A Guide to the Recovery Toolbox

By Steve Becker

People in recovery often hear of the tools. What are they? When do I use them? How? This book is a reference guide to help answer these questions, with over 80 tools and a troubleshooting section. Written to be accessible not only to twelve-step programs (AA, NA, Alanon, CoDA, etc) but anyone who wants to learn, whether you're in recovery or not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Becker
• Release date: Nov 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9780615458373

Steve Becker

People in recovery often hear of the tools. What are they? When do I use them? How? This book is a reference guide to help answer these questions, with over 80 tools and a troubleshooting section. Written to be accessible not only to twelve-step programs (AA, NA, Alanon, CoDA, etc) but anyone who wants to learn, whether you're in recovery or not

Book preview

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Pouring the Foundation

Screwdrivers Aren’t Male or Female

Replacing Old Beliefs with New Ones

Finding Issues In Myself, Not Others

You’re Not Alone

Take What You Like, Leave the Rest

Perfectionism

Codependent vs. Independent

These Are Rooms for Training

Finding a Group That’s Right For You

Crosstalk

A Higher Power of My Own Understanding

Listening Without Planning a Reply

Gratitude

Getting Current

Letting the Foundation Solidify

Peeling the Onion

People’s Behaviors Are a Reflection of Themselves

H.A.L.T.

Start With Little Choices

Letting Go of the Outcome

I Make Sense

Journaling

Understanding Our Families

Family of Origin, Family of Choice

Be Gentle With Yourself

The Old Tapes Playing in My Head

Starting to Take Care of Myself

Moving The Doorknob To The Inside

Friendship Circles

Share, Test, Share

No Is A Complete Sentence

I Don’t Need To Tell You Anything

One Day At A Time, Part I

One Day At A Time, Part II

One Day At A Time, Part III

It’s None of My Business What Other People Think of Me

Fix Others By Fixing Myself First, Part I

Fix Others By Fixing Myself First, Part II

Fix Others By Fixing Myself First, Part III

I Can’t Control Other People 24/7

Leaving Myself Reminders

Persistence Pays Off

Success Is Not Always a Straight Line, Part I

Success Is Not Always a Straight Line, Part II

I Don’t Have to Be Superman (or Superwoman)

Black and White Thinking

Keep Seeking, Room After Room, Part I

Keep Seeking, Room After Room, Part II

Defending Change

This Isn’t A Selfish Program; It’s A Self Care Program

Never Let Anyone Should on You

Being a Bitch or an Asshole Isn’t Always A Bad Thing

The Platinum Rule

The Victim & The Savior

Let It Wither And Die

When One Door Closes, Another One Opens

Taking Back My Power

Break It Into Manageable Pieces

It’s Not a Task; It’s a Process

I Don’t Have to Fix the World

Response-Able

Forgiveness

Taking Back My Power

I Own My Own Actions (Victim Role)

Rejection Is Their Stuff, Not Mine

Expressing Emotions Is Allowed

Child-like Is Not Childish

Share Feelings, Not Accusations

The Hero’s Journey

Understanding Love

Recognizing Love

Love Is Like A Sixth Sense

Emotions Don’t Require Motions

Tuning In

To Thine Own Self Be True

Am I Supposed to Be This Person’s Lover?

I Don’t Read Minds Anymore

I Want to Get to Know You; Understanding You Is Optional

Letting Go of Manipulation

Looking Myself In The Mirror

Helping Others

When Is It Okay To Help?

The Five Stages of Grief

Trying to Speed Through Grief

The Blanket Was Too Small

Taking a Moment to Reflect

The Twelve Steps Are Tools Too

I’m Not a Human Doing; I’m a Human Being

When Are Unhealthy Behaviors Healthy?

My Choice About God

I Don’t Have To, I Choose To

Grace

Conclusion

Appendix

Desiderata

A Reason, a Season, or a Lifetime

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Hope As An Obstacle

The Feeling Wheel

Troubleshooting Guide

~

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank …

The person who broke my heart…

Then stomped on it … then put it through a shredder.

It was the worst relationship of my life, but it was also an alarm clock. I forgive you.

The college professor

Who showed me a good example of a healthy boundary by pointing me

towards a good book and then letting me do the rest.

My counselor and the groups whose meetings I’ve attended

For helping me learn the things I have, and the things I continue to learn.

My friends who helped proofread the book

It’s not easy keeping 100+ pages straight and you guys n’ gals

caught things after my eyes glazed over.

Ed Spielman, Jerry Thorpe, and Herman Miller

Your television series Kung Fu introduced Master Kan and Master Po,

who taught many valuable and enlightening lessons.

My grandmother

For teaching me that to master the self is an even greater

(and in the end more important) challenge than mastering others.

~

Introduction

I intend for this book to be helpful to both people who are and who are not seeing a counselor or attending meetings of a twelve-step program (any of them). People who are often hear references to the tools but don’t often get any firm explanation on what this means. (What are the tools? Where do I find them? When do I use them? How do I use them?) There are 80+ sections to this book, each describing a tool I’ve learned.

