Quietly The Big Book says that resentments are the number one cause of relapse. The founders, of course, knew of what they spoke. I wonder if they would agree that fear is the next biggest cause?

Many would say no--ego is the next biggest cause of relapse. Maybe so.

But it is my experience that much of what passes for ego and pride is really fear wearing a mask. Most people I've met along the way don't so much think they're superior to others. In truth, they fear they are not as good as others, so they go to extremes to convince themselves and everyone else of their worth. Yearning for approval and acceptance, they tend to act badly when they're afraid they won't ever be considered worthy.

Fear is at the bottom of most expressions of our character defects. Fear blocks connections and thus spirituality--which is the only solution to addiction... That's why this week's lesson is devoted to fear.

A definition of fear: The emotional response to perceived danger. Danger triggers fear. The more imminent the danger, the greater and more fierce the fear. Danger can be deadly. Danger predicts misery and pain if we don't protect ourselves or get out of its way.

But fear itself isn't the enemy. Some fear is necessary for survival. If the ice is cracking under our feet, we'd better be afraid and get off the ice as quickly as we can. Fear saves lives.

The problem is about what we have learned to be afraid of. What kinds of situations trigger an alarm if we approach?

Managing our emotions means coming to understand and then to recognize what the fear is attached to and then making adjustments if necessary. What is our fear telling us? Many of us have learned to hear the ice cracking even when we are standing in the middle of a desert. In other words, we may be experiencing fear when we're not in any danger. In recovery, the presence of fear may also signify our discomfort at making healthy changes. It often tells us that we are right where we should be and that we need to "press on," to keep going even in the face of fear, to have courage... Why? Because on the other side of that fear is the land of the Promises.

Of course, like everything else in recovery, this work requires that we stay connected. Yet our connections with others are just what many are afraid of--what many have found to be so dangerous. And for good reason.

Nothing hurts more than trusting and then having that trust betrayed. Nothing wounds deeper than reaching out for that "soft hand of love"--especially in our formative years--but instead receiving messages that harmed our spirit, lies such as "You don't count. You aren't worthy. You aren't enough." As the tree is bent, so shall it grow.

Rather than the "soft hand of love," what many of us got was a fist in the face or at best a cold shoulder. Not everyone, surely not everyone. But many. Those who had a better start and then "crossed the line" into active addiction learned their spiritual lies of self-contempt as they spiraled down.

Either way, whether from the start or later on, everyone with an active addiction comes to recovery with a fear of intimacy. This fear is behind our avoidance of honesty, trust, closeness, and connection. If we have also been saddled with the effects of childhood abuse or a form of dual diagnosis, gathering the courage to reach out to others may be just that much more difficult.

Yet difficult or not, the journey must--and can--be made.

We need to do what we most fear; we need to strive for what eluded us in the past--honesty, trust, commitment, caring, and responsibility. Every active addict has practiced and is a master at slipping around these dangerous corners. (It was once said in a meeting of an especially slippery person that he "lived in a round building so he couldn't get caught in any corners.")

Do you want to hear testimony to the insanity of the disease...? The same person who is absolutely terrified of the "danger of Fellowship" will run like an Olympic sprinter back to situations that stole every speck of what makes life worthwhile....

Understanding the lessons on emotional management... can be a huge help in not falling victim to a firestorm of fear. Once you learn how feelings work, you'll be much better able to "call fear's bluff" and not get pulled off the road.

Here are some of the typical ways we run from fear: (1) withdrawing, (2) isolating, (3) eating, (4) blaming, (5) spending, (6) working to exhaustion, (7) fighting, (8) switching addictions, and the obvious, (9) using again. Rather than immediately and blindly reacting to fear, we must practice better ways of dealing with it.

It's not easy to stand in the face of fear and say, "Wait a minute. I recognize what you are and where you come from. But I also understand that to recover I need to get past you. I need to act. I need to open up to myself and my group. I need to tell the truth. I need to be honest. I need to own the damage I've done to myself and others--and ask forgiveness. And beyond forgiveness, I need to make amends in the manner taught by my program. I must put myself on the line for others. I must be of service."

No, it's not easy, but it is doable. There is no task that willing human beings in connection with the God of their understanding and the Fellowship cannot accomplish. Nothing is stronger than a spiritually fortified and connected human being.

