Alastair Parsons, Your Own Personal Illness

The magic of the the steps is that they seem to reveal the patterns of behaviour that our actions have prompted over the course of our lives. It helps us see ourselves and our condition of alcoholism and how it effects us and others. I am aware that there are many paths to recovery- my path has been the 12-Steps.

But he replied, “As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will not accept anything.” He pressed him to accept, but he refused. 10 minutes of Tips & Strategies to grow your mind and business.

We rely on others in terms of how we feel about ourselves. A decade of therapy also showed Bill Wilson he has two default settings in his relationship to other human beings – he either tried to dominate them or he became dependent on them for his sense of self and emotional well being.

What Does Aa Mean By spiritual Malady?

One can see how this concept of sin disease or in other words spiritual malady could be and was applied to early AA and incorporated into the Big Book of AA. My inventory of steps 4/5 showed me that my long lists of resentments were mainly the product of emotional immaturity and responding in an immature manner to not getting my way. The spiritual principles of AA and the 12 steps in particular were drawn from the 4 absolutes of the Oxford group, via initially the 6 steps and the idea of a spiritual malady is also borrowed from the Oxford group. The bottom line, a true alcoholic or addict has no power to stop, avoid, or control their drinking.

• The anger response is more comfortable than feeling the shame for some individuals.
• What is important though is that we strive to be a little better every single day and never give up on our spiritual journey in recovery.
• We have difficulties in our relationships with others, these relationships are often unhealthy and ill.
• We become so fixated on it that almost everything we do leads us to think about getting intoxicated.
• These things were true to some extent, in fact, to a considerable extent with some of us.

They do not necessarily come from a Judea-Christian belief structure, just from my own awareness, 12 step practice and years of Neursocience research. The spiritual illness that we faced acted as a catalyst for our addiction, and every attempt to self-medicate our spiritual malady pushed us deeper and deeper into the disease. The “spiritual malady” of the Oxford group seems enhanced in me, I believe I sin more than normal people because of my emotional immaturity and reactivity. My “loss of control” over drinking is also linked to emotion processing difficulties as it prompted impulsive, uninhibited drinking. To conclude, it’s not my body — my allergic reaction to alcohol — that’s going to take me back to drinking. It’s really not my mind — the mental obsession — that is the underlying root of what will take me back to drinking.

A Spiritual Remedy For A Spiritual Condition

It is strange paradox, the more you focus on helping others, the more you discover how much you matter. Especially being alcoholic more often than not, it is our nature to have that “my way or the highway” mentality. Intellectually, believing in something we cannot physically see or a scientifically proven exists is a hard pill to swallow, those intellectual individuals shut the idea out completely. These core beliefs make it harder for us to connect with a god of our understanding. The 12 steps were influenced by the Oxford Group who said sins cut a person off from God, and that there was such a thing as sin disease. It is therapeutic exchange and shame reducing to know someone else has committed similar sins or has acted for similar reasons; they were powerless over their behaviours. Referred to in several of the twelve steps is therefore unrelated to religion; it refers to the potentially healing power inherent in interpersonal relationships based on reciprocity and equality.

I proceeded to give John a discourse about the human ego, transcendence, and the Oneness of all things.

Similarly, those who struggle with alcohol addiction are more susceptible to developing a mental health spiritual malady issue. When this occurs, individuals are experiencing what experts refer to as a co-occurring disorder.

• My recovery has thus since been about “growing up” a bit, however unsuccessful I am in this pursuit on occasion.
• The basic tenet of this, is that it takes one alcoholic to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety.
• I do not believe I have the same spiritual malady as other normal people such as those people who were in the Oxford Group.

The spiritual aspects of recovery and the ‘God word’ can be an obstacle for many new folks trying to get sober. Hopefully the ideas included in this short writing show that there are many ways to approach these topics. I struggled with this myself in the early days of my recovery. It was one more thing that my disease used to separate me from other folks in the rooms of recovery, another way to feel unique. In steps 4 and 5 we listed wrongdoings to others and although initially petrified to share them with another, found that it wasn’t as difficult as we thought it would be, once you wrote down the worst top ten. These secrets are the emotional and psychic scars of our alcoholic past and they need to be exposed in order for us to fully heal.

The Psychology And Neuropsychology Of Alcoholism, Addictive Behaviour And Recovery

When things had died down and calm restored I spent the evening not in my fear or shame but in empathy and compassion. For example, this family have just moved into my neighbourhood, they seem wild and out of control. My step 4 showed me this is the unhealthy fruit of my greed, gluttony, my lust, my sloth. My dismissiveness and my arrogance are parts of defence mechanism against rejection, they guard my inherent sense of shame. I am full of shame, more so than fear, although these two overlap. We are far from being Saints but have a solution Saints would approve and achieve a kind of transient sanctity in this 12 step solution of letting go and letting God.

