The recovery process - What I have learned which could help America
by Steve Hein

This is an article I wrote shortly after 9/11.

S. Hein

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Recently one of the TV stations ran some stories under the heading: "America Recovers." This caused me to reflect on my own recovery process to see how what I have learned could possibly help the Americans.

The most well-known recovery process is the "12 Step" program, upon which Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is based. It seems useful to take a look at that process to see what insight we might gain.

To begin, though, we all know that the 12 steps are of little use to the alcoholic who does not believe he has a drinking problem. Until an individual acknowledges that it is he who has the problem, and not everyone else, it will impossible for the recovery process to begin. In this sense a recovery from an emotionally-based problem is much different than the recovery from a physical wound. Note that I do not subscribe to the belief that alcoholism is a disease. I believe alcoholics are created, not born. This is a separate question which I have addressed elsewhere in my work, but it reflects a larger principle of mine. This larger principle is the overwhelming majority of social problems are caused by the socialization process itself, not by our individual genetic natures. In line with this general principle, for example, I believe rebels and terrorists are created, not born.

But here my main focus is on the recovery process, so let me return to it now. As I was saying, the individual with the drinking problem must admit that it is he who has the problem. It has proven exceptionally difficult to convince anyone else that they have a drinking problem. Unfortunately, most people do not acknowledge their own problems until they are under tremendous pain. The human organism is capable of many defense mechanisms to shield itself from psychological pain.

In my own case I did not realize I had a problem until I was 35 years old. My problem was not a drinking problem. It was a not an especially easy problem to label. By many measures I was the model of the American dream. My parents were raised as poor immigrants' children. They worked hard so my siblings and I could attend some of the best universities. I went on to receive my MBA degree, graduating in the top 2% of one of the leading business schools in the USA. I then worked for a major corporation. Next, I started my own business. At the age of 27 I was already out-earning my farther by a factor of several times. My business was successful enough financially to allow me to retire at age 34. In the same year I got married for the second time. This marriage lasted less than 18 months. The separation process was the turning point of my life. I began to take a look at myself for the first time. Extremely reluctantly, I entered into counseling. It was a last resort for me. I realized I was successful but miserable.

Continued below...

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I was extremely judgmental. I did not know the meaning of the word "compassion." I supported the death penalty, I supported the use of punishment and fear. I supported the Gulf War. I once suggested we should take trouble-making children out to a field and shoot them. I had never once shed a tear for an abused child. Perhaps this is because I had never once shed a tear for the abuse which I had suffered as a child.

This last point, by the way, is an important principle of mine. The principle is that if we have not felt our own emotional pain, we will not be able to feel empathy or compassion for others. We may be able to feel sympathy, but sympathy is a different thing. When we feel sympathy we feel above them, but we do not really feel their pain.

It is no secret that the reason people drink is to numb their emotional pain. But in my case, I was not using alcohol to numb my pain. I was so far removed from my own inner pain that before I would ever get close to it I would find somewhere else to direct my attention. Typically I found female partners, who I emotionally drained one after another.

But I did not intend for this article to be so much about me. You see, I am still using writing as a form of my own therapy. I know I am recovering because I have written this much without stopping to cry, though the feeling has been very close to the surface on several occasions. You might fairly wonder what kinds of abuse I suffered, so I will briefly say that I was first psychologically abused -- some would say I was a victim of "psychological incest", a situation where the parent uses the child to try to fill their unmet emotional needs. I was also physically abused, having been hit with a board more than once by those in authority over me, then I was sexually abused by a male professor in my first year of university. Again, it is important to say that I did not ever see myself as having been abused, nor for that matter abusive to others, until things reached rock bottom in my life.

It is for this reason that one of my deepest hopes for America, and for the world, is that the events of September 11, will be this rock bottom low point for the people of the United States. At the same time, it is my greatest fear, though, that this will not be rock bottom. Realistically, I am trying to get myself used to the probability that things will get worse, perhaps much worse, in the USA before they get better.

This is now what causes me the most pain. This is what now causes the tears to begin to form. But I have already cried at least once over this. The time for my crying is perhaps past. Now, perhaps, it is the time for writing. To spread my message as widely as possible, to whoever is ready to hear it.

I feel very powerless. I can not force the American politicians to listen to me. I can not force the American school teachers to listen to me. I can not force the American parents to listen to me. I can understand why those we call terrorists resort to such drastic measures to try to be heard, but I am steadfastly opposed to violence as a means of resolving conflicts or influencing opinions. I believe in education and learning. These are much slower processes than violent attacks and counter attacks, but I believe this is our only long term hope for the future, especially in light of our unprecedented concentration of power and unprecedented ability to self-destruct. I also believe it is the most natural way for humanity to advance and for the species to evolve.

