Somewhere along my journey of recovery, I learned something very important: perfectionism and shame are two different manifestations of the same inner problem. They are two sides of a single coin. Shame is an extremely deep-seated, unconscious, all-pervading belief and perception that you are completely worthless, utterly unworthy, totally unlovable, and undeserving of anything good …
Here’s a paradox for you: Success in early recovery depends heavily upon our ability to trust others (e.g. a sponsor, a therapist, our network/support system), but success in long-term recovery depends heavily upon our ability to trust ourselves! Let’s look harder at this paradox. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard …
Vulnerability gets a bad rap in our culture; in my experience, it seems to be despised. In our culture, we seem to love the tough, hard, mean, sneering attitude. Vulnerability is perceived as weakness. The cultural message is clear: Be STRONG. Vulnerability is for losers. You can’t hurt ME! Why is this? How did this …
The “care” of God? Are you kidding me??? For many years in recovery, I had extremely serious trouble with trusting a Higher Power. My life did NOT get better quickly. It took many, many years in recovery before my life began to take on even a semblance of “normalcy.” For many years in recovery, my …
Several years ago I was at a meeting of Adult Children of Alcoholics. There was a new guy at the meeting, and he was clearly in his mid-to-upper-70’s, and I had never seen anyone of his age at an ACoA meeting before, so I was intrigued. After the meeting I went up to him and …
This blog post is about how outer success in life most often must follow the inner work of healing and emotional and spiritual growth. I’d like to start with a little story – a true one. I coach a guy whom I’ll call Bill (not his real name). Bill has 25+ years of recovery, so …
This blog entry is about childhood emotional trauma as a primary driver of active addiction, and about the healing process needed to sustain long-term recovery. Over the last 29 years, I have met thousands of people in recovery, and I have not met a single one of them who was not in need of some …
“To feel is perhaps the most terrifying thing in this society.” – Cecil Taylor Cecil Taylor is a jazz pianist who just happens to also be a bona fide, all-around genius. This blog post isn’t about him or about jazz or about music, but it IS about FEELING. That’s why I opened with this quote: …
This blog entry is about an important but neglected issue in recovery that I call “recycling.” In my experience, many people seem to believe that once you deal with an issue (a ‘character defect’ or psychological issue), then you are done with it. It’s totally over with, and you can just move on from there. …
This is kind of an odd title, right? But I wanted to reflect on something that doesn’t seem to get much air time in recovery. I kind of stumbled onto this way of describing an important difference in two ‘sides’ of life: that is, what I’m calling “Big Life” and “little life.” Let me …
