Speaker 1: Anytime we get triggered or angered, that is a sign
Speaker 1: or a place that is covering a wound, and so
Speaker 1: we need to sort of bring that to the light
Speaker 1: and process our feelings to resolution so that we no
Speaker 1: longer carry them.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves from moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: If you've listened for a while, you know I've talked
Speaker 3: about my recovery, how a twelve step program saved my life,
Speaker 3: but also how I don't go anymore. And every time
Speaker 3: I hear so you're anti twelve step, I'm not but
Speaker 3: when it comes to recovery, nuance tends to get lost.
Speaker 3: And that's why I was excited to talk with Arlene Allen,
Speaker 3: author of The Twelve Step Guide for Skeptics. She breaks
Speaker 3: down the misconceptions that keep people from giving these programs
Speaker 3: a real shot, and how to make them work even
Speaker 3: if parts of them don't resonate for you. We dig
Speaker 3: into the language of twelve step programs, terms like character
Speaker 3: defects and how they can be reframed. We explore navigating
Speaker 3: the spiritual aspects even if you don't believe in a
Speaker 3: traditional higher power. So if you've ever wrestled with recovery,
Speaker 3: been interested in twelve steps, or wondered if a twelve
Speaker 3: step program could work for you, this episode is worth
Speaker 3: your time. I'm Eric Zimmer, and it's time to feed
Speaker 3: our good wolf. Yes, Hi Arlena, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited to have you on. Your book is
Speaker 3: called The Twelve Step Guide for Skeptics, clearing up common
Speaker 3: misconceptions of a path to sobriety and often on the show,
Speaker 3: I mentioned that I was in a twelve step program.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that I have some concerns about twelve step programs.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that I don't go to meetings anymore, and
Speaker 3: the problem is there's a lot, a lot of nuance
Speaker 3: that's missed in that, and so from my side, I'm
Speaker 3: excited to have a chance to really explore all that
Speaker 3: nuance so that people who are listening a understand kind
Speaker 3: of my perspective on that. But also more importantly, because
Speaker 3: this is your interview, they understand the perspective that you're providing.
Speaker 3: I think you did a great job because this idea
Speaker 3: that you say at some point, I wish that people,
Speaker 3: if they had some boundaries, some context, a shift in perspective,
Speaker 3: they could move past some of these common barriers and
Speaker 3: get a lot out of twelve step programs. And I
Speaker 3: think that's really important because despite there being lots of
Speaker 3: other things on offer these days, there is nothing that
Speaker 3: has the reach and is free that twelve step programs do.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that they exist totally. And there are common
Speaker 3: barriers and misperceptions that I think keep a lot of
Speaker 3: people out or drive people out after a while, and
Speaker 3: I think your book does a really nice job of
Speaker 3: dealing with those. So yeah, I think you really accomplished
Speaker 3: your mission that.
Speaker 1: Means a lot to me knowing who you are and
Speaker 1: all of your knowledge, So thank you for saying that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a mission.
Speaker 3: So we're going to get to that book in a second,
Speaker 3: but we will start like we always do, with the Parable.
Speaker 3: And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 3: their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
Speaker 3: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 3: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 3: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 3: grandchild stops think about it for a second. They look
Speaker 3: up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
Speaker 3: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 3: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 1: Well that parable and I have thought about this a lot,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna ask a question, and not to be
Speaker 1: reductionist about it. What is so powerful about it is
Speaker 1: sort of this idea that energy flows where attention goes,
Speaker 1: like whatever we focus on expands, right, But if we
Speaker 1: sort of twist it a little bit and say that
Speaker 1: you know, it's not which one you feed, but what
Speaker 1: do you feed it? Right, Like, I know you're very
Speaker 1: aware of like internal family systems. And I would say
Speaker 1: over the last four or five years, since I learned
Speaker 1: about internal family systems, which is the way to relate
Speaker 1: to all the parts inside of you, including what we
Speaker 1: would call like the bad parts, is that all of
Speaker 1: our parts have a positive intention, and sometimes they do
Speaker 1: it in destructive ways. And I had a mentor early
Speaker 1: on who asked me, you know, we would talk a
Speaker 1: lot about self compassion, and she would ask me, can
Speaker 1: you love your unlovable part? And I thought it was
Speaker 1: an impossible question because oftentimes the answer is no. I
Speaker 1: had that experience, but I wanted to cut parts of
Speaker 1: me out. Yeah, your person I wanted to kill, but
Speaker 1: that's not really possible, right, And there's this old saying
Speaker 1: you can't hate yourself well. And so when she posts
Speaker 1: that question to me, can you love your unlovable parts?
Speaker 1: And it was no. But then I was introduced to
Speaker 1: internal family systems. I began to understand that what I
Speaker 1: would call like the bad role for the bad parts,
Speaker 1: the greed, the hatred, all that stuff, there was a
Speaker 1: positive intention for those roles in my life, and as
Speaker 1: I fed them love and compassion and understanding and appreciation,
Speaker 1: recognizing that I was behaving in those ways out of
Speaker 1: survival skills, that sort of lowered the tension in my body.
Speaker 1: It helped me to release fear and come more from
Speaker 1: a place of love, which is what I think we
Speaker 1: would commonly call the good wolf. And so the approach
Speaker 1: to getting rid of the bad wolf is to actually
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that leads us right into I think something we
Speaker 3: can talk about with twelve step programs, because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of nuance in this and twelve step programs. One
Speaker 3: of the things that you say right out of the gate,
Speaker 3: and you say again and again and again. I just
Speaker 3: want to get it out there for everything else it's
Speaker 3: about to follow, is that people are not the program.
Speaker 3: Thank you, right, People are not the program. And so
Speaker 3: as I talk about things that challenge me in twelve
Speaker 3: step meetings, you're going to hear me talk about people
Speaker 3: from time to time, right, And so I think it's
Speaker 3: really important that everybody understand that, like, people are not
Speaker 3: the program. You can need different meetings and get different experiences.
Speaker 3: You can just ignore or the one person that says
Speaker 3: stuff that you don't like, Like, there's lots of ways
Speaker 3: to work with that.
Speaker 1: All.
Speaker 3: Right, Now back to where we were, which is that
Speaker 3: you're talking about loving all these parts of ourselves and
Speaker 3: the twelve step literature as we go into it. But
Speaker 3: the twelve step literature is largely based originally on the
Speaker 3: original text, which was AA's Big book Alcohol tends to
Speaker 3: be fairly strong in its language about selfishness is our problem. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we have these character defects that we have to get
Speaker 3: rid of. Right, there's not a whole lot there necessarily
Speaker 3: at first glance about loving these parts of us that
Speaker 3: are problematic. I often would hear people say I'm still
Speaker 3: a liar, cheating, a thief. And that's not said in
Speaker 3: a like I'm proud of it way. It's there's some
Speaker 3: part of me that's bad, and I need to use
Speaker 3: this program to get rid of it. So let's just
Speaker 3: start talking there. As a thing that I do know
Speaker 3: that rubs some people wrong about twelve step language is
Speaker 3: that idea they don't want to talk about character defects.
Speaker 3: They may feel terrible about themselves already, So let's help
Speaker 3: reframe that or give that some context.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the two of the matter. Listen, that book
Speaker 1: was written in nineteen thirty five, Right, we're sort of
Speaker 1: judging their content of information based on the information that
Speaker 1: we have today. So we can see the stark contrast
Speaker 1: in these ideologies, and so I think, first off, I
Speaker 1: just want to say that that's actually very valid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very valid to just be like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of this language in there that
Speaker 1: is sort of reinforcing shame as opposed to resolving it.
