Proactive 12 Steps

Discussion of Step 5:

I explore these patterns and describe them to another person, noticing the healing power of compassionate listening.

Step Five continues the process that started with Step Four: Looking at behavior patterns, as opposed to just behaviors in isolation.

There is a difference between the Proactive 12 Steps and the traditional Twelve Steps. The tone of the original Twelve Steps is a tone that is very much related to the notion of good and evil: doing a moral inventory, paying attention to the wrongs you do. So, it’s very much a language of sin and redemption. There is a logic to it within a religious point of view. But it’s not necessarily the way that it works psychologically. And so it makes sense to pay attention to how this process unfolds here.

The process of change

First, we’re looking at behavior patterns, and then we’re trying to understand them. We pay attention to the emotional logic that’s behind them. When you have a repetitive behavior pattern, that means it is firmly ingrained. It doesn’t serve to beat yourself up about it and to force yourself to change it through willpower. This is very much the same problem that we talked about in Step One. When something is very ingrained, willpower doesn’t work.

And so what happens is this: With the best of intentions, you fall into a vicious cycle. And things go deeper and deeper and get more and more ingrained.

So what is this vicious cycle? You do something that you would call a “wrong” and so you criticize yourself for it. And you feel ashamed about it. And, through a lot of willpower, you manage not to do it for a little while… And then you do it. You slip. And now you feel terrible. You feel a lot of shame, and it’s tough to manage these feelings. So this then induces you to indulge. And the pattern, as you can see, goes deeper and deeper, alternating between moments of willpower and moments of shame. So that’s something that you’re not going to try to continue. It makes sense to step out of that cycle.

And the best way to step out of it is actually to understand what is happening. Because, when you know what is happening, you can take action at the level where things are causing the harmful patterns, as opposed to merely trying to change them through willpower.

Understanding vs condoning

We’re talking about understanding. Of course, this does not mean condoning. Condoning would be trying to glorify the problematic patterns. Understanding helps you change.

So, let’s say you identify a problematic pattern. Trying to understanding it means wondering why you do what you do. Is it just because you’re an evil, nasty person? Is it that you’re so lazy that you do things that hurt other people out of sheer laziness? Or is there some method behind the madness?

There might be some logic behind what you do. It would be some kind of emotional logic, not rational logic. What we will do in further steps is to try to understand better what is behind it. You probably already have a sense of what it is, if you approach it from wanting to understand it, as opposed to judging it and trying to eradicate it.

How do you proceed with exploring this?

It’s good to think of it as having several steps in this process. You know, sub-steps of Step Five.

First, you’re going to get kind of a general sense of it. Some fuzzy sense of what might be happening while you do what you do. Why, for instance, you arrive late at your appointments. Or why you might be angry at certain people. You go beyond the self-blame, and you understand the reason behind it. And, probably, it’s something like fear. So now you have a general sense of it.

Then you stay with it with your curiosity, and you try to work it a little deeper.

Step 5: I look at my behavior patterns with compassion, to understand the emotional logic behind them.

Discussion of Step 4:

I examine my life with honesty, searching for patterns in how I have been relating to people and situations.

There is something very striking about the 12 steps: They were originally written for alcoholics, and yet there’s not much mention of alcohol in them. They talk about putting things in a broader context, and many of the steps, starting with Step Four, have to do with how you interact with other people. So how can one make sense of that?

A couple of things here. One is about understanding patterns of behavior. And two is: How patterns of behavior are related to what happens in your life.

The religious context of the original 12 Steps

If you pay attention to the language of Step Four (and of the following steps), it is full of words such as being wrong, making amends, asking for forgiveness. In the traditional 12 Steps, God is very present, and the context is one of sin and redemption. You admit your sins, ask for forgiveness, and you are healed by the grace of God.

This kind of framework might work for you if you are a religious person, and your religious tenets are following that kind of pattern. But if you’re not, then what do you do? Even if you are religious, this kind of explanation is not an explanation of the way change happens. It relies on the metaphysical, on some miracles happening, as opposed to an understanding of what happens as you change your behavior. So in the Proactive 12 Steps, the wording reflects a different understanding of what it is that makes change happen.

A different context

We’re not speaking the language of sin. We’re not speaking the language of morality as something that is imposed on you. We’re talking about understanding patterns. So the wording of Step Four in the Proactive 12 Steps has to do with patterns of behavior and understanding these patterns.

What does this mean? What we are talking about is thinking in terms of patterns, as opposed to isolated individual actions. To take an example, let’s say you have been inappropriately rude with somebody. If you think of this as an isolated incident, all you need to do is apologize.  Thinking in terms of patterns means taking into consideration different circumstances, different times, different people. You look at the way that several unrelated incidents may have some characteristics in common. Then, you are able to reflect on what it is that tends to activate you. For instance, what tends to make you angry or to overreact to the situation. So, of course, it’s not just about being angry, I’m only using this as an example.

