There is a curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” It seems we may all be living with that curse right now. In reality, this is a gateway for great opportunity if one is prepared.
Recovery is the greatest preparation there is for accepting and using change. We in recovery from addiction are better prepared than most “normal” people to deal with what is happening to us right now. Where others see strife and inconvenience, we see new possibilities. We have faced down the known that was killing us and jumped headlong into the unknown that is the life we have now, one day at a time.
Part III – Steps Three and Four (continued)
There is a saying in AA that if you hang around long enough you will eventually hear someone tell your story. Clearly, no one is going to tell my whole story, but there will be enough similarity for me to identify more fully with the speaker’s experience. With the wide variety of experiences, it’s pretty unlikely that all of my story will mesh perfectly with all of someone else’s story.
The instructions for telling your story are laid out in the Big Book as: “Our stories disclose, in a general way, what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” When we talk about what we used to be like, the identification can come in the common problem. When we talk about what we are like now we are referring to the common solution. It is the area of “what happened” that shows a bridge of potentially uncommon experience. How did I get here and if I am here, where am I? Is where I am merely a physical space or is it more expansive than that?
This ultimate change process has been the subject of study for many professionals over the years. Some have spent their entire careers on this one subject. The study of change generally breaks down into two areas: what motivates a person to take actions that bring about change and what causes a person to resist taking actions that could bring about change. In these studies, the result of the change seems irrelevant.
The human reaction to most things requiring change is when there has been time to process it, and the alternatives have become untenable, then making a change may be embraced. It is an arduous process and for many things the process of avoiding change becomes protracted for as long as necessary with little adverse effect. When we are asked to change something we have come to depend on to the point of not being able to imagine a life without it then this very human process begins to work against us. This is what creates the avid resistance even in the face of tremendous negative consequences inherent in not changing.
The decision and motivation to change have to feel like ours. When it feels imposed, the instinct to reject it kicks in. This manifests itself in many ways. The most common is the impairing of hearing. It’s not that the ears are suddenly unable to hear sound — it’s that the brain is unable to translate what is being heard correctly. In some cases this is explained as the “addict brain” protecting the addiction. As mentioned earlier — when we’ve come to depend on something we are not always prepared to hear anything that contradicts what we’ve come to believe.
It’s this that creates the greatest initial barrier to the Third Step. In Step One, we have been presented with a reality that we may not be able to accept completely — powerlessness means loss of the power of choice. If things have gotten bad enough, a person can accept this premise long enough to do something different. But for many, this is merely an intellectual exercise — more convincing is in order as is clear by the amount of pages dedicated to it in the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous).
When confronted with Step Three, it’s as if we’re saying, “Yes, what you intellectually admitted to in Step One must be committed to in Step Three.” That’s a little more extreme than what’s actually said anywhere, but an accurate reaction to a brain that’s not ready to make that kind of commitment.
The next question is, “How committed to this change do I have to be in order to get any benefit from continuing?” The answer is, “not very committed.” Moving into action — any action — changes the thought process. The impetus and objective of the first five chapters of the Big Book is to move the person into action — which is also the title of Chapter Six.
In truth, the first “action” is the personal inventory. This is what Step Three moves the person towards. This action doesn’t necessarily seal the deal, but it moves people into new territory. Once the action is taken the person’s attitude and thinking has a chance to change. It’s not a guarantee of change but it’s a start.
It would be great if a person could just finish a Fourth Step and have their whole life change for them. That doesn’t happen. In fact, there are people who literally take these two steps over and over to no permanent or even long-lasting effect. One of the first questions one would ask at this point has to do with how thorough the person was when making this inventory. Often it’s believed that people leave out key issues from their inventory and keeping secrets that continue to generate their ingrained illness and an inability to stay sober.
I also believe the leap one makes from Step Three to Step Four is often farther than the newly sober person is ready to take. Remember, the idea of the individual “being convinced” seems to be key to moving forward. Is it just conviction that allows us to move forward and be as thorough as possible or is there more to it? A person can move forward without being convinced as long as they are eventually “convinced.” This comes through the process of working the Steps. Many have the conversion from unconvinced to convinced after doing a Fourth and Fifth Step. Others may not find it until they begin to make amends in Steps Eight and Nine. It’s not just working steps that causes this to come about. If a person is committed to going to meetings and participating in the fellowship, this exposure can eventually move a person towards a conviction to this new way of life. NOTE: There are many in recovery who disagree with this observation.
There are quite a number of elements at play here:
- Where is the person coming from? In other words, how bad has it been before they arrive at this first of many thresholds in the change process. It’s a mistake to believe that only those having lost everything are more willing to change than those who have only lost a little. What’s been lost is much more powerful than how much. Even then, the power of the “what” is as varied as the individual attempting to make a change. In that, weight is the true motivation, but that itself is usually not enough to convince someone to change.
- What is the person’s true reason to seek change? Again, this is as varied as the parade of newly “non-drinking” and “non-using” candidates for recovery. It is a peculiarity that this problem attracts people who have a difficult time being honest and forthcoming about anything. Not the least of these is honestly expressing what they are feeling. It is just as hard to get them to be truly forthcoming about why they might be seeking change. Seeking change should not be confused with a desire to change or even a commitment to change. The motivation to seek change may be entirely separated from the need or ability to change. When we delve into this area, we will encounter a world of smoke and mirrors as the person begins to protect what they perceive to be their freedom to make a choice.
- Are they finally willing to do things they don’t believe in? Some people I know don’t adhere to this concept because it imagines people blindly following the orders of others and they may have an opinion about the suitability of these others to lead people properly. All of the people involved in this are damaged in some way by the disease of addiction. There truly isn’t one person more qualified to share their experience with another than anybody else. The process truly begins with one addict/alcoholic talking to another addict/alcoholic. Are there really qualifications?
The treatment field has done a lot to help people suffering from addiction, and they have been able to make great strides at looking at the causes and conditions which often lead someone to this disease. Unfortunately today, the same institutions that were started on the outskirts of the recovery movement are now in a scramble for how to get what they do paid for by an ever increasingly resistant insurance market. As a result, those fundamentals of recovery that used to arm everyone leaving treatment are now made available, mostly through happenstance, only to a few. The ever increasing desire to get paid for something, has allowed people to be sicker and more “excused” for their condition and by extension their behavior.
There is probably as many conceptions of what constitutes Step Four as there are people taking it. This has created a sort of “cottage industry” of Fourth Step instruction. The steps have become fairly pedantic as most of those in recovery long-term seek to “protect” the sanctity of the program and the steps from those who would seek to change it or god forbid improve it. What may have been lost in all of this is the ultimate goal of taking this step and this is seeing where we were wrong. The error handed to many is the idea that we are to look at “our part” which is argued that it makes the process more understandable to those new to the process. I contend that it allows for a potentially slurry or fuzzy utilization of the process. If we are given a pass to do the easier way we will most likely do that and not seek to do any more or seek any further.
When ultimately this plan doesn’t work, we don’t immediately jump to “I guess this didn’t work because I was completely dishonest in my fourth step.” Instead, we toy around with the idea of failure and being “constitutionally incapable,” etc. This is just another way of seeking to take less responsibility. If we are not ready to take full responsibility (including things that we may be unclear about being responsible for) then we aren’t really ready to move forward to the next step.
Notes from the Half Measures Seats 