Surrender to the Process: Task 3 in Carnes’ 30 Task Model for Addiction Recovery

A common struggle for addicts entering recovery is the tug-of-war of their desires: wanting to stop acting out while still feeling a pull toward addictive behaviors.  Early in recovery, there’s often an expectation from yourself or from a spouse or loved one to change instantaneously.  And at the beginning, that can feel possible: after discovery or disclosure of addiction, you might have an immediate sense of disgust or distaste for the addiction that fuels sobriety. But with time, that initial emotional response subsides, and the addiction can easily come back when the underlying roots of the problem are still hidden.

One of these underlying roots is a sense of control: a belief that you can force yourself to stop your addictive behaviors, you are in control of your own recovery, and you can pick and choose what you do to get better.  Notice, however, that one of the hallmarks of addiction is repeated attempts to stop without success.  Often early attempts to stop are half-hearted, done in isolation, or not informed by recovery principles. 

The momentary willingness that comes after disclosure or discovery will not turn into long-term sobriety unless there is a recognition that past attempts to control don’t work.  Unless there is a true surrender of control, change will not last.

Surrender to the Process vs. Attempts to Control

What is Surrender?

Surrender is a recognition of the reality that you do not have the power to get better from your addiction on your own or by manipulating or controlling your recovery.  This ties into 12 Step work and breaking through denial as you recognize your own powerlessness and unmanageability.

Surrender acknowledges that the attempts you’ve made to change have been futile.  Often, this is because they are done by yourself without the support or accountability of others.  Or because you approach recovery in a piecemeal fashion, only choosing to do some things and leaving behind necessary tasks for your recovery that stir up discomfort.  Or you may be still on the fence about recovery in general.

What is Control?

Control happens when we believe that we are not powerless and that we can do the work of recovery on our own.  This often leads to white-knuckling, a term that refers to forcing yourself to stop acting out behaviors by sheer willpower.  The term “dry drunk” refers to someone who may not be acting out in their addiction, but hasn’t addressed the underlying root causes of the addiction to create lasting, holistic life change because they are still seeking control. 

Control can be obvious, as in some of the examples above, but it can also show up in subtle ways.  When you are only doing some of the work of recovery and ignoring putting into practice that which makes you feel uncomfortable, you are exercising your own control.  Control shows up in comparing yourself to others in recovery, seeing yourself as better or more capable than them.  Thoughts like “if I just do better, then it will all be fine,” are denial statements that foster this sense of control, but then lead to feelings of lethargy, depression, or self-hatred when you cannot follow through on change.  Another indicator is a lack of willingness to rely on others for support or help through the process, meaning you aren’t attending meetings, don’t have a sponsor, and have no accountability with other group members.

Characteristics of Surrender

Surrender requires you to be uncomfortable.  When you’re surrendering to the process of recovery, you will feel discomfort with some of what you are tasked to do.  You might not like some of the early restrictions or accountability you need to put in place, like an internet blocker, location tracking app, or daily accountability with a sponsor.  But remember that picking and choosing what you feel comfortable with in recovery is a setup for slips and relapse.

Surrender releases anxiety to experience peace.  When you are attempting to stay in control, you put incredible pressure on yourself to change on your own, followed by devastating shame when you inevitably fail.  If you choose to surrender to the process, you can experience the peace of knowing that you aren’t alone and help is available. 

Surrender requires that you say no.  You will need to learn what your limits are in recovery.   We like to think that we can do everything we want and resist temptation to act out in addiction, but this isn’t true. One of the ways denial perpetuates addiction is to tell you that you should “test your strength” or “test your resolve” by putting yourself in risky situations. But this is another form of ritual and preparation for acting out.  You need to identify appropriate boundaries and restrictions early on to set yourself up for success.  Addicts are notoriously bad at boundaries – that’s part of the addiction – so surrendering to boundaries that others help you identify or that have been tenets of the 12 Step recovery process are necessary. 

The Spiritual Nature of Surrender

If we can’t do recovery on our own, then what does that mean? Who can do it for us?

Surrender is a spiritual discipline.  Recognizing the role of God in this process is essential.  In 12 Step, incorporating God or your Higher Power involves recognizing something bigger than yourself that is guiding you toward health, because your self isn’t cutting it.  Step Two and Step Three of the 12 Step program dig into this exploration in more detail. 

