles, and literature on how to pray and meditate.  Most religions have formal guidelines for prayer.  Religious guiding principles include confession of wrongdoings, asking for forgiveness, expressing gratitude, asking for guidance, asking for blessings on family, friends, and loved ones or trying to love.

Choose your own religious ritual or spiritual pathway that works best for your lifestyle and beliefs.  Select a regular routine that will enable you to continue and make it a habit.  Pray in nature, taking a walk, in the shower, or on your knees by your bed.  Meditate in a group.  Bow your head, clasp your hands, or close your eyes.  Or sit alone, quietly and just think.

Talk out loud or write entries in a journal dedicated to your higher power.  Dictate a long prayer in the morning, night, or recite short messages throughout the day.   Whatever the method, you have the autonomy to choose your own process for prayer.

Whatever your course is for prayer and meditation ensure it is one you can do consistently.  During this time for yourself, you can address self-care, including how to nurture inner peace, when to reach out to others, and how to find a way to embrace a perplexing task and really own it as yours.  You can reflect upon ways to carry through on good intentions, where to make time for fun, and to be present for your feelings.

Prayer and meditation is a time to be open and receptive to whatever comes up.  Honor the process by being with and allowing your feelings to move within and through you at their own pace and timeframe. Stay with the practice trying not to change, distract, distort, or numb what is happening within.

Respect what is happening inside by mindfully acknowledging your thoughts, emotions, and perspectives.  It may be a good time to reach out to a trusted friend, your therapist, or your sponsor for validation.  Eventually you will get to a place of acceptance, understanding, and a renewed sense of relief and peace.

With an inner sense of tranquility, the hurt, anger, and helplessness is diminished.  When the walls of fury are dropped, the gates are open to a pathway for love.  You are more receptive and able to connect to those you love or trying to love. Your connections are expanded because you set free your loving presence to soar.

Cultivating a deeper prayer life provides new opportunities for reflection, affirmation, and lasting change in your relationship to yourself and others.  The eleventh step of Alcohol Anonymous is one that is encouraged to practice every day.  With diligence and consistency, a spiritual consciousness awakens a fuller, robust life with rich, meaningful relationships.

Here is a prayer to get you started.  It is a recovery prayer based on Alcoholics Anonymous, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“Thank you for keeping me straight yesterday.  Please help me stay straight today.  For the next twenty-four hours, I pray for knowledge of your will for me only and the power to carry that through.  I pray that you might free my thinking of self-will, self-seeking, and wrong motives.  I pray that in times of doubt and indecision, you might send your inspiration and guidance.  I pray that you may send me the right thought, word, or action, and that you show me what my next step should be.”

Step Ten of Alcoholics Anonymous — A Life Journey

Posted on by helpingsoul

Responsibility: No single drop of water thinks it is responsible for the floodStep 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Steps one through nine provide tools to awaken internal realizations and relational manifestations.  They offer help to accept the past and heal what is possible.  The first nine measures give guidance for honesty, faith, hope, courage, and humility for responsible lives.

Step ten is based on the principle of responsibility.  Being responsible is using our authority to make independent decisions for our actions and for our failures to take action.  We are accountable for our actions and their consequences.

The tenth step uses the basis of responsibility and applies it to daily life as an ever evolving journey.  Throughout the stages of life, we are in a in a constant state of transition, emerging, evolving, and becoming.  We are continually discovering and making sense of our existence.  As we repeatedly question ourselves, others and the world, it is important to continue looking within and practice being accountable for our behaviors especially when we are wrong.  Paying attention to our varying degrees of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors helps improve conscientious decisions-making.  Keeping abreast to our internal being and being true to ourselves and others maintains balance and happiness as we progress in our lifespan.

To help encourage awareness make time each day to practice stillness.  Stillness is slowing down from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.  Set up a quiet sanctuary for your practice.  Maintain a personal ritual in a quiet place where you can focus internally.  It’s a time to just notice and listen in the moment.  This is not a time for judgment or ridicule.  Just allow thoughts to surface and pay attention to where the feeling is sensed in the body.

The concept is simple, yet can feel difficult to perform.  To assist, you might create a place dedicated solely for the purpose of reflection.  Form a tranquil space with pillows, blankets, and memorabilia that are personally special.  Wear comfortable clothing.

Nature is another sanctuary.  Ensure there are no external distractions such as electronic devices or interruptions.  Take the time to focus internally and scan your body and listen to your inner being.

Begin by taking several slow, deep breaths.  Start your practice remaining silent for five minutes and as your meditation muscles strengthen, add more time.  Increase in one to five minute intervals each week until you reach thirty or forty-five minutes, or as much as feels right for you.

