PART ONE | Humility
Humility is the spiritual foundation of recovery. In order to feel worthy, we do not need to be unique. People who do best in recovery are those who surrender and follow suggestions.
A common first response to the requirements of recovery is to negotiate, to pick and choose what we think will be helpful. One person might say, “I don’t need to go to a meeting every day for the first ninety days of recovery. Two meetings a week are plenty enough for me.” Another newcomer might exclaim, “I don’t need a sponsor. I can do this by myself.” And yet another might say, “I don’t have to work all the Steps. One and Twelve are enough for me.” This kind of thinking is based on the mistaken belief that we are special and unique and that we don’t have to do what everyone else has done to develop a solid, robust recovery. This dangerous attitude has led many newcomers, and even some old-timers, back into the depths of despair and relapse. We are special and unique, but not in this sense.
To begin recovery, we need to surrender. Surrender can be best defined as the total and complete acceptance of the reality of our situation. We suffer from an illness that we are powerless to defeat on our own. Surrender also means that we accept that our illness has impaired the way we manage our life.
This is a lot to accept if we are governed by false pride and have a tendency to minimize the severity of problems. The motivation behind this self-defeating strategy is “If I don’t have to do everything that everyone else has to do, then I am not as sick or as bad as all of those who need to work the whole program.” Here is where the danger begins. If we do not surrender to the reality of our condition, then we will not be moved or motivated to go to any lengths to stay clean and sober. We will not have the necessary foundation to tackle the upcoming tasks that are necessary to establish a solid recovery.
PART TWO | Limbo
If we truly accept that we suffer from a fatal illness over which we are powerless, we will experience what is called an existential crisis. An existential crisis occurs when we let go of an unhealthy behavior, but we don’t yet have a better and healthier alternative available. We are betwixt and between. We are in limbo. We’ll want to avoid the feelings that surface from being in such a difficult position, but it is important to feel the desperation and anxiety that come from surrender. An existential crisis places us at a crossroads between complete despair and hope. Allowing ourselves to surrender to this crisis shifts something inside of us. We become open to new possibilities; our reliance on our false self is shattered. This prepares us for the next step in recovery: hope.
Hope is a therapeutic force present in all forms of healing. Hope springs from faith at this stage of recovery: a faith that there is a better and healthier alternative. We find our hope in the Twelve Steps. On page 58 of the Big Book, the newcomer is told that “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” If we believe ourselves to be special, then we won’t adhere to these crucial words of advice.
PART THREE | Faith
How do we develop faith? For those of us in recovery, faith comes from witnessing the transformation in others who suffer from a similar problem. Through attendance at Twelve Step meetings, we witness firsthand the miracle called recovery. We see other people who are suffering from this terrible illness successfully trudging the road of recovery. It is by witnessing recovery firsthand that the seed of hope is planted.
So give up this nonsense that you need to be special.
My clinical supervisor William C. Rader, M.D., a truly gifted psychiatrist, provided me with the following analogy. He used to say that when we undergo a surgical procedure, we don’t want to be special; we want to be average. Average patients do well in most surgical procedures; the special cases run into trouble. Special cases typically do not survive. In recovery, it’s okay to be average. We want to be in the middle of the pack. The average person in AA gets well. The special person doesn’t because he or she doesn’t do what the average AA member does to stay sober. This sabotages recovery and usually ends up causing chronic relapses.
Feeling that we are special also prevents us from attaining humility. Humility is the spiritual foundation of our recovery, and the only solution to the medical problem of addiction is a spiritual cure.
This belief in how special and unique we are can develop into a grandiosity that we may need to recognize within ourselves.
Let’s begin with a simple possibility … what if what you are seeing and perceiving as real is not real and is quite distorted. Like u are seeing things as real that are not real. That u have been using glasses with the wrong prescription.
Grandiosity
Here’s what the twelve & twelve says on page 122/123…
“A number of eminent psychologists and doctors made an exhaustive study of a good – sized group of so – called problem drinkers . The doctors weren’t trying to find how different we were from one another ; they sought to find whatever personality traits , if any , this group of alcoholics had in common . They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the A.A . members of that time . These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish , emotionally sensitive , and grandiose …”
Now what does it mean to be grandiose?
“In psychology, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority, uniqueness, or invulnerability. It can range from inflated self-esteem to delusions of grandeur.”
OR
“What is grandiosity?
Grandiosity refers to a sense of specialness and self-importance that might lead you to:
• boast about real or exaggerated accomplishments
• consider yourself more talented or intelligent than others
• dismiss or try to one-up the achievements of others
• believe you don’t need anyone else to succeed
• believe you’re above rules or ordinary limits
• fail to recognize that your actions could harm others
• lash out in anger when someone criticizes you or points out a flaw in your plans
Grandiosity often resembles self-centered or arrogant behavior, so people often don’t recognize it as a mental health symptom.
You may not even be aware of some of your grandiose thoughts or behaviors.”