Surrender to God or a Higher Power can be a tricky endeavor for those whose views of God are complicated, who have difficulty trusting in God, or who don’t believe God has the power to create change.  These roadblocks are worth working out in the context of your 12 Step group or with your sponsor.  At the bare minimum, believing that there is something outside of yourself that will guide you through recovery, even if it is as simple as the 12 Step process or your work with a sponsor, gives you a good place to start.

Practical Steps for Task 3

Ask for help.

The easiest way to recognize surrender in someone is their willingness to no longer tackle the addiction on their own, but to actively seek out help from others.  This can come in the form of joining a 12 Step group, therapy group, support group, or going to counseling.  Take it a step further by connecting with a sponsor or other group members for contact outside of the group.  Recognize that asking for help requires vulnerability and openness: you need to share the realities of your addiction openly with someone rather than offering partial information.

Identify your Higher Power.

This can be the God of the Bible if you are a Christian believer, or can have a foundation from your religious background.  If you chafe at the idea of religion, you may choose the 12 Step group, people who have gone before you in recovery, recovery itself, or a particular value you hold like love or compassion.  Again, seek to identify something bigger than yourself and have conversations with others in the program to open yourself up to faith and be curious about this process. 

Name denial-based roadblocks.

Denial in your thoughts can be a major factor that keeps you in control and prevents you from offering full surrender.  When you look at the subtle types of control listed above, do you identify with any of them?  Make a list of the denial statements that are most common to you that fuel these attempts to control.  They can include thoughts like, “I don’t need to do that,” “I’m not as bad as so-and-so,” or “other people might need 12 Step, but I don’t.” 

Now consider: what have you tried before in terms of your recovery?  How successful was it?  Is your denial telling you the truth or not?  Look also at what beliefs might be causing you to resist placing trust in your Higher Power or in the support of others.

Grieve the losses associated with surrender.

Surrendering addiction is hard, often because it can feel like you’re giving up the only coping mechanism you have available when stress or other painful emotions arise.  There are aspects of addiction that were appealing or pleasurable to you, and you will need to let go of them.  It also may require you to let go of the belief that you are in control or that you are capable of stopping on your own.  Surrender is a process of letting go.

Remind yourself of your commitment.

When you choose to surrender, it is not a one-and-done moment.  Surrender is a daily practice.  Repeatedly remember your commitment to surrender through a daily reminder, as with a spiritual practice like prayer, journaling, or meditation.  You might choose a mantra or repeated phrase like, “I can’t, but God can,” or “I choose to surrender to the process of recovery.”  Use the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  Regularly reinforce this commitment through the support of a church or religious community.

Invite others to help with boundary-setting.

As mentioned earlier, a lack of understanding and implementation of healthy boundaries is a characteristic of addiction.  Recovery requires going back to basics with boundaries.  Sit down with your sponsor and talk about your limits and what you should say no to in early recovery, even if you don’t want to.  Get specific and honest here about what you truly need.  Your sponsor will help you explore which triggers are in your control and those you can’t control to help you adapt your boundaries accordingly.  Talk to others in your group with similar acting out behaviors about what boundaries they found effective in early recovery and choose to adopt some of theirs if they strike a chord in you.  Read stories of those who have been successful in recovery, many of which can be found in the foundational text of your 12 Step fellowship, and imitate some of the changes they made if they are relevant to you.

The Evolving Nature of Addiction Recovery: How to Keep Growing After Getting Sober

You’ve made it past the early stages of recovery.  Crisis mode has passed. You’re no longer just trying to get sober and understand your addiction.  You have a recovery plan in place.  Maybe you’ve achieved a major milestone, like a year of sobriety.  Or perhaps you’ve completed your 12 Steps.  You feel confident in yourself and your progress.  But you also might be wondering: what now?

Focusing on recovery as a lifestyle rather than as a one-time event is crucial once you’ve made it past the initial crisis of establishing sobriety.  The 12 Step model encourages you to go over the steps repeatedly for that reason.  Similarly, Patrick Carnes has developed a 30 Task Model, of which only the first seven steps are related to the beginning tasks of getting sober and understanding your addiction.  The later steps go on to making greater, long-term changes in your life.