In the beginning taking time for mindfulness may seem like a waste of time. Allow for the process to transpire and you will reap many benefits. You will have more clarity and decisiveness.  With less wandering of the mind, you are able to make quick, precise decisions.   You are more centered, well-balanced and connected with your core and inner being.  Having greater connection to your body and mind provides more awareness.  Being aware supplies consciousness to peace and confidence in your authenticity.

Stillness is your sacred time to connect to your spiritual power and to reflect inward.  It is a valuable time solely for you.  With practice, you will adopt, habituate and notice positive changes in all areas of your life.

Now that you are more aware of your thoughts, emotions, and actions, challenge yourself to experience fearful situations and remain there knowing you can manage your emotions and take responsibility for your behavior.  Each person has unique thoughts, emotions, and urges.  They are a natural part of life.   Distinctive thoughts and feelings are not right or wrong.  Labeling them good or bad/right or wrong is passing judgment.  Acceptance is a state of non judgment.  Reassure yourself, that your thoughts and feelings matter and are of value.  They equate just as much as everyone else’s.

The more in tune you are with your thoughts and feelings, the more you can create a safe place for you to express them in a healthy way.  This means stating your wants and desires.  If you are not getting want you want, it is your responsibility to express your needs.  People are not mind-readers.  The only way to have a healthy discussion is to communicate openly and honestly.  Allow the other person to speak, express their thoughts, desires, and feelings; and then do the same.  Use respectful dialogue.  Establish ground rules such as no name calling, blaming, yelling, or stonewalling. If the conversation elevates to such a level, take a time out with a specific day/ time to reconvene and continue the discussion.  Ensure you return at the established day/ time.  This builds trust.  With practice, responsible responses will habituate and become easier over time.

Having an awakening to your internal psyche creates more options and alternatives. Exposure to communication brings deeper connection and better relationships.  We are our choices.  Thus instead of using alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, gambling, and relationships to restrain what you think and feel, you have the capacity to notice, acknowledge and choose how you manage your internal workings.   Your relationships will show the improvement.

Step 10 encourages you to notice and allow whatever thoughts and emotions you are thinking or feeling to surface.  By observing your interior consciousness you are awakening to a richer life of happiness, joy, and serenity as well as managing your own life for safety and protection.  Having thoughts and emotions are normal and healthy.   Allowing them to surface doesn’t mean you have to act on them.  It’s being in charge, building a relationship with your fears and distress, and strengthening your confidence to know you can handle difficult experiences.

Responsibility Sure Glad the hole isn't at our end.

Forgiveness – A Crucial Component of Step 9 in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

Posted on by helpingsoul

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.Forgiveness is a process and a choice.  It is the opportunity to untie the bindings of your pain from the past.   As part of the course of action, forgiveness involves confronting your fears and compassion to allow yourself time to physically and emotionally heal.  Exposing yourself to persons, surroundings, or objects that you fear offers the opening to have a corrective experience.  You are able to reorganize your memories and repair those recollections.

For example, as a child you may have experienced being attacked by a Rottweiler.  You were not physically hurt but the immediate threat startled you.  As a result you froze.  This is a natural fear response.   The terror was never discussed by your family or friends.  Thus the thoughts and emotions were not processed and disorganized memories formed.  Avoiding the discussion of the incident caused your fears to worsen.  Unprocessed feelings transform to generalized fears and all or nothing thinking.  Consequently you became fearful of all dogs and avoidant of the neighborhood where the attack occurred.

By exposing yourself to another Rottweiler that doesn’t attack gives the opportunity for a remedial and healing experience.  Difficult memories are allowed to surface.  The thoughts and emotions that were once suppressed can now be processed.   Processing gives way to reorganizing your memories.  You learn that not all Rottweilers show aggression.  You broaden your capacity for more knowledge and understanding.  All Rottweilers don’t attack.  There are some aggressive dogs and others that are very loving.  Black and white thinking transforms to accepting that Rottweillers and all animals have trustworthy and safe parts and some that are not.  For example, a cat that was once abused as a kitten associates touch as a threat.  Thus when you pet him, he bites.  As long as you don’t pet the cat, he is kind and playful.  Animals and experiences are complex and make up many parts not just good or bad.

The same is true for people.  Most parents, loved ones, and friends do not intentionally try to hurt you.  The hurtful behavior that was endeared was taught and passed down from their parents.  As a child, you have no choice but to tolerate the emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.  You are completely dependent upon your caretakers for safety and protection in whatever capacity they can.  Thus you learn to protect yourself, suppress your emotions, and tolerate abuse.  The abuse continues until you learn that as an adult you have a choice on what to tolerate.  You can now tune into your emotions and express them in a healthy manner.  As an adult you can courageously choose and confront those in your cycle of abuse.  You can choose to forgive.

