Spirituality in Recovery

Announcer: Welcome to Addiction and the Family, “Episode 34: Spirituality in Recovery.”

Casey Arrillaga: How has addiction affected your family?

Female Speaker: It robbed me of my father.

Female Speaker: Addiction's affected my family in absolutely every way.

Male Speaker: It has caused a lot of turmoil.

Female Speaker: It goes back to what I understand is at least three generations.

Female Speaker: It robbed my daughter of her mother. It robbed my mother of her daughter.

Female Speaker: Addiction has made our family quite challenging.

Male Speaker: Addiction has affected my family tremendously.

Male Speaker: It's affected my relationship with my sister where I wouldn't – I'd go for months without talking to her. It's a very difficult thing for everybody involved. It doesn't just affect the one individual. It's a disease that affects the whole family.

Male Speaker: Addiction is spread not only genetically through some of my relatives and I assume ancestors.

Female Speaker: It's generational.

Female Speaker: I think of him every day.

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome to Addiction and the Family. My name is Casey Arrillaga, and I'm a clinical social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Ranch and InMindOut Emotional Wellness Center in Texas. I’m the author of the books Realistic Hope: The Family Survival Guide for Facing Alcoholism and Other Addictions and Spirituality for People who Hate Spirituality.

Kira Arrillaga: I’m Kira Arrillaga, addiction counselor intern and recovery coach at Windmill. Casey and I were in our addictions together for over ten years and have now been in recovery together for almost twice that long.

Casey Arrillaga: I've led hundreds of family workshops, but just as important is that Kira and I have lived the experience of being family to addiction as both children and adults.

Kira Arrillaga: Join us as we offer experience, strength, and realistic hope about how you and your family can find recovery together.

Casey Arrillaga: In this episode, we explore the role of spirituality in recovery, why so many people think it’s important, why so many people find it difficult, and some practical ideas on how to make it work for you. Along the way, I’ll share some of the interesting things I’ve learned in writing my latest book, Spirituality for People who Hate Spirituality: A Primer, and I’ll talk about how spirituality has shown up in my own recovery. All this after a break to hear from one of our sponsors.

Welcome back. Many people say that spirituality is central to the recovery, yet it is something that a lot of people coming into recovery find very difficult, to the point that a good number give up all together because they can’t get over this apparent hurdle. While neither Kira nor I ever walked away from our recovery because of this, it is something we both had to grapple with and find our own way through. It doesn’t help that despite so many people agreeing on the importance of spirituality and so much being written about it, there’s very little consensus on what that term actually means. While some definitions of spirituality have a religious component to them, an increasing number do not.

Given all this, I’m going to go with the definition that I found most helpful to me. Spirituality is a sense of connection to something greater than yourself. I haven’t seen this definition in any dictionary. Instead, it is a product of years of grappling with how to get the benefits of spirituality in my life while not finding it easy to swallow concepts offered to me about that which is beyond the material plane or the great unseen and unknown or that about which I feel certain just because I choose to believe it or was raised to believe it. There’s plenty that I do not know or understand and I don’t claim that a lack of concrete proof means that something can’t be true. I just find it hard to base my life on such things.

Since the benefits of incorporating spirituality are undeniable, I want a definition that leads to these improvements without sacrificing my values or depending on a leap of faith that I’m not ready to take. Thus, I go with the idea of something greater than myself because it’s extremely broad. I’ll get more into its implications later. For now, I’ll just say that this openness of concept is deliberate. My definition says a sense of connection rather than a connection because it’s this sense that has been the most helpful to me and others. When I feel connected to something greater than myself, it improves my experience of life even in the face of my doubts. It no longer matters if I believe what anyone else believes or if I’m certain that I’m right. This may reflect the western tendency to value individual experience over collective belief, but it’s proven to be a great practical benefit so I’m going with it.

Now that we have a working definition, what’s next? To start, let’s talk about why so many people see spirituality as being important in their lives and especially in their recovery. While spirituality may not come easily to you or me, we cannot deny that it is vitally important to many people around the world. We could cynically write such people off as simple-minded or self-deluded, or worse yet, as self-righteous or self-serving. We could say that all spiritual leaders are hucksters pedaling the opioid to the masses, but honest observation shows that this is not so. Negative people may be found in any group, spiritual or not, but there are countless adherence of countless spiritual paths who are good and honest, intelligent, and observant with leaders who dedicate themselves to helping others. Many of these people will tell you that spirituality is a central part of their lives, sometimes the basis for who they are and how they operate in the world.

