EMOTIONS AND OUR POWERLESSNESS
The Key to Our Transformation and Growth


Many times, we responded to our emotions in undesirable, less attractive and regrettable ways.

No matter how hard we tried to gain control over this not-so-good side of our emotions like our anxiety, irritation or rage, we still felt the sting of these emotions every now and then.

We found ourselves repeatedly falling prey to and trapped by such debilitating emotions as hatred, anger, envy, arrogance and depression from time to time.

We tried hard to rid ourselves of these emotions by denying their presence within us or by suppressing them, thinking that they would disappear if we did so.

But they did not, and it terrified us that in spite of our very sincere and honest intentions and all of our efforts to do away with our uncomfortable emotions, they did overwhelm us and made us feel and behave in ways that we were embarrassed about.

We believed that we must be able to control our emotional life and we found it very difficult to accept that this was not possible.

Moreover, because we believed that we must be able to control our emotions we got dissatisfied with ourselves when they were beyond our control, and indulged in self-criticism and self-flagellation.

As a result, we developed a chronic dissatisfaction with our emotional self; a spreading cancer deeply entrenched at the heart of our emotional life.

But eventually, we discovered that our emotions had their own life and the energy that they produced in us was beyond our control whether the energy sprang from love or from hatred.

This way, we realized that we were powerless over our emotions and that our emotional life had become unmanageable as a consequence.

We admitted our powerlessness and unmanageability over our emotions through our First Step.

Through Step Two, we opened our minds to the possibility of a loving and caring intention of our Higher Power for us behind these uneasy emotional experiences.

When we thus opened our mind and became willing to surrender to this loving and caring intention of our Higher Power through our Third Step, it dawned on us that we had seldom been aware before that our uneasy emotions arose in us for a reason; that they had a message for us hidden beneath our discomfort, a message that holds the key to our healing, freedom, change and growth.

We needed to pay close attention to our emotions through our Fourth Step Inventory and while sharing this inventory through our Fifth Step.

Most importantly, we realized that we had to first acknowledge and own these emotions and their exact nature whole-heartedly, as ours, through our Sixth Step.

This was the key, the breakthrough that gave us the permission to stop clinging on to our chronic dissatisfaction with our emotional life.

When we thus owned and accepted our emotional self unconditionally, we finally felt a sense of freedom from our tendency to whip ourselves into submission and change, and from our self-blaming behavior.

Only then could we clearly see the message that our Higher Power carried for us through these emotional experiences.

We found the direction as to what we needed to do to respect ourselves emotionally and thereby change what the message of these emotions indicated that we must, through our Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Steps so as to grow in our existential awareness and self-acceptance.

As a result, we learned to invite and allow our Higher Power to guide us when these emotions seem to threaten our sanity.

Gradually, our Higher Power moved us away from the turmoil and the conflict that we impulsively used as our first reaction to the presence of these emotions within us, towards the healing path of admitting and owning responsibility for these emotions and their consequences, identifying the harm we have caused under the influence of these emotions and making the necessary amends by consciously choosing to respond differently from thereon.

This way, as we learnt to let go of our dissatisfaction with our emotional self and embraced the message of freedom and change that our Higher Power carried for us beneath these uneasy emotions with the help of the Program, we developed a capacity to perceive our emotions as an energy that connects us to our Higher Powers will for us.

Through Step Eleven, we continued to seek our Higher Powers will for us in context with our emotional life as it transpired in our daily recovery, and we continued to receive the strength, courage and clarity that we needed to deal with our emotions in positive and constructive ways, through this process of the 12 Steps.

As a result of these Steps we took, we stopped judging our emotions on the grounds of right and wrong or good and evil, and started listening to our Higher Powers message beneath these emotions instead.

We broke free from the prison of our emotional problems and eased our way into the solution that our Program promises.

Thus, through this path of surrender to our program, we moved closer towards Self-Acceptance and towards accepting and loving others as they are, the key to our Twelfth Step efforts.

You are welcome, Wendy

Yep, I read it every now and then whenever it's time to inventory my emotional health or the lack of it...

In fact, I used this experience, strength and hope just the other day over a situation, and yes, much more was revealed to me through this process than the mere surface-level uneasiness, discomfort and disturbance that seemed to overwhelm me. Now, I'm grateful for all that, was a learning, growing and humbling experience

Thank you Manon for your kind words, how are you doing my recovery sister?