The persons on your list from Step four are participants of the cycle of abuse.   By respectfully approaching those on your list, you may be able to have an open discussion, grasp a better understanding from their perspective, explain yours, and possibly heal old wounds.  All participants must be willing to have an open mind and to listen and speak compassionately from the heart.  It is possible to heal hurt with positive, respectful dialogue.  As you both come to a new understanding, unresolved emotions are replaced with restored, transformative memories to a place of forgiveness and healing.

Make Amends

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Step 8:  Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) recognizes that addiction affects not only the user but all relationships especially family members.  It doesn’t matter whether their role was passive or aggressive.  Each person has a part and the eighth of the twelve steps of AA spotlights those relationships in a two-step process.  The first piece is to make a list of all persons harmed.  The second element is to become willing to make amends to those persons listed.

This means looking back at all your relationships and doing a personal inventory addressing your role even when you have been harmed by others.  The process can be daunting and feel overwhelming.  Reflecting upon difficult times and the interactions can bring up hurtful memories and feelings of guilt, shame, disgust, hurt, and many other complicated emotions.    During these times it is useful to practice self compassion, patience, and understanding.  To help, you may want to use the guidance of your higher power; consult with your sponsor, a trusted friend, or a therapist to learn to set free those harmful feelings.  Looking into the past is a humbling experience.  It is important to let go of your pride and acknowledge your role.  It takes tremendous humility to make amends with someone who may have harmed you more than you injured them.  Step eight is about having the humbleness to take responsibility for your part.

In step four you began to look at your resentments, made a list of persons, and of whom you have those ill feelings toward.  Step eight offers the opportunity to look at that list from another perspective.  Since the principles toward willingness can feel complex and overwhelming, I have broken the process down into ten specific, achievable, and realistic goals.

Process for step Eight:

  1. Assess your past in manageable amounts of predetermined timeframes in a safe environment.

Set aside a chunk of time to open the doorway to a loving viewpoint for yourself and for those on your list.  While accessing your past and reviewing your list from step four, give yourself the opportunity to practice self-care.   You may want to start with fifteen minutes and progress to an hour or so.  Do it at your own pace and when you are ready.  Decide if you want to start from the most recent of times and then go backward or vice versa.  There is no right or wrong way to revisit the past.

Set the environment and give yourself the proper conditions to feel safe and prepared for difficult emotions to arise.  You may want to play your favorite CD.  Brew a warm beverage.  Sit in a comfortable chair in a well-lit area.  You may want to have a box of tissues nearby. Ensure your surroundings are free from interruptions and distractions.  It may mean turning off all electronic devices or going out into a secluded spot in nature.  Whatever it is, make sure the atmosphere feels right to you; where you can take time to process your past.   Keep a journal or notebook and write what comes up.  Allow your thoughts to flow freely without judgment or ridicule.

2.  Be compassionate to yourself.compassionate hug

A lot of hurtful feelings may arise.  Allow for your emotions to emerge and come to the surface.  It is normal to feel resentment, sadness, anger, disgust or whatever you are feeling.  There is a reason why you are feeling the way you do and permit yourself the opening to feel all that materializes.  Let the feelings occur while actively becoming attentive to them.  Focus on the present moment, where you are right now.  Don’t derail yourself by not feeling the feelings.  In the moment, practice compassion and move away from opinion and criticism.  Just notice, stay with the process, and if helpful write what comes to mind in your journal.

3.  Make changes to move toward acceptance.

Integrate nurturing, comforting thoughts and behaviors.  Surround yourself with supportive people who can help in the journey.  Acceptance is allowing and understanding the process.  Progression is giving yourself permission to cry, to be angry, and to feel your pain.  The more you experience what you have suppressed for so many years, the more you can relinquish the past and live a gentler, more open and fulfilling present. Freedom comes after you let the feelings flow.

4.  Begin to write a list of people who you have harmed.

You have already begun a list with your resentments in step four.  Use the inventory to guide you to reconstruct or formulate a new list for step eight.  Set your timer for how long you want to spend evaluating who is on your list.  Start with fifteen minutes and progress to more time as the process becomes easier.  Through the process, finalize who you want to address and acknowledge your role.

5.  Evaluate how you harmed those persons.

You have completed your list for now.  It is time to evaluate how you harmed those persons.  What do you think you did to contribute to the conflict?  What would you do differently now?  How could you have looked at the situation differently at the time?  What do you think the other person was feeling?  What messages was their behavior indicating?  What were you communicating with your behavior?  Was that aligned with what you really wanted to convey?   How would you act to parallel your behavior with your intent?

6.  Determine your role in the wrong doings.

Decide how you played a part.  What was your role in the relationship?  What did you learn?  What would you do differently now?