Assess your progress.

Acknowledge where you are in the 12 Steps.

If you haven’t yet completed the 12 Steps, this is a good place to start.  Review which of these steps you have not yet fully completed.  There are certain steps, like Step Four and Steps Eight and Nine, that are particularly difficult because they require time and effort.  Making amends and learning how to forgive are challenging but necessary steps in this process.

Ask your sponsor, recovery friends, or support group for feedback.

The people who have supported your recovery work so far likely know you and your recovery best.  If asked, they may be willing to suggest a few options based on their experience of you.

Maybe you are letting things slip now that you’re feeling better.  You aren’t attending meetings or your support group as frequently, or you’re neglecting to reach out to people who are supporting your recovery.  Your self-care may be lacking.  The people who have been in your corner thus far will notice these things and give feedback.

If you don’t have a sponsor or anyone to ask, then getting a sponsor, building more deeply into recovery relationships, or joining a support group needs to be your next step.

Go back over your first step.

As you review your first step, see if you can add any additional information, now that you have more knowledge of addiction.  Identify factors (seemingly) unrelated to your addiction that may have been exacerbating the problem.  Challenges such as arguments with spouse, parenting difficulties, or overworking can be patterns that you’re likely to continue unless they are addressed.

Pinpoint other addictions.

Do you noticed any other addictive patterns in your life?  It is common to replace one addictive behavior with another: drinking copious amounts of coffee for the caffeine high when you’re recovering from alcoholism; using shopping or overworking as a way to cope with the stress of letting go of sex and love addiction.  This can be another way to self-medicate and avoid the tougher tasks of recovery.  Have you replaced one “drama” with another?

Check on the status of intimacy in your relationships.

Recovery requires creating healthy intimacy in relationships with yourself, your friends, and your significant other.  Healthy intimacy is not limited to sexual intimacy: instead, it means learning how to be vulnerable and connected to people without being held back by fear.  This starts with learning to be vulnerable and connected to yourself: recognizing your emotions, accepting your experience, and addressing your critical self-talk.

Identify any losses you have not yet grieved.

Often addiction comes from numbing out and escaping from feelings of loss or pain.  Therefore, avoiding the grieving process might have fueled your addiction.  Also, leaving the addiction behind is its own grieving process.  Identify areas where you might have unresolved grief or pain that needs to be processed.

It also might be time, now that you have more mental and emotional space, to begin to address some of the deeper issues that led you to addiction in the first place.  You may have early trauma in your past that led to negative core beliefs about your worth or value that have lingered.  It might involve destructive patterns in relationship with your spouse or friends that need a more major overhaul.

Recognize any additional amends that need to be made.

Incorporated into the 12 Steps is a requirement to make amends for past wrongs or failures toward others.  Making amends can be a one-time act in some cases, particularly for those with whom you have little interaction.  If you are married or in a long-term relationship, however, amends is an ongoing process.  Working with your partner on rebuilding trust is a goal that can propel you forward into living amends with them.

How to Take Action

Create or revisit your Personal Craziness Index (PCI).

The Personal Craziness Index is a tracking tool designed by Patrick Carnes and outlined in his book Facing the Shadow that can help you identify signs that you’re slipping away from living into your recovery.  Becoming conscious of the factors that are contributing to or taking away from your recovery over a period of 12 weeks can give you an idea of goals to be working toward.

Experiment with healthy intimacy.

Once you are able to connect with your own emotions and experience, then you can work on becoming intimate in more healthy ways in your friendships.  Choosing vulnerability in relationships is a strong way to foster connection, as Brené Brown suggests.  Look for opportunities to grow in intimacy, and ask for feedback from those with whom you are in relationship.

Do trauma work in therapy.

If you are working with an individual therapist, now might be the time to transition to processing past trauma.  There are several methods of trauma processing that are effective, but I personally am a fan of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR.

You might be wondering what trauma to focus on processing first.  If this is the case, I’d recommend working on a trauma egg, which is a tool to help you make sense of the impact of your family-of-origin and other influences on your experiences of past trauma.

Actively grieve losses.

Write a psalm of lament.  Write a letter to the person, item, dream, or ideal that was lost.  Identify what you’ve missed about the loss.  Consider what you’ve gained from the experience of walking through loss.