What makes spirituality so important to them? To answer this question, we’ll look first at the nature of human happiness and how spirituality fits into it. Then we’ll consider the psychological and physical benefits of spirituality. Finally, we’ll talk about the benefits of spirituality for anyone recovering from addiction or any other compulsive behavior. Let’s talk about happiness. Happiness is not always easy to define, let alone measure, but the growing field of positive psychology has given us tools to understand how spirituality not only fits into a deeply happy life but can actually be its foundation.

One of the central concepts in positive psychology is that happiness has three basic forms and that satisfaction in life involves finding a mix and balance of each. One or another of these mentions may come more naturally to you, but all are within reach. In looking at types or forms of happiness, positive psychology splits happiness into three major categories: peak experiences, engaging experiences, and meaningful experiences.

Peak experiences are the standout moments in life, the ones that really stick with us. Spirituality offers some of the most impactful peak experiences and many people have found that such moments have changed the course of their lives. These experiences may come through the time and effort of daily dedication to deep prayer and meditation that leads to a breakthrough such as the sudden realization that they’re one with everything. The most powerful ones are those that increase the sense of connection to something greater than themselves, whether it’s a deity, an undefined source of good in their lives, or the entire universe. The deeper the sense of connection, the more powerful the experience. Many have had such experiences say afterwards that they may never have that precise feeling again, but that the memory of it stays with them for life, sometimes changing their sense of who they are, why they’re here, how they treat others, and what they will do with the rest of their time on earth.

Now let’s look at the second category of happiness, engaging experiences, these are the happy times that come from being engaged in things that feel both challenging and worth doing for their own sake. We seek engaging experiences not because they feel like a high but because they help us both enjoy life and grow at the same time. Engaging experiences offer a sense of flow in which the time the activity requires does not seem so important. Instead, we want to savor what we’re doing and feel a sense of accomplishment afterwards. In other words, they are their own reward.

Spirituality offers engaging experiences through such things as prayer and meditation practices, religious rituals, or the study of sacred or inspiring texts. Some may find spiritual engagement through walking in nature or contemplating a starry sky. Others will find it when they explore themselves or seek to emulate that which they find divine. Once again, there is no wrong answer. Instead, there is a universe of possibilities to explore. Find the things that help you create your strength in connection to something you consider greater than yourself and you will be on the right track.

The final category of happiness is that of meaningful experiences. These are often considered the most valuable because without a sense of meaning, life often feels empty. This is true regardless of what else we experience, have, or accomplish. Meaningful experiences are those that involve getting beyond ourselves, often through being of service to others and to that which we consider greater than us. This might include service to those closest to us, our community, to the larger group around us, our society, or to all others, our world, or to something even greater than that, our higher power. It is in getting beyond ourselves that we find the most lasting satisfaction.

Luckily, spirituality offers a wide variety of opportunities for meaningful experiences. This is in no small part because many religions and spiritual traditions include an emphasis on being of service to others without expectation of a direct or reciprocal reward. Examples include the Islamic practices of Zakat, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, which is the obligatory giving of a portion of one’s wealth to help those less fortunate, and Sadaqat, which is a voluntary giving of wealth, time, energy, kindness, etc. Other Abrahamic faiths, Christianity and Judaism, also emphasize the importance of giving and of being of service. Buddhism and Hinduism both refer to selfless service as vital parts of dharma, which means the sacred way or law of the universe. The list goes on but you get the idea.

Service given freely has measurable effects on our brain, most often showing up as a very rewarding activity. A number of regions are affected, especially those that associate with pleasure, social connection, understanding other’s emotions and needs, and the anticipation of future rewards. This seems to give neurological underpinning to the Buddhist story of the student who approaches a teacher to ask how they can serve others. The teacher replies, “What others? Serve yourself.” When the student asks how they can serve themselves, the teacher replies, “Take care of others.”

Let’s look at more of the physiological and psychological benefits of spirituality. There’s been a remarkable increase in research about the benefits of spirituality since the late 1990s. This has included many studies showing that religion and spirituality lead to longer lifespans, better recovery from illness and surgery, stronger immune response, decrease stress hormones, and lower blood pressure, among other benefits. Research shows that there’s a greater benefit to intrinsic religious practice, which is to say the aspects that feel more personal, such as prayer and meditation, rather than the extrinsic religious aspects, which is to say those parts that are more social. In other words, our inner spiritual life seems to have more of a positive influence on our health than our external spiritual life.