Feel the fear. Then question it. Listen to what it is telling you. Then decide what is best for you to do--regardless of how you feel.

Excerpted from Now That You're Sober: Week-by-Week Guidance from Your Recovery Coach by Earnie Larsen with Carol Larsen Hegarty. Larsen is a nationally known pioneer in the field of recovery from addictive and unwanted behaviors. He has authored and produced more than fifty-five motivational self-help books and resources on a variety of topics ranging from managing interpersonal relationships to spirituality.


Now That You're Sober

Softcover, 288 pages

Make no mistake about the intention of the guidance offered in this book. This is not just another "nice recovery book"--one that you read and then put aside, hopefully taking away a few good thoughts. My intention is that the material offered here should be chewed, pulled apart, scrutinized, and internalized. This book is designed to be worked. It is intended to provide support, insights, and exercises that will do something about the high relapse rate of people starting recovery.
--Earnie Larsen, from the introduction

In this invaluable guide, renowned author and lecturer Earnie Larsen brings you a portable recovery aftercare program that you can easily integrate into your personal life and take with you anywhere you go.

Now That You're Sober is an all-purpose, yearlong compendium of recovery wisdom and inspiration to help those who are newly sober focus on practical applications of Twelve Step principles. Like a traditional aftercare program, it is designed to keep the basics of recovery front and center in your consciousness, as it is the loss of this awareness that causes relapse. In his characteristic down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is style, Larsen serves as your recovery coach, providing guidance and inspiration when you feel vulnerable in your sobriety, and helping you to move past common stumbling blocks and flourish in your daily life. Each of his fifty-two entries includes a motivational essay, or pep talk, centered on a key element of recovery, followed by personal, practical, actionable steps to help you refocus on the concepts and behaviors that are essential in a recovering person's life.

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When someone we love takes the first steps to sobriety, it’s a welcome development. However, in the midst of this new lifestyle, new challenges arise for both the addict and those close to them. In Everything Changes, Beverly Conyers offers practical tools for friends and family to navigate the early months of recovery.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
--Hebrews 11:1

What is recovery? In a general sense, it is the restoration of health after an injury or illness. Because addiction is an illness of mind, body, and spirit, recovery from addiction implies holistic healing in which all facets of an individual's being evolve toward health.

To put it another way, recovery from addiction is a long-term journey of personal growth. It builds on abstinence from substances of abuse to encompass physical, emotional, social, and spiritual healing.

Recovery often begins with the acknowledgment that a problem exists. But like all ventures into the unknown territory of positive change, the journey is likely to be full of wrong turns and bumps in the road. It can sometimes resemble a maze more than a superhighway. To complicate matters, there is no single road to recovery.

For some addicted individuals, lasting recovery begins when they enter a good treatment facility, commit to individual counseling, or begin attending Twelve Step meetings. But this is not always the case. Slips and relapses are common. Many people enter multiple treatment programs over extended periods of time, only to resume their addictive behaviors after each attempt at sobriety.

Other individuals trace their recovery to "hitting bottom." Going to jail, losing a job, or simply being "sick and tired of being sick and tired" are all potential turning points into recovery. But "hitting bottom" is seldom a onetime event. Recidivism rates are high for people with addictions, and many people hit multiple "bottoms" before they are ready to commit to recovery.

Although events and circumstances can influence an individual's decision to change course, there is an internal factor that is of far more significance. That factor is readiness. People begin to recover from their addictions when they are ready to try to change their lives.

This is not to say that ambivalence disappears. We all feel a degree of doubt when we decide to change something in our lives, whether it's a job, a neighborhood, a relationship, or even a diet. The lure of the familiar is always powerful because it feels safe, even when it is destructive.

Despite the ambivalence that often accompanies early recovery, the journey can be said to begin when an addicted individual starts to make healthy choices. How long it will take and how successful that individual will be in reaching the desired destination--which for most people is some version of a stable, productive life--depend on many factors, including support.

Family and friends may be willing and eager to support their loved one's attempts at recovery. After all, they have witnessed firsthand the destructive course of addiction and, in the process, experienced wrenching heartache, fear, and despair. But what is their appropriate role in the process? What can they expect as their loved one begins to change? How can they maintain their own peace of mind? And how can they handle the inevitable bumps in the road?