Shift your focus to a new area of growth.

After establishing sobriety and having more mental and emotional space, you might find that you need to focus on improving communication in your marriage, creating stronger friendships, growing in parenting skills, or dealing with workplace issues.

Once you identify which of these areas still needs work, make this a focus of your growth.  Go to marriage counseling if you’re wanting to restore your marriage.  If you’re looking to build more relationships outside of your 12 Step group, join a club or group at your church or in your town.  Work with your child’s teachers to help you grow as a parent.  If you’re dissatisfied with your career, consider career counseling or switching your job.

Pain, Joy, and Longing: What The Giver Can Teach Us About Desire

What comes to your mind when you think about the word desire?  Is desire a familiar friend to you?  Or something that you run from as soon as you feel even a hint of it? We all carry different desires in our lives: desire for food, desire for another person, desire for a promotion at work, desire for a house (or a bigger house, or more stuff for your house).  Or perhaps your desire is more abstract: desire for more peace and calm in your life, desire to be loved, desire to achieve a mission or purpose in life.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines the verb desire as “to long or hope for;” “to express a wish for” or “to feel the loss of.”  Notice how desire is so closely tied to disappointment or anticipation: we’re looking forward to something, but we haven’t yet attained it.  Or on the flip side, the final definition intertwines desire with loss or grief, as when we desire something we once had but lost.

What are some of the desires you identify most strongly in your life?

A short time before the movie release a few years ago, I read the children’s book The Giver by Lois Lowry.  In this novel, the characters live in a dystopian future where everything exists in shades of gray.  The lack of visible color extends as a metaphor to the citizens’ emotions and longings.  The inhabitants of this community take a pill each day that suppresses desire and emotion.  The plot of the book begins when the main character, Jonas, is assigned to the role of Receiver of Memory.  This assignment requires him to receive all the painful memories that the society has wiped from its memory. 

I listened to a podcast discussing some of these themes in greater detail after reading the book.   This theme discussed in the podcast struck me: because the characters in the book do not experience emotion and have no memories, they don’t experience feelings of pain.

Wouldn’t we all like that?  Our world is full of pain: we have only to open up a newspaper, turn on the TV, or take a walk on the city streets to see suffering in our world.  We grieve the deaths of those we love, we feel pain at broken relationships, we are shocked by the violence around the world, and we weep at images of children who are starving.

As Jonas begins his process of receiving the memories the society chose to erase, he is wrecked by the intensity of the emotions he feels, ranging from joy to sadness.  In the process, something starts to change in him.  He begins to see in color.  He stops taking his pills and begins to experience desire, sadness, and joy in his daily life.  Emotions he didn’t even know existed are now rising to the surface.

Another theme that surprised me in this novel was the assertion that medicating pain through erasing memories doesn't just strip these people of suffering.  Because pain and longing do not exist, there is no opportunity for joy.

There are a multitude of ways that I attempt to make myself happy to feel a fragment of that joy in my day-to-day life.  I’ll obsess over how many Facebook likes I get on that photo, spend hours playing mindless games on my phone when work feels overwhelming, or stop and get my favorite fast food when I’ve had a bad day.   But it doesn’t take long for me to realize that these are all ways I’m simply medicating my pain and deadening my feelings through this false sense of happiness, while denying the deeper desire that bubbles just beneath the surface. 

We all have ways that we choose to escape from our pain and longings. These typically involve us numbing that pain or desire, driving it far away so we don't have to deal with it or feel it.  We can run to shopping, drugs or alcohol, sex, the approval of others, perfection, power…any number of things that quiet the voices inside of us that want something more.

How do you avoid pain and deaden your heart to your desires?

Pain is uncomfortable, that's true.  Longing typically leads to pain, because our longings likely won’t be perfectly fulfilled in this life.  But if I kill my desire and shove my pain into a deep dark corner of my heart where it will never be acknowledged, my life will be flat.  Maybe I won’t feel sadness or longing, but I also am robbed of my ability to experience joy.

I love that joy and pain are juxtaposed so clearly together.  They are two strong and seemingly opposing emotions, but you have to be able to experience one to find another.  As a Christian, I am grateful for the pain God has brought me through, because the deeply rooted joy I can now experience is so clearly an outflow of that.  I can rejoice and be thankful in God.

