After Addiction Comes a Vacuum For many of us, the final stages of our addictive behavior found us unable to incorporate any real structure into our daily li...

Why We Need to Escape the Performance-Based Life to Recover I recently taught a class on 12-step spirituality for those who are not necessarily in recovery b...

Asking for Help I recently opened my iPhone and accidentally bumped the Siri button. Although she is generally trying to help me, Siri and I have a bit of a ...

Taking Life on Life’s Terms Those of us who have spent any time in recovery circles have heard the term, “Taking life on life’s terms.” There are days when I...

Surrender and Recovery What is Surrender? Why do many people have so much trouble with the concept, and why have so many of us reduced this first step into r...

The Rise of 12-Step Meetings Since its inception in the 1930’s, the model of 12-step meetings for recovery has left an imprint on the American culture and be...

“I’m, David…” I remember the very first time those words came out of my mouth in a meeting. The evidence was clear. I qualified to be there! The stories and ...

As human beings, some of our most fundamental needs are to know and be known and love and be loved.  This is often referred to as part of our hierarchy of ne...

There is an old adage that says, “Assume the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.” If I could alter one thing about myself it would be to stop filling the...

Paying the Price of Change Here is one of the ways I learned about the price of change. A couple of years ago, I hired a personal trainer to help me with the...

The Challenges of People in the Thresholds of Recovery In keeping with our focus on the thresholds of recovery and embracing the thin places between who we w...

Understanding The Thresholds of Recovery I have recently been doing a bit of reading about something called liminal space, or liminality. Liminality isn’t ...

The Work of Recovery and the Integrated Soul Most of us who embark on the path of recovery have heard the phrase, “the work of recovery,” – mostly because ...

How The Neurology of Joy Influences Recovery True joy can be an enigma to many of us who suffer with addictive behaviors for many reasons, particularly if we...

Recently, our blog posts have been exploring the addiction model as a stool with four legs.  The four legs supporting that stool are anxiety, shame, trauma, ...

The Shame Cycle As I continue to walk the road of recovery with my clients, I am more and more convinced that we are as addicted to our shame as we are our s...

How to Recover from Substance Abuse in an Anxious Culture In my last blog entry, I mentioned that we would be exploring the “legs” of the addiction stool in ...

The Connection Between Resentment and Relapse When I first entered the rooms of twelve-step recovery it was an almost overwhelming experience for me. It was ...

With Recovery Comes Change A number of years ago, I hired a personal trainer to help with the revolving door relationship I have with twenty pounds.  Being n
 When we find ourselves in situations where we have to redefine normal, it will always feel like suffering. It will be the emotional and spiritual equivalent of a barking trainer pushing us beyond anything we ever thought we could endure. We might even be tempted to lay blame, retaliate, and rebuff the very people we’ve