For people who are not seeing a counselor or attending a twelve-step program, I won’t try to convince you that you should. Everyone has their own path in life and there are many ways to learn (like reading a book). Maybe you’ll find some tools in this book that you can apply to your own life. I’m all for that.

Lastly, this book will help by donating to charity. I’ll start with donating 51% of the profits, and as time passes I’ll gradually increase the percentage until 100% of the proceeds are going to charity. This book will help me and you, and others too.

A few tips on how the book is laid out:

I refer to the sections of this book as sections. I don’t call them chapters because some aren’t even a page long. Some tools don’t need much explanation.

Many of these tools are like a big network – they’re all interconnected and your understanding of each affects your understanding of the others. So don’t worry if you don’t feel you have a 100% handle on any particular topic. I kept the book small on purpose because I wanted to make it very easy to read through more than once or to use as a reference guide. After you finish the book go back to the tools you weren’t sure about and see if they make more sense.

The first group of tools I call Pouring the Foundation … most of them are ‘beginner’ topics, but a few of them are some of the harder topics I’ve dealt with. Those can be scary or alienating topics, so I address them right away to put them into perspective for you so you can look past them and move on to other topics you may find more helpful.

I’ve added See Also references at the end of many sections to help show how the tools interconnect and support each other. I hope this’ll make for a handy reference guide once you’ve read the book, but if this is your first time reading it I suggest reading the tools in order – I did try to put them in a logical order so the later tools build on the ones before.

I’ll be publishing this both as an e-book and a paperback. Both should be laid out exactly the same, but if you find this book in one format and prefer the other it should be available, just check your favorite retailer.

~

Pouring the Foundation

Screwdrivers Aren’t Male or Female

Replacing Old Beliefs with New Ones

Finding Issues in Myself, Not Others

You’re Not Alone

Take What You Like, Leave the Rest

Perfectionism

Codependent vs. Independent

These Are Rooms for Training

Finding a Group That’s Right for You

Crosstalk

A Higher Power of My Own Understanding

Listening Without Planning a Reply

Gratitude

Getting Current

~

Screwdrivers Aren’t Male or Female

You use the right tool for the right job. If you need to screw in a screw you use a screwdriver, not a spatula. It doesn’t matter if the screwdriver is blue or pink. There are a few places in this book where I reference something that gives you a clue about my gender, my sexual preference, or which of the twelve-step programs I participate in, but I’ve tried to remove those things wherever possible because I believe as people we need to focus on what helps us – the tools. It’s very easy to get distracted by some minor thing and then write it off as though it wouldn’t work for us even though it sure as hell would if we could just see the tool for what it is. So that’s lesson number one: see the tool for what it is. Look past the things your brain wants to use as excuses and figure out how these tools apply to your own life.

~

Replacing Old Beliefs with New Ones

I’m going to use an analogy in this section that’ll start off sounding like it’s going to be violent and disturbing, but I promise it won’t be.

In some parts of the world it’s considered a delicacy to eat monkeys. The method for trapping these monkeys is rather ingenious. The hunter will find a gourd (a hard-shelled vegetable), cut a hole in it, hollow it out, and tie it to a tree or a stake in the ground. Then they’ll take a piece of fruit and cut it so it’s just small enough to fall into the hole in the gourd. They’ll put the fruit in the gourd and leave for a while. The monkeys come, find the gourds, stick their hands in and grasp the fruit, and when they go to pull their hands out they find that they can’t. The hole in the gourd is just big enough to let the fruit out, but not big enough to let the fruit out with the monkey’s hand wrapped around it. When the hunters come back the monkeys panic because they know they need to get away – but their brains aren’t developed enough to understand that they need to let go of the fruit in order to get away. Their brains only know that the fruit is a good thing, and if they could get away then they could enjoy the fruit. They’re stuck in a situation they don’t fully understand. Now here’s the interesting part – can you figure out how the local animal lovers release the monkeys from these traps?

To release the monkeys people get other pieces of fruit and throw them on the ground near the monkey – close enough that the monkey has to make a choice to either continue holding on to the fruit in the gourd or let go and take the one on the ground. The monkeys are smart enough to know the other piece is just as good as the one in their hands, so they let go of the one in the gourd, grab the one on the ground, and take off into the forest.

When my counselor told me this I immediately understood – it’s the same advice we hear about quitting smoking. They say to take up another habit: chew gum, exercise, join a sporting club, then whenever we get the urge to follow the old patterns, participate in that new habit instead. We can’t just drop one habit. Without something else to take its place we just sit there thinking about how we can’t submit to the old habit.

The tools in this book are to be used the same way. When I feel myself struggling to retain control of something that’s out of my hands I use the tool called Letting Go of the Outcome. When I feel that being hungry, angry, lonely, or tired is about to cause me to do something I’ll regret later: H.A.L.T. When someone comes screaming at me for no reason, I don’t yell back at them: People’s Behaviors Are a Reflection of Themselves … and I remember: Take Back My Power.

