I see a strong connection between alcoholism, with it's roots in childhood trauma and early programing about ourselves and how we fit in the world - with our ability to experience delight as adults.
For me delight is intrinsically rooted in a connection to self and the world. It is the ability to be present for the moment-to-moment beauty in our selves and all that surrounds us. It is the quiet, magical, expansive feeling of being alive.
Below are my thoughts on the connection between alcoholism, belonging and delight as well as a little introduction to how I combine my trauma informed approach to the steps with coaching techniques to help get you out of that stuck place of survival mode and into a life of thriving and full aliveness.
You can listen here or read below the video. If you like what you hear, please reach out and see how we can work together. This August, I am offering a promotion:
Four [4] sessions for $100.
Enjoy!
I believe part of our human experience is getting to experience delight.
There are a lot of emotions that I love and delight just seems to be the one that shows up most often in my life - the one that I feel so settled in when it happens. Like I just I feel cared for and happy and free when I feel delight. So it's really important to me and it's one of the ones that I really want to help my clients cultivate.
I believe that the connection between alcoholism and delight - or lack thereof - is that alcoholism is really a coping mechanism that we use to deal with all of the survival mechanisms that we had to adopt as children. Those survival mechanisms and coping mechanisms are all are all centered around this lack of belonging - or the threat of having belonging taken away - and a low sense of self-worth and not feeling good enough.
I think that the 12 steps are a really wonderful way of addressing those feelings. We start [in the first few steps] to look for something beyond ourselves - or a Reality, a Truth - outside of our own experience, which has been so bastardized and harmed by our childhood, by growing up in these systems of oppression that we live under.
In the Fourth and Fifth steps we begin to look inward and really see - what are these fundamental beliefs that I have that are really affecting all of my behaviors? All that character defect talk - really what it is is we're not stopping at the coping mechanisms. We're going deeper than that and asking "what are the beliefs that I have about myself, about the world, about God or spirit?" And so through the 12 steps we really uncover all of the false beliefs about our worthiness.
When we talk about worthiness, what we are really talking about is our worthiness to belong. One of the things that I think that 12 steps is decent at- but not amazing at - is then getting us past survival mode and into thriving. Thriving is really where delight comes in.
And so I see this through line between alcoholism + addiction and belonging + worthiness and delight. And when I speak of delight, I am speaking of these moments of just like "oh my gosh Isn't this amazing?"
So my method is I combine the 12 Steps - which are really a way of clearing out the past, resettling and kind of landing in ourselves - with coaching techniques, which are really about going into the imagination and imagining a new future. We ask the question,
"What do I know deep inside that I have not in the past been able to get in touch with that can then move me forward into the life that I really want to live?"
A life that day-to-day, moment-to-moment feels fulfilling. I feel connected, I feel free, I feel ease, I feel like I have purpose.
So if you're interested this summer, I am running a special, I love coaching, I love working with clients of being in the space with people, and I'd like to be doing it more. So I am running this special as a gift to myself, as a gift to future clients:
Four [4] sessions for $100.
That's 25 bucks a pop. You can pay as you go, you can pay all at once.
If you're interested in moving away from this feeling of just not being good enough, not doing it right, If you're asking the question,
"why is like my life just not clicking in the way I thought it would?" and into a space of ease and connection and belonging and delight, please reach out.
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