people uncovered their authentic selves and, as a result, pursued a healthier, more honest standard for well-being.
MEET PATTY POWERS, addictions recovery coach. Patty plays the role of mirror for her clients. By living with each of them for up to a month at a time in their own homes, she reflects back at them every day, and even moment to moment, how devious and manipulative the incessant inner dialogue of voices that distract them, delude them, sabotage them, and warp their personalities can be.
She has observed how the first transformation stage in addiction recovery comes from a self-awareness that develops, usually slowly, by practicing honesty and humility with self and others. Another necessary ingredient is self-acceptance of your “authentic” self, whatever that turns out to be. Addicts so rationalize their actions that they can’t hear the truth or actually feel and express feelings unless something or someone penetrates and short-circuits their inner chatty dialogue of noise, fear, and denial.
One of Patty’s clients, a woman with a very successful career whom we will call Nancy, hired Patty for a month to help her break a dependency on prescription drugs. She developed a problem with painkillers and antidepressants in the wake of the attacks of 9/11, and shortly thereafter had to cope with the painful aftermath of a difficult divorce.
Patty noticed early on that Nancy would begin feeling drowsy any time she began to feel stress. Not only was Nancy unaware of this pattern, she vehemently denied there was any connection between her fatigue and her unexpressed feelings. Nancy showed very little self-awareness, and that was sabotaging her attempts to maintain sobriety.
One of the advantages of having a full-time sobriety coach such as Patty, as opposed to being in a thirty-day rehab facility, is the constant personalized mirror for self-reflection that the sobriety coach holds up, coupled with the new life skills that clients learn and practice within the familiar world of their own living spaces. In recovery herself for several decades from heroin, Patty lives in New York City but has stayed with clients throughout the United States and in Britain and Canada. She has coached alcoholics and just about every other kind of drug addict known to medical science.
Whenever her client Nancy appeared fatigued despite having engaged in little or no physical exertion during the day, Patty would say to her, “Check in with yourself. What are you feeling right now?”
When Nancy seemed to be withdrawing, Patty would ask, “Where did you just go? What were you thinking about?”
Any time Patty caught Nancy future tripping—feeling unexpressed fear—she would instruct her, “Let’s get you back in your body. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Feel your feet, your legs, your entire body.”
After several weeks of this often-annoying routine, Nancy finally began getting in the habit of bringing herself back to the present moment whenever the inner dialogue of her addict mind got out of control and tried to undermine her sobriety. Through this process she was rediscovering her authentic self.
Patty’s constant vigilance, combined with her barrages of penetrating questions and the grounding exercises, gradually began to dispel all of Nancy’s rationalizing stories until one day a significant breakthrough occurred. Nancy returned to her former home to pick up some belongings from her married days, and the visit triggered the release of a lifetime of feelings. She got tired and sleepy as soon as she walked through the door, and felt as if she stayed in the house for any length of time, she would have an overpowering urge to use drugs again.
“You were right!” Nancy later blurted to Patty. “I understand the connection now. I feel it. I see that I react to my feelings by wanting to check out with sleep.”
Once addicts have that first revelatory glimpse of their true self hiding beneath all of the layers of drama and trauma, it’s as if they are coming out of a sleepwalking trance. Consequently, they should keep repeating this mantra: “Don’t go back to sleep! Never go back to sleep!” Without vigilance it’s easy to slip back into an unconscious state. In Nancy’s case, her revelation had a chain reaction that put into place all of the elements necessary for her sustained recovery.
Of course, many people who aren’t addicts also suffering from loneliness, isolation, grief, fear, or whatever else afflicts the human spirit. They lead lives of quiet desperation. Having someone they can be themselves with, someone who they can be honest and self-revealing without fear of judgment with is, in my experience, an essential therapeutic first step to achieving wellness and healing. In this sense we all have the capacity—and, indeed, the duty—to become one another’s sobriety and mental health coach, acting as mirrors reflecting one another’s souls.
Too many people are sleepwalking through life, with no self-awareness. One symptom of our collective narcolepsy may be the periodic violent outbursts of shootings and mayhem that characterize our society. I am convinced that the lessons we take from the collective addiction and recovery experience can also tell us a lot about the mental health origins of gun violence in the United States, especially showing the common link between childhood trauma and its impact on the developing brain.
Addicts can lose just about everything in their lives and still survive, “But people in broader society who experience real hardships don’t have the experience or life skills to cope very well,” said Patty Powers. “The intensity of the fear and grief and financial stress since 9/11 and the Great Recession are all adding up. During the late 1920s and early ’30s at the start of the Great Depression, guys jumped off buildings in response to losing everything in the stock market. They didn’t shoot up their families and groups of strangers. The level of violence and addiction going on today is indicative of the huge pressure of stress from trauma that has built up in all areas of life. Addicts try to cope by getting high because they are afraid of being overwhelmed by their feelings. Getting in touch with our feelings in a healthy way can help us to stop killing ourselves and each other.”
SELF-AWARENESS UNMASKS YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF
Like most people entering recovery from an addiction, I was in a state of confusion for at least the first six months to a year, feeling as if I had been trapped in a hazy bubble that made it difficult to engage in any kind of reality other than brushing my teeth and getting dressed every day. In recovery, the word “mocus” is used to describe that haze. Early recovery is a basic survivalist kind of head space. Although self-awareness can and often does develop over time, “normies” too often think of people in recovery as being stuck in that twilight zone head space.
“By the time I recognized that I had a problem with alcohol, I was very confused about who I was and where I was going,” Dan Duncan, the director of community services for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in St. Louis, told me, echoing a common refrain. “Self-awareness is integral to recovery because you lose your authentic self in addiction. Alcohol and drugs have a warping effect. Finding your way out is a gradual self-examination process. The joy of recovery for me was the adventure of self-discovery. I really wanted to know who the heck I was. Am I the guy who lied so much when I was drinking, or am I the decent guy buried underneath all of the crap? When I finally found out and rediscovered myself, my mother said to me, ‘I finally have my son back.’” Today, Dan has more than three decades in recovery and works as director of community services in the St. Louis area for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, dedicating his life to helping others on the recovery path.
Self-awareness is the necessary first step to taking personal responsibility for your life. Self-awareness triggers the process of finding out who you really are so you can deal honestly with yourself and others. Self-awareness is a foundation for 12-Step recovery programs because it’s an acknowledgment that whatever you have been doing hasn’t been working for you.
Not everybody is interested in becoming self-aware, yet I believe that all addicts and alcoholics
