Category » Applied Philosophy & Psychology
Exiting the Stages of Change
People in recovery sometimes think about exiting the stages of change hoping to move from great to gone. In SMART Recovery, some are in those stages while others are in a not-so-good to alright stages. Believe me, please, when I say it’s not where you’re at that’s important; it’s movement itself, in the direction of […]
How We Change
Last week’s blog covered the Cycle of Change, (CoC, Prochaska, DiClemente, and Norcross, 1992) with respect to judgment. One reader suggested that it might be helpful to discuss the attributes of each stage in the CoC. The full scheme is illustrated below in Figure 1, The Five+ Stages of Change. In general, healthy growth occurs […]
Judgment and the Stages of Change
Two ideas have recently come together: the futility of judging addictive behaviours and the dissolving of the desire to judge when faced with the Cycle of Change, (CoC, Prochaska, DiClemente, and Norcross, 1992). Regular readers will recall that the CoC is included in SMART Recovery as a means of gauging one’s readiness to approach an […]
Love & Addiction
In the middle of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Maté stated that “People who cannot find or receive love need to find substitutes—and that’s where addictions come in” (2018, p. 231). In the argument following that statement, Maté outlined the human requirement of being wanted and needed (connection). That arose as Dr. Maté […]
Withdrawal I: Alcohol
Part of many check-ins, during SMART Recovery meetings, is a discussion of withdrawal symptoms. When a person decides to leave her drug of choice behind, things start happening. And most of them are painful. Here’s why. Tolerance is what happens as your body adjusts to using psychoactive (or other) drugs. (All drugs discussed in addiction […]
Emotions versus Values
Often, in recovery meetings, questions will arise repeatedly. Are you being led by your emotions or your values? is one such question. It is also a question which ought to be asked from about age four and throughout school years, but that’s another blog! The usefulness of the question concerns understanding epistemic primacy. Primacy is […]
Lewandowski’s 41st Goal
There are two versions of the same message framed in completely different ways. The first is Sir Winston Churchill’s KBO: Keep Buggering On meaning just don’t quit. That message, in the words of a rigorously thoughtful contemporary philosopher sounds something like this: To live well is to act so as to move toward achieving the […]
The Process
Today we look at a simple concept that is difficult to use well. I first learned of it in The Daily Stoic (Holiday & Hanselman, 2016, 8 June). We had one SMART Recovery meeting based on The Process and it seemed worth putting on record. So here goes. In the 12-step culture, there’s an expression […]
Maslow and Self-Transcendence
Probably the least clear of Maslow’s needs is self-transcendence, the final growth need in his hierarchy. The description of this state is “Helping others, connecting with something outside ourselves” (Atkinson & Tomley, 2012, p. 139). G-d is often referenced as that something higher than us. There is a parallel between wanting to transcend (“to rise […]
Maslow and Self-Actualization
What if they were right? What if each of us does have a purpose for which we are particularly suited? Maslow and at least one other psychologist, James Hillman, held this to be true. Reaching the second to last of Maslow’s growth needs, self-actualization, is pretty much nailing purpose. I looked at maybe 100 images […]