This book is intended to serve as a resource for family and friends who are entering the uncharted territory of early recovery. Although the horizon beckons with tremendous promise, the immediate terrain is strewn with pitfalls. Confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety are common. Expectation and disappointment, relief and resentment, optimism and doubt all come together in a shifting tableau of emotional turmoil.

Despite the challenges, families who understand the inevitable ups and downs of early recovery put themselves in a strong position to offer their loved one meaningful support. Equally important, they are better able to maintain their own peace of mind as the path to recovery unfolds--and everything changes.

Excerpted from Everything Changes by Beverly Conyers. Conyers is an editor and freelance writer who lives in New England. She is the author of Addict in the Family: Stories of Loss, Hope, and Recovery.


Everything Changes

Softcover, 160 pages

A relative or friend has finally taken those tentative first steps toward sobriety. With the relief of this life-changing course of action comes a new and difficult set of challenges for recovering addicts and those who love them. Family members and friends often find themselves unsure of how to weather such a dramatic turn, as the rules and routines of their relationships no longer pertain.

Everything Changes assuages fears and uncertainty by teaching loved ones of newly recovering addicts how to navigate the often-tumultuous early months of recovery. Beverly Conyers, author of the acclaimed Addict in the Family, again shares the hope and knowledge that she gained as a parent of a recovering addict by focusing on the aftermath of addiction. She outlines the physical and psychological changes that recovering addicts go through, and offers practical tools to help family members and friends

• build a fresh, rewarding relationship with the addict
• be supportive without setting themselves up for disappointment
• avoid enabling destructive behavior
• set and maintain boundaries
• cope with relapse
• deal with the practicalities of sober living, such as helping the addict find a job and deal with the stigma of addiction

List Price: $14.95
Online Price: $13.45

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Many people are attracted to the practices of positive affirmations, vision boards, and other tools of manifestation because of the cash and prizes they are promised if they follow a simple routine. Who doesn't want to believe we can procure all of our heart's desires? Who doesn't want to take the fast track to contentment and serenity? Although there is nothing wrong with these aspirations, or with the various ways we aim to achieve them, practices that are only grounded in abundance and tranquility tend to abandon the seeker when scarcity or emotional turmoil are present. Although incredibly seductive, anything that promises the light without acknowledging the shadow isn't telling the whole story.

We are fallible human beings. We can easily get caught up in the notion that God is a bank teller or an orchestrator of our heart's every desire. We want to believe that spirituality will propel us not only toward enlightenment but toward riches and everlasting emotional bliss. We don't want to walk through the tough stuff in life, so we gravitate toward the book, program, or path that promises to show us how to avoid it. But "it" doesn't go away so easily. Everybody experiences pain, and we don't always get exactly what we want. Even the spiritual path that doesn't deny our suffering can be used with the intention of navigating around hardship. I believe this is just part of being human. We are drawn to the light just like a flower to the sun. However, unless we stay rooted, plugged into the dirt, we won't be able to survive.

We might use the realities of life to tell ourselves that we must not be "doing it right" or that something is wrong with us because we don't feel "happy, joyous, and free" all the time. Or we may feel judged by others for having a difficult emotional experience amid all the tools and tricks that could free us from such discomfort. And thus, the cycle begins. We search for the next quick fix. Yesterday's yoga class is today's vegan diet. We swap chanting for meditation and try visiting a new church. We increase our commitment to altruism and find a new healer, psychic, or trainer. We decide that reading literature is out and putting pen to paper is in.

If you understand this cycle, and may even be able to add a few more "fixes" to the list, you might be longing for a spiritual path that you can follow in all conditions--material and otherwise. Perhaps you're longing for spirituality that doesn't run you ragged looking for perfection and that brings you comfort in whatever circumstance you may find yourself. I believe that many of us are truly yearning for a spiritual path that allows us to be whole human beings--with faults and assets, troubles and triumphs--because the truth is that we will never transcend the human condition, and we need a spirituality that can cope with that reality.

It turns out there is a concept that captures the phenomenon I've described. It is called spiritual bypass. Spiritual bypass is a defense mechanism by which we use spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid our emotional wounds, unwanted thoughts or impulses, or threats to our self-esteem. A simple example of this defense is when we believe that if we pray hard enough, or in the right manner, we can escape our painful feelings. We are experiencing spiritual bypass when we expect our spiritual practices to "fix" our problems, rather than to be with us in the midst of them.