Speaker 1: Like this idea of character defects, I don't actually like
Speaker 1: that word myself. Now. I will tell people to go
Speaker 1: back to literature all the time, and I do have
Speaker 1: my own opinions, and one of my opinions is that
Speaker 1: I like to think of character defects as survival skills, right,
Speaker 1: like the character defects. Like if you do read the literature,
Speaker 1: they do talk about how these are natural instincts that
Speaker 1: are out of balance. So while there is talk about
Speaker 1: character defects, there is also sort of compassionate language around hey,
Speaker 1: this is a natural instinct and it was just out
Speaker 1: of balance. But we do have this negativity bias where
Speaker 1: we do sort of focus on the negative and discard
Speaker 1: the positive and so if both things are in it,
Speaker 1: it just depends on what you focus on, like the
Speaker 1: good wolf in the bubble, but both are actually valid.
Speaker 1: And I am very sensitive to people who are vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and you know, to go to this program feeling guilt
Speaker 1: and shame and to be confronted with that is very
Speaker 1: challenging on so many levels. And I think like when
Speaker 1: someone you know kind of hits bottom and they're just like, okay,
Speaker 1: like there are some things that are not working. I'm
Speaker 1: willing to surrender and receive information like you're actually doing
Speaker 1: some stuff that's wrong, which is just flat wrong. Yep.
Speaker 1: And so it is a little harsh. There is a
Speaker 1: lot of focus on character defects because those are the
Speaker 1: things that need corrected. We don't need to correct the
Speaker 1: good things already. Yeah, it's okay, let's talk about the problems.
Speaker 1: Let's bring some solutions and so that you can feel better.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think the modern insight that underlies this,
Speaker 3: which isn't in the book, and we could debate whether
Speaker 3: the book should be updated or not, but is that yes,
Speaker 3: character defects and yes, our selfishness are actually really problems,
Speaker 3: and they are part of the reason that we are
Speaker 3: stuck in the mess that we are in. The more
Speaker 3: modern insight is those things exist for a reason. Those
Speaker 3: things are serving some sort of purpose, and again that
Speaker 3: purpose is not working anymore. But it made sense, and
Speaker 3: so it moves from as Gabor Montek famously said, don't
Speaker 3: ask why the addiction, asked why the pain exactly. But
Speaker 3: I do think for me that that idea of particularly
Speaker 3: the lines about you know, selfishness, self centeredness, is the
Speaker 3: root of our problem. Those changed my life. It's strong medicine,
Speaker 3: it is strong medicine. But for me it was right
Speaker 3: because of what I realized was whether I was thinking
Speaker 3: good about myself or thinking bad about myself, what I
Speaker 3: was doing was always thinking about just myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I showed up pretty broken. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: self centered to the extreme, self seeking to the extreme.
Speaker 1: But why was I seeking so hard? Yeah? I had
Speaker 1: needs that were not being met and all my survival
Speaker 1: skills that I had developed in childhood were not transferable
Speaker 1: to healthy adult life. And so, you know, I was
Speaker 1: met with that strong medicine. But I was just at
Speaker 1: that point where I was like, my way is not working,
Speaker 1: and I was in such a state of humility that
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, tell me how you did this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let's not get it twisted. You know, people typically
Speaker 1: go there because their lives are It's not just that
Speaker 1: they're not going well, they're going bad. Like really all right,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like, although there is
Speaker 1: a lot of conversation now with like dry January stuff,
Speaker 1: like people are recognizing that living in alcohol free is
Speaker 1: about optimization. It's not necessarily because you have a problem.
Speaker 1: But most people go there because life is terrible. And
Speaker 1: that's where I was. I was in so much emotional pain.
Speaker 1: I was like, do I kill myself or do I
Speaker 1: get sober? And it was something I had to deliberate.
Speaker 3: I was like, right, right, And I think that the
Speaker 3: couple of things that make a lot of this difficult
Speaker 3: in a way are that, indeed, addiction issues alcohol use
Speaker 3: disorder ranges on a vast spectrum. It's one person's quote
Speaker 3: unquote bottom is very different than what another person's is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think also it's a good thing on the
Speaker 3: whole that there are alternatives to twelve step programs, because
Speaker 3: I think even when we get past some of the
Speaker 3: misconceptions that you're talking about, they're not for everybody, So
Speaker 3: I think it's good that there's other things out there.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of glad for me that there wasn't me too, right,
Speaker 3: because I was dying. I was going to go to
Speaker 3: jail for a really long time, and I'm glad I
Speaker 3: didn't spend any more time than I already had messing
Speaker 3: around with apps or this or that. Like I just
Speaker 3: went and it was the only thing that there was saying,
Speaker 3: and it was a little bit intense, but it worked.
Speaker 3: It saved my life, you know, they saved my life twice.
Speaker 3: And so again I feel mixed because I think it's
Speaker 3: really good that there are alternatives, and for some people
Speaker 3: an app will stop their drinking in an optimization type way.
Speaker 3: That would not have worked for me at that point, right,
Speaker 3: I needed something far more than that.
Speaker 1: Same. Yeah, I think we got Seber the same year,
Speaker 1: And I'm also very grateful that there wasn't anything else available,
Speaker 1: Like there was no recovery memoirs, there were no you know,
Speaker 1: there is sober social media accounts, which is kind of
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why I wrote the book, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that are openly bashing twelve Step,
Speaker 1: but you know, I'm not one of those that it's
Speaker 1: this or and only this, Like I'm an and the Girl,
Speaker 1: I'm like the hill I will die on. Is the
Speaker 1: twelve Steps are a worthy endeavor. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: the only thing that you should do. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that there are amazing benefits to it, largely for free,
Speaker 1: and that it's just a realthly endeavor. I'm an and girl,
Speaker 1: So I'm like twelve steps and therapy, I'm yoga and
Speaker 1: twelve start. You know, there's just so many different modalities.
Speaker 1: This is such a great time to get sober or
Speaker 1: to get alcohol free, if that's kind of a thing
Speaker 1: for optimization. But I'm just saying in this book that
Speaker 1: the Twelve Steps are a worthy endeavor. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to meet some of the roadblocks head on, which I
Speaker 1: think are actually very valid and just be like, here's
Speaker 1: a way to round that so that you get the benefit.
Speaker 1: Because it benefits are so good. Like you said, it
Speaker 1: saved your life, me too, but it not only saved
Speaker 1: my life, like it gave me sort of a very
Speaker 1: practical and pragmatic way for problem resolution, for self examination,
Speaker 1: for goal achievement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea, and let's address some of
Speaker 3: these barriers upfront. Okay, I think there are two types
Speaker 3: of barriers, right. Barrier one is do I really need
Speaker 3: to get sober? Barrier two is do I need to
Speaker 3: do it in this way in this program? So I
Speaker 3: want to talk about category one just for a second,
Speaker 3: and I think the first one there and you talk
Speaker 3: about this is you know, can't I just learn to
Speaker 3: moderate and say a little bit about that?
Speaker 1: Well, listen, in society, like alcohol is the only drug
Speaker 1: you have to explain why you're not using it. We
Speaker 1: are just so bombarded with messages of you know, drinking
Speaker 1: it's fun and all that stuff. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of external influence to drink, right, and so it's very
Speaker 1: hard to come to the just and listen. Like for me,
Speaker 1: it was a reliable source of medicine. It was medicine
Speaker 1: for me, to be honest. It was my way of
Speaker 1: emotion management that ultimately did not work well for me
Speaker 1: because when I just alcohol, there's like this switch that
Speaker 1: gets flipped and all I want is more. And so
Speaker 1: I did try to moderate for two years after a
Speaker 1: particularly bad night involving the police. I didn't end up
Speaker 1: going to jail, partly because I was dating this policeman.
