Ever wonder what a chronic relapser is and how they can affect your family? We should be able to just put the plug in the jug and move on with our lives.

When people become too self-reliant, they may stop working on their program entirely. This complacency can then lead to a sense of entitlement which is extremely dangerous for people in recovery. Entitlement leads to unrealistic expectations, https://ecosoberhouse.com/ which often leads to disappointment and resentment. It is strange paradox, the more you focus on helping others, the more you discoverhow much you matter. Without a connection to a higher power, it can get quite ugly in sobriety.

Understanding What a Spiritual Malady Is

I related and all my negative emotions retreated to source like a evening tide on a beach. I am not only fearful I have reacted to their arrival via shame based defence mechanisms and reactions.

If we start by trying to recover from alcoholism and addiction and find we still have other issues then obviously address these with outside professional and specialist help. For example, one variable I believe is slightly different in alcoholism to other affective disorders is distress based impulsivity which leads to maladaptive decision making, it leads to always wanting more of that…that anything. In fact our first “spiritual” wakening was probably the result of drinking as it transformed how we felt about ourselves and the world in which we lived. 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. I had a connection with the world I could not generate myself, when sober. One can see how this concept of sin disease or in other words spiritual malady could be and was applied to early AA and incorporated into the Big Book of AA. Sins I believe are the poisoned fruit of fear, often helped along in alcoholics by false pride, shame and guilt.

A Deep Look into the Spiritual Void

The disease of alcohol and drug addiction is not just mental and physical but also spiritual. The spiritual malady, however, can be seen as an inward unmanageability.

• The great psychiatrist Carl Jung called this a ‘low level thirst for wholeness – for union with God’.
• The only solution to a spiritual malady is a spiritual awakening.
• As you grow in your sobriety and learn more about yourself, you may find that your concept of a Higher Power changes as well.
• Similarly, those who struggle with alcohol addiction are more susceptible to developing a mental health issue.

The solution to your alcoholism is the same as the solution to their alcoholism. The original power greater than himself, as for millions of alcoholics over the last 80 years is another alcoholic. One recovering alcoholic or a group of recovering alcoholics is a power greater than oneself. I respond to feelings of humiliation by humiliating you, I react to my chronic shame by attempting to created shame in you. These are my main negative emotional reactions to the world that often scare me and make me feel ashamed. Not enough action, or effort to change my feelings in a healthy manner. I was working with someone last year and we had a disagreement and this guy said to me “I am upset” and “You have hurt my feelings” I was taken aback.

How Oceanfront Recovery Can Help

Intellectually, believing in something we cannot physically see or a scientifically proven exists is a hard pill to swallow, those intellectual individuals shut the idea out completely. These core beliefs make it harder for us to connect with a god of our understanding. A spiritual malady is a deep-seated inner conflict that leads to restlessness, irritability, and discontentment.

Through our spiritual connection, we finally are given the power to overcome the disease and live happy, joyous, and free lives in sobriety. It simply means we are spiritually blocked off from the Power of God, which enables us to remain sober, happy, joyous, and free. Once physical abstinence is attained, the addict will cultivate a lifestyle of recovery through the insights revealed through the 12 Steps. The steps that particularly bring awareness to concrete examples of the spiritual malady of addiction are discovered in Steps 4 and 5. These steps outline the emotional patterns which have a tendency to the block the ‘sunlight of the spirit’. As the steps are taken, it may be seen that resentments function to create separation from the people that the addict loves and the whole of life. It is through emotions and thoughts about them that the addict creates isolation from their relationships.