26 August 2023
During the past four weeks, craftsmanship has been defined as an awareness that something can be done half-consciously or with attention to detail. Formulaically, craftsmanship = skill + concentration. Either as part of craftsmanship, or maybe preceding that awareness, is the need to understand the problem or issue at hand.
This is a subject prevalent in both of the worlds I have inhabited as an adult. As an architect, knowing the dimensions and attributes of the design issue at hand is an often rushed-through phase of the work. Architects carry 100s of precedents around in their hands and minds. Seeing a new site, a list of requirements, or a few design challenges immediately call up some of those precedents—and the sketching begins—too early, too fast. Know the problem.
Similarly in psychotherapy. Clients often present (show up with a declared reason) with a lesser issue than the one they actually need/want to work on. Being wise, and not diving into treatment before understanding that person’s life, is the more responsible route yet the social and economic forces at play in today’s world ask, “Come on, you can get this done in six or surely twelve sessions?” Henry Ford’s assembly line meets care of the soul.
What these opening issues have in common, with recovery from addiction, is the P.I.G. or problem of instant gratification. Who doesn’t want to be the brilliant professional solving a complex issue at first glance? But, when you dig a little deeper, Frank Lloyed Wright claimed he never drew a line until he had the whole solution in his head (untrue, but cool goal) while Howard Sutcliffe once told me that most architects could do the same thing as him if they spent the time he had spent (also untrue). What both architects were saying is, spend the time to know the issues before committing to a solution. Both were/are enormously talented designers.
These issues arise early in recovery and don’t go away until (or if) they’re dealt with. What we’re talking about here is the difference between white-knuckling and recovery. Many white-knucklers very admirably manage to stop their self-destructive addictive behaviours only to substitute a healthier addictive behaviour that restricts their lives to a predictable, manageable routine with few avenues for error. This is not an accident but nor is it the result of a full design investigation. In recovery, the full design investigation, which many people are afraid to undertake, is psychotherapy with someone skilled at seeing patterns of thinking, emoting, and behaving.
I want to be clear about the origins of the P.I.G. in recovery. Many people recovering from addiction do go the full course and still don’t understand the roots of their issues. This is not necessarily a failure of the person recovering or the therapist. Most people are not fully ready to look at all of their issues, especially people who have just turned their backs on years of addiction with the exponentially multiplied shame those years yield. Until we can forgive ourselves for our missteps, the strength to see the sad truth simply isn’t there. And the only way to get there is to live as honestly and healthfully as possible with your real self.
Living honestly with yourself means having the ability to feel and think freely, knowing that you are not your thoughts and feelings but only the thoughts and feelings you choose to act upon. I had a client in his ‘60s who told me, after many sessions, that he felt for the first time that it was alright to have feelings of his own. How can a person who hasn’t given himself permission to feel live honestly with himself? A good life takes time.
Living healthfully is where the last of SMART Recovery’s 4-Points comes into play: a balanced life. My assumption is that most people think of balance as a condition requiring symmetrical equality of values. I try not to think of balance that way. There are 15 sub-definitions of balance but the sixth is the most suitable for our purposes: 6. A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design or composition (Morris, 1975, p. 100). Our lives are chosen compositions of parts. When our lives are moving forward in a way that brings some deep satisfaction, we have probably achieved a good balance—for the moment.
But balance is a moving target because, per Heraclitus, life is change. As we move through time, life changes, and we change. Per those changes, the optimum balance shifts.
In the third blog in this series (here), we looked at order and disorder. Note the similarities between the definition of balance and the definition of order: 2. a. A condition of methodical or prescribed arrangement among component parts, such that proper functioning or appearance is achieved (Morris, 1975, p. 924). That similarity more or less vindicates the idea that a well-ordered life is a life in balance.
To be fully balanced, as above, takes time and changes. For many people in the addictive/traumatized community, there are subsurface forces at play for a long time. A balanced or well-ordered life consciously makes room for those emerging factors. Without that space-making, there will be an unceasing sense of restless unease.
Finally, maybe the most important choice each of us makes, is whether or not to fight for self-actualization, the state of becoming as fully you as you can be. Earlier (link above) we looked at two primary drives that co-exist in human lives: the drive toward entropy or it’s opposite, the drive toward order. “Everything you do either expands the sense of what is possible or adds to the feeling that nothing is possible (Stutz & Michels, 2017, pp. 27-8), the latter commonly referred to in addiction as “the fuck-its”. Awareness of that (mistaken) sense. that nothing is possible, is the first step toward order. The second is acting to create your life of ordered balance.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage illustrated dictionary of the English language. American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.
Patrick, G. T. W. (Tr.) (2013). The Fragments of Heraclitus. Digireads.com.
Stutz, P., & Michels, B. (2017). Coming alive: 4 tools to defeat your inner enemy, ignite creative expression, & unleash your soul’s potential. Random House Canada.
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