Speaker 3: Good strategy, perhaps going to get in trouble with the
Speaker 3: law often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've.
Speaker 3: Never contemplated that one till now. I never this opportunity
Speaker 3: totally kind to run this thing out a few more
Speaker 3: years at least, you know it.
Speaker 1: Jeez. Yeah. I had a really bad night and I
Speaker 1: woke up the next morning. I really hurt my sister
Speaker 1: and physically and emotionally and super traumatized. And I woke
Speaker 1: up with that horrible, sickening, sinking feeling that something terrible
Speaker 1: had happened the night before, and I had to hear
Speaker 1: everything secondhand because I was a blackout drinker. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: And that's when I started asking the questions like am
Speaker 1: I an alcoholic? Like what makes me different from all
Speaker 1: my friends who drink like I do? And it just
Speaker 1: like one question, let to do another? And so I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, let me just try to
Speaker 1: moderate this thing. I'm me just try to learn how
Speaker 1: to control it and drink like a lady. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I was drinking like a trucker. I was not drinking
Speaker 1: for you, like I was sailor, Lord have mercy. So
Speaker 1: I was like, let me, try to control this thing.
Speaker 1: And so I spent the next two years in the
Speaker 1: self help section of Barnes and Noble, like trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what was my problem. Really, yeah, it can't
Speaker 1: be this truth is as I was. I was kind
Speaker 1: of on the right track. But you know, thirty years
Speaker 1: ago I was reading books like Men Are from Mars,
Speaker 1: Women Are from Venus, the Seven Spiritual Laws of success
Speaker 1: or money or Abundance. I forgot what it was. I
Speaker 1: was a deepalk droper book. But I was trying to
Speaker 1: think my way into right living kind of a thing,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to moderate. So that was like
Speaker 1: a glass of water between drinks. That was eating before
Speaker 1: I went out, and blah blah blah, keep a couple
Speaker 1: of assprun out a glass of water by my nightstand,
Speaker 1: because when you wake up at three o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning with cotton mouth, you're so like, yep, completely dehydrant
Speaker 1: out of I thought, oh, yeah, if I could prevent
Speaker 1: the hangover, maybe that was the thing. Vitamins whatever. So
Speaker 1: I didn't have a horrible night every night I drank.
Speaker 1: But when I had a horrible night, it was because
Speaker 1: I was drinking. And I really just could not moderate.
Speaker 1: I couldn't predict what would happen once I started drinking,
Speaker 1: even with all these crazy plans I had in place.
Speaker 1: And I kind of joke around that I had two
Speaker 1: alter egos when I was drinking. I had bad ass
Speaker 1: Bency or Windy Windy because I was either fighting or crying.
Speaker 1: There's a third, bloody Susan, and literally everybody loved her. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd like to joke around that if I could encapsulate
Speaker 1: my drinking experience, is that if it was in a bottle,
Speaker 1: a bag, or blue jeans, I was doing it.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 1: That's good, phil void literally and figuratively super fun, that's good. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Moderation is an interesting one. There's a line from
Speaker 3: a big book that seared itself into my brain, which
Speaker 3: was I may not get it exact because I'm in
Speaker 3: a little bit of ways from it, but the thought
Speaker 3: that somehow, some way they'll control their drinking is the
Speaker 3: great obsession of every abnormal drinker.
Speaker 1: Control and enjoy.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, yes, okay, so control and enjoy their drinking.
Speaker 3: Because I was trying to control and enjoy it from
Speaker 3: very early on. I knew like hang on like something
Speaker 3: in me was like, something's off. But I tried moderation too,
Speaker 3: and the first time that I got sober, I was
Speaker 3: a homeless heroin addict who's no doubt in anyone's mind,
Speaker 3: including mine. I had fifty years at jail time. I mean,
Speaker 3: there was just no doubt. This isn't working. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: stayed sober about eight years. I went back out and
Speaker 3: all I did when I went back out was drink
Speaker 3: and smoke an enormous amount of marijuana. And over time
Speaker 3: it began to dawn on me, this isn't going so
Speaker 3: well now. I wasn't having external consequences. Everything on the
Speaker 3: outside was okay. I had the best job I'd ever had,
Speaker 3: I was getting promoted, you know, But inside I knew
Speaker 3: I was really sick. But I also knew that, like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to be abstinate and go back
Speaker 3: to recovery. God, I don't want to do that. So
Speaker 3: maybe I can moderate. And I thought to myself, there's
Speaker 3: a program called moderation management out there. I'm going to
Speaker 3: try this. And I was moderation Management's best student for
Speaker 3: a while, or what I should say is I was
Speaker 3: its most ardent student at trying and still got in
Speaker 3: f but I remember nights like this where it's a
Speaker 3: like eleven thirty night, I got to get up at
Speaker 3: six thirty in the morning. I'm already fairly hammered at
Speaker 3: this point, and I'm standing by the sink and my
Speaker 3: brain is fighting me. I'm fighting my brain. It's like
Speaker 3: one more shot, one more shot, And of course I'm
Speaker 3: going there's no reasonable reason to have one more shot.
Speaker 3: You're already three or four shots over what moderation looks like.
Speaker 3: And yet I mean, I lost that battle more often
Speaker 3: than I won it. And I had that realization that
Speaker 3: you just talked about control and enjoy I realized I
Speaker 3: can try and control my drinking not very well, but
Speaker 3: it's miserable. It's miserable because I'm having the eleven thirty
Speaker 3: at night battle over a shot of whiskey that's tearing
Speaker 3: me apart inside. Or I can just let off the
Speaker 3: reins and enjoy it, except that at this point for me,
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of enjoyment and a whole lot
Speaker 3: of trouble. And I'm really glad that I tried moderation management,
Speaker 3: like really tried it. Yeah, because it just now when
Speaker 3: my brain starts that dance up again. I'm like, Nope,
Speaker 3: you tried, done work, not for you.
Speaker 1: You had enough evidence. Yeah, I think that's such important
Speaker 1: information to how like, I love this idea of run
Speaker 1: the experiment, and we ran the experiment. We ran the
Speaker 1: moderation experiment, and we gave it the old college try.
Speaker 1: You know, an experiment. You know, I love the lens
Speaker 1: of science because it has a way of depersonalizing things,
Speaker 1: so like shame and guilt are not involved. But it's like,
Speaker 1: let's just run the experiment. And I ran the experiment,
Speaker 1: and I tried and tried and tried. I dancy myself
Speaker 1: a clever girl. It's like, okay, but an experiment is
Speaker 1: you have a presupposition, and do you run the experiment.
Speaker 1: You take some actions, right, you have some beliefs, you
Speaker 1: make some decisions, you take some actions, and then you
Speaker 1: examine the result. Right, And my results were coming out
Speaker 1: pretty clear that I am just not that person who
Speaker 1: can moderate. There are some people who can. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: in all transparency, there are some people who can do that.
Speaker 1: You know, like you said in the beginning, you know,
Speaker 1: addiction or alcohol usessor is a spectrum, so there will
Speaker 1: be people somewhere along the line. Who can choose to
Speaker 1: soften it's not a thing, or maybe they can choose
Speaker 1: to moderate. For me, it just took up too much
Speaker 1: mental bandwidth because I have this element of obsession that
Speaker 1: maybe some people don't have. Yes, and so once I
Speaker 1: start drinking, it's that switch that gets flipped that says
Speaker 1: more and I don't have any ability to moderate that.
