Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 40 (Exploring Step 2 of the Twelve Steps of Adult Children of Alcoholics)

In today's episode, I continue my review of the Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization's 12 Steps.

Step 2: "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

The second steps is a hard stop for many people. As soon as there is mention of a "power greater than ourselves," people think of God.

But is there another way to look at this step?

And why is this step necessary?

I share my thoughts about step 2, how I've struggled with it, and share with you a different perspective on this challenging step.

Remember, just because I choose to follow the 12 Steps, doesn't mean that the steps will work for you. Your mileage will vary depending on your own personal beliefs. However, I do believe there are some key concepts worth reflecting on that will help you on your journey.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Let Go and Be Free podcast, a podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host, Ron Vitale, author of the Let Go and Be Free: 100 Daily Reflections for Adult Children of Alcoholics series. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit, letgoandbefree.com. And with that, let's get on with the show.

And welcome to this week's episode, I am continuing my discussion of the 12 steps. But the second step, so if you haven't listened to the last episode, Episode 39, I would recommend that you check that one out. So you can get the kind of breakdown of the first 12 Step. This is the second one. And I will be honest, and say that this is one of the most difficult steps for people, for many people. And it's also difficult for me, and some of the things that I will talk about in this episode might seem contradictory to what I've said in the past.

I'm just trying to be honest, and that I do struggle, you know, with this step, it's not an easy one for me. And for many people, in fact, you might get to this step, it's only step two. And if you're not familiar with the 12 steps, you might turn around and say, you know, hard stop, I'm done.

And I'm asking you to please just kind of give it a shot in the sense of like, just at least be open minded to considering it. And even if at the end of the day, you just say, Can't really swallow this, I still would recommend that you listen and learn the rest of the steps as I find that they are a little bit more, I guess, grounded in the day to day, especially step like four. And when he gets to some of the later steps, I find that they're a better guide.

And I know this sounds really weird, like, wow, I'm talking bad about the 12 steps. But this one, it's not that it's bad. It's just, I could see how it's controversial with many people. So I think I've built it build up enough, let me let me read through what the actual step is. And then kind of break it apart as to what I think about it, why I struggle with it, and why I think other people struggle with it as well. So again, just a little bit of background, if you're kind of jumping into this, and you're like, Where are these coming from, again, the 12 steps are from adult children.org. If you go to their website, and under the literature section, there is a drop down there and you'll see the word steps. If you click on that, you'll see there are 12 steps. And this is from the adult children of alcoholics. It's their worldwide, you know, and dysfunctional families worldwide service organization. So, this is the official step that people who attend a COA meetings or as some people say, ACA meetings,you know, learn, so let me read it.

I've read it twice, nice and slow. And I'll give you something to kind of think about. And again, I asked him, you know, please just have an open mind. So came to believe that a power greater than ourselves, could restore us to sanity.

I'm gonna say that, again, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves, could restore us to sanity. And I think you could see, now that I've read the the step out, no matter if you've known this step, you know, for decades, or you're just stumbling upon it, the fact that we're talking about a power greater than ourselves.

You know, some look at that and say it's God, some look at it and say it's some form of a higher power that is beyond us that we're we don't know what it is, you know, some look at it and say, I don't want to say that there's something greater than me that I need to help me I am perfectly fine in being able to help myself. So again, I have struggled with all of these questions. And I think the the honest truth for me is, you know, I grew up in a Catholic background.

So I received my Holy Communion, I received my confirmation. I went to church at least once a week, when I was younger, sometimes it was more because I went to Catholic school from the ages, or I should say grades, because I think it'll be a little bit easier from fourth grade, all the way up through graduating college. So not only was it my elementary years, but it was also my four years of high school. And then my four years of college, and I have shared my story in a past episode, how I decided to stop attending Mass when I was about 19 or so, from an incident that happened.

At a mass on a Saturday night I was at my mom short version is there was an elderly gentleman who was having a difficult time breathing, like right in front of us. And what happened was, instead of the priest, you know, stopping the mass as the paramedics were wheeling, you know, the person out on a stretcher. Until this day, I don't know what happened to that person. I don't know if he died, I don't know if he was fine. I don't know what you know what happened.