7.  Establish a plan for how you would like to make amends.

At this instant, you have evaluated and deeply understand your role from multiple perspectives.  Establish a plan for how you would like to make amends.  You may want to make an official apology to the person.  You may want to repair the relationship with an open dialogue.  It is up to you to decide the best way to compensate for your role in the relationship.

To create a safe environment for discussion about the past, listen openly and without attachment.  Detach yourself from the outcome and their reaction.  Listen honestly and without judgment or criticism.  You may want to mirror what you hear the other person saying. Try reflecting their thoughts and feelings in a short sentence starting with “I”.  Try your best not to react to their words.  Your goal is to mirror what they said and check in to make sure you have received the message correctly.  Let the other person have an equally valid point of view.  A major source of conflict is not recognizing each other’s separate existence.

There are many ways to make amends.  Consult with your sponsor or trusted confidant to determine what method is right for you and that particular situation.

8.  Seek advice from your sponsor or respected member of AA who has completed step eight to review your list.

You have made your list.  You have determined your role.  You have established a plan on how you would like to make amends.  It is time to take this thorough craftsmanship of work to your sponsor, someone you respect in the AA community, or your therapist.   It helps to have one person review and check your list to ensure that you are not going to do more harm than good by approaching that person in the mending process.  There is no right or wrong way.  Remember a person’s opinion is subjective.  It is up to you to use your internal wisdom, guidance, and reflection to know what is best for you and the relationship with the person you have harmed.  You are the one who has to face those on your list and have crucial conversations. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide who you want to make amends with and how you want to do so.

9.  Begin the process to willingness to approach those persons and make amends.

Willingness begins with acceptance.   You began working on your acceptance of the process in step three listed above.  You have been able to recognize and allow hurtful parts of yourself to surface.  You have hopefully offered yourself understanding and normalized that we all have components we are proud of and are not so proud of.

The darker sides are elements that may have been denied, shunned, or rejected from loved ones in the past.  The more compassion, self-love, and sympathy you have for your experience and reaction that made you who you are today, the more you can accept your true self and others and their individual characteristics.  When you are able to understand the origin of these mysterious sides of yourself, you can learn to integrate them into your being and use them in positive ways instead of destructive habits.  Most of us have sides that split into bizarre fantasies or mean behaviors that are usually nothing more than compensations for past humiliations, wounds, or deficits.  Understand they are normal.  You don’t have to shun essential pieces of yourself anymore.  You can consciously use them constructively.  The closer you are to self-acceptance of all that you are the more willing and able you are to accept others as they are.

10.  Make amends with those persons on your list.

You have completed a long, arduous, and difficult pathway into your past.  You have learned to be with and release difficult emotions.  You have developed more self-compassion, acceptance, and willingness to face your fears and have those essential conversations.  It is time to take your dedication, all your preparation, and your hard work to good use.  Now is the moment to make amends with those persons you have harmed on your list.apology_artform

While making your reparation, remind yourself to practice compassion for yourself and for the other person.  Allow for differentiation and acceptance of their story.  It doesn’t make it right or wrong.  Their opinion, thoughts, and perspectives are theirs to keep.  You are there to make amends with your narrative and what you believe to be right.

The twelve steps of AA are meant to be a lifelong process and journey.   As you go through each, there will be times to review certain steps again.  We all have an effect on others.  The steps are a guideline to awaken empathy, compassion, and understanding of those relationships.   Step eight gives the opportunity to reflect and learn from the past so that we are more present, aware, and compassionate in our relationships.

“Growth and healing occur by allowing old wounds to be expressed and released in order to make room for a lighter way of being.”             ~Kathryn Tull, M.A., LMFT

April Wright, MA, MFTI is a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern #69624 under supervision of Kathryn Tull, M.A., LMFT #44809.   April holds an active and current registration with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.   April is a member of CAMFT – a professional network designed to educate, advocate and enrich its members. If you have any questions or you would like to discuss how to enhance your spiritual connection and need support in your sober process, please contact April for a free 15-minute consultation.

April Wright, M.A.

MFT Registered Intern #69624.
Under supervision of Kathryn Tull, M.A., LMFT #44809
Kathryn Tull, Inc.
310.502.4944
http://www.therapywithapril.com
http://femmevolution.wordpress.com

Peace Mandala for Amends

Alcohol Anonymous (AA) Step 7: Ask Our Higher Power To Humbly Remove Personal Shortcomings

Posted on by helpingsoul

SeventhStepPrayerIn step one (1), you admitted powerlessness over alcohol.  In step two (2) you came to believe that a power greater than you could restore your reasoning.  You possibly named that source to be God, Allah, Nature, a passed-on relative or loved one or even your breathe.  In step three (3), you turned your will and life over to the care of your higher power.  In step four (4), you wrote a list of your moral inventory which included your resentments, faults, fears, sexual injury, and harms.  Once your list was complete, in step five (5) you stated your role in past wrong doings.  In step six (6), you declared to your higher power that you are ready for him/ her to remove your shortcomings.  And now in step seven (7), you humbly ask your higher power to remove your shortcomings.