Over time I’ve learned ways to incorporate more and more of these tools into my life, and I’ve gotten faster at applying them. As you practice using these tools you’ll get better with them too. My life has become much more peaceful and centered, and the drama in other people’s lives stays there and doesn’t invade mine. But before you can keep other people’s drama out you’ll need to figure out your own drama and deal with it yourself, which leads me to the sections called Finding Issues In Myself, Not Others and These Are Rooms for Training.

See Also:

Letting Go of the Outcome

H.A.L.T.

People’s Behaviors Are a Reflection of Themselves

Taking Back My Power

These Are Rooms for Training

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

~

Finding Issues In Myself, Not Others

The fact that you’re reading this book tells me you’re willing to learn new tools and apply them to your life, and that’s good. But the important thing to remember is that you need to apply these tools to yourself, not to others. I knew two people once who were in a relationship, and together they both started reading about addiction and codependency. They both started to go to meetings. Soon Person A was quoting things they’d learned from the books and meetings in an attempt to force Person B into doing things they didn’t want to do. This is absolutely the wrong idea. We do not use these tools to change other people – we use them to change ourselves.

The goal is to look at yourself and your own thoughts/feelings/behaviors. If you catch yourself reading something in this book and immediately thinking of someone else being a good example, challenge yourself. See if you can think of a time when you thought/felt/acted that way. You may find it’s something you’ve done too. That’s where you’ll need to apply the tool.

See Also:

Fix Others By Fixing Myself First, Part I

Fix Others By Fixing Myself First, Part II

~

You’re Not Alone

Don’t Give Up Too Fast

Many times I’ve seen people come to a twelve-step meeting and hear something they think is wrong (or worse, an insult) and they choose to leave and never come back. People are quick to put the blame on the program, on the person who shared something they disagreed with, their counselor … anyone but themselves. You own your thoughts and opinions. Own your fear. If you want to run, that fear is what’s making you want to run. Challenging ourselves is the hardest battle any of us face.

Everyone you see at a meeting is there fighting their own fight or flight response; everyone who’s ever been to one has done it. Even if you think your problems are unique – maybe they are – what’s not unique is that you’re not the only person trying to learn new ways to cope. Focus on the common goal: learning new tools, new ways of coping with problems, new ways to live life. Some days are harder than others, but as you continue it does get easier. When you’re having one of those hard days remember – you’re not alone in the struggle.

If you’re at a meeting and you hear someone say, You’re not alone, they’re referring to this tool. Once you’ve read this section someone else will be able to say those three words and you’ll have three paragraphs of understanding. That’s one of the benefits of the tools – the titles are like abbreviations, or mantras – a shorthand way of saying a whole lot with only a few words.

I didn’t start practicing Tool #1 and perfect it before moving on to Tool #2 and perfecting it (this is why I won’t number these sections). The tools in this book were all learned gradually, and many of them were being practiced all at the same time. I’m sure that anyone reading this book will end up doing the same, because so many of these tools are related to each other. I’ll try to write this book in an order that makes sense, but you’ll find that they all intertwine. At some point a couple tools will come together and a light bulb will come on, and then you’ll start on the next group.

When you spend enough time practicing the things I’m writing about … implementing, and implementing, and implementing again… you’ll come to love yourself more than you ever have. It sounds silly and trite, but it’s true. If you think you love yourself now, just wait. When I first started going to meetings I went twice a week. I looked at it like a college class – except it doesn’t end when the semester is up. You can keep attending for as long as you need to. You can leave and come back years later and it’ll still be there for you. But going even once a week for a year is 52 hours spent focusing your mind. It may not seem like much at first, but it adds up. If you live out in the woods, then re-read this book 10 times. Eventually it’ll sink in, gel together, and you’ll see the connections between the tools without needing the see also references at all.

~

Take What You Like, Leave the Rest

It’s a challenge to face life and look at the choices I’ve made – and more importantly, the choices I’m continuing to make. Looking at my past I may feel guilt or regret, but the saving grace is that those things are in the past – they can’t be changed. But the choices I make today and tomorrow … those can be changed, if I have the courage. Not everyone has the courage. Some people find one or two things about the tools or twelve-step programs that they disagree with and use them as reasons to turn their back on changing at all. You don’t have to do this.

If I start a new career I don’t expect to know how to use every tool in that field within the first week in the career. Some tools don’t make sense the first time you look at them; some might seem to be completely backwards. It can take years to become an expert. But that’s okay. Start out slow, use the ones you can, leave the rest. Come back and look at it again in six months and you may find another one makes sense now. As you keep coming back, you’ll find more and more things click. In the mean time don’t let that stop you from taking advantage of the tools you can use.

I came to my first twelve-step meeting because I wanted to change, but expecting to change