Brave New Kitty

Principle: Self-discipline

“One day at a time” is one of the most well known 12-Step slogans of all time. Visit any Alano (a place where 12 Step meetings are held) in the world and you are likely to see it prominently displayed in a bold, decorative script. It was one of the first of many 12-Step phrases to become part of popular culture. You hear it everywhere now: bosses say it to employees, teachers to students, friends to friends. It’s become kind of a universal cliché to express the idea of persevering or having patience in difficult situations. This is true as far as it goes, but it is an incomplete understanding of the phrase, which is really about developing the quality of self-discipline.

At first glance, this may not make sense. How is “One day at a time” about self-discipline? Well, it provides a way to control impulses by keeping focus in the present: the impulse to get high is immediate and forceful, so it makes sense that controlling it must be immediate, too. (As any addict knows, thinking about quitting at some point in the future is futile.) The thought of maintaining sober habits for a lifetime can be overwhelming to a newly sober person who hasn’t fully integrated them yet. But if a person says to himself, “One day at a time,” or, in times of extreme stress, “One hour at a time,” or even “One minute at a time,” he feels much more capable of resisting his impulses. Anyone can do something for a day that might scare the hell out of them to try to do for the rest of their lives.

So “One day at a time,” then, is a mental tool that helps addicts resist impulse, and resisting impulse is a form of self-discipline. When a person discovers this tool and is able to practice it successfully, it has all sorts of beneficial results. He feels better about himself. He feels strong, capable, and hopeful. And he creates space in his psyche for other positive thoughts and feelings to sprout and grow, creating a sort of upward spiral of personal development. In general, people who overcome addiction are people who’ve incorporated this self-discipline into their lives. (And not just in AA or from ODAAT—such self-discipline can come from many different sources. But that is another topic.)

If it makes sense to you that ODAAT is a tool that helps addicts learn self-discipline (and what else could it be, really, when its very utterance is intended to help a person refrain from giving in to their urges?), then this brings up an interesting aspect of addiction, which is this: What most people call addiction is really just poor impulse control. People know they should stop or slow down; they know they are not behaving in a healthy, self-loving manner; they feel remorseful about it or know they will feel remorseful about it eventually, but they just can’t make themselves refrain from taking that next drink, that next hit, or placing that next bet. Even in the case of physical addiction, beyond a few days’ period of withdrawal (which may require medical supervision), the real challenge is psychological, as almost any heroin or nicotine addict who has gone through that process can tell you.

I realize this sounds harsh, but it isn’t. I am not by any means saying addicts are weak-minded or bad people. Not at all. They come by their behavior honestly. They typically have deeply rooted psychological issues that are extremely difficult, and often extremely painful, to address. For what I hope are obvious reasons, such a psychic burden typically results in depression, feelings of hopelessness, low self-worth, and poor coping skills. When a person with these issues discovers the diversion of compulsive behavior, particularly in the form of psychotropic relief, it makes sense that he could learn to depend on it and that it could become difficult to live without. Why would he want to try, particularly in the absence of something to replace it? Seen in this light, poor impulse control is something to be understood, not judged, and addiction seems to be a perfectly rational response to dealing with one’s anxiety. Unfortunately, it is also a powerful, self-perpetuating cycle of behavior that a person usually gives up only when the pain it causes becomes worse than the pain it is trying to cure (known, in recovery jargon, as “hitting bottom”).

12 Step programs, and indeed all other addiction recovery programs, succeed to the extent that they are able to make addicts address the issue of impulse control. They may not define it that way, but that is essentially what they are doing. ODAAT successfully holds off urges so people can adopt new, more mature—and thus more effective—methods of dealing with their issues. They do this by acknowledging their problems, taking responsibility for them, trying to right wrongs created by them, and learning to incorporate all of these habits into their daily lives in an ongoing fashion. In short, they stop behaving like impulsive children and start behaving like disciplined adults.

ODAAT is a prime example of why addiction is not a disease, and 12 Step groups are not medicine. Rather, they are places you can go to learn impulse control and grown-up values and receive support and encouragement while you do so. Why else would there be so much emphasis on having a psychic change, one that involves developing honesty, willingness, humility, and personal responsibility? These are the traits that allow a person to pursue his dreams, desires and goals. They also make addiction a very unattractive option, because when you have good things going on in your life and have been able to come to some sort of peace with the demons of your past, self-destructive urges go away with much more of a whimper than a bang. They simply lose their seductive power.