The priests just went on as business as usual, you know, like, as though he was just, you know, just doing his thing, you know, like turning out the butter kind of thing. And I got really offended by that.

Because even at his homily at the part where the priest is supposed to give this lesson to the community, like, he just made one mention of like that, let's pray for brother John. But there was nothing else it was like, Well, I have scripted this speech. And I'm just going to talk about something and it was this really poorly put together homily, of talking about something from the gospel, instead of, like, in my mind, this life lesson, they went in front of us of like, what happens when someone is really having an emergency in front of you?

How can we work together as a community to help this person, and it was more of, well, let's just ignore that. And I much rather focus on, you know, this lovely homily that I put together, that really offended me. And I just said, up and out. I told my mom, I'm like, if God does exist, if Jesus is live, he would not have allowed this to happen. And I said, I'm done. And then, of course, over the years with the sexual child sexual abuse scandals with the Catholic Church, there's just many things that I have rubbed me the wrong way, let's just say, and I just, I've just broken from the church.

So you know, when I say that, and I read a step like this, you know, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves, could restore us to sanity. It's a difficult thing, not just for myself, but for many people. Because if you look at it and read this step, at the very surface level, it talks about, potentially God. And if you don't believe in God, then you're gonna say, Well, why, why would I even read this step? Why would I even focus on this? And, you know, there are times in my life where I'm like, Yes, I do believe God exist. And then there are other times of, you know, me saying, I don't know, I just doesn't seem to make sense to me. Why would God allow all these horrible things to happen? And, you know, there's been no proof and you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then the, the, the child part of me, the Catholic part of me says, You can't say that because of God's listening, you're gonna get in trouble. You know, and then there's that circle. So I'm very conflicted at times when it comes to thinking about, you know, God.

You know, part of me thinks if there is a God, you know, why would a God want people to worship him? It her I'm a little bit, I guess, more open with the potential of a higher being. If someone is God, again, could do anything, why would it be so limited into how we think of things, you know, how we see the world? You know, we're very limited with our senses. And you know, we can't even see in infravision and ultraviolet light, and there's so many things we just don't understand about the universe. You know, and of course, when you focus into, you know, Jesus and such, you know, God's only Son, you look at that and say, Well, does that mean that all the other world religions are wrong? And you know, I've spoken about this in the past. I remember being a freshman in high school.

And the priest saying, you know, a child born in Africa, who doesn't believe in Christ is going to die and go to hell. And that also did not really sit well with me. And I know, you know, some of you may be extremely religious listening to this. And I say, we might have to agree to disagree. I'm not poking fun or making fun of what you believe. I personally believe that if there is a God, I, I cannot, it does not sit well with me that just because someone wasn't born in a certain location, or born, you know, with a certain color of skin, and have certain privileges, that that person soul would be doomed for eternity, just because you didn't get the luck of the draw, and be born in an area of the world that believed in Jesus like that, that just doesn't sit well with me. And again, you know, I've I've remember the priest at the time saying, well, that's why we had missionaries.

And, you know, and trying to convert people, and I'm like, Well, what if, you know, we remember us asking in the class, what if this, this child never came across a missionary and never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus? Or what if you live in another part of the world where they, you know, your, your Buddhist or your you study Hinduism, you're going to be doomed forever, just because you didn't get the luck of the draw, and you're cultured, didn't believe in the quote unquote, true God like that? Really? You know, and again, there were lots of arguments and in high school with the priest over that, and then I just remember saying, in my head, like, no, that's just not right to me.

You know, if, if, on one hand, God is supposed to be compassionate, and, you know, Jesus, you know, washed the feet of his disciples, and He took in the sinners and all these things. How would you then turn around and be like, well, you know, if you're not born in the lucky part of the world, where you know what Christianity is? Well, you know, you're doomed, sorry. I just, I never really believed that. And still today, I don't believe that. And I know that, that may turn some of you off. And you might say, well, he's wrong. Maybe I am wrong, I don't know. But then I will counter and say, faith is literally a trust in a thought, a belief in something that we cannot prove. We may say that there is evidence with the Bible or miracles. But so do other people believe in other religions?

