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If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.” We embark upon a journey of recovery that allows us to develop a deep spiritual connection. Through our spiritual connection, we finally are given the power to overcome the disease and live happy, joyous, and free lives in sobriety. This mesh of negative emotions can link up fairly instantaneously spiritual malady I find. It is the web my spiritual malady seeks to ensnare me in. Sometimes others expel the same negative emotions on to us. I have found this a fairly common trait among male alcoholics in recovery settings and meetings. These emotion processing deficits also appear to make us more impulsive, and to choose lesser short term gain over greater long term gain in decision making.
- I grew up in a family that did not express emotions like the ones I had mentioned.
- In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
- The reason is that our reaction to alcohol and drugs is physical, it’s not mental.
- If he is alcoholic, he will understand you at once.
The spiritual principles of AA and the 12 steps in particular were drawn from the 4 absolutes of the Oxford group, via initially the 6 steps and the idea of a spiritual malady is also borrowed from the Oxford group. I do not believe I have the same spiritual malady as other normal people such as those people who were in the Oxford Group. On page 62 the text explains that“Selfishness-self-centeredness! Do you have ups and downs, get angry, irritable, and harsh with people.
How Far Have We Come In Understanding this “Spiritual Malady” of Alcoholism?
This is how a mental health disorder manifests itself as distorted fear based thinking which appear, if acted upon, to make one’s situation a whole lot worse. From my own experience as an alcoholic, I came to believe that Bill was right when he declared that alcoholism is a spiritual illness. I survived thirteen years as a mostly dry and yet untreated alcoholic in AA. Both The Big Book and The Twelve and Twelve have remained largely unaltered since they were first written.
- Do you have ups and downs, get angry, irritable, and harsh with people.
- The reason we cannot just quit is that our mind constantly has us believe that we can control and enjoy our drinking.
- It is therapeutic exchange and shame reducing to know someone else has committed similar sins or has acted for similar reasons; they were powerless over their behaviours.
- In fact, I felt “more me” when I drank, it was like I escaped a restrictive sense of self to be a more expansive, people loving self.
- The literature asks us to look at our lives from an entirely different angle to see how this “spiritual malady” asserts itself.
“The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instrumen… I look at the past fleetingly sometimes to help others but I never stare at it too long. Otherwise we have not really completely treated our alcoholism. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ We have a sea change in how we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us. It is almost miraculous, the sudden transformative effect it can have on us. We have the chance to be free from the sick version of our real self, the self that has been in bondage, in addiction.
What is a “Spiritual Malady”?
Intelligence is not incompatible with humility, provided I place humility first. To seek prestige and wealth is the ultimate goal for many in the modern world. To be fashionable and to seem better than I really am is a spiritual illness. In steps 4 and 5 we listed wrongdoings to others and although initially petrified to share them with another, found that it wasn’t as difficult as we thought it would be, once you wrote down the worst top ten. These secrets are the emotional and psychic scars of our alcoholic past and they need to be exposed in order for us to fully heal. Almost disappointingly I found some of my sins were quite tame when compared to other people I have spoken to in recovery. This is why we celebrate this great anniversary, this co-founding of AA, as it is the start of this therapeutic and spiritual connectedenss with other alcoholics needing help and giving help and with the wider world.
To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process.
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I had to pray to let go of these resentments and then make any necessary amends. We can also see this as years of not being able to regulate our negative emotions properly, if you wish to see them as sins.
Sometimes the shame persists for some time and I try to relieve it by behavioral addictions, too much shopping, too much eating, too much objectification of the opposite sex. If someone hurts me, according to my step 4, my angry resentment of what they have said or done makes me ashamed.
What Do We Mean by Recovered?
I did not realise that the engine driving this emotion dysregulation was chronic shame. Also we need to be aware what we project on to other alcoholics is the same thing as they project on to use and sometimes we project if back. I can manage my spiritual malady or emotional dysfunction, I have the tools to do so.
This guy was an Olympic champion at expressing how he feels compared to me. I never say I am upset because it also seems to be an undifferentiated emotion that I have trouble accessing, mentalising and expressing. In fact I think this pattern of interlinked negative emotions occurs simply because of inability to identify, label and share the simple fact that I have been upset by what someone has said or acted towards me.
December 21, 2020 by Burning Tree Programs in
Self compassion allows us to be compassionate towards others. We are far from being Saints but have a solution Saints would approve and achieve a kind of transient sanctity in this 12 step solution of letting go and letting God. I also impressed upon him that mostly I can manage this emotional dysfunction but often I fail to and get into a resentful anger. I would have had empathy for where the newcomer “was at in his recovery” as I had been there once too. The guy was probably in guilt too as he could been working on his recovery more. I explained to him that his pride had been hurt, he was in shame and his “apparent” depression every since was simply prolonged self pity.
- We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.
- It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it.
- When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.
- Here we have an abnormal reaction to alcohol and for some alcoholics a maladjustment to life.
The three must be addressed to find healing, recovery, and to live life sober. It is emotionally healthy to be altruistic – to help others without question or expectation. It is emotionally healthy to accept yourself as you are. I believe we can unwittingly complicate our treatment of alcoholism by believing we have other conditions we see as distinct from alcoholism but which are in fact part of this condition called alcoholism.
Negative emotions that cut me off from sanity and reason. They do not necessarily come from a Judea-Christian belief structure, just from my own awareness, 12 step practice and years of Neursocience research.
