This Week In Recovery Lesson
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength… Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”
Mark 12:30-31 (NLT)
How do I love my neighbor… my brother… my children… if I don’t love myself?
I often have this discussion with clients I counsel at the prison since they have come to believe that they are addicted to alcohol and drugs and do what they do because they are self-destructive and need to love themselves again. Then I come along and suggest that they already do love themselves and that there is where the problem lies that lands them in prison time and time again.
“But Mr. Steve (they are ordered to address staff as Ms. And Mr.), how can you suggest that I love myself when I can’t stop hurting myself and those I love and keep ending up in this place I hate?”
We all do what we do in pursuit of something better than what we have and what we are. If what we have are feelings of physiological deprivation, we will seek a remedy to feel better. If we are feeling psychologically deprived and emotionally wanting and needy, we will seek a remedy to feel better. The need for remedy and gratification is not partial or respective of anyone. We are all addicts of pleasure and relief. It is in our nature to protect our innermost self to survive.
If I am wounded I need and want healing. If I hurt I need and want relief from the pain. If I am tired I need and want relief from fatigue and weariness by way of relaxation and sleep. If I am anxious I need and want comfort from my anxiety. If I am immobilized by the pain of guilt and shame, then I need to escape the pain. My methods might be painful and destructive to myself and others but make no mistake; I was motivated by my need for something better than what I have and where I am at. And I care enough about myself to be about doing something about it.
The following recovery lesson is intended to help you to examine your inner self, as well as assist you in managing the depressive symptoms that emanate from internalized guilt, shame, anger, and resentment. It is a vehicle to acknowledging love of self so that one can with methods into a plan of action on how to love oneself in a way that is best—healthy, constructive and productive. When done prayerfully, and perhaps with assistance from a trusted confidant, it is a real opportunity for transformation out of fear, depression, and internal doubt, into courage, positive regard, and confidence in the truth about your self and how you see and function in the world.
Goal
Develop coping skills necessary to manage depressive symptoms.
Objective
Develop understanding of the connection between anger, fear, self-destruction, withdrawal (isolation), and the underlying depression.
Actions
- Looking back at your life growing up until present day, how would you say you have failed to live up to the standards and expectations of those you care most about? Please be specific about your take on expectations and standards and how you feel you did not meet them.
- How did not living up to standards and expectations of loved ones cultivate in you feelings of failure?
- How did feelings of failure feed into your intentions to medicate to escape those feelings?
- How did medicating feelings connected to failed expectations feed into apathy toward society’s expectations?
- How did not caring enough about social expectations promote acting out in ways that could be considered harmful to yourself, to loved ones and to society?
- How did you act out? What harm has been done toward society, toward your loved ones, and toward yourself?
- How have expectations you have for yourself, for loved ones, and society been affected by so much failure and disappointment in your life?
- How might you feel helpless to facilitate enough change for your circumstances and relationships to improve enough to begin to satisfy expectations you have of others and others have of you? How might that feed into feelings of depression?
- How would you describe your feelings of depression?
- What would you say you understand about the connection between rebellion, self-destructive behavior and isolation, and your underlying depression?
Please refer now to TWRAC 049 for this week’s recovery application challenge for managing depression.
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