Thinking in terms of patterns is an entry point in trying to understand why you do what you do. Understanding, of course, does not mean condoning. It means that, before you can effectively change anything, you have to understand why it happens. Because if you don’t, then you don’t have the tools to change it.

Mindful understanding

As you’re starting to see with Step Four, and you will see even more in the following steps, the Proactive 12 Steps describe a path that is different from the traditional 12 Steps. The Proactive 12 Steps are oriented to changing the way you behave, by understanding what it is that makes you do what you do. So it’s not going to have the moralistic tone of “wrong” or “atonement” or “repenting”… But it’s going to have the much more mindful approach of observing what is, to understand it.

We’re talking about mindful understanding. So this is different from trying to analyze and to force-feed some logic, some rationality into this. It’s not that human behavior has no logic whatsoever. There is a logic, but that is an emotional logic. For instance, when you are scared, shadows on the ground will look threatening. When you are happy and safe,

Discussion of Step 3:

Moment by moment, I take a mindful pause to deal with my life calmly and effectively.

When you hear a phrase like “find yourself,” it probably feels intimidating. It probably feels like a huge thing, some major shift, some revelation. Something that it would take a lot of work to arrive at. So you might have the intention of finding yourself, and you say: “Yeah, so it’s vital. And therefore, I will do that when I have a substantial chunk of time. When all the stars are aligned. When it feels right. When I’m okay. When something is supporting me in doing that…” And as a result, you don’t do it.

So the wording of this Step is not just “to find myself,” it is “to find myself moment by moment.” We’re not talking about something that’s going to be a significant revelation with a big drum roll. Something enormous. We’re merely talking about being in touch with yourself moment by moment. Now again, that might feel a little mysterious, but let’s take it in a very down-to-earth way.

A mindful pause

What this Step talks about is taking a mindful pause. You do this it in the middle of your day, in the middle of what you’re doing. It could be a minute, it could be two, but it could be even less than a minute. And during that moment, you stop.

Now it’s called a mindful pause as opposed to “just stop.” When you stop, what you had been doing is interrupted. Your focus is on: “Okay, so can I go now? Can I continue?” During that moment, you’re closed off to anything other than impatiently waiting for the possibility of continuing.

What’s different in a mindful pause, compared to that kind of stop, is that, during the mindful pause, you shift your attention somewhere else. A simple way of doing that is to pay attention to consciously breathing.

So you breathe in. You breathe out. Your attention follows the breath. The in-breath. The out-breath. You’re not in the middle of doing a yoga movement, or some mysterious meditation practice. You’re merely slowing down and paying attention to the quality of your breath. You’re noticing the “in” movement and the “out” movement. As you shift focus to your breath, you are no longer lost in your thoughts or lost in what you’re doing.

Mindful vs Mindless

Being mindful is the opposite of being mindless. So we’re merely shifting from mindless to mindful as we take a pause and pay attention to our breath. And so you could do this for a minute, or more, or just for a brief moment. You could even do one breath in, one breath out, and nobody will notice that you’re taking a pause. You can do that while talking to people.

What this gives you is a chance to do is to reconnect with yourself. So, again, this is not like a big thing about finding yourself in some mystical way or some surprising psychological discovery about yourself. It’s a sense you have, as you breathe in and out, that sense of: “Oh, there’s something here. There’s somebody here. What I’m noticing is me breathing. Me paying attention to what it is that I notice at this moment.”

It is possible that, when you first experiment with this, and for quite a long time, you’re either going to have a sense of: “I don’t notice anything” or you might be noticing a sense of tension, a sense of: “I can’t wait to get it over with.” And that does not mean that you’re doing this badly. There is no way to do this badly. Whatever happens, and whatever you’re noticing, is what is.

Of course, in the long run, as you do this, you will progressively find a way actually to feel calmer and more open as you do it. But you’re not going to get there by forcing y...

Step 3: To find myself, moment by moment, I take a mindful pause.

David Mars Ph.D. gives us an experiential sense of AEDP for Couples.

Discussion of Step 2:

I understand that I cannot force change through willpower. I need to disentangle my life patiently.

So you’re coming out of Step One with the powerful realization that you’re stuck, really stuck. Step Two is about the possibility that you can move, from that to the opposite of “stuck:”  something that is flowing, something that is growing, expanding. And this kind of possibility, from the place of feeling stuck, feels unattainable. Impossible to believe. So no wonder that, in the traditional Twelve Steps, Step Two is about the intervention of God.

It takes a miracle?

If something is tough to believe, it feels like it must be a miracle. And then it takes God to make it happen. So, if you believe in God, the traditional wording of Step Two is meaningful.  With the concept of an all-powerful, benevolent God, the possibility of miraculous change is not as impossible as it might have seemed at first.

But what if you don’t believe in God? Does it mean you’re even more stuck?