Just because it’s fashionable to attribute immaturity to a disease doesn’t mean it’s correct, or helpful, to do so. Such characterization obfuscates the real issue and makes it more difficult, not less, for people to get themselves on track. Sobriety is a decision we make, evident in the fact that no medical procedures or treatments can make it happen. We can only make a volitional choice; this is the “psychic change” referred to over and over in AA. And this is good news, because it means we are not at the mercy of our biology. We are not victims. We are capable, rational people who are always able to do the next right thing and create the life we want for ourselves, if only we choose to.

How ironic that 12 Step programs provide the right tools, but under the completely incorrect—and invalidating—assumption that addiction is a disease. If you take the time to analyze 12 Step language and methods (and that of most, if not all, other recovery programs), this fact will become obvious to you. There is no other “disease” in the world, for example, that requires you to make amends to people you’ve wronged. The very idea is absurd in a medical context; it only makes sense when seen as a moral problem. So, if you’ve found relief in a 12 Step program, celebrate its strengths, but please, please, please be cognizant of its shortcomings, as well.

The disease label is seductive, but it is not rational, and it will never get you where you want to be in life. You must learn self-discipline, one day at a time or some other way, to achieve that. Remember this, whether you are struggling with impulse control or any other temptation to see yourself as a victim.

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Sometimes looking back at ourselves can be difficult. Even something as simple as a high school picture can make us cringe with embarrassment. “That hair! Those clothes! Ohhh, what was I thinking??” Sometimes, it’s even worse. Maybe we held beliefs that we’d rather not own as ours; this is the personal history I’m addressing here.

In 2003, Jim and I took a motorcycle trip out to the west coast, and we spent a night with my aunt and uncle in Seattle. I hadn’t seen them in many years, and we reminisced about family late into the night. My aunt brought up something that happened when I was thirteen. Her daughter, my cousin, stayed with my family for a couple of weeks that summer, and apparently, I had turned her on to the lord: I was in my “Jesus saves” period. My aunt brought it up laughingly, but said how annoyed she was that Dena came home with a bible and a love for the lord (neither my aunt nor uncle, like everyone on that side of my family, were at all religious).

When she told this story, Jim looked at me with incredulity. I was mortified. My spiritual beliefs have gone through dozens, if not hundreds, of iterations, since then and could not be further from that now. By the time I was eighteen, I was a devout atheist, reading the work of Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, and Friedrich Nietzsche. When I got sober at age 27, I could not stomach the idea of Jesus as Higher Power, and if “as we understood him” had not been added to the higher power steps, I—like many addicts—would not have stuck around. Most of the people I sat in meetings with believed their H.P. was Jesus, but they were tolerant of those that didn’t, unlike the fundamentalists I’d gotten involved with fourteen years earlier. I read my Big Book religiously, but everywhere it said “God,” I crossed it out and wrote in “H.P.” above it. Later, after I’d had a “spiritual awakening” (still early in my sobriety), I crossed out “H.P.” and wrote “God” next to it; I hadn’t returned to fundamentalism, but I knew there was something where I’d so thoroughly believed there was nothing. And even later, I came to realize that it didn’t matter what I called my spirituality; it’s beyond anything I can fully understand, anyway.

My relationship history is another area of my past that I’m not proud of. I had so many boyfriends that I knew were not right for me; I actually seemed to choose men with whom I had no future. Some were cruel, others just not compatible. Either way, I spent many years preferring bad relationships to no relationship at all. In retrospect, this seems unfathomable, and embarrassing, but it’s the naked truth. I finally overcame that impulse somewhere in my mid-thirties, and spent two solid years alone enjoying single life and being happy. It was only when I realized—and accepted—that being alone was preferable to being with someone I was incompatible with that a good relationship became possible. I’m not saying it works that way for everybody, but it certainly worked that way for me.

There are other things I’m not proud of: my drug use, my dishonesty, my self-centeredness, my temper, all of which are the root of several nasty situations in my past. If I think about it, I’m sure I could come up with many more. We all could. Nobody is completely proud of everything in their past.

So when I recently opened my Big Book for the first time in a few years and saw all those crossed out, then rewritten “Gods,” I cringed. I actually had an impulse to throw the book away. But instead of doing that, I paused (a Golden Pause) and took some time to notice what was happening with me.

My first thought was that I was not that person anymore. My spirituality had been sooo undeveloped. I felt embarrassed that I was ever that naïve, that literal, that backward in my beliefs. I was annoyed by all the memories that came to me, of attending different (Christian) churches, of praying to a paternal god-figure, of once having a fundamentalist-Christian sponsor whom I allowed, for awhile, to draw me into non-AA religious activities. I don’t even want to get into my fanatic zeal for the Twelve Steps, which was at least somewhat responsible for my naiveté in other areas.