It’s not hard to imagine that this speaks to the influence of our psychology on health, something that has been clearly established by much scientific research. Spirituality has been found to help across a wide variety of mental health and subjective wellbeing outcomes. This includes how satisfied people feel with their lives and how well balanced they feel between positive and negative emotions. This effect is stronger the more solid a person is in their spiritual belief. Interestingly, life satisfaction seems to be positively influenced by both religious practice and nonreligious spirituality whereas the balance between positive and negative emotions is influenced more by spirituality than by religious practice. It is commonly thought in the scientific community that many of the physiological benefits of spirituality may in fact be a direct result of the psychological benefits. This may be visualized as a positive feedback loop in which spirituality helps with feeling better emotionally, feeling better emotionally helps with physical health, physical wellbeing reinforces positive emotion, which in turn makes it easier to have faith in a higher power and engage in spiritual practice.

How does this come into play in addiction recovery? It can be argued that the cascade of physical and psychological benefits of spirituality has been realized no more than in the field of addiction recovery. Through seeking a spiritual solution, millions of people worldwide have reclaimed their lives, including gaining and then improving physical health, psychological wellbeing, life satisfaction, economic benefit, social connection and a sense of purpose and meaning.

The use of spirituality as a primary tool in addiction recovery is exemplified by 12-step recovery fellowships. Some people refer to these fellowships as the most influential self-help movement on earth and they are centered squarely on the idea of a spiritual awakening. This phrase undoubtedly signifies different things to different people. You can take it to mean anything that is helpful to get you in touch with your spiritual nature and/or higher power. It’s described in 12-step literature as something that can happen suddenly or slowly over time. My favorite idea is that through the process of recovery one’s spirit awakens.

Twelve-step recovery began with Alcoholics Anonymous, which was formed by people with an addiction to alcohol, many of whom have been thought of as hopeless cases who instead found a way to save themselves from their addiction. In their basic text, Alcoholics Anonymous, they constantly reinforce the need for spirituality placing repeated emphasis on the idea that alcoholics of the hopeless variety cannot recover without relying on a power greater than themselves. An amazing array of 12-step fellowships follow the example of Alcoholics Anonymous, each one using the same model to address a different addictive or compulsive behavior.

People were initially surprised that this spiritual solution worked so well on alcohol addiction, let alone that it would be equally effective for addiction to other drugs such as heroin. What was more surprising is that this exact same model can be successfully applied to compulsive behaviors and other issues that aren’t centered on drug use, such as sex and love addiction, mental health issues, and group recovery around traumatic experiences. Then there are groups that are formed by and for friends and loved ones of those with an addiction or a compulsive behavior. These include Al Anon for family and friends of alcoholics, Nar Anon for family and friends of people addicted to any drug, S Anon for family and friends of sex addicts, etc. The 12-step group Adult Children of Alcoholics might qualify as both a trauma survivor group and one for those affected by someone else’s addiction.

In using the 12 steps, every one of these groups embraces a spiritual solution to their problem, even if that problem is someone else’s behavior. How does that work? The idea is simple. Members find healing through first admitting that they can’t solve the problem by themselves, which is Step 1, coming to believe that a higher power could help them to be okay, Step 2, and then deciding to rely on that higher power for guidance, Step 3. For the not so spirituality minded or outright spirituality resistant person, this may sound like an immediate no-go, but allow me to explain and maybe become less of a turnoff.

First off, Alcoholics Anonymous set the tone for the whole spiritual recovery thing by establishing that every member can choose any conception of a higher power that they want. This means that while some 12-step groups still use the original 1930s American protestant designations of God with a capital G and Him with a capital H, many of the more recent 12-step programs take away gender pronouns and just use the word god in the steps. A lot of individual members don’t even say God when talking about their higher power preferring to say HP, bigger than me, the universe, or any other term that helps them connect. Many refer to their higher power as he, she, it, or avoid the use of pronouns altogether when discussing the source of their spiritual guidance.

Members use an almost infinite variety of things as their higher power. Some turn to the religious and spiritual touchstones of their culture or upbringing. Others use ideas such as the universe, nature, the ocean, or the conception of an energy that flows through all things. Still others turn to the group of people at the meetings as their higher power saying that they find the wisdom, guidance, support, and love that they need there. There are those who find that they’re better off not thinking too hard about it and simply say that they have a higher power that is on their side, even if they don’t have it clearly defined. All of these people find that finding a spiritual life through those first three steps brings relief around addictive compulsive behaviors and mental health issues or helps them make greater peace with someone else’s behaviors.

What do the other nine steps do? They walk the recovering person through a process that fosters a closer relationship between themselves and their higher power. Barriers to both spirituality and self-acceptance are diminished, spiritual practice and reliance are encouraged, and service is highlighted as a vital part of a fulfilled life. Through all this, the 12-step recovering person is promised a spiritual awakening.