The same thing. So if we take three examples, simple examples. Let's say that someone is a Christian, and they believe Jesus is God, God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. That's what that person believes.

And let's say that there is another person who's a Muslim, and they believe in Allah. And let's say, a third person, they're atheists don't believe, you know, in God at all. Each person has taken that belief system of the room to say, this is what I believe. And I don't believe personally, that I can point in another person and say, Your belief is wrong.

I have a much more open opinion of that have, I really don't know, if what I believe is correct. I am taking a leap of faith. When I say, I believe there's a God. And that's why I struggle with this. Because I don't really know. I have no way of knowing I could be wrong in believing it, I could be wrong in not believing it. I just don't know. And I don't know if I will ever know, you know, so with this step, to take the religious part out of it out. And to kind of spin it around a little bit this question.

We could look at a power greater than ourselves in a different light. So you can look at this, you could read this step and say, I believe in God, I believe Jesus is Lord. And I can easily take my beliefs and apply it to this. And I can read this as came to believe that, you know, Jesus is greater than ourselves and can restore us to sanity. Totally see how that will or align nicely with someone who believes in Christianity. It's easy with someone who believes, let's say they're Buddhist, or let's say they're Hindu or Muslim, I can also see the person reading this question, or this step.

And when they question, What is that power greater than ourselves, I can see them saying, Let me apply my own belief system to this, there's something greater than me totally get that. Where it can be a little bit more challenging, is in the third example, if there's the atheist, and that person that says, I don't believe that there's a God, hands down, there's no question for me, you know, person who is just know, only what I see. Real around me.

Something that I can touch, that exist, anything beyond that is just smoke and mirrors and doesn't, doesn't, you know, isn't true. There are people who believe that I can see, and I'm asking you to kind of flip this, those of you that fall into the third category, that when you see a power greater than yourselves, that could be, let's say, flip it, it could be the power of community and going to an ACA meeting, it could be working with a therapist, someone that is outside of yourself, someone that has a power greater than ourselves. In mental health, you see where I'm shifting this a little bit. So if you don't believe in God, there are times in life where we have to accept least I hope, we have the openness to accept that there are powers greater than ourselves. So for example, if I get sick, and I need to go to a doctor, I recently earlier this year, I was in a biking accident, and broke my hand. And I needed to go to a doctor to take a look at my hand and see how bad the break was.

The doctor checked me out. And then, you know, I relied on her to be able to give me the advice of look, go to the physical therapist, here are the exercises that you need to do to build your hand back up. Here's how long it's going to take. This is the struggle you're going to be that person had knowledge greater than me that I did not know, I am not a surgeon, I am not, you know, I can't tell like do I did I need surgery on my hand to fix it? Or could I just let it heal on the split, like, I needed to rely on powers, you know, people powers greater than me, in order to heal.

Same thing when I tore my Achilles, about eight years ago, you know, had this accident playing racquetball, I couldn't even walk I was like limping to get to the car was in so much pain. And I had to go to the doctor. And the same thing, I had to go to an expert. Now check me out and say, Okay, here's what happened. This is what your accident is, these are the steps that you can do to get better, you can get surgery or you can not get surgery. I'm not an expert, I'm not a doctor, in those things. So in this when we're dealing with our mind, with, we grew up in a dysfunctional environment, we have those shades of gray color, that basically our glasses that come over us.

And when situations happen, there's triggers that get us to go back in time. And then parts of our mind are thinking about some of the bad stuff that we grew up with. This step is sent essentially saying, if we could believe that there is some type of power greater than us, that can help us and restore us to sanity. That's important, because it is allowing us to say, I need help. I need assistance. I need someone that can help teach me, guide me, listen to me, as I'm going through the rest of the steps. So let's take that apart a little bit.

Again, step could be easy. If you could simply say, I believe in God, you can pray. And you can say God is going to help me get through this. And I'm going to go through these 12 steps. And those 12 steps are going to help me to live my life in a way that again, I can overcome the dysfunctional upbringing that I went through.

I can see that nice and easy. And for those that struggle with saying, I don't believe in God, that's nonsense. No.

