Selfish: Concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself,seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wild
We cannot allow anything to come between us and our spirituality, or between us and our living process. If we do, we shall destroy ourselves and those around us.
Anne Wilson Schaef, When Society Becomes an Addict
Characteristics of early childhood development: Very self-centred, Just beginning a sense of personal identity and belongings, Possessive, Often negative, Often frustrated, No ability to choose between alternatives, Resistive to change, Becoming independent, More responsive to humour and distraction than discipline or reason…
Howard Malitz, Seasons of Sobriety
As a person who has been living in addiction recovery for over two decades, I still wonder why the word `selfish´ has such a powerful impact upon me every time it comes up. It did so, by implication, in the list of early childhood characteristics quoted above, which has prompted these reflections.
To provide some context, my memory of childhood is punctuated by instances of hearing: `Don’t be so selfish´ from parents or caregivers in response to me voicing my needs, desires, or wishes as a young boy. Physically, when spoken out loud today, these words have the effect of pulling the rug out from under me. They have certainly left a lasting impression, one that is now clearly deserving of reappraisal.
From what has become clear to me about childhood development, it is perfectly natural and necessary for a child, in the very early years, to be fully concerned with self without regard to others. It is how our species and other mammals have secured survival over the aeons. It is a basic building block of evolution, neither good nor bad, but simply unarguably necessary in that phase of life.
We have all experienced temper tantrums; ours, and others. Temper tantrums range from whining and crying to screaming, kicking, hitting, and breath-holding spells. They’re equally common in boys and girls and usually happen between the ages of one to three years. Some children may have tantrums often, and others have them rarely. Tantrums are an integral part of childhood development.
Ideally, we grow out of them as we mature emotionally. Many of us have not had such a smooth ride in terms of maturing, so we exhibit infantile behaviour long after such behaviour is beneficial for our development and the health of our relationships with family members, friends, and associates. Under certain circumstances today, I still throw a tantrum.
Imagine the ideal family environment in which the parents are mature and highly conscious, willing and able to provide the child with the necessary attention, guidance, and support to become thriving young adults before they leave the nest.
In that scenario, the child will have learned to strike a healthy balance between her own needs and wishes and the needs of those surrounding her. She will have learned to deal with frustration and to remain true to Self without being either selfish or selfless, to paraphrase Dr Allen Berger, who has written extensively on the topic of emotional sobriety. She will have learned the basic building blocks of living life on life’s terms.
Of course we are not saints, as the authors of the Big Book of AA put it. Neither were our parents and adult caregivers. In fact, it requires little imagination to recognize that the major conflicts which are currently being played out throughout the world, at huge human and environmental cost, are superlative collective manifestations of the childhood tantrum.
What I conclude from my own experience of being so regularly and rudely rebuffed with `Don’t be so selfish!´ is threefold:
I was indeed often selfish, as is only natural for any child, a fact which deserves acknowledgement, understanding, and compassion.
Secondly, there were very natural needs at play which often remained unmet, perhaps even discounted, or ridiculed..
And, finally, my parents were regularly overwhelmed by the needs of their ten children. They, themselves, sometimes reverted to infantile responses where a more mature response would have been necessary for and beneficial to the child’s healthy development.
It is often remarked that addicts are the lucky ones because we are forced to address and redress the issue of our own emotional immaturity by the fact that a continuation of the addictive dynamic would otherwise be fatal.
Addiction is a deadly business. Alcohol kills. Cocaine kills. Fentanyl kills. Even process addictions such as gambling or sex addiction can often end in suicide.
Addicts, therefore, are given a very real second chance to sort out the unfinished business of our adverse childhood experiences. My experience of recovery is shaped by the spiritual approach of the Twelve Steps, formulated, and elucidated in the AA Big Book, first published in 1939.
If we asked people today on any high street in Europe or North America, many would indicate that they had heard of the Twelve Steps but could not really tell what they contain. This is a pity, in my opinion, because the principles contained therein would be beneficial to anybody interested in learning to fulfil more of their potential as human beings.
This is achieved by becoming free of the many fears and limitations we place upon ourselves, and those imposed upon us by the societal norms which have been collectively shaped over generations.
In his 1963 essay on `Treating the Causes of Alcoholism´, Harry Tiebout (1896 – 1966), a leading US psychiatrist and early advocate of the AA movement, writes:
AA is a therapy discovered by chance. To be sure the original members followed brilliantly the clues with which their own experience had presented them. They learned from experiencing. They followed no book. They found a method, a programme; they prescribed it, and it worked. The idea of seeking causes was discarded, sometimes noisily and with jeers at those who still tried to be scientific…
The programme helps the individual remain sober thus removing the symptoms. It also aimed at altering the inner source of discord by its stress on spiritual development, thereby getting at the causes that provoked the symptoms….
AA found a very basic fact, namely, that spiritual growth is a real antidote to the hostile negative forces… The most one can hope for is progress in the amelioration of the hostilities, and growth in the positive forces that ensure health.
Tiebout’s statements remind me of the shift which is so pivotal in the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness modality, which featured in a recent edition of these reflections. Over time, and with repeated, regular PQ practice, we learn to shift from fear-based Saboteur energies to the Sage energies fuelled by loving kindness.
In her commentary of `The Course in Miracles´, Marianne Williamson states that: `A miracle is a shift from fear to love´.
Recovery from addiction was generally considered an impossibility only a century ago. Thanks to the spread of AA and kindred Twelve Step fellowships, it has become a compelling miracle of our times. Recovery, therefore, can also be described as a shift from fear to love.
Fear is characterized by an `either, or…´ attitude. Love, in contrast always takes up the `both, and…´ perspective.
The early members of AA chose the spiritual (as they understood spiritual) over the scientific. That was the expedient approach at the time and allowed the solution to quickly take hold in lives otherwise characterized by hopelessness and desperation.
An integral part of the solution was `carrying the message´, i.e., sharing it, free of charge, with an ever-expanding community of those who wanted this message, a community which grew from two people in 1935 to over two million today.
As these recovery fellowships mature, we are now moving to the `both, and..´ perspective with respect to exploring the scientific and spiritual aspects of the root causes of addiction and in drawing upon modern and recently developed resources to augment the Twelve Steps as we implement the solution. These resources may include Jung’s work on Archetypes, Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, Trauma therapy modalities such as EMDR and Somatic Experiencing, PQ Mental Fitness, Inner Child work, Kinesiology, etc., to name only a few.
Insights gained from neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and our understanding of trauma, among other disciplines, have provided important information that was not known or understood when the Big Book was first published in 1939. I am very pleased and honoured to count myself among those who, today, bring the discoveries from these disciplines to bear on how we apply the programme of recovery originally formulated by the founders of AA.
The result is a more compassionate approach embedded in our expanded understanding of the human condition. I believe this approach will reach more people and deliver even better outcomes as we progress.
As Bill W., a co-founder of AA, writing in 1953, expressed: I think perhaps they (the many oldsters who have put our AA `booze cure´ to severe but successful tests (but) still find they often lack emotional sobriety) will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance (which is to say humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God.
We are now that spearhead. You will find a warm welcome among us, the many groupings of people engaged in Twelve Step recovery, whose focus of attention is the cultivation and maintenance of emotional sobriety. This warm welcome awaits you, whether you identify as an addict or not.