“If you are truly humble, nothing can touch you, neither disgrace nor praise, because you know who you are.” –  Mother Theresa

In step 6 you prepared yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually to have the limitations you listed in step 4 removed.  The limitations could be past negative self talk, manipulative behavior, or explosive reactions to others.  Whatever the behavior, thoughts or feelings, you are now ready for change.  After much preparation, step 7 provides the direction to humbly ask your higher power to remove obstacles that are preventing you from the healthy interactions with self and others.  You have adjusted your attitude, let go of arrogance, pride, and now unpretentiously and respectfully ask your higher power for strength and to remove whatever obstacles that have prevented you from succeeding in the past.  During times of temptation to retreat to old destructive patterns, you look for your higher power’s guidance.

What does it look like to complete step seven?  Let’s use the example of quitting smoking. In step six, you prepared yourself and declared that you are ready for change.  You said, “I am ready to quit smoking” and you turned it over to your higher power.  You believe in the possibility to quit smoking.  You let go and have faith in your higher power. You rely on dialogue and prayer, modestly asking for strength during times of temptation.

Steps 6 and 7 are considered the hardest of the actions due to their constant attention to a spiritual connection.  At times, it is difficult to determine your own personal will versus your higher power’s will.  It is the belief in your partnership with your higher power and their desire for your success that can help alleviate any question.  Your confidence in your partnership, personal intention, motivation, and daily actions affirming your desires are of utmost importance to the outcome of your efforts.

You can view it from the standpoint that your long-term goal is to quit smoking.  You declared it in your mind, to another, and to your higher power.  Your responsibility is to ensure you have continual, conscious contact with your higher power to guarantee that each minute, hour, and day you do the best you can to achieve your goal.

With the grace and guidance of your higher power you are breaking down your larger goal into smaller manageable actions.  The process begins in the morning when you awaken.  You embark on the day asking your higher power his/ her will for you.  It could be the simplest of things such as you are not going to buy a pack of cigarettes today.  As the day passes, the enticement may be great.  This is where the importance of step 7 comes to play.  You ask your higher power for help and pray for the power to carry out your goal.  As your spiritual bond strengthens, your chances to follow through are increased.

If you fail it is important to forgive yourself and keep trying.  Unlike your higher power, you are human and mistakes are bound to occur.  It is imperative to have compassion and understanding for yourself.  If helpful, visualize that your higher power is holding your hand and supporting you along your journey to remain from smoking; knowing your will and intent are in good fortune.

At the end of the day as you fall asleep, give yourself praise and accept your higher power’s approval for your role in making your goal a reality.  If you broke down and bought a pack of cigarettes, it is crucial to be kind and gentle to yourself in small setbacks.  There is another day and your higher power is there to support you when you humbly ask.

Working step 7 along with the other steps is a continual process.  As long as you are continuing to put one foot in front of the other, you are moving forward; positively and purposely as your higher power encourages.  With the guidance of another and your ongoing spiritual connection and consciousness, you are able to achieve anything you determine it to be.  As long as you are kind, gentle, and compassionate to yourself, your spiritual being will support and help you along the journey.

April Wright, MA, MFTI is a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern supervised by Kathryn Tull, M.A., MFC44809.   She holds an active and current registration with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences pre-license 69624.  She is a member of CAMFT – a professional network designed to educate, advocate and enrich its members. If you have any questions or you would like to discuss how to enhance your spiritual connection and need support in your sober process, please contact April for a free 15-minute consultation.

April Wright, M.A., MFTI 69624
Employed & Supervised by Kathryn Tull, M.A., MFC44809
310.502.4944
http://www.therapywithapril.com

One Woman’s Perspective on her Sex Addiction and Recovery

Posted on by helpingsoul

The  following is an interview with a woman who self-identified as being in  recovery from a sex addiction.  She is in her 40’s, professional, and  married with children.  She asked to remain anonymous for the sake of  her privacy; she used the pseudonym “Nora.”  I asked her about her  addiction and about being a woman and sex addict.  I began by asking her  to describe her sexual addiction:

Dr. S: How would you describe your sex addiction?