While spirituality in recovery is not exclusive to the 12-step model and it’s not even necessary to overcome addiction, more people have recovered in 12-step fellowships than in any other. This may be in part due to the relative popularity of Alcoholics Anonymous over any other recovery fellowship, but no matter the reason, the benefits of spirituality for addiction recovery cannot be denied. These benefits include both protective factors, which are those things that help people avoid addiction in the first place, and curative factors, which are the things that help a person who has an addiction to get their lives back.

Protective factors include religious mandates against excessive substance use or any at all and faith communities that reinforce moderation and provide social support to cope with stressors when they might otherwise use alcohol, other drugs, or compulsive behaviors to get by. The help of such protective factors is no small thing because some people are at high genetic, psychological, and cultural risk of addiction. They need every advantage available to avoid falling pray to this deadly brain disease.

Curative factors that spirituality offers includes infusion of meaning and purpose into lives that have been torn apart by addiction, a means to rebuild and replace damaged social relationships, reconnection with self and a higher power through daily spiritual practice, and both tools and a new frame of reference to cope with the trials and tribulations of life. I’ve witnessed these benefits happen for more people than I can count, both in my personal life and professional experience. I’ve also been [19:17] to these miracles and have personally gained everything I’ve described in this section. Spirituality has gone from something that was [19:24] to my self-image to a vital part of it.

I once was enslaved by my addiction and was terrified to keep it going but was more terrified to face life without it. Today, I live a life of sobriety based in spirituality instead. I see meaning in what I do and how I live. I start and end every day with prayer. I seek my higher power’s will and do my best to follow it at every turn. I do none of this perfectly but I keep on striving to make spiritual progress because I love how it feels and how it has transformed both my external and internal experience. This is so much more than what I thought I would get when I set out to tackle my addictive and compulsive behaviors. I would’ve settled for cutting out a few behaviors and avoiding the consequences that were obviously coming if I didn’t change. The gap between that and the amazing and fulfilling life I got cannot be put fully into words if spiritual solution is what made it all happen.

This was not a fast or easy transition, however. In the next bit, I talk about what makes spirituality so difficult for so many of us and offer ideas on how to overcome these obstacles so that you can have all the benefits of spirituality that I’ve been so blessed to enjoy. To get some perspective on this, let’s hear some interviews Kira did with people in recovery talking about spiritual struggles in their lives.

Kira Arrillaga: How has spirituality been difficult for you?

Male Speaker: I came into recovery with this idea of who and what God was and it unfortunately closed me off so hard that I couldn’t mix the two. It was the God that I grew up with or it was the A concept and I didn’t know how to mix it. I didn’t know how to let things go or to be open.

Female Speaker: Spirituality has been difficult for me in the sense that I was raised in a very religious home so I naturally obtained guilt when I don’t do as I was instructed in my younger years. Today, I don’t practice a religion. I practice my spirituality. Sometimes it still seeps through.

Female Speaker: When I was drinking and I didn’t care about anybody or anything, I’ve always believed in a higher power, I just kind of lost it there for a while.

Male Speaker: The hard part was I lost it when I was using and everything for years, several, 15, 20 years. I grew up Catholic so we were churchgoers and all of that. God was introduced to me at an early age and through my childhood and growing up. I knew about God and understood what the concept and belief would be. Yeah, that was the tough part was just being disconnected and not really caring about anything but making money and not…

Male Speaker: When I relapsed and I came back in, I even shared with my guys, my third step prayer was really simply, “God, I have no idea who and what you are. Please show me.” Starting from ground zero on that allowed me to be like, okay, whatever is the truth. If it proves there is no God, then by all means because I was so tired of believing lies or make believe or thinking that I was right.

Casey Arrillaga: Why is spirituality so hard for some people? There are many reasons for this, including spiritual skepticism, trouble reconciling logic with spirituality, an assumption that spirituality and science are opposed, bad experiences with religion, limited thinking about what spirituality can be, fear of giving up control, feeling upset with the state of the world, depression and hopelessness, and even genetics that lean away from spirituality. We’re going to focus on only a couple of these so that this episode doesn’t get too long, but my new book tackles each of these in depth and talks about how to overcome them.

First, we’ll look at bad experiences with religion. If this is an issue you face, take hope. It may take time and practice, but the results are well worth the effort. What qualifies as a bad experience with religion? This could be one moment or event that really rocked someone’s world, such as the loss of a loved one to a sudden and/or painful end despite years of faith or fervent prayers for the life to be spared, but most bad experiences happen over the long term. They come from repeated experiences with religion that inspire fear or distaste. This might be due to threats, prejudice, discord with the person’s core values or anything else that provokes strong negative emotions.