My first impulse was to destroy all evidence that I was ever that person. I have done this in the past with old photos, old diaries, and the like; in fact, perhaps it was because I’ve done this in the past that this time, I paused to more fully consider the impulse and what it really meant.

What it meant, I realized, was this: I was willing to pretend that a large part of my life had never happened. I was willing to rewrite my personal history so I would never have to acknowledge that I was once ignorant, incomplete, backward, foolish, or any way I did not want to see myself. Essentially, I was willing to disown who I once was. Which means that at some level, I was willing to disown who I am today.

I can’t begin to say how sad this made me feel. Is my self-love still so tentative, even after all these years of effort and progress, that it’s that easy to deny myself? To turn a cold shoulder to the rawest, most tender aspects of who I was and in some ways still am?

I put the book back on the shelf. I made the decision then and there to never throw away anything with that much personal history in it, even if that history isn’t always my best side.

Personal history, no matter how crazy or embarrassing, is something to embrace, even to cherish. Every single event, opinion, belief, path, person, mistake, and circumstance in my life has brought me to where I am today. If I like where that is, which I do, then I shouldn’t have a problem with my history. In fact, I should be grateful for it, proud of it, and feel good about it, because if it had been different, who knows where I’d be? Change one thing and you may change everything.

Even if you don’t like where you are right now, your history is uniquely yours, and ought be embraced. Whatever mistakes you made, whatever regrets you have, all are fodder for a better future. If we can’t learn from our mistakes, we might as well all call it quits right now. No, we must learn to claim our history as the vital, integral, necessary part of us that it is. For me, this is an attempt to do that: not only do I know, now all of you do, too. As scary as that is, it feels pretty good.

It isn’t always easy to claim our histories, especially when a history is as messy, fractured and unpretty as mine is. But I think it’s necessary if you want peace and serenity in your life, not to mention a chance at a better future. Agonizing over a less than ideal past is a pointless waste of energy that could be much better spent on more productive pursuits.

I still struggle with accepting some of my past, but since the day I made the decision to keep the book, it’s been easier; something shifted for the better. That experience helped me reach a new level of acceptance and even pride about who I used to be. I realized that all the layers mean, more than anything, how much I have grown and how much I continue to grow. And that is a life well spent, and certainly, nothing for which to be ashamed.

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In the past couple of months, I’ve been having a really difficult time writing. I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve had “writer’s block.” I’ve got plenty of topics and plenty of ideas in my head. It’s been more a case of just feeling weary of it and wanting to do other things. When I sit down to write, it requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline to complete a task. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I fail; the amount of failures is evident in the lower volume of work I’ve been turning out.

I’ve learned over the years, by observing my feelings and behavior, that such sluggishness can be indicative of a new wave of personal growth and that by paying attention to it, I can move myself along the path with more clarity and efficiency than if I just wait for whatever it is to whack me alongside the head.

This is tougher than it might sound. Even those of us who devote ourselves to self-improvement can balk at change. It’s easy to ignore the signs for as long as possible. In fact, I think it’s probably the norm rather than the exception, especially when that change involves facing down demons or discovering unpretty truths about ourselves (as we all must if we are to forge forward in our lives).

Typically, I don’t know I’m balking at first. I only know I feel sluggish, uncreative, and easily distracted. But after several years of repeating the same pattern of delving in and pulling back, delving in and pulling back, I’ve learned to spot the signs of a new growth cusp sooner and sooner in the cycle. And if I think something new is coming, I try to make room for it.

When I’m on the cusp of change, I’ve learned that I not only feel lazy, I also tend to sleep more, eat more, and distract myself with brain-numbing activities such as television or computer games. Sometimes, I pick fights with my partner, or fantasize about getting very drunk or stoned. One of the most powerful indications of a new growth cycle is vivid dreaming. If I’m having a lot of vivid dreams, I try to pay attention to what they’re telling me. I try to notice how they relate to feelings I’m having—or resisting—in my waking life.

The general pattern seems to be that my conscious mind resists change while my unconscious mind drives it forward, creating conflict and anxiety that demands some sort of resolution. And I think this is true for everyone, although it manifests in different ways. When I’m able to step back and observe this happening, then I’m in a position to do something about it. I can make room in my life for the change, the awareness, the new plateau, whatever it is that’s trying to emerge.