Nora: At this point in my recovery, many previous problematic  behaviors have dropped away, leaving only the core of my addiction –  which started in early childhood – masturbation with disturbing fantasy.   So in describing my sex addiction, I would say that I have been able  to let go of all my problem behaviors without great difficulty but  struggled to achieve abstinence with masturbation with those  fantasies.  I am currently sober and have been for some time, one day at  a time.   My addiction started in early childhood, and later was  obscured by the acting-out I was doing with men.  But it was all deeply  influenced by the control and rage-based fantasy world which started in  my childhood.

// Dr. S:  How did you know it was an addiction?

Nora: I was unable to stop my behaviors on my own.  I would  make promises to myself to stop having one-night stands, unprotected sex  and falling in desperation (love) with unavailable men.  I would be in  one desperate relationship, and cheat on that person, intrigue with  other men, or cheat on him in my fantasies, and go from one bad  situation to the next – from my teens until my late 20’s.  I started  therapy because I was terribly unhappy, and early-on in treatment my  therapist told me to go to Al Anon because I had a family history and  relationship history being with others who struggled with alcohol and  drugs.  I began understanding I was a co-dependent but I wasn’t able to  yet accept my own sex and sex and love addiction issues.

Dr. S.: What made you accept that you were powerless over it/that it was an addiction?

Nora: Accepting my powerlessness has come in stages in my sex  addiction recovery.  About a year or so into individual therapy my  therapist, who had already told me to go to Al Anon, next told me I  needed to go to SAA [Sex Addicts Anonymous].  I was angry and refused.   I am surprised that somehow I didn’t quit therapy.  But later I was a  bit more open because I could see my inability to stop acting-out  sexually and with love addiction.  I hit bottom.  Prior to my bottom, I  was sure I had met the love of my life: a seminary student who was  moving out of the country in a week.  I was certain I would be able to  convince him to stay and be with me!  When he left and I never heard  from him again I came crashing down.  I remember looking around and  seeing natural beauty, and happy people, and I was miserable.  I  remember thinking that I had to quit these behaviors and get a grip.  I  went into to therapy deeply humbled and told my therapist I was going to  go to SAA meetings.

Dr. S.: What made you feel like you needed recovery?  What did you do for recovery?

Nora: I went to SAA.  Unfortunately I didn’t continue to go to  Al Anon.  I didn’t understand at the time the struggle I had with  co-dependency was as serious as my sex addiction problem.  I was still  confused and thought that now that I was in SAA that would take care of  everything.  Of course it didn’t and later I realized a lot of my  inability to get completely sober in SAA was because I wasn’t working on  my co-dependency.  After a while I returned to Al Anon and remain in  both programs now.  I am not in AA but I understand from AA friends who  also go to Al Anon they consider themselves “double winners”.  I hope  that is true for me as well.

Dr. S.: What have you come to understand are the origins of your sex addiction?

Nora: I believe that its origin was in my early childhood.  I  was raised by two parents both with significant mental illness.  My  mother had a severe anxiety disorder and my father struggled with  depression and rage.  There was a tremendous amount of tension, rage,  and fear present at all times in my family.  My father had been a war  veteran and it was only later in his life that I suspected he likely had  PTSD.  He was also a high functioning alcoholic.  He was terribly  violent and for some strange reason, I took on the role of standing up  to him and often bearing the brunt of his violence while no one in the  family stepped-in or defended me from it.  So I was an extremely angry,  fearful, and anxious kid.  I think my anger saved me but it became  eroticized and the root of my sex addiction.  I had all this anger  directed at wanting to save my mother and defeat my father.   I was  never going to let a man or anyone have power over me and I was never  going to let anyone’s anxiety intrude on me – at least that was my power  fantasy, which of course isn’t – and wasn’t – reality.  I wanted to  have power over men and women.  And in my mixed up thinking thought I  could do that sexually.  Unfortunately my concern about power was not  just with men but in all areas of my life and these issues kept me from  being close and intimate with family, friends, and my partner.  At its  root, I was terrified of intimacy.  My “savior” anger has probably at  the same time turned out to be my worst enemy.  It remains a central  part of my recovery work today.

Dr. S.: What made your recovery different as a woman than  it would be for a man?  Why do you think more women don’t get help for  their sex addiction?

Nora: I think that some of the differences have been that  there are far more men in [SAA] meetings than women.  There have been  more women who identify with the “love addiction” side of things and  sometimes I feel they don’t recognize that “love addiction” is often  eroticized fantasy of power and that has to do with sex as well.  I  sometimes feel isolated and alone, and that there still is as much  social stigma about women being sex addicts as there has been  historically about women being open about having sex.  “It’s just not  done.”  I see all the statistics that show women are becoming addicted  to internet porn in larger and larger numbers, but I am not seeing these  women in my meetings.  It makes me sad.  I have seen a tremendous  increase in attendance in the conference call, women-only meetings but  perhaps that still suggests we women are afraid to go to face to face  meetings?  I am glad for the support of the conference call meetings.

