Episode 236 -- September 1, 2022

Responsibility: The Cornerstone of Recovery

We probably started to learn about being "responsible" at a young age. Our guardians, teachers, and employers may have used the word numerous times, reminding us to hold ourselves accountable. But what does responsibility look like now that we're in recovery?

Craig Nakken can help. In his book The Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive Process and Compulsive Behavior, Nakken helps people understand the process of addiction as well as the progressive nature of the disease and how to be healthy and happy and sober. We can use Nakken's insights—including those having to do with the value of responsibility—to keep building a successful recovery.

In the following excerpt, we see how being accountable for our actions and owning up to our mistakes can help us cultivate healthy relationships and grow in our recovery journey. We don't have to drown in shame when we recall our past—we can learn from it, forgive ourselves, and move forward.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

Relationships and Recovery
The beauty and joy of recovery is found in relationships. By forming healthy relationships, we overcome our illness. By using the word we in the Twelve Steps, we start to untie the unhealthy relationship between the Addict and Self and start to connect the Self with others, with something larger than ourselves. We break through the resistance that prevented our drive for connection from reaching out to others. It is through others—other recovering addicts, as well as other people—that we as recovering addicts develop the skills to feel comfortable with our lives and can experience joy, perhaps for the first time in our lives.

Most people crave relationships that comfort and nurture them, making them feel proud and important. Once we have established a healthy relationship, we need to work hard to create a feeling of safety and mutual respect within it.

Addicts are not adept at establishing healthy relationships. They are accustomed to using and abusing the fragility of relationships. Mutual respect has to be expressed in both words and actions: we must act in respectful ways toward others if we want to transform ourselves into respectable people. In this way, we each help each other get what we need and want out of life. Most important, we support others in our relationships by keeping them safe from our own insecurities and negative behavior.

Truthfully, we know, like all human beings, we have meanness within us. We have lived it and expressed it, often hurting others in the process. In supportive relationships, even though we may feel like expressing ourselves in a mean way, we learn to choose, honor, and live the Higher Principles that promote good relationships. We recognize this is more valuable than any momentary sense of power or pleasure we might get from lashing out. We work at having healthy relationships instead of having power over another person. When healthy people disagree, they strive to settle issues fairly and come to mutual understanding, not to win out and make the other feel bad. In a healthy relationship, people know they cannot control others because this leads to, among other things, distance and resentment.

In healthy relationships, individual differences are seen as assets, not liabilities. Each person's strengths are respected and sought out when needed. In healthy relationships, there is no attempt to reshape the other person. We accept others as they are. Leadership within a healthy relationship changes hands comfortably, as different skills and abilities are required to solve various issues.

Guilt and Shame in Recovery
Addiction is in part about shame. Addicts feel shame because of their addiction and because of how they act out. Many people, therefore, enter recovery with a deep sense of shame. Others who enter recovery may not feel any shame at all, believing there is nothing wrong with what they've done. At some time during their recovery, however, these people enter a period of deep shamefulness as they look more honestly at their past actions.

In recovery, we work hard to unravel the knots of shame that have tied us to our addiction, kept us acting out, and perpetuated the addictive process. During recovery, we explore our feelings of shame to understand our addictive logic. We realize that as pleasure-centered people, we felt shame and depression about our addiction, and to cover the pain, we went on using drugs or drinking. As power-centered people, we feared the loss of control that would come with admitting our powerlessness, and so we grasped for still more power and control by eating everything in the refrigerator or going back to the gaming table, certain our luck would change.

Recovery, we learn, is not about shame. Shame is a judgment we place on our own being, rather than against our actions. Recovery is about allowing us to feel guilt. As recovering people, we need to learn the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt means we have committed an action that was wrong or not helpful to others or to ourselves. We can then think about and correct the offending action, regaining our sense of self-respect. Though we're guilty, we can correct the mistake and be forgiven, and the mistake can be forgotten.

Responsibility and Making Amends in Recovery
Responsibility is a cornerstone of recovery. We may feel guilty about the ways we've acted and about those we've hurt. This is part of recovery; it is part of having a conscience. But we must not label ourselves as bad people, for this can restart the addictive process. In recovery, we learn to change our perspective on ourselves. Our illness can't be cured, but it can be treated if we are willing to work on it. Members of our support group who have "been there" can help in the healing process as we walk through the minefield of our shame.

In recovery, we learn to monitor our actions, and when we act in negative ways, we do not become shameful and defensive; instead, we admit our mistakes and make amends for them. Making amends does not just mean saying we're sorry. It means recognizing and thinking through our behavior: Because of how I acted, there is an inequality in our relationship. Now I need to find out from you what is needed for the relationship to become equal again.

For a person who, during his addiction, continually blew up at his spouse, making amends would not mean saying, "I'm sorry for blowing up at you." It would include admitting to his spouse what he has done, recounting a specific incident, and then saying, "I know this caused you great pain and frustration. What do you need from me to make up for this?" If her request is within his realistic limits, he would act to make restitution to her. By making amends, he commits himself to a change in his behavior.

By claiming responsibility for our actions, we may win bck some of the relationships we lost through our addiction. We are all human, and we all act foolishly from time to time, but shame is a distortion of reality that makes it impossible for us to make amends. In recovery, we learn to see ourselves realistically, as human beings.

About the Author:
Craig M. Nakken, MSW, CCDP, LCSW, LMFT, is a lecturer, trainer, and family therapist specializing in the treatment of addiction. With decades of working experience in the areas of addiction and recovery, Nakken has a private therapy practice in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of several seminal books and writings in the recovery field, including Men's Issues in Recovery, Reclaim Your Family from Addiction, and Finding Your Moral Compass

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