Then I would say look at this Step and apply it to how can others help you, again, is that a therapist is a psychiatrist? Is it going to adult children of alcoholics? Meaning? What is it that is outside of our self that can help us? Where can we learn and get that energy from energy in the sense of knowledge power of like, wow, I didn't know this thing. You know, I read this book. And it taught me something different about how my brain works, and how trauma has affected me as a power greater than ourselves in the sense that it's knowledge that we never had.

And now that we've gotten this information, we can apply it and live it day to day. That's where this step is important. If we stay stuck in our brains, and say, I have everything that I need, I don't need anybody's help. I don't need any new knowledge. There's no power outside of me, I'm fine. I'm good to go. Bah, humbug. If we say that, we are limiting ourselves, and keeping ourselves within a walled garden, and there are many that live that way that say, I love my garden, the way it is, because I have meticulously set around me, everything that is safe. And everything that I want to know.

And refusing to seem beyond that is restricting our growth. This step sets the foundation for allowing us to grow over time. Because as we interact with that power greater than us, again, it could be a therapist, it could be a psychiatrist, it could be even a trusted friend and having a conversation and somebody shares story with us of like, what they did to overcome a similar problem, we would learn something that is a power greater than us, because it's outside of our own experience. It's outside of what we've lived through. And by allowing openness to then say, hey, wait a minute, I can learn from that. That's where the magic quote unquote, magic happens.

And then we can get restored to sanity. Because we're not just stuck with blinders on that say, Well, I grew up in this environment. And I'm going to basically, lock myself in this little walled garden, and I'm going to do what I think is right. And then often what happens is we're repeating, sometimes unconsciously, some of the behaviors of what we learned as a child, we may never pick up a drink, or never be addicted to anything. It could just be we are mimicking some of the behaviors that we saw. As a kid, we might be emotionally abusive and arguments.

We might be struggling with trust, we might be emotionally immature, because that's what we saw from our parents, as we grew up, we might become narcissistic and selfish, because we didn't have some of that love that we need it. When we were a kid. This step is saying whatever you want to define power as we, as people do not have all the answers on our own. That in itself can be a challenge. Because if we are, you know, I like to write a whole series on, you know, the self rescuing princess. You know, Cinderella doesn't need the prince to basically find happiness, you know, that's the basis of my entire Cinderella's secret witch diaries fantasy series, you know, the Cinderella story of she's this, you know, down in our luck, teenager finds the prince through a fairy godmother and lives happily ever after. That's not how my series goes. It's It's darker than that. And it's, you know, I spin things on its head, because at the end, I want her Cinderella to discover that she has power within herself and she doesn't need a man to save her. And I look at that, apply that to my own life of I don't need a partner, you know, to save me. And that's what I was doing in many of my early relationships. I was like, Well, I'm feel broken.

You know, I grew up in this environment where, you know, there was divorced twice and there was there was all kinds of horrible things and I want to get out of this. And so I was like, I'm going to do everything I can, and I'm going to be the best I can the smartest person I can be. And no matter how hard I tried, I kept falling into these relationships that were basically trying to fix the problems that I saw in my early life. So I would, you know, match myself with someone that they had problems, I had problems. And I thought, Oh, if we came together, we make a hole, two broken pieces make a hole.

That was ludicrous. Now, when I look back at it just made no sense. And so I spent a lot of time and energy thinking, that's what I need to do. And when I realized that was wrong, then I was like, well, I need nobody, nobody can save me. But that's not true. I needed many people, many things to get to where I am, I could not have done any of this on my own. And I know that might sound strange, like, why is he saying that if he believes so strongly in, you know, the power of oneself, because it's, it's a, it's a healthy balance. It's knowing when you can pick yourself up, when you fall, and get back on, let's say the proverbial horse and move forward.

Or as they say, fall down, dust the dirt off your knees and get up again and keep moving. And then there is the time to know, when you reach out a hand and say, I need help. This step is saying, it's important to know, whatever that power is, whatever you however you define that power, that you need help to restore you to some sense of sanity from the unmanageable life that you've been dealing with. That's where the power in this step is that it's saying, you know, I need help, could be a therapist, could be your reading self help books, could be your friend, could be many different things. God could be belief in the power of community, it could be a whole bunch of different things.