Dr. S.: Have you had any relapses?  How do you think about relapse?

Nora: If you are referring to my inner-circle, or bottom-line  behaviors, I have had no slips in areas such as sex outside of my  relationship, affairs, and intrigue.  But I have had slips with  masturbation and fantasy.  Sometimes I understand the slips and  sometimes I have to work to get it.  I have done a fair amount of  therapy and work the 12-steps and understand that I have to practice my  program, one day at a time.  I don’t believe I can promise never to have  a relapse, and that is not about having one foot out the door or making  excuses.  But I think with regards to my core sex addiction, if I stop  taking care of myself and/or stop working my program, I can find myself  in trouble.  Sometimes I feel I am in my addiction even though I am not  acting-out.  This is when I have lost my grip on the “here and now,” and  I confuse where I am powerless and where I have power.  If I think I  can deal with my addiction or stress by myself, then I am in trouble.  I  know I am powerless over addiction, so one day at a time makes me more  responsible to do everything I can do to stay honest and work the steps  and choose to bear the hard stuff that I used to act-out over.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Posted on by helpingsoul

Multiple Faces of Borderline PersonalityBPD consists of characteristics that many people experience in various times of their life.   As you read this article, you may feel you have tendencies toward borderline personality disorder.  It is natural and not warrant to diagnosis.  If you think it is more than just a phase , seek a professional, licensed psycho-therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist.  It is never wise to self diagnose and just as a newly diagnosed, cancer patient may seek a second opinion, it is adviceable to do the same.  The purpose of this article is to educate, inform, and broaden awareness, not diagnose or treat.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-IV, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five or more of the following:

  1.  Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
  2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
  3. Unstable self-image or sense of self
  4. Impulsivity and self-damaging behavior (e.g. spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).
  5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
  6. Marked reactivity of mood (e.g. intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety
  7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
  8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g. frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights)
  9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

People who have BPD report a history of abuse, neglect, and separation as a child.  They have an insecure sense of self; frequent changes in jobs and turbulent relationships.  When they feel threatened they lash out with retaliatory responses, self-mutilation, and self-sacrifice, even at the expense of self or others.

Attitudes towards family, friends, or loved ones can change from admiration to devaluation with intense anger or dislike.

BPD are driven by such defense mechanisms as splitting, projection, and projection identification, omnipotent denial, and magical thinking.  The borderline personality is dominated by shame/ blame defenses and persecutory, abandonment, and annihilation anxieties.

BPD have been shown to have abnormalities in the brain that control aggression and impulsivity.

BPD makes up at least 2% of the general population.

BPD comprises 20% of the inpatient psychiatric populace.

BPD makes up 11% of the outpatients in the mental health system.

An estimated 10% of BPD patients die by suicide (Source YouTube)

A mnemonic for BPD is PRAISE:

P – Paranoid ideas

R – Relationship instability

A – Angry outbursts, affective instability, abandonment fears

I – Impulsive behavior, identity disturbance

S – Suicidal behavior

E – Emptiness

BPD can be treated successfully with the proper therapeutic alliance.  It takes time, consistency, and stability in the relationship so the BPD can form trust.

Dialectical behavior Therapy  is a comprehensive individual or group approach that was created specially to treat BPD.  The modality teaches the client how to take better control of their lives, emotions, and themselves through self-knowledge, emotion regulation, and cognitive restructuring.

BPD encompasses many characteristics that people feel during different stages of their life.   It is a debilitating disorder but there is available treatment and healing with the help of a professional therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist.  There is a better way to live and many resources are available online, mental health organizations, and school systems.

Borderline Personality, Codependency, and Love Addiction

Posted on by helpingsoul

cycle of addiction

Borderline Personality tendencies, codependency, and love addiction are self-destructive behavioral patterns. Each personality seeks constant approval and love from others while abandoning themselves. Through people pleasing, compulsivity, and dependent patterns of behavior, a sense of self is lost. Relationship dynamics runs the extremes from idealization and domination to being controlled. The extremes create a false sense of safety, self-worth, and identity. This articles covers the characteristics of all three behavioral types and relates it to the cycle of addiction.

Everyone embraces some cycle of addiction, whether it be the way you towel off after a shower or mindlessly move through the grocery aisles. Regardless of the activity, the ritual involves unconscious thoughts, feelings and actions that repeats cyclically.

There are four parts to the cycle of addiction. The first stage is preoccupation, the second is the ritual, the third is acting out, and the fourth phase is feelings of guilt and shame.