How can you choose to acknowledge your desire, knowing that it will be painful?

I need to choose to embrace desire every day.  (And to be honest, I’m not always successful.)  It is easy to find ways to medicate pain in our world, because we as a people don’t like to feel these difficult emotions.  But I must choose to sit in pain or sadness when I feel it, rather than running away from it.  I must choose to become alive to my desires, although that often hurts.  And in so doing, I’m opening myself up to experiencing joy and compassion toward others.

The Curious Difficulty of Letting Go

This past summer, my family held a garage sale, which is often quite the production.  Between my parents, my sisters and I, we have 4 separate households from which to sort through overstuffed closets and forgotten storage cabinets, hoping to find hidden treasures to add to the sale pile.  I’m often surprised by just how much stuff we’re able to produce from those parts of our home we barely think about.

One of my contributions to the sale was a Keurig coffeemaker. I loved it when I first received it.  But over the years, it had gone through some wear and tear.  Coffee brewed from it didn’t taste as good, I could only use filtered water in the tank, and I had to reset the clock settings often due to a frequently tripped fuse in my home.  I also noticed I had started drinking coffee less often, replacing it with a newfound love for tea.

Once, that Keurig was my lifeline.  Working early mornings with small children created a serious need for coffee. But as I entered into a new career, I used it less and less until it just became another piece of stuff to sell in a garage sale. That coffeemaker sat on my counter for over a year with me barely using it before I realized it was time to give it up. 

This makes me think about how we cling not just to these material items, but also to relational patterns, distorted thoughts about ourselves and our world, and defense mechanisms we learned in childhood that help us cope.  Oftentimes, we start these behaviors or thought patterns because they work – they ease our pain or anxiety.  They serve us in some way or another, meeting a need or a desire that we have difficulty fulfilling in a healthy way.

Before we know it, these habits become ingrained in our minds or in our daily practice and can develop into codependent relationships, depression, anxiety, addictions, or any number of difficulties in our lives.  We can often look at these patterns and know they cause problems, but they can feel familiar and safe after being used for years.

In a different season of life, we needed these thoughts or behaviors to cope.

Think of a child who is physically abused by her parents when she speaks up to protect her brother from similar harm.  We might expect that child to learn to stay silent and spend time alone in her room, avoiding interaction with her family.  As she gets older, she may make herself feel better by turning to food, sex, perfectionism, or alcohol.  These behaviors might have provided temporary relief for her then, but if they continued to be her only source of coping into adulthood, they could easily become addictive or problematic behaviors.

Maybe you’ve experienced a similar story. As a child, you may have learned to do what you needed to do to find ways to deal with the pain.

But these thoughts and behaviors might be holding you back and creating problems in your present-day life.

As adults, we have the opportunity to choose a different path, letting go of the old behaviors and stepping into newer ways to cope.  Often, though, that process isn’t something that can happen overnight.

When I sold that hardly-used coffeemaker, it felt like I was cutting off an arm.  I could think of about 100 reasons why I needed to keep it, and I almost felt physical pain at letting it go.  But I needed to clear it out, to have more physical space and declutter my home.

If this is how I felt about a piece of junk I barely used anymore, how much more difficult is it to let go of the unhealthy ways we’ve dealt with pain in the past?

Sometimes, giving these up feels impossible.

Many times, these behaviors and thoughts are based on past experiences that are no longer threatening us now.  It is important to learn how to let go of those things that are causing more frustration, pain, or harm than they’re worth.

But we can’t let go of these life patterns without filling that space with something different.  We need to learn to adopt new behaviors and thoughts that fit in our current season of life.  We need to get rid of the things that take up that mental and emotional space in order to make room for things like healthy self-care, more accurate views of ourselves and our world, and restored relationships.

What thoughts and behaviors are you clinging onto that helped you at a different season of life, but need to be let go of now?  

Now I don’t think about my Keurig much.  I’m in a season where I drink coffee once every few days, avoiding the caffeine because I know how it affects my anxiety.  I still find comfort in wrapping my two hands around a warm mug, but typically it’s filled with tea.  While this material example is minor compared to changing old coping patterns, it’s reminding me to let go, to create space in my mind and heart for the things that I need in the season I’m in right now.