Speaker 1: So going through this process of trying to moderate, I
Speaker 1: would argue, is essential.
Speaker 3: You're not going to give up something that you love
Speaker 3: without a really good reason, right, love love, Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so I agree. I think the moderation is a useful experiment.
Speaker 3: I love the lens of experiment too, and I tried
Speaker 3: that experiment. That's how I went back out after eight years.
Speaker 3: Was this belief like, well, I'm just not going to
Speaker 3: do heroin. Obviously that's a terrible idea. We all know that,
Speaker 3: and so I'm just going to drink. And the experiment
Speaker 3: it's sort of like when they test the effectiveness of
Speaker 3: a drug. You know, in the first month, you're like, hey,
Speaker 3: this drug's pretty effective, and then they realize that after
Speaker 3: three years it will kill you. That was kind of
Speaker 3: my experiment, and that's not an experiment that I want
Speaker 3: to run again, because experiments can be expensive, you know,
Speaker 3: and deadly, these type of experiments, and so you know,
Speaker 3: I ran at once, didn't work, and I remain fairly
Speaker 3: clear that I can't do that. So okay, moderation, you
Speaker 3: go through it, you figure it out. And let's say
Speaker 3: we now arrive at a point where I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: it seems pretty clear that there's no moderation for me. Right,
Speaker 3: I'm either on or off, but I don't have that
Speaker 3: slow down switch.
Speaker 1: The cost is too high.
Speaker 3: Yep, So now I need help. I'm looking around at
Speaker 3: help and I see twelve step programs and I go, ugh, Right.
Speaker 1: Isn't that funny that that's like the common response to
Speaker 1: twelve I was like, oh God, Like.
Speaker 3: Well, I think honestly, for nearly anybody who is facing
Speaker 3: down getting sober, it could be anything, and they would
Speaker 3: be like, uh to anything that asks much out of them. Right,
Speaker 3: But twelve step programs people know more about them than
Speaker 3: they do any other alternative because of the media and
Speaker 3: all of these different things. Right, we have an idea
Speaker 3: of what that means. Whereas if I said you should
Speaker 3: go to smart recovery, people would be like, Okay, what
Speaker 3: the heck is that no one has any idea because
Speaker 3: you know, it's a small thing. So one of the
Speaker 3: things that you say is I almost missed out on
Speaker 3: my sobriety because the program isn't what I thought it
Speaker 3: was going to be a sad, shameful group of dingy
Speaker 3: church basement dwellers.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought it was.
Speaker 3: Well that some meetings are kind of that way, to
Speaker 3: be honest.
Speaker 1: There's a few, to be honest, you know what, I've
Speaker 1: grown to love those two. Me too, Me too, but yeah,
Speaker 1: because the essence is that it wasn't what I thought
Speaker 1: it was, and it's no interesting. You know, I coach
Speaker 1: people who want to get sober who don't want to
Speaker 1: do that, and I will always ask why yeah, or
Speaker 1: even the people that interview, I always ask why not?
Speaker 1: And it's always like so there are to read big
Speaker 1: trigger words that typically heat people out if you look
Speaker 1: at the steps at face value. Like when I read that,
Speaker 1: like I wrote this book because I'm a skeptic, I
Speaker 1: saw the steps and I saw god, I saw alcoholic,
Speaker 1: and I saw powerless and I was like, no, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then my way wasn't working. There wasn't nothing else.
Speaker 1: I was like, fine, I'll go yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: I met this girl. I talk about her in the
Speaker 1: book a lot kimmers. You know. I was like, listen,
Speaker 1: if this is religious, if this is the God thing, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to do this because
Speaker 1: I grew up in the church, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I had been begged Gog my whole life to fix me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here we are still human, right. I was still
Speaker 1: make all these mistakes. I was still acting in ways
Speaker 1: that were not in alignment with the values that I
Speaker 1: grew up with, and so I thought I was a
Speaker 1: bad person. So I kept asking God to fix me.
Speaker 1: And I got to this point where I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, if I can't be good, I kept failing.
Speaker 1: I thought I was failing, and so I decided if
Speaker 1: I couldn't be good, I was gonna be good at
Speaker 1: being bad. So that's so. And I got sober, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, if that's what this is,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to see it. And
Speaker 1: this grip pulled me aside and she was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a thing, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: She's like, just for funzies. Let's do this little exercise.
Speaker 1: She said, take pace paper out on one side, write
Speaker 1: down all the attributes that you would want God to be.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, well it's like loving powerful,
Speaker 1: I'm clearly the favorites ape Like it had to make
Speaker 1: sense to me, like what did I really know about God?
Speaker 1: Because I grew up with God and there were times
Speaker 1: when I had spiritual experiences and so I was trying
Speaker 1: to draw from, like all the positive things I had
Speaker 1: felt growing up. And she's like, well, what don't you
Speaker 1: want it to be? And I was like, well, punish
Speaker 1: you know this idea of hell? What is it all about?
Speaker 1: How can you say that you love me but then
Speaker 1: condemn me to hell? Like I'm born on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the planet and they have a different religion
Speaker 1: or whatever. And she was like okay. So when I
Speaker 1: was done, she said, hand me a piece of paper
Speaker 1: and I handed it to her and she tore it
Speaker 1: in half as she handed me back the bahasative side
Speaker 1: and she's like, let's just start with this. I was like,
Speaker 1: that's it, and she's like that's it. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh good. So it was introduced to this idea that
Speaker 1: you could readefine words. Yeah, like who gets to decide
Speaker 1: what God means to you?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: You do? Like I have like this rebellious nature. I
Speaker 1: was like, nobody's going to tell me what God means
Speaker 1: to me? Yeah, I'm going to decide. But I just
Speaker 1: didn't know that that was an option until she told me.
Speaker 1: It was an option that was revolutionary to me.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just in testing it in
Speaker 3: a detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to
Speaker 3: pause and reflect. What's your one big insight so far
Speaker 3: and how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 3: and be present. Cant it. If you want to keep
Speaker 3: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 3: I'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
Speaker 3: SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with
Speaker 3: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 3: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you Feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we'd love to welcome you as well, So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good wolves together. I think that line that as
Speaker 3: a last second decision, tacked on to the end of
Speaker 3: the third step after a whole lot of debate about it.
Speaker 3: God comma as we understood him, and now it still
Speaker 3: says him. But at least it gave this little wiggle
Speaker 3: room there, right, And I bet that line saved millions
Speaker 3: of people's lives. You know, my problem was different around God.
Speaker 3: My problem was I came in and I didn't believe
Speaker 3: in God, and so I came in and I was told,
Speaker 3: you need to have a higher power and it needs
Speaker 3: to you know, you can make it whatever you want.
Speaker 3: But it's nineteen ninety four in Columbus, Ohio. And this
Speaker 3: is what ninety five percent of us are talking about
Speaker 3: when we say God. We may drop the judging, shameful pieces,
Speaker 3: but we still believe it's this thing that's going to
Speaker 3: intervene on your behalf and get you sober. And I
Speaker 3: was so desperate. I was like, Okay, fine, okay, I'm in.
Speaker 3: I'm in, I'm in. I'll do whatever it takes. And
Speaker 3: I tried and I tried, and I tried to believe.