Many dynamics of relationships exist but for the purpose of this article, codependency, borderline tendencies, and love addiction will be discussed with an emphasis of the cycle of addiction.

During the first stage, thoughts begin to preoccupy themselves with a lover. Persons consume the majority of their time and attention toward their imago. The imago is the image we place on our partner who mirrors our original caretakers. The psychological term for this is transference. The image feels right because it is familiar much like eating macaroni and cheese. Admiration for their partner is comfort food that feeds the attraction to excitement, chaos, and emotional intoxication.

The intense attraction is due to an unconscious drive to heal and resolve childhood wounds. This overwhelming state of infatuation is part of the first stage of addiction called preoccupation. During this phase, the love addict feels high (emotional intoxication) as parental fantasies to heal the abandonment, emptiness, and lack of self-worth are perceived to be met even if for a splitting moment. Thoughts and energy of their partner preoccupy all the love addict’s time. The majority of the day is conceiving ways to hold onto them and bring them closer so that they don’t abandon them.   Love addicts relinquish total control and power to their partner.   Any sense of spiritually becomes impaired as a grandiose persona transfers to their image.

Love addicts relation to family, friends, and personal care begin to change during the second phase of addiction. This stage is called ritual. Compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of their partner override any sense of independence.   Control completely transfers to other. Love addicts become dependent with learned helplessness and neediness. Trust and judgment projects on their partner and smashes their personal values and feelings. Love addicts give up control while abandoning themselves and becoming dependent on their lover to make personal decisions.   Over time love addicts’ careers, relationships, and personal care diminish.

Love addicts deny and refuse to open their eyes to the reality of their false, fantasy love. Similarly, codependents do not acknowledge their partner’s defensive wall, inability for real connection, and love themselves. Codependent relationships create enmeshment just as love addicts take on their partner’s morals and values and blur boundary lines. Relationships are viewed through unconsciously filtered fantasy. Relational dynamics continues between colossal cycles of intense passion and extreme anger. The sense of excitement in the emotional extremes is drunken in like an alcoholic drinks whiskey. The high of emotional intoxication deepens to obsessiveness that then is mistaken for authentic love.

The third period is acting out. Negative consequences of lost identity, irresponsible behavior, and diminishing life conditions are overlooked. Symptoms of loneliness, despair, and self-hatred continue in a downward spiral of intolerable circumstances. Self-worth bottoms and depression creeps in.

As the spiral continues downward, bottom hits with feelings of guilt and shame making up the fourth stage. Love addicts feel stuck as if they cannot cope on their own. Codependents feel they need their partner to survive just as a dependent child. Guilt, shame, internalized anger and resentment grow until the pain is too great, and the hurt is too much to bear. Finally, a glimmer of hope emerges, and awareness unfolds. Denial slowly lifts as light shines down on their partner’s defenses, emotional unavailability, controlling, and manipulating behavior. Further consciousness arises in financial and career sacrifices if they still have a job. Understanding of their isolation surfaces the notions of little contact if any with family and friends. It’s a rude awakening to the mess.

Shame and guilt stage causes love addicts to feel like failures, remain hopeless and lose sight of their discovery. Consequently, they fall deeper into depression. Denial sets in again to lighten the pain, and the cycle begins again.

Borderline personalities obsess again about their partner thinking they will save them from their misery. Codependents shift independence to dependence and as they stay in the relationship; prolonging the cycle of addiction.

Commonly borderline personalities, codependents, and love addicts develop from an alcoholic family or dysfunctional family who are narcissistic, unable to allow another to have an independent self, and cut-off emotionally. The personality types yearn for real connections and intimate relationships yet don’t know how and continue to play cat and mouse.

Childhood hurt and rage from parental abandonment, neglect, and emotional abuse leads to internalizing thoughts of being bad. The child splits the image of his desire internalizing it as bad and places a good internal object-image onto their caretakers.

If a child’s needs of nurture, mirroring of feelings and thoughts, and care lack, the child continues to split parts of themselves; internalizing they are bad, and their parents are good. This pattern is a defensive survival technique so that the child can tolerate the abuse in an environment where he is dependent.   As adults, a bad internalized image persists as a worthless and inadequate identity thus the perceived need to latch on to others for an identity. The wounded adult attracts partner’s who replicate their parents and place the externalized fantasy image of real parts onto their partner ultimately giving them all power and control.

Awareness of the similarity of borderline personalities, codependents, and love addicts can shed light and understanding of internal emotional drivers of behavior. New knowledge brings more choices and the more power and control for healthy, respectful, and loving thoughts, feelings, and actions. Understanding how one’s personal cycle of addiction originated can then begin to find ways to break the cycle and healing can begin. The goal is to feel whole (independent) while having the capacity to give and receive love.