For example, fear might have come through being threatened as a child that you would be punished by a god or gods if you do not behave in the ways your caregivers wanted. The more often this was repeated, the greater the fear may have grown. If those same caregivers punished you themselves, this may have modeled that authority figures would inflict emotional and physical pain if they were disobeyed, or worse yet, if they’re angry. It would be easy for a child to believe that if the caregiver can treat them this way, then a deity might easily do the same. This could be reinforced if the religion talks about that deity in parental term as you’re referring to the deity Our Father or the Divine Mother.

Even greater fear may have come through being threatened, not only with immediate punishment, but that there would be indefinite consequences if you did not obey or believe as your caregivers or religious leaders wanted. Examples of this might include threats that if you didn’t believe what is being taught or do things right, then you would be reincarnated into a worse life or you would spend eternity being physically and psychologically tortured. If taken seriously, such threats can be terrifying and children can become emotionally scarred by repeatedly being terrorized.

While I did not grow up with that fear, I’ve done therapy with several clients who found that these threats helped define their view of themselves in the world. Some were conflicted as adults not sure if they could fully believe that a higher power would threaten them like this but also uncertain about fully letting their guard down. Others have rejected all religion as a result, making it very hard for them to connect with any spirituality despite wanting that sense of connection and support. Some families punish or threaten to abandon a family member who doesn’t believe what the rest of a family believes, becoming romantically involved with someone of the “wrong” faith, or otherwise steps too far out of line with the family or community’s religion. Some spiritual traditions actually recommend or even demand this.

For those raised in such a faith, the threat of this happening may be ever present, which is likely to create anxiety or resentment. I’ve worked with people who have suffered this fate. They talk about the anger and fear that come from being cast out of the only community they had known. Some have seen their family divided due to being exiled from their faith. For such people, gaining any sense of spirituality can be very difficult. Some have abandoned it all together while others have tried to make their way back to the faith of their childhood. For many of them, it seems difficult to find a middle path.

This highlights the prejudices found in some religions. Most common is the prejudice that people of our faith are better than others. This prejudice could be mild but is sometimes very strong to the point that people who do not share the religion are considered lesser than the chosen few. Sometimes religions also encourage prejudice against types or classes of people in a society or those who act against the moral codes of the religion.

For example, some religions have codes against having sexual or romantic relationships with people who were assigned the same gender at birth. If someone raised in such a faith finds themselves being attracted to others of the “wrong” gender, there can be a lot of emotional discord based in fear of being outcast by their peers, family, religious community, etc. They may fear for their lives. These concerns may be realistic or they may be the result of years of exaggeration by authority figures who were attempting to discourage homosexual behavior. It may be a mix of both. Regardless, what is important is that the fears feel realistic to the person who is stepping out of line from their religious tradition. Perhaps both psychologically destructive is the self-condemnation that can result whether anyone else knows of the attractions or not.

Similar prejudice may come up if a member of one religion falls in love with someone of a rival religion. Individually and collectively, the couple may face anything from getting the cold shoulder to receiving death threats. Some may be the victims of violence to property or person. Their children may also run into social problems possibly getting prejudiced or pressured to pick one side or the other within the family. A religious person can also experience prejudice that does not come from the members of the religion itself but instead from the larger society if the religion is one that is viewed unfavorably.

For instance, a Muslim and a majority Christian or Hindu community may find themselves the victim of many types of prejudice. While some may find this strengthens their faith and binds them together with others of their same religion, others may find themselves turned off by the whole thing, abandonment and even hostility towards any type of religion or spirituality may result. Some of the bad experiences around prejudice in religion don’t have to directly involve the person at all. It could be enough to see this prejudice happen to a friend, a loved one, others in a community, or just to hear about it in the news.

People may feel disappointment or disgust in hearing about a religious crusade or act of terrorism that left thousands dead, injured, or orphaned. Seeing a religious leader call for hateful attitudes or acts against certain groups of people, hearing nonbelievers or a minority group blamed for the ills of the world, or the more personal stories of a friend being rejected by their family for religious differences, any of these can lead a person to turn their back on all religion or spirituality.

Discord with the person’s core value can happen through such experiences, but this is not the only way. Such discord can also occur when vital values, such as fairness, teamwork, love of learning, or forgiveness seem to be discarded in the name of religion. Worse yet is when a given religion gives lip service to such values but its actual practices seem to violate them. In fact, the hypocrisy of this can be a violation of core values all by itself.

For instance, I’ve seen religious people in my society favor others of their same religion when giving out charity, despite preaching fairness and mercy towards all. When this happened, I felt pushed away from that religion. Other times I’ve heard religious adherence say directly that curiosity and love of learning should be discouraged unless applied only to the study of their religion. Some have said all learning beyond strictly prescribed roles should be discouraged among women. This has turned me away from religion, even if in doing so I’ve painted with too broad a brush.