When I realized there was language for this experience, I could not stop thinking about it. I was both curious about and dumbfounded by the fact that so many of us have been trying to walk a spiritual path--whatever that means to each of us, whether religious or not religious--only to get tangled up in the illusion that spirituality is a method for controlling obstacles and outcomes. We were earnestly and openly doing our spiritual work without realizing that the ways in which we were using the tools were actually in service of perpetuating our shortcomings. Consciously, we wanted to evolve. Unconsciously, we wanted to stay comfortable and in control.

John Welwood coined the term spiritual bypass in an article for The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology titled "Principles of Inner Work: Psychological and Spiritual," and many others have touched on the subject over the years. This is the first book entirely dedicated to the topic. My intention is to extend the preliminary conversations on spiritual bypass in such a way that a new vernacular arises. My hope is to raise awareness about spiritual bypass, so that individuals might identify the defense in their own lives. I want to reveal the many forms of spiritual bypass, so it becomes less theoretical and more identifiable. I want people to have permission to be spiritual beings while having a human experience. I am not trying to put down or pathologize spiritual practice; I am attempting to bring more consciousness to spiritual practice as it relates to one's psychological nature.

Living in a culture that perpetually advertises the next quick fix, I have personally experienced spiritual bypass many times. Drifting toward the defense not only guarded me against my feelings, but it allowed me to strive for my goals in a way that was "spiritual"--which, let's face it, didn't look so bad on the outside. As an action-oriented person who loved the idea that someday I could "get it right," I pursued spirituality, psychotherapy, yoga, education, ad infinitum, in the hope that I would reach a finish line of sorts. I longed to feel good with the expectation that I could overcome the bad, primarily my feelings of worry and shame. In my life, the notion of "arriving" has been a rather appealing one.

Although my various pursuits of betterment have been rewarding, my investigation of spiritual bypass has allowed me to see the naïve beliefs that I had about spiritual practice and the human condition. I've since learned that I cannot bypass my feelings, my history, or the essence of who I am. Trying to overcome such things only pushed the proverbial finish line even farther away. No matter what I did, what I achieved, or what I understood about myself--at the end of the day I was, and am, still me. Thus, my striving for enlightenment and clarity, embedded in the goal of surpassing myself, only made my feelings of worthlessness grow.

I have finally redefined my personal finish line from "becoming someone" to accepting who I am and where I am in my life. I can retain a sense of purpose and intention; the difference is that I try not to use my spiritual path as an escape hatch for the present. Instead of discovering a golden road, free of frailty and emotional turmoil, I am learning to love those parts of myself that I once rejected. This newfound "love and tolerance" was not the starting point for this book. The research I conducted on spiritual bypass was rooted in my desire to "get it right" and the defense mechanism seemed all wrong. I have been truly surprised at where this investigation has taken me during the last five years. Even as I write these words, my understanding of mind, body, and spirit is ever-evolving. The minute I think, "I get it," I'm actually just beginning another stage of awareness. Investigating consciousness is funny that way--we don't know what we don't know.

Excerpted from Recovering Spirituality by Ingrid Mathieu, Ph.D. Mathieu has extensive experience counseling substance-dependent clients. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California. This is her first book.


Recovering Spirituality

Softcover, 200 pages

Recovering Spirituality guides those in recovery in developing the awareness and skills to deal with life's issues by practicing authentic spirituality and emotional sobriety.

Spirituality is a critical aspect of the Twelve Steps and other recovery programs. Yet, for those of us disposed to addiction, it can be easy to get so caught up in the idea of our Higher Power and the abundant joys of a spiritual life that we experience "spiritual bypass"--the use of spirituality to avoid dealing with ourselves, our emotions, and our unfinished business.

In Recovering Spirituality, researcher and clinical psychologist Ingrid Mathieu uses personal stories and practical advice to teach us how to grow up emotionally and take responsibility for ourselves. Without turning away from the true benefits of an active spiritual program, she shows us how to work through life's challenges and periods of pain while evolving and maintaining an authentic relationship with our Higher Power.

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©2011 Hazelden Foundation