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.