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12 Step and Victimhood


Question? 

Just to run something by you and be seen.  I get a lot out of the fellowship from 12 step meetings but in my heart and gut something doesn’t feel right. They want me to admit that I have a disease and I’m powerless over it. I don’t really believe that. Feels like victimhood.

Thoughts?

Every faith tradition, sacred text, healing modality and 12 step teaching all have elements that can be translated as the same.  It’s either about love or fear, the two powers that either heal or destroy.
If you take a little time to translate the meaning then you will see they all are saying the same things.  Truth really is truth just as electricity always works the same.  Sometimes what stumps us is the meaning of words that have been used in a harmful way towards us and we reject the truth that is in that system, modality or teaching. 

Twelve step programs do have a languaging that is hard for some of us in Loving-groups.  We do not believe we are powerless over our choices and actions.  We believe the brain is neuroplastic and we can change.         
  
But let’s look deeper with a new lens on the topic.

 So you have a “disease”.  Isn’t that true?  We are in dis-ease.  Pain does that to us.  As we do something unhealthy to diminish our pain repetitively we grow into an addiction, a thing that fires our brain for a moment of “ease”.  So yes pain and fear is a disease. 

And it could be that since we spent 50 years doing “the thing” that our brain will always be “sensitive” to that particular behavior. That part of our brain just is so used up and worn out that it will never overcome it completely.  Thus needing to stay away from the bar for the alcoholic.  Funny thing to note too, that once we begin to heal, the bar isn’t attractive anymore anyway. 

So we know we have “dis-ease”.  And we know that our brains have been so overstimulated that the addiction just doesn’t work anymore.  We can’t get the same hit anymore from the same release from our pain.  So what comes next? Facing that truth?  Leaning into love?

So are we powerless?  In a sense yes, we are.  In unconscious pain we are powerless.  This is the ultimate state of disconnection from love which is fear and pain, which started our addiction of easing the pain in the first place. 

So when we are in fear, we act out and it becomes like a demon taking us over.  Until we render ourselves truthful at that place filled with fear and give ourselves over to love, god, universal support, we are powerless.  We cannot heal in pain and fear.

So alone and afraid you are powerless.  In love you are powerful.  Getting to happiness is a journey and must first be met with “alone I am powerless in my addiction”, fear will never get me there.  So yes, admitting “we are powerless alone and in fear” is a good place to start, the must place to start, but not a good place to camp out for decades. 

It’s a place to say “I give, I cannot do it alone,  I want more” and practice faith which is believing in something better before you have proof of it yourself. 

So I can say I am powerless over my addiction,  ALONE.  But with god (love), 12 step programs, groups, and support I can find my way to making the kinds of choices that will bring happiness into my life.  All truth leads back to the same place.  We need love and connection, without it we are powerless. 

And it’s ok to tell the cold hard truth that I got to the addiction because I didn’t have love and connection.  I am powerless alone but I can change this with faith.  Aren’t we all teaching the same thing? Maybe?  The biggest problem is that some teachers teach dogma that is confusing, teaching literal application and not understanding that standing on how it’s interpreted is not important (fear).  Sometimes we just need a good translator. 

Sharon 

Send your questions to results.roses@cox.net

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