Courage to Change for Recovery’s Sake
Courage to change for recovery’s sake. “What do you mean?,” you might ask. Followed by, “I have courage, and I’ve tried just about everything I know to do to change things. How in the heck do you think I’ve lasted this long in a marriage with an alcoholic?” (or some similar close relationship: parent, brother, sister, best friend…)
I understand this sentiment. I do. I’d spent nearly four decades coping with various loved one’s drinking. It wasn’t until one of them went into residential treatment for alcoholism 17 years ago that I finally began my secondhand drinking recovery. And it’s been quite a journey, but the difference in me/my life from then to now? Let’s just say, you likely wouldn’t believe I was once “that” person.
How I Finally Got the Courage to Change for Recovery’s Sake
My recovery journey zigged and zagged, like most recovery journeys do – whether a person is recovering from an alcohol use disorder or from secondhand drinking or something else, entirely. It included cognitive behavioral therapy with a therapist who understood the family member’s experience and participation in Al-Anon, a 12-step program for people affected by someone’s drinking.
It included participation in the family programs offered at the treatment center where my loved one was in residence. And it included studying the emerging science – SCIENCE – that finally explained the myriad of issues I’d been dealing with – all loosely tied by threads to the idea that alcoholism was a disease.
Courage to change for recovery’s sake – but how?
Along the way, I found many of the Al-Anon slogans, readings and concepts hugely helpful. Why? They helped me “jar my thinking;” move me out of the reactionary part of my brain to the thinking part. But one in particular really gave me fits and starts – the Serenity Prayer – especially this line, “to accept the things I cannot change.”
This prayer was recited at the close of most Al-Anon meetings, and my mom had a framed image of it on our wall when I was growing up. I’d read or heard it hundreds of times. But I never knew how “to accept the things I cannot change,” let alone have the…
Wisdom to Know the Difference
For decades, I’d interpreted “courage to change the things I can” to mean having the guts, the drive, the stick-to-it-ness to keep at it until I got the things not in keeping with how I felt they should be – somehow changed.
So for me, getting to the place of “wisdom to know the difference” meant separating “courage to change” from “the things I can” in order to figure out how in the heck I was supposed to “accept the things I cannot change.”
And to do that, it took discovering and studying the emerging scientific research that explained:
- how the brain wires, maps and develops
- how what happens to a fetus, infant, toddler, child, tween, teen, or young adult during these wiring, mapping and developmental processes can result in risk factors for developing the brain disease of addiction (aka substance use disorder, alcoholism, drug addiction, brain disorder)
- how “mapping” severe alcohol use disorder (aka alcoholism) changes a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors yet can be successfully treated with the right kind of help
- how those changes in my loved ones had, in turn, changed me because of how I’d “learned” to cope with their changed thoughts, feelings, and behaviors — in other words, how I’d experienced secondhand drinking-related toxic stress
- and why the only brain – therefore the only person – I could change was mine/myself.
It was with these understandings that I could finally do the hard work to “accept the things I cannot change” and find the “wisdom to know the difference.” And it was then that I found Serenity, and the “COURAGE to change the things I can” – namely, myself.
Bottom line…
It took many years for me to get solid in my secondhand drinking recovery. And we’ll all do our recovery journeys in ways that work for us, but you may find it helpful to break down the Serenity Prayer into its smallest segments as I’ve described above as a way to get started. Or, as one of my reader’s shared in the version she’d once heard and uses:
“God
Grant me the serenity
To accept the people I cannot change
The courage to change the person I can
And the wisdom to know
That person is me.”
You may also want to check out my latest book, 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much.” I wrote the first edition in 2008/09 but in this past 10 years there’s been explosion in new understandings about what happens to the person with a drinking problem and what happens to those who love them. As importantly, it can help everyone concerned find the information they need to begin or continue their recovery journey.
And as always…
Feel free to contact me to arrange a phone, Zoom, Skype and What’sApp call to discuss your specific concerns. There is no charge. Please email me at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to schedule.
Lisa Frederiksen
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- 4 Things to Support Brain Health and Function for Recovery - August 30, 2022
can we schedule a zoom meeting Lisa
Sure – please email me at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com