Well, no. You don’t have to believe in God for seemingly miraculous change to happen. Let’s remember the context. While the Twelve Steps use the language of God, the bulk of the steps is about you changing your attitude and behavior. If the Twelve Steps were just a religious program, they would be just about the power of prayer. That is the power of God to make changes without you having to do anything. But the context of the Twelve Steps is that you make the changes. You do the hard work.

Faith in human nature

In this context, Step Two is not so much about faith in God as it is faith that all this hard work you’re doing has a chance to pay off. So it need not be a belief in a divine power that can take you out of the insanity of being stuck. It is essentially a belief that making hard changes is part of human nature.

So why not just say it that way? Well, when you feel stuck, and you’ve tried hard, it’s hard to believe that there’s something you haven’t tried that’s going to work. It is even harder to think that what would work consists in no longer pushing so hard, no longer relying on willpower. So the idea of stopping to push so hard, the sense of letting go of how you’ve been doing things, seems downright crazy. So the only way it would happen would be through a miracle? Well, it may be so, but then call it the miracle of human nature.

By the way, believing in human nature need not mean you have to stop believing in God. You can thank God for making human nature what it is. The same way as you think that it is God who made the sun and the earth, and made the earth revolve around the sun. Your belief in God can go together with the idea that the capacity to heal is part of human nature.

Faith in the collective experience

Another good thing to remember is that, at this point, for years and years and years, people have been using this kind of program actually to make changes. And there is a track record of these changes helping people transform what they do and who they are. So what is the essence of Step Two? As I said before, it is to stop trying so hard, relying on willpower. Still, letting go into what is more of an organic process and letting go of this pushing and striving and tightening. Finding a place inside of you that is more open and calmer.

Now that might seem entirely crazy, but let’s use a metaphor for this process.

The cord metaphor

Let’s take the analogy of a cord; let’s say a chord from your headphones or a power cord. It’s very long, and it’s been all tangled up. So how do you disentangle it? If you are impatient and you try to pull, all you succeed in doing is getting it even more tangled. The only way to disentangle it is to go very slowly and to find ways to create an opening between all the va...

Step 2: To get unstuck, I need to find, in myself, a calm and open space.

Discussion of Step 1:

I face reality. I am not able to control what I do, and this has serious consequences.

Denial

There are many forms of denial: “It’s no big deal” or “I don’t really have a problem” or “I can handle it” or “I could stop anytime I want” or…

What happens is that you don’t see what is now visible to everybody else. You have a problem; things are not working out; things are out of control.

Why have you been in denial? Well, you didn’t intend to. Denial is a mechanism that is in all of us. It is a coping mechanism that allows us to function under very tough circumstances.

For instance: We are all mortal. It is an inescapable truth that we are all eventually going to die. It is scary and sad. But, if we kept thinking about our death every moment of our existence, and feeling scared and worried about that, what kind of life would we have?

So denial, in and of itself, is not wrong. It can be a beneficial mechanism that helps us disengage from problems we cannot solve, and focus on living in the moment.

And so, you ask: How do I know when it’s good for me to be in denial, and when it’s not? The test is how it affects your life. If it prevents you from taking action that you could be taking, then it is not productive for you.

In this way, the discussion of Step One introduces us to a significant theme of this proactive program: Personal development is a learning process. We don’t just assume we know it all. We don’t just take it for granted that somebody else has all the answers. We get information, we experiment (with caution), and we learn by trial and error. This is the meaning of the quest for serenity, courage, and wisdom (a.k.a. “the Serenity Prayer”).

Overwhelm

It’s essential to keep in mind that denial is a powerful protective strategy that has deep biological foundations. There is a mechanism in our nervous system that is triggered when we are faced with insurmountable problems—very much the way it works on animals in the wild.

When animals encounter a threat, they have two basic strategies: Either fight or flight. Neither is inherently good or bad. For instance, if you’re an antelope and a lion is hunting you, it makes no sense to show some resolve and fight! You better run away.

When the threat is overwhelming, the animal’s nervous system simply can’t handle it. It just doesn’t compute. This is the “deer in the headlights” phenomenon: The deer is paralyzed.

Denial, in this case, is not useful. It is not allowing the animal to go on happily with its life. It would be much more helpful to take action (in the case of the deer in the headlights, to run away). But it can’t because its nervous system is in short-circuit mode.

So, think of denial as some sort of short-circuit mechanism that gets triggered when there is an overwhelming threat. When the animal is in that “short-circuit” freeze mode, it cannot override the freeze.

What we’re encountering here is another strand that is a significant theme in this program—the role of fear. Once you’re in the grip of fear, your nervous system has its logic. It’s not what we call being logical. It’s the logic of fear, of panic even. It has nothing to do with the outlook on the world you have when you feel safe.

Feeling safe

The critical part of this process is to find safety. Without safety, it’s going to be very difficult to give up your old habits. They are ways of coping that you have developed over time.

“Coping” is too mild a word. To your nervous system, the old habits feel like time-tested protections. They may not work well, but they are the only protections you know, and you would feel unbearably vulnerable without them...