How do I make room? Well, I try to stop resisting as much as possible. I work with the resistance through journaling, meditation, and conversations with empathetic people. Sometimes body work, like massage or even just vigorous exercise, also helps with resistance. I try to give myself lots of space and lots of opportunities to grow in the new direction. I spend more time alone. I try to be gentle with myself, but at the same time I don’t allow myself to duck the responsibility of the new awareness. I try to see it as a positive, even if it seems to be something I don’t really want to be aware of; actually, especially if it’s something I don’t want to be aware of, because I know those are the things that have the most to teach me.

I think it’s very important to be aware of these cycles of growth in our lives. The more clarity we have about them, the easier it will be to incorporate them and move toward our goals, dreams, and desires.

So when I started to feel sluggish about writing last month, I began to look for these signs of growth. Surprisingly, there weren’t any. I wasn’t distracting myself with video games and television; in fact, I’ve been watching less television and playing fewer games than usual. I wasn’t picking fights with Jim, I wasn’t having any self-destructive fantasies (no more than usual, anyway), and I wasn’t having a lot of vivid dreams.

Huh.

My first thought, upon seeing no signs, was that I was in denial. It wouldn’t be the first time, and usually indicates a really big change afoot. So I looked again and still I found nothing.

Again, huh.

I pondered this for a while, all the time feeling great unwillingness to sit down at my computer and work. Maybe I was just in a low cycle. Maybe I was getting sick, or fighting a bout of depression. Maybe it’s my natural cycle of creativity to have slow periods.

All of that makes sense. And while any of these factors could have been behind my behavior, as they often have been, it turned out this time that none of them were.

The reason for my torpor, I finally discovered, was that I’d branched out creatively. I’d found a new creative outlet that was taking up a relatively small chunk of my time, but a big chunk of my psyche.

Here’s what happened.

I used to enjoy cooking and baking very much, but for a number of reasons—living alone, foot and back problems, going out a lot—I’d gotten away from it. Then during the holidays, I decided to bake bread for gifts, and I fell in love with cooking all over again. I found myself experimenting with new recipes, watching cooking shows, driving around town to find obscure ingredients. I was having a lot of fun.

Cooking is not only fun, it’s a creative challenge. I used to fall asleep thinking about my writing, but lately I’ve been planning meals and thinking up new sauces and salad dressings.

It might seem obvious in retrospect, but it took me awhile to figure out that cooking was taking up a large portion of my creative energy. It wasn’t that I was bored with writing. I just found something else I was really enjoying, and I was “saving” my creativity for it without being aware of it. I don’t know if this is exactly what’s been going on, but it’s something like this. And figuring this out has freed up creative energy for both pursuits.

Personal growth isn’t always about our internal world. We can’t constantly confront demons and heighten self-awareness, ferret out shortcomings and dwell on our pain. In fact, we do those things in order to enjoy our lives, pursue our interests, and do what we love. If not, what would be the point of all the work?

If you’re struggling or feeling lazy, it could be you’re resisting change, in a low energy cycle, or devoting your energy to other pursuits. The only way to know for sure is to know yourself well and pay attention to whatever’s going on. Whatever it is, though, adventure awaits. Be ready, trust the process, and you’re in for the time of your life.

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Principle: Critical thinking

“Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?” This is a cliché often heard in AA meetings. Usually, it’s said to get people to think about their attitudes: are you positive or negative? Excited or morose? Involved or avoidant? Self-explanatory, perhaps. But as with most clichés (especially those pertaining to personal development), by looking deeper we can extract even more meaning and, if we’re lucky, uncover more profound truths about ourselves and about our human nature in general.

First, let’s look at the problem. In AA, the problem is typically a negative attitude, which will, if indulged, eventually lead you back to self-destructive behavior. Such behavior can take myriad forms but essentially involves doing things that aren’t in your own self-interest. Symptoms of being part of the problem include, but are not limited to:
•    Complaining a lot
•    Blaming other people for your problems
•    Feeling sorry for yourself
•    Acting more helpless than you really are
•    Holding grudges (also known as resentments)
•    Avoiding introspection (also known as personal inventory).

The solutions, then, include, but are not limited to:
•    Looking for the positive in situations
•    Taking accountability for your actions
•    Forgiving others their shortcomings and wrongdoings
•    Developing the habit of introspection.

At first glance, it seems to be a simple matter of acting more positively. And that is absolutely true, and valuable advice on its own. But there’s more here than just behavior modification. If you see this cliché merely as advice on how to behave, then you’re seeing only its surface. You can glean a lot more from it if you consider its underlying meaning.