Speaker 3: And that's something really bad happened in my life. And
Speaker 3: I realized that I didn't have a God that made
Speaker 3: any sense to me. And that was the beginning of
Speaker 3: the unraveling. It still took me a few years, but
Speaker 3: eventually I went back out. So when I came back
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, I can't pretend again, what
Speaker 3: do I do with God? Because I don't believe in
Speaker 3: an interventionist God that does anything. I don't believe in
Speaker 3: a person I just that's me, right. And what I
Speaker 3: realized was I can't build my life on something I
Speaker 3: don't personally believe. That's a bad strategy. And so then
Speaker 3: for me it became I need to do an even
Speaker 3: more radical re understanding of what this means, and so
Speaker 3: my problem was slightly different, but it is doable. As
Speaker 3: you mentioned in the book, some people just have God
Speaker 3: be an acronym for group of drunks, meaning I believe
Speaker 3: the people in the program, the support of that can
Speaker 3: help me get sober. And I think that's a really
Speaker 3: good one. Some people say good order direction, right, that's
Speaker 3: another one.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 3: It ended up being I believe that there are these
Speaker 3: sort of principles that we see again and again across
Speaker 3: religious traditions, across philosophical traditions, across psychological traditions. And my
Speaker 3: belief became if I had tried to live according to
Speaker 3: those principles to the best of my ability, yeah, it'll
Speaker 3: be enough to keep me sober. It'll be enough for
Speaker 3: me to handle what happens. And that turned out to
Speaker 3: be a foundation that I could build on. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: will say that over time, because I don't go to
Speaker 3: twelve step meetings anymore, and we'll eventually get to what
Speaker 3: that is. Over time. I got tired of translating in
Speaker 3: my head. I got tired of hearing somebody talk about
Speaker 3: God and me go, okay, well, what that actually means
Speaker 3: to me because a lot of the ways it was
Speaker 3: talked about was in the interventionist sense, and that didn't
Speaker 3: make sense to me. So not only was I translating
Speaker 3: the word, I had to try and translate the sentiment,
Speaker 3: and just for me, over time, for me, it grew tiring.
Speaker 1: I could see that matter is. You know, it's for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. It's a great place to start. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I love this idea of layering tools. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: So let's just say for arguments, say you know the
Speaker 1: book Alcoholic Anonymous talks about, you know, gaining access to
Speaker 1: power like that. Really, if we kind of boil it
Speaker 1: all down, that's what it's about, access to power. And
Speaker 1: you and I together is dronger than me by myself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that you can't read the label from
Speaker 1: inside the jar. And when I'm in the swirling emotions
Speaker 1: of despair and all that stuff, I'm in a jar
Speaker 1: and I can't see. But if you said, hey, Arlena,
Speaker 1: just share with me what you're thinking and I talk
Speaker 1: about it, there's something about talking about it that relieves
Speaker 1: some sort of stress. There's a connection that happens, there's
Speaker 1: some validation. You'd be like yeah, I could see how
Speaker 1: you feel that way. Like to me, those are like
Speaker 1: the magic words. I could see how you feel that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so validating, right, and there's something that then makes me
Speaker 1: feel safe and then my defenses come down and then
Speaker 1: the truth comes out. And so let's just say that
Speaker 1: it's a good place to start because those are the
Speaker 1: types of dynamics and that is a power greater than myself.
Speaker 1: Like just at mear minimum, that in and of itself,
Speaker 1: to me was enough. And I really struggled with making
Speaker 1: sense of God until Cameras was like, just focus on
Speaker 1: these things and just work out everything. Yeah, the mental
Speaker 1: gymnastics required to try to figure it out. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just too much, right, But you know, we focus on
Speaker 1: what we do want, not what we don't want, right,
Speaker 1: And so I have had this ability to sort of
Speaker 1: like let go of the rest.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Your book talks about why people don't go to a
Speaker 3: and then why people leave, and so we're going to
Speaker 3: come back around to leave, although I keep sort of
Speaker 3: jumping in because we're in the right spot. But what
Speaker 3: are the you said three big reasons that people kind
Speaker 3: of resist. You know, I think we talked about God
Speaker 3: the other was the word alcoholic. Talk to me about
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, resistance is huge. Put a pin in that. I
Speaker 1: want to circle back to that. But the word alcohol
Speaker 1: like typically brings up these ideas of a man in
Speaker 1: a trench code. Homeless people typically serves up really negative images.
Speaker 1: But I started going to meetings and meeting these amazing people.
Speaker 1: I'm from California, the Silicon Valley area, and I was
Speaker 1: exposed to a lot of professionals. There was like homeless
Speaker 1: people too, And this is one of those things, like
Speaker 1: I found the right meetings that served me, and I
Speaker 1: went to like the bougie side of town and hung
Speaker 1: out with the fancy people who were sober. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be like them because they were seeing things that
Speaker 1: resonated with me, and they see that you're kind of
Speaker 1: the average of the five people you spend the most
Speaker 1: time with. I decided to hang out with people who
Speaker 1: were like account executives or doctors, lawyers, like I related
Speaker 1: to them better and they had what I wanted. So
Speaker 1: I did a lot of that. But I was like,
Speaker 1: if that's what an alcoholic is, signed me up. Like
Speaker 1: I wanted what these people had, and so really, what
Speaker 1: I've come to understand that when people use that word
Speaker 1: freely is because these are people who have stood at
Speaker 1: the abyss of despair, of life and death, and even
Speaker 1: though they had tremendous guilt and shame, they decided to
Speaker 1: do self examination, which requires a huge amount of heart.
Speaker 1: Like these people are badass, Like they are able to practice.
Speaker 1: They're really striving for things like honesty and integrity. Like
Speaker 1: you were talking about the Principles. I got a friend
Speaker 1: who's a staunch atheist. He's been going to AA for
Speaker 1: forty years, and he just decided that he was going
Speaker 1: to listen for the principles and do that. I was like, sane, sane,
Speaker 1: because even though you know, I have this relationship with
Speaker 1: this higher power thing that I don't really understand. I
Speaker 1: kind of think of it his love, we're both still
Speaker 1: talking about the same thing and practicality. And so people
Speaker 1: rail at the word alcoholic at first, it's because they're
Speaker 1: missing some information. That's a limiting belief. Limiting belief is
Speaker 1: either missing information or incorrect information. And so I would
Speaker 1: sort of argue that if you are like throwing AA out,
Speaker 1: it's because you're harboring a limiting belief. And I'm what
Speaker 1: you would call recovery promiscuous. I want all the tools
Speaker 1: that are going to benefit my life. So I don't
Speaker 1: see the word alcoholic is a shame label. I see
Speaker 1: it as a badge of honor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. We've explored this topic a lot on
Speaker 3: the show, and it's this idea of labels and diagnoses
Speaker 3: when it comes to addiction, mental health, all of this stuff.
Speaker 3: And I think that ultimately what we want is we
Speaker 3: want to be able to use labels when they are
Speaker 3: useful to us and discard them when they're not. Exactly
Speaker 3: and to your point, know what that label actually really means,
Speaker 3: or at least means to me. I still I'm seventeen
Speaker 3: years sober ill. I don't go to twelve step programs.