Other things that provoke strong negative emotions towards religion, spirituality might include anything from religious wars and crusades to having people regularly attempt to prophesize to them. I remember when my daughter read a library book that had depictions of the Christian crusades in Europe. She was horrified of the imagery of people who shared the same faith as some of her closest friends slaughtering people who did not share their religion. It took a while for me to realize that she had started to wonder if her friends and their families would rise up one day and kill us. I reassured her that these events were long past but I knew that in some parts of the world today such things still happened. The weaponry of war has become more efficient but the spirit is still the same. While my daughter eventually found a spiritual path that suited her, this sort of thing definitely did not help.

How can a person who wants spirituality find it despite bad experiences with religion? The simplest starting point is to realize that spirituality can be found separately and distinctly from religion. That is to say a sense of connection to something greater to yourself is not dependent on a given set of rituals and rules. For those raised in a particular faith or society that takes for granted that one religious text or teaching is the divine word, it may be difficult to conceive of independent spirituality. Difficult is not the same as impossible, however, and this is an area in which the effort is well worth it.

Some people find it helpful to explore how many religious and spiritual paths there are out there. They may be looking for something that fits better than what they know or they may find it helpful to open their minds to infinite possibilities of spiritual thought without needing to take someone else’s beliefs. Some stay with their religion but find it helpful to recognize that each adherent of that religion has their own beliefs. They may take a common vow and chant or sing in unison, yet if each person was interviewed in depth, it would become apparent that every one of them focuses on different parts of the belief system as their own favorite part of a common prayer has other parts of the religion that they acknowledge but do not emphasize and may have things in the religion that they question or ignore. This means that whether they mean to or not, everyone chooses what they believe. For some, this is a conscious choice and for others it is unconscious. Once you see this, you can make your own conscious choice about what your religion will mean to you.

Similarly, it can help to acknowledge that since the religion is made up of many people who all have their own beliefs, the prejudices some adherences do not necessarily speak for all. It can be painful or frustrating to encounter such prejudice but that doesn’t mean that you have to give up on all people of that faith, let alone give up on spirituality all together. If you find yourself taking on self-condemnation as a result of the prejudice, then I urge you to let that go. This can be done through affirmations, exploring your own beliefs, engaging in positive spiritual practice, talking with supportive people, and therapy. Through all of this, always remember that you can and will believe what you choose to. You can have a rich spiritual life with or without religion. Free your mind from internal prejudice, including prejudice for or against religion and let yourself have the spiritual experience you deserve.

Now let’s look at the other spiritual roadblock, fear of giving up control. In both my work with others and in my own life, I’ve come to see that when we like to be in control it usually means that we don’t feel safe otherwise. This may stem from childhood experiences in which we felt little sense of power when we got hurt physically, psychologically, or sexually. It may also come from times when we felt like our needs were not being met and we had no power to change this. The greater the frequency and severity of such things, the more profound the effect. Some of us develop a tendency to give our power over as a result that many others developed a desire to be in control.

For me, this process started with some of my earliest experiences. My first memory involved nursing with my birthmother in the first three months of life. I remember feeling that I had to keep her attention for as long as possible and get as much as I could as fast as I could. She has confirmed that this is valid and she only really felt connected with me when we were nursing. This means that for most of the time in those early days of life I likely sensed that I was not getting what I needed. Even in such an early age, the idea of keeping my mother’s attention felt like survival. This was the beginning of my desire for control.

As I grew, I ran into more and more situations that felt dangerous, some justifiably so. In the first few years of my life, I was threatened or hurt physically, sexually, and psychologically. Some of this was intentional and much was not, but as a child, I could not distinguish. Each such experience reinforced the idea that I would be better off in control. When I was introduced to religious concepts, I was not particularly interested. The idea of a God meant less control for me. I thought the authority figures in my life weren’t to be trusted, so a higher power who was the ultimate authority figure was not an appealing concept.

I might have continued like this for life if I hadn’t had a few key experiences. One big one was that I fell in love with and married a young woman who convinced me to go to therapy with her. Through this, I processed some of those early experiences and lessened the fears that stemmed from them. This didn’t make me into a spiritual person, but it helped remove barriers to future explorations. The next big experience that I had was that I entered recovery from addiction and was told that spirituality would be key in maintaining sobriety. I was not excited or particularly open to this, but a few relapses changed my mind. My childhood fear still told me I shouldn’t give up control, but I saw that I was not doing a great job of running things. This left me more and more willing to try the spiritual ideas that seemed to work so well for others.

