Recovery and Character Defects

The topic at the home group last night was step 6 (the step of the month!) and the process of dealing with/living with/getting rid of more subtle character defects. When we first get sober, we are often astonished at how our more glaring and potentially fatal problem behaviors magically stop, sometimes very quickly. Some of us stop threatening to kill people or ourselves, stop stealing cars, stop lying and cheating, stop putting people we love at risk-- and all of that change often happens pretty much overnight. 

But we stay sober for a while and begin to realize that there are other...issues. Naively, some of us think that if we just don't use drugs or drink, everything else will magically improve. We begin to realize this is not the case the longer we stay sober. Some of us truly struggle with being indomitable assholes for years after removing the drugs and alcohol. Others of us were better socialized to begin with and yet, we find that certain challenging attitudes, values and behaviors just won't go away, no matter what we try to do. 

The process naturally leads to revealing what our character defects and shortcomings are and then our realization that our lives would be a lot better if we found ways to at least moderate their influence, if not get rid of them entirely. Once we do step 4-- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves-- and step 5-- admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs-- we are usually willing at least to some degree to cut at least some of that toxic shit out of our lives. 

Steps 6 and 7 come along naturally, in this way. 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

What's the most interesting thing about this movement of the soul in recovery is that the steps DO NOT say "6. Beat the shit out of ourselves when we realized what pieces of garbage we were. 7. Tried with all our might to embark on a desperate course of self improvement to finally become perfect on our own terms."

Because there is an entire industry dedicated to exactly that. 

Instead of suggesting a program of self improvement, the steps address two approaches: readiness and humility. Be ready to have the defects removed, or at least be ready to be ready. Then just keep requesting that they be removed. 

It seems like this stance of combined willingness and humility gets obfuscated or outright ignored by a lot of recovering people. I have never encountered a group of more self-loathing, self-attacking and self-castigating people than in 12 step groups, especially AA. It's one of the great riffs of recovery-- how much of a shit person I was before I got sober, and how, now that I am sober, I am a much better person, but I am still a bag of shit. In the face of this performance of self-hatred, I often wonder how some of us stay sober at all. If it were really true that I hated myself that much, why not just drink myself to death?

A friend of mine jokes: "I would totally work on being kinder to myself if I weren't such a worthless piece of shit."

I suspect instead that it is not all that real, this performance of self-hatred. I think it's based in fear and ego. "Self-centered fear is the chief activator of our defects," wrote Bill Wilson in the 12 and 12. And one of our defects, it turns out, hilariously, is publicly performing how fucking defective we are. 

This is one reason I almost always get to Cheri Huber's wonderful book, There is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self Hate, when I am working with sponsees. In fact, I have loaned about 6 copies of this book and not gotten them back. haha. 

I know what some of you might be thinking, because I resist this idea myself. My context growing up was the opposite of this in many ways: There is Nothing Right With You: Who Do You Think You Are? would be the book I could write from that perspective. (The sad thing is, it would probably sell a million copies). 

I just read an article yesterday about how narcissism is on the rise-- diagnoses have increased and the mental health profession is taking notice. You'd think that it would be like throwing kerosene on the narcissism fire to promote the above book. But, having read it about 6 times, I am reminded that it is in fact incredibly painful from the perspective of my own narcissistic tendencies, ego inflation and lack of empathy. Because, in my experience, it turns out that that arena of character defects in myself stems from self-hatred, not from too much inaccurate self-love. 

Anyway, the idea is to just let go of all that self loathing, and, especially, stop the egocentric public performance of self-hatred. The steps and their call for willingness and humility propose a way through the challenging aspects of ourselves that has nothing to do with our own self will or plans or designs for self improvement. Nothing. Become ready and ask. Being ready includes fierce awareness of our shortcomings but without attachment. You can't be ready to let go of something if you are attached to how fucked up you are. One way of dissolving attachments is to see where the shortcoming affects behavior and act from the outside in, stopping the behavior. How does it feel to stop the behavior? Are you even able to stop the behavior? If so, how? If not, what will you do next?

Become ready and ask.