Speaker 3: But if you ask me, are you an alcoholic? I
Speaker 3: would say yes. But that only means one thing to
Speaker 3: me today. It means that I'm someone who cannot successfully
Speaker 3: drink alcohol. That's the extent of it. It doesn't mean
Speaker 3: I'm still sick. It doesn't mean that I have character defects.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean that I'm different than other people except
Speaker 3: in one way right to me, because I don't feel
Speaker 3: like I'm different than the average person. Right, I don't
Speaker 3: feel like there's like people in recovery and then normal
Speaker 3: people like I think that's a useful distinction for a while,
Speaker 3: and then eventually for me became unuseful. And so for me,
Speaker 3: it's just that one thing I cannot successfully take mind
Speaker 3: altering substances. Yeah, I love what you said about a
Speaker 3: limiting belief right being either incorrect information or was it
Speaker 3: not enough information or missing information? Yeah, yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just interesting because this program has allowed me
Speaker 1: to grow on a ball. What I need also changes yep. Right,
Speaker 1: And I went to meetings for so long because it
Speaker 1: was sort of just convenient way for me to check
Speaker 1: a lot of boxes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is. I mean that in a good way.
Speaker 3: Like when I stepped away, I had to reverse engineer
Speaker 3: in my mind, what do I think I'm getting there?
Speaker 3: Why is this working? And now I got to make
Speaker 3: sure that I'm getting those things elsewhere and that does
Speaker 3: take some patching together. Whereas AA, like you said, it's
Speaker 3: a very convenient, you know, one stop shop for a
Speaker 3: lot of good things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is where I'm an and girl like. I
Speaker 1: still do twelve step meetings occasionally, but I moved five
Speaker 1: years ago, and so I quit going to in person
Speaker 1: meetings because in the area that I'm in, it just
Speaker 1: wasn't feeding me anymore. Yep, And so I decided I
Speaker 1: needed to layer in more things.
Speaker 3: I should be clear, I will go to a twelve
Speaker 3: step meeting. I mean, like my friend Chris is fairly
Speaker 3: active in the program. I'll go with him occasionally. I
Speaker 3: will go just because, I mean, on one level, I
Speaker 3: love them. I do think there is a type of
Speaker 3: beauty that you see in a twelve step meeting that
Speaker 3: you don't see most of the time anywhere else. And
Speaker 3: it's there in pretty much every meeting if you look
Speaker 3: for it. And I am not like against AA or
Speaker 3: twelve step programs in any way, shape or form, And
Speaker 3: I'm not like I won't go. They just for me
Speaker 3: in the last X number of years didn't feel like
Speaker 3: the best way for me to become the next best
Speaker 3: version of myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that it leads to a really good point,
Speaker 1: is that we need to really trust our instincts. Like
Speaker 1: everything you said is so valid. The whole point is
Speaker 1: that we're growing and evolving, and so we need different things.
Speaker 1: And it's not that I don't like twelve step meetings.
Speaker 1: It's that I have a crating to go deeper or
Speaker 1: for more. Yeah, and so I started exploring other things.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, sometimes it's just
Speaker 1: easier to jump on a zoom meeting and see some
Speaker 1: friends and hear some good stories, be reminded of information
Speaker 1: that transformed my life. You know, they say that we
Speaker 1: have a quick forgetter, but you know you were talking
Speaker 1: about sort of made me think of what neuroscience calls
Speaker 1: the default mode network. It's sort of like the way
Speaker 1: that it's like the neural And I love science because
Speaker 1: when I don't have faith, I have science, and science
Speaker 1: is actually explaining a lot of the spiritual dynamics that
Speaker 1: you and I understand now, right, And so what I
Speaker 1: know now is that our brain operates on a default
Speaker 1: mode network. It's the way our neurology was developed. There
Speaker 1: was this really good book called What Happened than to You?
Speaker 1: By doctor Bruce Perry and Overwmberin. It's a slight variation
Speaker 1: on the question of what's wrong with you? And it's
Speaker 1: such a more gentle, compassionate that it's like, what happened
Speaker 1: to you? Well, what happened to me is that I
Speaker 1: had a lot of trauma when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: and it shaped my neurology. It shaped how I respond
Speaker 1: to stress in a very specific way, and so in
Speaker 1: my adulthood I have learned tools and practices that reshape
Speaker 1: that default. But what I know for sure is that
Speaker 1: if I stop doing all these practices, I will revert
Speaker 1: back to my default, which is basically at the essend
Speaker 1: to be super reduction as a fear based right, like
Speaker 1: I come back to my survival skills, which no longer
Speaker 1: serve me in adulthood. And so I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's a more compassionate lens instead of thinking that I'm
Speaker 1: an addict or I'm an alcoholic, Like I don't really
Speaker 1: talk about that a whole lot anymore. I been sober
Speaker 1: for thirty years. It's been a long time since with
Speaker 1: all that stuff. When my fear gets kicked up, I
Speaker 1: do respond in very specific ways, and so I sort
Speaker 1: of liken it to you know, diet and exercise, Like
Speaker 1: I could go to the gym every day for a
Speaker 1: year and be in great shape that if I stop,
Speaker 1: I've revert back. I live on my gains, which is
Speaker 1: very painful or like I wouldn't eat one salad and
Speaker 1: I expect to be healthy the rest of my So
Speaker 1: it's likely right. So totally gets that. So that's why
Speaker 1: you know, going to meetings, like I stayed in the book.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm not saying that you've got to go
Speaker 1: to meetings forever. You're a beautiful example of you don't
Speaker 1: have to do that. And there will be people who
Speaker 1: say you have to go to meetings for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life, otherwise you'll relapse and die, you know,
Speaker 1: which is what we see. Actually, I'm sure you have to.
Speaker 1: They told me when I first got sober that if
Speaker 1: you stick around line and I feel, see people die.
Speaker 1: And that has definitely been my experience. I've you know,
Speaker 1: lost people. I really loved this, you know, this thing,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the people being problematic, let's just
Speaker 1: have a little compassion for them because they're afraid they've
Speaker 1: seen some terrible experience and terrible things. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: you're right, you don't have to do this forever. For me,
Speaker 1: it was just like a convenient place to get check
Speaker 1: all the boxes of gratitude and remember what it was
Speaker 1: like for the future and be of service and connect
Speaker 1: with spirituality because you know, am I everyday walking around life?
Speaker 1: I really don't have a lot of opportunities to talk
Speaker 1: about spirituality and lesson in those rooms where you know
Speaker 1: it's encouraged to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think if I didn't do this show,
Speaker 3: I would probably still go to twelve step meetings. You know,
Speaker 3: if a huge chunk of my life was devoted to
Speaker 3: doing something different with my mind. Let's say I was
Speaker 3: still in the software business, which was a great career
Speaker 3: in many ways. It's just simply that to your point,
Speaker 3: I need to be reminded of things very often. I
Speaker 3: just happen to be in a position where I get
Speaker 3: reminded of these things all the time because I'm talking
Speaker 3: to people all the time, I'm reading these books all
Speaker 3: the time, and I'm helping teach these ideas to other
Speaker 3: people all the time that I swim in them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's beneficial. But I may not always do that.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, maybe I go back to be
Speaker 3: a software guy in five years, I don't know, and
Speaker 3: my needs might change. Yeah, And so you know, I
Speaker 3: want to go back to something you said a second
Speaker 3: ago about trusting our instincts, because I think this is
Speaker 3: interesting because today I can trust my instincts. Yeah, when
Speaker 3: I was still drinking or very early in sobriety, my
Speaker 3: instincts were terrible. What my natural reaction to do was
Speaker 3: always like by that point, generally a really bad idea.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if they still say it,
Speaker 3: but they used to say it all the time, like
Speaker 3: it's your thinking that got you here, and so, you know,
Speaker 3: I think that that idea of instincts is an interesting
Speaker 3: one because I think sometimes we can trust our instincts,
Speaker 3: but our instinct might be I shouldn't go to meetings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bring up a good point. You know, you
Speaker 1: and I are pretty far down the road and trust art,
Speaker 1: we've had the ability to learn how to trust our instincts.
