I was walking out of an AA meeting the other day with a friend of mine. She was sharing with me about a recent interaction she had with someone she knew in our program. The conversation was confusing to her and a bit frustrating. Then she said this:
“That person is resisting the healing process and is only acting out of the capacity that she knows—I have to consider that.”
This is profound.
What a helpful thing to do. Especially now that we are sober and trying to better ourselves through recovery. That involves being with others that are like us that are trying to better themselves, too. As we arrest our own unhelpful behaviors that kept us stuck, we start having different conversations—
Conversations with the SAME people—now, WE are different.
We are healing and transforming our old addictive patterns of thinking and behaving. Not reacting out of our old ways of protecting ourselves from past hurts, but responding in loving and transformed ways to others around us.
Thinking differently. Behaving differently. Responding differently.
We have to consider that the same people we are interacting with may not be growing at the same rate along with us. We are operating from a different context now. We have a new task—to receive others’ pain and hold it along with them. Just sitting with them. Not fixing fixing them. Not jumping in the pit with them—but coming alongside as we identify with their experiences and sharing our own. Praying with them, listening and giving them a hand to hold to guide them along the way.
Just as others did for us.
As we work the 12-steps with the people we sponsor, we start to see transformation in them. In this process, we start to experience The 9th Step Promises:
"...No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which use to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”
And, they will realize this, too.
Hurt people hurt people.
Healing people help heal people.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
Philippians 2:3-4
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