Luckily, the recovery fellowship that I had embraced had a very open idea of spirituality, one in which each person was completely free to choose their own idea of a higher power. While some of the literature of the fellowship used terms borrowed from Christianity, such as referring to God with a capital G, I was repeatedly told not to let the language get in the way. Since I could choose my own conception of a higher power, I was able to come up with something that I wouldn’t mind running my life. I found it helpful to write out a list of the qualities I wanted in that higher power. I started with things like loving, caring, and personal. As time went along, I thought of new qualities that I wanted or needed so I added them to the list. I’ll talk more about this in the next section of the episode.

When I looked at this list, I didn’t feel as scared to turn over control. As many before me have discovered, giving up control to something I trust is not only possible, it can feel like a big relief. It also helped that turning over control was a gradual process. When I used the scientific method to treat my spiritual quest as an experiment, I gathered a lot of data through prayer and meditation before I was willing to cede any control. Even then, it took time to trust and thus give over more and more control.

Luckily, I could take as long as I wanted. My addiction recovery sometimes sped the process because I could get so far off track left to my own devices, but even then, the decision to give over control was voluntary. As I became more comfortable or more desperate depending on the day, I turned over more and more control and my life got better and better. If you think it over, that’s not such a bad deal. To hear how other people in recovery see this, let’s return to Kira’s interviews.

Kira Arrillaga: How does your spirituality affect your recovery?

Male Speaker: Yeah, God and I talk every day about that, sometimes twice a day. We’re on the chat mind every day. I couldn’t do it without Him.

Female Speaker: I talk to God all day long and God is my higher power also. I get on my knees every night. I talk with Him. Him and I have a good understanding. If I talk to Him, He’ll listen. I make sure I talk to Him every night.

Kira Arrillaga: How has your spirituality affected your recovery?

Female Speaker: That is the easy answer. My spirituality has saved my life, has saved my relationships with my family. Spirituality is a huge part of my recovery.

Male Speaker: They told me when I came in that I have this one problem that I need a power greater than myself to solve, and when I tapped into it, I would then have a power that would solve all my problems. That’s proven true. I’ve realized that I have to allow my spirituality into everything that I do. I just don’t have to do it all at once. I don’t have to do it all at once. My spirituality and my recovery, they’re synonymous with my life.

Casey Arrillaga: Let’s take a break to hear from one of our sponsors and then we’ll talk about how to make spirituality work for you.

Welcome back. Now that we have looked at the benefits of spirituality and some of the things that get in the way, it’s time to create a spiritual practice that works for you. Luckily, there’s a wealth of knowledge out there about how to do this, therefore, what I’m presenting here is a very basic overview along with some practical ideas. In my book, I look at finding a higher power that works for you, prayer, meditation, how to tell spiritual guidance from self-will, benefits of group spirituality, how to establish a spiritual routine, and the importance of patience and resistance.

For the purposes of this episode, let’s focus on why a higher power can be helpful and how to find one that works for you. The concept of a higher power is central to my approach to making spirituality work for you. It gives you a focus for spiritual practice and a way to frame your spirituality. Before you protest, let’s make sure we’re talking about the same thing. For our purposes, let’s define a higher power as that which you feel is greater than yourself. This is deliberately very broad and comes from my definition of spirituality itself. It allows your higher power to be literally anything you want as long as it meets the basic criteria. It need not be a deity or a spiritual being and it doesn’t have to resemble anyone else’s. This section will help you find a higher power concept that you can wrap your head around and which will give you the benefits of spirituality.

If you feel unsure about where to start, here’s a few ideas that have helped others: the spirit of the universe, the wisdom and guidance of past spiritual masters, the lifeforce and connection of everything on earth, any deity from any religion, love and kindness, the combined wisdom and energy of everyone who’s recovering from addiction, your highest self, the ocean, an unnamed spiritual being or entity, all of nature, all of your ancestors, and the small still voice within. For extra fun, keep in mind that you don’t have to make a lifelong choice. You can start with one idea and then refine it or swap it out for something else if it isn’t working for you.

Some higher power concepts will be more useful to you than others. For instance, choosing a higher power who doesn’t care about or doesn’t assist you in any meaningful way will not be very helpful. Despite this, many people have just such a conception in mind when they say God. I thus advocate for a few basic guidelines when choosing your higher power, or if you prefer, your understanding of your higher power. I can already hear a few people saying, wait a minute, how can I just pick out the qualities I want in a higher power? That seems like making something up or creating my own fairy tale. In response, I will contend that we all do this to some extent anyway, as we’ll see in just a moment.