So far I have, obviously enough, resisted the urge to kill myself. But just this week I wondered if I would be able to withstand the pain of seeing the future deaths of thousands or hundreds of thousands of those who I identified with so closely for so many years. I wondered if I could stand the pain of watching what will happen to the country I was once so proud of. I wondered if I could stand the pain of seeing the increased "security" and restrictions on freedom, knowing that the people who I love the most in America, those who value true freedom, as I do, would feel less free to voice their dissenting views, when all they are really saying is they want America to live up to its own cherished ideals. It was these very ideals, it needs to be remembered, which once won the respect and admiration of millions around the world. But when these are ideals become mere empty words used as justification for actions which make Americans appear hypocritical, they cause foster resentment and hatred rather than respect. Such feelings of resenement and hatred contribute to the violence which now the US is just beginning to taste on its own soil. But the most painful part of all this for me personally is knowing that this entire sequence of attack and counter-attack, death and more death, destruction and more destruction, could all have been prevented had the leaders of these attacks either gone through their own recovery processes to deal with their own unacknowledged pain, or had been advised by someone who had.

But I am not only frightened by the prospect of the additional deaths which we all feel certain will come as a result of the US action in Afghanistan. I am equally, or even more, frightened by the heightening of the kinds of pain which were already abundant in America. The kinds of pain which are much more pervasive than any future terrorist attacks. The kinds of pain for which the US government, the CIA, the FBI, the National Guard, and the local police are powerless to prevent. In fact, these institutions are one source of the pain to which I refer.

The sources of pain in the USA are many, and they are deeply woven in to the very fabric of American society. Not just American society, of course, because America is simply an extension of the values, beliefs and rules which have their roots much farther back in history, back at least as far as the earliest known written collection of such values, beliefs and rules. By this I refer to the writings preserved for us to analyze (if we dare to do so) in the Old Testament. But I again stray a bit too far from my stated goal of looking at the recovery process.

So I return to the dilemma we face in commencing the process itself. This dilemma is that those who are alcoholics, like all those with similar dysfunctions, are also precisely those who are best able to defend themselves against admitting they have a problem. At the same time they are precisely those who feel most threatened by any such admission.

The alcoholic might try to intimidate others into helping him fill his unmet needs, such as the need for security and the need to feel powerful and in control. He may go on drunken rampages, he may be come physically abusive. He may use threats to try to keep someone in a relationship with him. What he really yearns for and needs is to be respected. He knows that if he is respected others will help him voluntarily, and even if he won't admit it, he knows he needs help. But he confuses respect with fear. Instead of earning the respect he seeks, he loses it, and this confuses him, causing him still more pain from not understanding why people do not want to cooperate with him in helping him meet his needs.

Not able to share his true feelings or admit he has a problem and needs help, he continues to push those away who are sincere in their desire to help. He is unable to receive the gifts he needs the most -- acceptance, understanding and the intimate emotional human connection which every child needs to feel secure about himself, things he did not receive sufficiently. Not only is he unable to receive these emotional gifts, but he typically ends up pushing the giver completely out of his life. So the cycle of abandoment, pain, the fear of facing this pain, and the attempts to numb it continue for years, or even generations.

There are other reasons he is not able to share his true feelings beyond his own insecurity and defensiveness. First, his true feelings were never allowed to be expressed when he was young. Second, he was never taught the words with which to express his feelings. In school he was never given any help with expressing his feelings. He was never given emotional literacy classes. So, like our intenational leaders, he acts out his feelings, and blames others for them. He then justifies his actions through the use of any number strategies. But, as long as he is busy justifying his actions, he can not start the real recovery process.

The alcoholic also feels the pain of the wasted resources. The more he drinks, the more it costs him in not only the expense of the alcohol itself, but in terms of his financial decisions. He may make disastrous financial decisions, such as wasting his resources to prove that he is "right" and someone else is wrong, such as in legal battles with personal or buisiness partners. He may also waste his resources trying to punish someone, to "teach them a lesson." I understand this process very well because I once wasted my own resources in such a legal battle, trying to prove what an "evil" person my ex-wife was, how much she deserved to be punished and how much more noble I was than her.

Or the alcoholic may try to bolster his self-image with expenditures on material goods, appearances, relationships, etc. But all of these are an insufficient substitute for his unmet emotional needs. He may also try to numb his pain through productive work, as Freud suggested, and become a work-aholic. But on some level he realizes that even this productive work, is meaningless until he has addressed his inner turmoil.