Speaker 1: And I was in the beginning able to trust my
Speaker 1: instincts because my instincts were out of balance and my
Speaker 1: default mode network was still in survival mode, and so
Speaker 1: I just needed new information and new ideas to help
Speaker 1: me think because the way I was thinking made sense
Speaker 1: to me at the time, you know. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: how decisions are made. It's like you have a feeling,
Speaker 1: and you consider the information that you have, and you
Speaker 1: make a decision based on the information that you have,
Speaker 1: and then you take action, you invoke the law of
Speaker 1: cause and effecting you experience a result that's a cybernetic loupe.
Speaker 1: So like, I found myself in the same spot over
Speaker 1: and over again, and I was like, what is going on?
Speaker 1: And what I learned later is that we decide emotionally
Speaker 1: and justify logically. And what I was deciding from emotionally
Speaker 1: was I had this aversion, this aversion to myself because
Speaker 1: I hated who I was, had so much self loathing
Speaker 1: making these mistakes, but I just didn't know what to
Speaker 1: do instead, And by going to meetings, by actually working
Speaker 1: the twelve steps with a sponsor, yes, a loving compassionate
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole discussion around how do you
Speaker 1: choose one and what do you actually do? I actually
Speaker 1: described in the book how I did it. It's not
Speaker 1: the right way, it's just a way it worked for me. Whatever,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was the process that just you know,
Speaker 1: ended up helping me get the result I wanted. But
Speaker 1: it did start with examining my whole decision making process,
Speaker 1: like really breaking it down and the twelve steps, specifically,
Speaker 1: the fourth step was a very pragmatic and practical way
Speaker 1: to sort of unpack all my baggage. Yeah, so helpful.
Speaker 3: Let's spend a minute there, because I think that's important.
Speaker 3: I think one of the aspects of AA, the reason
Speaker 3: that it works is the peer support. I'm talking to you,
Speaker 3: one alcoholic talking to another. There's some sort of magic
Speaker 3: in that, right, So there's that that's a big component
Speaker 3: of it. The other is that there is a actual
Speaker 3: program to change who you are. That's what the twelve
Speaker 3: steps are. Or maybe that's the wrong way to say it.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's not to change who you are, but it's
Speaker 3: to help you change the coping mechanisms and the ways
Speaker 3: that you relate to the world that are causing you
Speaker 3: to stay, as you said, stuck in the same place.
Speaker 3: And that's a real benefit. Are the twelve steps the
Speaker 3: best way to change? I don't know. Is there a
Speaker 3: best way to change? Of course not. There's lots of
Speaker 3: ways to change, but it is a way, and it
Speaker 3: is a way that lots of people have done. And
Speaker 3: I'm so glad that I did them multiple times, right,
Speaker 3: I'm so glad that I went through that process multiple
Speaker 3: times because they do. And so when I look at
Speaker 3: my life and I'm like, Okay, if I'm not going
Speaker 3: to meetings, what do I need. One of the things
Speaker 3: I need is some sort of structured way of continuing
Speaker 3: to examine my inner world and change. And there's lots
Speaker 3: of different ones, but that's a component of what I
Speaker 3: think in my sort of reverse engineering. You know, I
Speaker 3: need the support of other people, and I need to
Speaker 3: support other people. I also need some sort of structure
Speaker 3: to how I change. Yeah, and the twelve steps gives that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I loved about the four step. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, I kept hearing that people were doing steps one, two,
Speaker 1: and three and relapsing and that terrified me. And what
Speaker 1: I get is that because of the guilt and shame,
Speaker 1: people are so afraid to look. But what I want
Speaker 1: people to know is the Force up is licensed to bitch,
Speaker 1: like you give a comp.
Speaker 3: At least at first, at least until your sponsor gets
Speaker 3: a hold of it.
Speaker 1: Well, listen, I had a captive audience. I had a
Speaker 1: really come all right pashonate sponsor, and I wish I
Speaker 1: would have known that before going in. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's just a different perspective. It's like
Speaker 1: what you get to talk about. You get to name
Speaker 1: the people that you're mad at or resentful. You get
Speaker 1: to get really specific about the cause and how they
Speaker 1: hurt you, and how they hurt you. Was it your
Speaker 1: self esteem that they damaged? Kind of sounding a little victimy,
Speaker 1: but it was like what was effected? It was my
Speaker 1: self esteem, it was my emotional safety, financial insecurity relation.
Speaker 1: I got to exam. And then the last part was
Speaker 1: what was my role in all this? What was the
Speaker 1: dynamic right and every relationship with sort of a fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty shared so what was my part? And that
Speaker 1: was the light bulb moment, Like and when I wrote
Speaker 1: it all out at once, I began to see these
Speaker 1: patterns emerging and I lied, And it was largely around responsibility.
Speaker 1: I was taking inappropriate responsibility for others and not taking
Speaker 1: that responsibility for myself. And when I was able to
Speaker 1: sort all that out with a sponsor, I was able
Speaker 1: to let go of what was at mine so that
Speaker 1: I could bear the weight of what was, which was
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: That's a really beautiful thing to say.
Speaker 1: So this one thing is that it wasn't that I
Speaker 1: changed it was I emerged, Like through this process, it's
Speaker 1: like my authentic self is able to emerge. And so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like I was bad and needed to be good.
Speaker 1: It was like I was holding on to these survival
Speaker 1: skills that were actually hurting me. Yeah, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to let go of them and tell I knew
Speaker 1: what to do instead, Like that's super practical.
Speaker 3: Right, So listener and thinking about all that and the
Speaker 3: other great wisdom from today's episode, If you were going
Speaker 3: to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away,
Speaker 3: what would it be? Not your top ten, not the
Speaker 3: top five? Just one?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Think about it?
Speaker 2: Got it? Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in practice?
Speaker 3: Or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our Good Wolf
Speaker 3: Reminder SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net. Slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms.
Speaker 3: All right back to it. If something is the only
Speaker 3: way you know how to cope with certain situations in life,
Speaker 3: you're gonna stick with it until you have something else.
Speaker 1: It works because you got to make it make sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that line I emerged. I think that's
Speaker 3: a really beautiful, beautiful way of saying it. That is
Speaker 3: what happens. There's this Yeah, we change, Yeah, we recover
Speaker 3: parts of ourselves, but on a different level, it's something
Speaker 3: new that is still made up of me. It's still
Speaker 3: me shaped in some way, but it's a much sturdier,
Speaker 3: beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: I wonder if i'd ask you a question, I wonder,
Speaker 1: what did you discover about yourself that surprised you? Well.
Speaker 3: I think that the primary revelation I already sort of
Speaker 3: hit on, and the rest of the steps helped me
Speaker 3: just to see it more and more clearly, was this
Speaker 3: idea of my complete focus on myself. Even if I
Speaker 3: thought that I was doing something for someone else, if
Speaker 3: I looked underneath closely enough, it was still me, me, Me.
Speaker 3: And that's still largely the case, I think for all
Speaker 3: of it to some degree. Right, I'm not trying to
Speaker 3: pretend that I fixed that I didn't.
Speaker 1: But it's from a different motive, don't you think.
