Patterns of the Past

Patterns of the Past

Understanding Change through Courageous Correction

Personal reflections from a fellow traveler.  Not AA approved literature.  Shared in the spirit of Experience, Strength, and Hope.

Change and correction are often quite uncomfortable.  The moment I accept that change must occur typically comes when repeating the behavior is more painful than changing the behavior.  A program of recovery worked honestly is also uncomfortable.  Our pathologies are challenged, our coping mechanisms are exposed, and feelings that were once ‘managed’ are revealed. 

A person who uses substances or experiences to numb these emotions is unwittingly stealing from their future self.  Drugs, alcohol, deception, promiscuity.  They all promise peace yet deliver distress.

I recently heard a clinical psychologist ask the question: “Are you using deception, or is deception using you?” 

I believe that at the core of every individual who stumbles into the rooms of recovery, suffers from the most insidious form of deception: Self Deception.

Minimization. Rationalization. Justification.

But wait!  There’s more….

Self-exoneration, compartmentalization, avoidance, denial, deflection, distortion, and delusion. 

These tactics often lie unseen or unacknowledged and serve as intricate mechanisms that move the motor of our malady.

Changing the patterns of our past is probably impossible to do on our own.  Many of us have tried for years and found ourselves within the same loop of loss. 

I have found that the rooms of recovery are where comfort and correction collide.  If we’re honest and painstaking about our recovery, we can begin the process of changing the patterns of our past. 

Where in my life can I ask my Creator for the courage to be corrected?