The good news is that properly treated, those in recovery from the disorder are often able to, with continued growth, use this quality in order to be very successful. The same pursuits that many had, prior to their struggles becoming unmanageable, become easy to focus upon again, often leading to more success than they experienced before. This is greatly inspirational for those who have just come into the room when the mountain looks impossible to climb. Seeing the same traits that were harmful before, turn to assets and lead to a more incredible life is often the first thing that attracts newer members to recovery. Addiction is often referred to as a disease of perception as addicts have a tendency to creating extraneous narrative around the experiences of their lives. Since this additional narrative often consist of perspectives that causes the addict to feel separate, this is where the spiritual malady lives. It is through the daily cleansing of perception through the process of the steps and the sharing with another addict that the addict is able to return to living as an integrated part of the whole of life.

• One can see how this concept of sin disease or in other words spiritual malady could be and was applied to early AA and incorporated into the Big Book of AA.
• It is the web my spiritual malady seeks to ensnare me in.
• My step 4 and then 5 showed me that I did not have the natural ability to deal with my negative emotions.
• The spiritual malady, however, can be seen as an inward unmanageability.
• The motivation that drove most of these positive outcomes, however, was typically relief from their low self-esteem or otherwise painful thinking.

For a while, that seemed to work for us but once we stopped using substances the discontentedness came back to the surface in sobriety. People in the rooms refer to this as a ‘god-sized hole’. It’s a void that we used to fill with drugs and alcohol.

The Spiritual Malady Of Addiction

My emotions became wedded in time to being undifferentiated arousal states that prompted me to seek an external way to deal with these troubling emotional/arousal states. I can manage my spiritual malady or emotional dysfunction, I have the tools to do so. I do not necessarily have to react to my feelings of negativity about myself, someone else does not need to experience the consequence of my resentments. If we practice virtues instead of defects then the brain changes for the better and we recover quicker. Our positive loving, healthy behaviours change us and our brains via neuroplasticity for the better. As I would have had a resentment, it would have had a wolf pack of negative emotions attached.

Hence I believe we should appreciate that this definition of our condition has been updated by research into emotions especially in the last 20 years. I have for several years wondered if the spiritual malady described in the Big Book adequate or accurate enough in describing what I suffer from. Our spiritual malady causes us to be restless, irritable, and discontented. People like us are obsessed with the thought of controlling and enjoying our drugs or alcohol. The biggest problem is that our mind buys the lie that the next time it will be different.

I was amazed as this guy was reading his emotions, identifying verbalising/expressing them to me in a way I have never been able to do. I would have had empathy for where the newcomer “was https://ecosoberhouse.com/ at in his recovery” as I had been there once too. I explained to him that his pride had been hurt, he was in shame and his “apparent” depression every since was simply prolonged self pity.

Understanding What A Spiritual Malady Is

First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke.

The spiritual malady is the result of my being out of order with my higher power who I choose to call God. I was the director in the drama of life and managing the world so I could get what I thought I needed to feel ok. Fear and resentment dominated my thoughts and I made decisions based on self which caused me harm and harmed others. In fact our first “spiritual” wakening was probably the result of drinking as it transformed how we felt about ourselves and the world in which we lived. In fact, I felt “more me” when I drank, it was like I escaped a restrictive sense of self to be a more expansive, people loving self. I had a connection with the world I could not generate myself, when sober.

Finding We Matter, Through Our Service To Others

This is why we celebrate this great anniversary, this co-founding of AA, as it is the start of this therapeutic and spiritual connectedenss with other alcoholics needing help and giving help and with the wider world. Thus my original point is not semantic, AA was not founded by one person, it was co-founded as we alcoholics achieve sobriety with the help of other alcoholics. Millions of lives have been saved not to mention the lasting benefits it has brought to families, and societies once harmed by alcoholism. It symbolizes that this was the day when one alcoholic helped another alcoholic achieve lasting sobriety. Dr Bob like Bill Wilson had intermittently stayed sober via involvement with the Oxford Group but they had always relapsed back to drinking. I have a spiritual tool kit that deals with this emotional disease. These are all parts of my emotionally entangled web that is spun when I react to some sense of rejection.

On page 62 the text explains that“Selfishness-self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”This“SELFISHNESS-self-centeredness”(or the “ego”, as some people refer to it) drives us to respond to life situations with the above “symptoms” as well as disorders and addictions other than alcoholism. For a long time I thought my life was unmanageable because of all the crazy insane things I did while drinking — like the car accidents, hurting people when I didn’t mean to, failed relationships, loss of jobs, family dysfunction, jails, asylums, etc.

I respond to feelings of humiliation by humiliating you, I react to my chronic shame by attempting to created shame in you. These are my main negative emotional reactions to the world that often scare me and make me feel ashamed. I also have other ways of reacting in an emotionally unhealthy way that my step 4 showed. I was working with someone last year and we had a disagreement and this guy said to me “I am upset” and “You have hurt my feelings” I was taken aback. This guy was an Olympic champion at expressing how he feels compared to me. I never say I am upset because it also seems to be an undifferentiated emotion that I have trouble accessing, mentalising and expressing. In fact I think this pattern of interlinked negative emotions occurs simply because of inability to identify, label and share the simple fact that I have been upset by what someone has said or acted towards me.