That's why this step I believe, is so important. Because it's finding the healthy balance and boundary between what you can do on your own and what you need help with. And when I say help with, that's where you can put in your own belief system. You know, this is where again, we don't need to argue on this semantics of Do you believe Jesus is Lord? Do you believe in Allah? Do you believe in No, God, it doesn't matter with this step? You can apply it to your personal belief?

And how do you want to move forward with that? What is important is that you're open to other possibilities of needing help, to get you out of the circumstance that you're in, and being open to admitting that and saying, Yeah, you know, what, I do have problems. I do need to grow in certain areas. I'm not saying that you need to believe you're broken, or you're damaged. But this step is saying, when you look back at your family upbringing, and you see what you learned as a kid, and you see how that's applied. You know, maybe you're a workaholic, maybe you've fallen into, you know, always doubting yourself or putting yourself down, there's so many different ways that when you've grown up in an alcoholic, you know, addictive environment, or dysfunctional family, of how that has affected you, and how you have applied that in your work relationships, in your friendships, in your romantic relationships.

And all of these things that swirl around this step is basically saying to you, what if you take a moment and stop, and you say, wait a minute, what if there is a power beyond me where I can learn something that could help me live a better life. That's why at the end of the day, I have come down on the side of, okay, I can deal with this stuff. I understand this.

And talking this out on this podcast has helped me kind of define it better for myself so I can understand where I'm coming from with it. Because again, I struggle with this step many people do. But I hope that this has helped you look at it from a different perspective and to be open to the possibility of what if you can learn something that can help you live a better life that's outside of yourself? We don't all have the answers. I don't care how old I am. I can always learn something new. It just doesn't matter of my age, or my experience. And it doesn't matter where that information comes from, I can learn something from someone much younger than myself or from a book or in talking with someone, I just want to be open to the possibility that there is some type of power greater than me, that can help me find that sanity.

Again, I've always believed Knowledge is power. And I don't mean that the sense of power, like I'm going to rule the universe kind of power. But I have found from little kid that when I applied myself to learning, and being open to my own local experience, that's where healing happens to me. And my early experiences, were just throwing myself into books, and reading and reading about other people's experiences. You know, I still remember reading The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, and how touched I was, you know, that book, and just really seeing what the characters were going through. It's very powerful book.

Margaret Atwood's, you know, a Cat's Eye, and the experiences of a young girl and, and some of the problems that that character goes through or her surfacing book, like, there was literature that I would read, and I would identify with people there and learn from experiences from that, as well as once I started going to therapy. I listen to the stories that I would tell, you know, my therapist, and then the guidance that he would give me back and say, Have you thought about this? That's how I found out about adult children of alcoholics. Meetings, he suggested, Why don't you go to one higher? I never even knew that existed. I think I was like, 2021.

At the time. I was like, Oh, I know, there's a there's an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He's like, Oh, no, these meetings are for people who grew up in a family that have, you know, their parents struggled with, you know, dealing with addiction. Why don't you attend these meetings? And it was hard for me to be like, Wow, do I? Can I do that? Do I have the courage to do that? Where the mind, you have a choice? Do you want to be open, or you want to live in the walled garden? You know, we might think that the garden is beautiful. But when you open the door, and see that there's an entire world out there, you look back at your walled garden and go, Oh, I didn't know, our world is small. Maybe it can grow a little bit more, and can see more, live more, learn more. So I hope that this episode has been helpful for you.

If you're interested in learning more, go visit, let go and be free.com. Again, it's always helpful if you listen to the podcast, whatever platform like it, leave a positive review, I'd appreciate that or share this with someone else. Maybe there's someone in your life that is struggling. And maybe, let's say they don't believe in God, and you've tried to help them, and they're just not open. Maybe this podcast, this episode might help them go, oh, I can look at it from a different perspective. Again, I believe that, you know, spreading a message of goodness and happiness and personal responsibility to others out in the world can then not just help myself, because I learned from that. But it can, you know, give other people hope. And I think that's important, especially in today's day and age. There's a lot of negativity out there. So again, thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I sincerely appreciate it. And I hope as always, that you are doing well. So be well. Thank you.

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