Speaker 3: Yes, Actually, what I think is I tend to believe
Speaker 3: that we have multiple motives underlying things. So I do
Speaker 3: kind things for other people. Some of that is because
Speaker 3: I just want to be kind. It's a value. It
Speaker 3: emerges naturally for me. There's all that, and I'd love
Speaker 3: you to see me that way, right, Like doesn't mean
Speaker 3: that it's not valid. It just means that you know
Speaker 3: it's mixed. But I think that was a big one
Speaker 3: for me. It was just seeing all the ways. Because
Speaker 3: if you'd asked me, are you selfish? I would have
Speaker 3: said no, of course, not Now I clearly was. I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess if you'd asked me at that time, I
Speaker 3: probably would have said yes. But that was a real
Speaker 3: light for me. And then I think as we got
Speaker 3: into doing the fourth step, I saw that I'm not
Speaker 3: a resentment based alcoholic. Primarily, I'm a fear based alcoholic.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, you do a resentment inventory and you do
Speaker 3: fear inventory. At that time, I didn't see that I
Speaker 3: had resentments. Now with years later, things become a little
Speaker 3: bit clearer and I'm able to see things I didn't.
Speaker 3: But what I did identify with was I was scared
Speaker 3: of everything. Yeah, I didn't believe I could be anything
Speaker 3: good or useful. That was all gone. And you know,
Speaker 3: you quote the line in the book somewhere it's like
Speaker 3: we're egomaniacs with an inferiority complex. That pretty much described it.
Speaker 3: I think it just showed me all the subtle ways
Speaker 3: that I was always trying to arrange life to be
Speaker 3: the way I wanted it. Yeah, and I think that's natural,
Speaker 3: Like you said earlier, these are natural instincts as a
Speaker 3: natural instinct, and it's a useful instinct a whole lot
Speaker 3: of the time. Yeah, and instincts. I think this is
Speaker 3: the actual line from the book can run amok, you know,
Speaker 3: and mine had. And I love what you said about
Speaker 3: the fourth step two because it's amazing to me. I
Speaker 3: can see it so much more clearly now. But the
Speaker 3: vulnerability in people and they're terrified of writing that stuff
Speaker 3: down and sharing it with someone else. Now, after you've
Speaker 3: done a couple of fifth steps, your ability to be
Speaker 3: shocked by anything is largely gone. I mean I would
Speaker 3: say to people, there's like nothing that you're going to say.
Speaker 3: There's nothing that you could possibly say. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's going to make me, you know, like judge you harshly.
Speaker 3: But until you've done that a few times now, it's easy,
Speaker 3: you know, somebody I know I relatively easily can be
Speaker 3: like well I'm like this, I'm like that, I felt this,
Speaker 3: I felt that. But boy, those first few times it's
Speaker 3: so hard, but life changing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that the treasure you seek is in
Speaker 1: the work that you're avoiding. M Yeah.
Speaker 3: I heard somebody say the other day, the answers you
Speaker 3: seek are on the other side of the actions that
Speaker 3: you're avoiding you or.
Speaker 1: The treasuy you seek is in the cave you fear
Speaker 1: to enter. But it's it's like the thing that we're
Speaker 1: most afraid of hold the most power of transformation.
Speaker 3: Or one last thing I want to cover here is
Speaker 3: this idea that AA is a cult. Just kind of
Speaker 3: help us reinterpret or see that differently.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a little culty, but if it
Speaker 1: is a cult, it's the worst cult because people don't
Speaker 1: do what they're supposed to do. Anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, you said something in the book that I think
Speaker 3: is really important to this. You said that one of
Speaker 3: the things about a cult is that there is one
Speaker 3: person who has authority, and AA is a completely decentralized thing.
Speaker 3: No one has authority. It's a bizarre organizational system, but
Speaker 3: no one has authority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're really bumping up against is recovery resistance. Right,
Speaker 1: We will look for reasons not to do this thing, right,
Speaker 1: we will look for all kinds of reasons not to
Speaker 1: do this because it's so confrontational to our very identity,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to tie back to the default mode network, right,
Speaker 1: Like drinking was such a part of my identity. It
Speaker 1: was really difficult for me to think of not doing it.
Speaker 1: And the idea that is a cult like that is
Speaker 1: something that the brain can latch onto and point out
Speaker 1: very valid reasons why it might be a cult, right, right,
Speaker 1: And again, like you were talking about earlier, this is
Speaker 1: sort of a people based problem. Yeah right. So you know,
Speaker 1: we started this conversation by saying that the people are
Speaker 1: not the program. The twelve steps are the program. I
Speaker 1: take people back to literature. Don't rely on what I
Speaker 1: say or you say, go back to literature. But this
Speaker 1: idea that twelve Step is a cult largely is centered
Speaker 1: around how people behave and listen. Twelve Step is not
Speaker 1: the hotbed of mental health. I'll just admit that right upfront.
Speaker 3: As I used to hear people describe it, it's like
Speaker 3: you gathered all the sickest people in like one place.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but you know this sort of brain is
Speaker 1: not true. But anyway, yeah, yeah, but it leads me
Speaker 1: to this idea that the people that offend you at
Speaker 1: meetings or put you off or whatever, they're triggering something
Speaker 1: inside that actually needs to be healed. So I would
Speaker 1: encourage people to notice when they feel angry. About something
Speaker 1: like if someone's coming off as culty or controlling or whatever,
Speaker 1: to work that feeling and that thought process through the
Speaker 1: steps to find out what's going on underneath. And I
Speaker 1: liken the meetings to this example that Mary and Williamson shared.
Speaker 1: She'd use to lecture a lot on the course of miracles,
Speaker 1: and she talked about gmologists will take two raw, rough
Speaker 1: amethysts and put them in a tumbler together, and as
Speaker 1: these amethysts bump up against each other, they rub off
Speaker 1: their rough edges, and then they come out they're smooth.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if we go to meetings and we
Speaker 1: tumble around with all these people. We hear all kinds
Speaker 1: of ideas that challenge us. And if we can day
Speaker 1: the course, stay with the feeling, stay with the thing
Speaker 1: that pissed you off. They say that the truth will
Speaker 1: set you free, but first it will piss you off.
Speaker 1: I'm saying lean into that. Don't leave the program because
Speaker 1: somebody made you angry. I'm saying, don't waste a good crisis.
Speaker 1: Use that as a way to examine what is going
Speaker 1: on underneath. Because anytime we get triggered or angered, that
Speaker 1: is a sign or a place that is covering a wound,
Speaker 1: and so we need to sort of bring that to
Speaker 1: the light and process our feelings to resolution so that
Speaker 1: we no longer carry them. So, yeah, people at meanings
Speaker 1: can be problematic. I'm saying, with a few simple boundaries
Speaker 1: and with a little bit of courage and persistence, that
Speaker 1: even those people have something to teach us and to
Speaker 1: help us heal.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, Yep, that's a beautiful place for us to wrap up.
Speaker 3: You and I are going to continue in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation. I'd like to talk a little bit more
Speaker 3: about finding the right meeting because this is really important.
Speaker 3: I'd like to talk about the how mindset and how
Speaker 3: important that is to recovery and wherever else we happen
Speaker 3: to wander. But listeners, if you'd like access to the
Speaker 3: post show conversation, all the other post show conversations, an
Speaker 3: episode I do each week about it teaching a song
Speaker 3: and a quote or a poem that I love, and
Speaker 3: if you want to support us, because we can really
Speaker 3: use the support, one you feed dot net slash join
Speaker 3: is the way to do that. Arliah, Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed the book and this was a wonderful conversation,
Speaker 3: and I would just end by saying, anybody out there
Speaker 3: who's struggling with your substance use and you're thinking about
Speaker 3: twelve steps, this book is a great, great guide to
Speaker 3: help you as you enter that world, or to get
Speaker 3: you into that world if you're having trouble getting into it.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Thank you so much.
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