If you’re engaging in problem behavior, I think the pertinent question to ask yourself is: why? Why am I so negative, critical, resentful? Why do I act like I’m less capable than I really am? Why do I avoid looking at myself? The answer, the true answer, will probably surprise you. You’re likely to think it has to do with being stubborn, closed-minded, having bad habits, being an addict; you fill in the blank, because we all have these labels we give ourselves for why we do the things we do. But these labels themselves are part of the problem.

Labeling ourselves is limiting, you see. It doesn’t go far enough. Whenever we say we’re “stubborn” or “closed-minded” or “angry” or anything else, we have a tendency to settle there, to look no further. This is true not just in personal development, but in all areas of life. If we label another person, we tend to always see him through the filter of that label. The same goes for thoughts, beliefs, nationalities, professions and pretty much everything else.

But labels are particularly damaging when we apply them to ourselves, because they hinder a deeper search into our behavior, so they get us stuck. Yes, it’s good to know you’re stubborn, angry, or closed-minded, and it’s good to work at modifying these tendencies: holding your tongue, being responsible, not indulging in self-pity (for example). But if you really want to change on a core level, to free yourself from the burden of anger or blaming or feeling like a perpetual victim (or all of the above), then you have to do more than this.

You have to learn to love yourself unconditionally. And you have to do so by developing the habit of critical thinking.

All addictive, sabotaging, negative, helpless, and blaming behavior stems from a lack of self-love. (I’m not going to go into why this is the case. The spiritual literature of the world—Buddhist in particular—is full of more than ample evidence of the damage we do by not loving ourselves enough.) But usually we aren’t aware of this. We don’t get this far in the reasoning process. Instead, we get to a label, and if it fits, we stop there.

Without deeper awareness, though, we eventually hit a crisis point (another version of whatever got us down the road of personal growth and/or sobriety to begin with; a bottom; a dark night of the soul), and we do one of two things: we either succumb to the despair and backslide into old ways of dealing with our problems, or we go deeper. This is where critical thinking comes in, for it is not possible to go deeper without it. Furthermore, since this is the ongoing process of personal development—that is, if we’re on a path of personal growth, we will continue to have crises and continue to go deeper and deeper to work through them, for that’s what the examined life is about—critical thinking is what will carry us through crisis after crisis (or, if you prefer, growth opportunity after growth opportunity). Critical thinking is the key to moving forward not only in personal growth, but life in general.

It may seem ironic that deep, abiding self-love can only be arrived at by critical thinking. It should be an emotional process, you think, one that involves getting in touch with your feelings. But that’s what critical thinking does. Feelings are muddy and messy and, in and of themselves, unable to lead us to solutions. If we aren’t able to be rational about them, they can be very problematic. It is only when we apply a sustained and earnest analysis (the personal inventory) to our inner world that our feelings, self-love in particular, come to real fruition.

What do I mean by critical thinking? Critical thinking is simply the skill of being rational, but this is more difficult than it might sound, especially in the realm of our own psyches. It’s very easy to see ourselves how we want to see ourselves and dig only as deep as doesn’t cause any discomfort. It’s very hard to develop the habit of earnest introspection, of looking objectively at ourselves and dealing honestly with what we find. It’s so hard, in fact, that we have Steps and sponsors and books and meetings and clichés to help us. All 12 Step literature (and much secular self-help literature) devotes a great deal of space to this issue. Nothing is more valuable to sustained growth than developing the habit of honest self-appraisal, and nothing is more conducive to self-love, because the closer you get to understanding who you really are, the harder it becomes to not love yourself. (Again, I’m not going to go into why. It’s too big a topic, and something you have to figure out for yourself, anyway. I’ll just say that it has to do with our True Nature as spiritual beings.)

Developing the habit of critical thinking will serve you well in all aspects of life. You’ll be a better problem solver. You’ll understand people better. You’ll be more confident. You’ll be more curious. You’ll be more skeptical. You’ll weigh more sides of an issue before making a decision. You’ll be more respectful of other people’s right to do the same. And, slowly but surely, you’ll cease blaming, feeling sorry for yourself, holding grudges, and acting helpless, because critical thinking will bring you round to realizing the futility in all of that.

The truth is, sometimes we’re part of the problem, and sometimes we’re part of the solution, and sometimes, despite our best efforts, we just don’t know until after the fact. As long as we inhabit a human body, we’re destined to shortcomings and errors of judgment. But if we strive to develop critical thinking, and we become increasingly self-aware, we move more and more toward the solution side of the equation.

That’s really the best any of us can do.

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