Most of us just do it unconsciously basing it on our experiences and things we’ve been told. Rather than this, make a conscious choice and thus allow yourself to have an understanding that works for you rather than causing you more problems. For instance, I’ve seen a lot of people unconsciously decide that their higher power has qualities reminiscent of their parents, especially their fathers. This is even more true if they have a higher power concept based in any religion that presents the deity as a father figure. If their father was angry and unpredictable, they think of their higher power as being this way, too. If dad was gone a lot and aloof when home, they think of their higher power as not being too involved in their lives. Was dad a loving and attentive parent? Then they feel their higher power cares about them and will protect them. The parallels are not always so obvious, but if you write out the ideas you have of a higher power and compare this with a list of your parents’ traits, you can see how much of your higher power concept is based on one or both of your parents.

This makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Our parents were our original higher powers. They were the first things we felt connection with. They were the source of our survival. They largely had control over our lives. As we grew up, they were our first experiences of authority. They modeled stability or its lack in relationships. Thus, when we first conceive of a higher power, it is likely that we will draw on these experiences. Unfortunately, our parents may not have been great role models for some of these things, no matter how hard they tried.

As an example, when I was an infant, I got the impression that I could not count on my caregivers for safety and stability. This was never their intention but it was my takeaway nonetheless. Thus, when someone presented me with the idea of God, the Father, I was not tempted by that offer. No matter how often I was told that I could count on God, I had different ideas. When I later saw that I could benefit greatly by incorporating a higher power in my life, I had to come up with something that was not modeled on my childhood experiences. This involved first acknowledging the influence those experiences had had on me. Once I had done that, I participated in healing word to let some of it go and I found I could conceive of a higher power that would always be there for me.

I was able to do this in part because I realized, if there was a force in the universe that runs the show or that created everything or that has the power to make anything happen in my life or that can just offer helpful guidance that is better than what my conscious mind comes up with on its own, then I’m not going to understand that force perfectly. Accepting this means that whether I intend to or not I’m going to come up with my own understanding. I’m reassured in this by realizing that everyone who sits together in religious service will nonetheless have their own understanding of their higher power, of their faith, even if they are singing and chanting in unison or reading out of the same text. Each of these people will make conscious or unconscious decisions about which parts of their religion are the most important to them and which qualities of a higher power are the focus.

If that’s true of religious adherence, isn’t it even more likely to be true for someone who subscribed to no particular faith? Seeing this, I gave myself permission to make a list of higher power qualities that I wanted and then claim the higher power described as my own. Now I urge you to give yourself the same permission. You are free to choose whatever qualities you want in a higher power and declare that this is the spiritual force to which you will turn. If you discover on your journey that you need to add or change some of the qualities on your list, feel free to do so at any time. Review your list periodically to both remind yourself of what is on your side and to make sure it is up to date with your needs.

To give an example, here is my list: loving, caring, personal to me, compassionate, wise, understanding, forgiving, helpful, creative, humorous, capable, powerful, always available, bigger than all my problems combined, able and willing to keep me sober, has better ideas than mine, more than enough, incapable of abandoning me, and loves me just as I am. The first three things in my list are ones I find particularly essential, loving, caring, and personal. Loving because human beings thrive when they feel loved and I suggest a higher power that helps you thrive. Caring because if your higher power doesn’t care about you, then you aren’t likely to feel much support. Personal because your higher power concept is yours and a higher power is more likely to feel like its there for you in a loving and caring way.

Now it is time to write out your own list of qualities you want in your higher power. Don’t worry if it seems silly or unrealistic. The simple act of doing this will be a step towards creating a higher power concept that works for you. Once you have the list, you can describe these qualities to the deity of a religion. Seek out and establish a god concept that fits the list or simply decide that, while you don’t know for sure what your higher power is, you will only accept something that has those qualities. Thus, when you pray, you might say, I’m only talking to anything that fits my list, anyone else can kindly move along. When I did this, it led to the wonderful and useful relationship with my higher power that I still enjoy today.

There you have a few ideas on finding and incorporating spirituality into your life and recovery. As we often say in recovery, take what you liked and leave the rest. If you find these ideas helpful or would like to hear more, I go into more detail and cover more concepts in my book Spirituality for People who Hate Spirituality: A Primer. Until next time, stay safe and be well.

Thanks for being with us through another episode of Addiction and the Family. As they say in many recovery meetings, take what you liked and leave the rest. Go out and explore the possibilities for recovery in your life and give your loved ones the space and dignity to make their own choices. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe. It means a lot to us. If you know anyone else who could use what we have to offer, please tell them about Addiction and the Family. If you have comments about this podcast, have a question you’d like answered on the show, or want to contribute your voice, or just want to say hi, you can write to us at addictionandthefamily@gmail.com. We’re also happy to be your friend on Facebook and we can be found tweeting on Twitter.

Kira Arrillaga: Addiction and the Family is produced, written, and engineered by Kira and Casey Arrillaga, with music by Casey.