This nagging awareness, even if it is quite nearly unconscious, causes him additional pain. He feels an emptiness which haunts him in the middle of the night. But he does not know what else to do except to try more of the things which have helped numb the pain in the past. It is only when the failure of these things to stop his pain becomes so incredibly, unbearably painful, that it becomes evident to him, or at least has the potential to. I am afraid to say that for most people, they never reach this point in their lives. They simply die still trying to numb their pain in all the old, time-tested ways.

Will this be also be the course of an entire nation?

Will the empire of America one day fall, as have all the other empires in history? If so, how will this fall play out?

Here we can only speculate, and again that takes me too far from the scope of this article.

What then, specifically, can what we know of the process of recovery from emotional, physical and sexual abuse offer us in dealing with international conflict? What might possibly help us learn the most we can from the attacks as quickly as possible so no more children need to lose their parents. There is no question to me that these attacks were a message to the American people. I plea with the Americans to listen to this message, to try to comprehend what some have called an "incomprehensible act." I beg them to try to hear what the message is; to listen as they have never listened to their own children and as they were never listened to as children themselves. If we do not hear the message this time, what more will it take? If this was not painful enough, how much more pain will it take? The answer to this question is what frightens me most.

The President urges the American people to get back to work. This, to me, is like suggesting to the alcoholic that he get back to drinking. More of the typical business as usual will serve to distract us from what had better be a very, very, very painful experience. Let us please learn from this pain. Let us not distract ourselves by blaming others, by creating distracting wars and slogans, and by "getting back to work."

I have my ideas on the message which these messengers attempted to deliver, but that is not the point of this article. Here I want to help us see what we can learn from the general recovery process model. As I see it there are several things this model can offer.

First, we have already seen that the first step is admitting we have a problem. Next, as suggested by the first step of the AA program, it is helpful to then admit that we are powerless to fix this problem by relying on ourselves and our old methods. We must try something new.

Here the 12 Step program encourages its followers to give up control of their lives to a higher power. I am not a big fan of this component of the program for reasons I have discussed elsewhere in my work, but that does not negate the value of some of the other steps. Also, there may be more we can learn from reflecting on the first step.

If we think of someone who has in the past been a "control-aholic", we might conclude that one of the first steps to recovery is to admit that they are not able to control everything; that they are powerless, for example, to get others to always do what they want them to. It might be especially important for them to admit that in the past they have not even been able to control themselves. Upon reflection and honesty they might realize they have at times acted out their emotions, even when they knew their actions would lead to unhealthy consequences for themselves or others.

This point leads me to think of another general principle which I learned (or am still learning) when it comes to personal growth and improved relationships. This principle is that we are ill-equipped to tell someone else how to run their lives if we have are having problems running our own lives. We might ask ourselves, then, how well have we, as Americans, done in running our own affairs?

At this particular time in history, a high percentage of people in the USA appear to be feeling very proud to be American, that America is the best country in the world, has the highest standards for freedom and justice, etc. Whether this is truly the feeling of healthy pride or whether it is something closer to desperation could possibly be debated. One could make the argument that we cling most strongly to our beliefs about ourselves and the world in times of crisis. But the fact that there is a crisis does not mean that our beliefs are any more accurate than before the crisis. In fact, it may be an indication our beliefs helped lead to the crisis, something which maybe imperative to realize if one is to not only recover from the current crisis, but if one is to decrease the likelihood of future similar crises.

This leads to another step in the 12 Step program, or more specifically to the fourth step in my alternative 12 step program. In this step one makes a thorough assessment of themselves. Included in this assessment is a look at one's past actions, one's culture, one's family, one's religion, one's country, one's beliefs and one's values. (Here is someting to check a few of your beliefs now, if you want.)

A related step is to make a list of all the people we have harmed or wronged, and then to try to make amends to those people wherever possible. The next step in the traditional program takes this a bit further by suggesting we continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, to promptly admit it. Needless to say, we have to acknowledge that we have done something wrong at all before we get to this point. If one is feeling closed, insecure, defensive, self-righteous, threatened etc. such acknowledgement is extremely difficult.

An additional step in the recovery process model is to begin making real changes in one's life with the new awareness one has received from both external feedback and internal questioning and searching. The final step, then is to internalize these changes, to help educate others and to serve as a model as a way of leading others to a healthier way of living.

In another article I may discuss more specifically how the United States might apply this model in its attempt at recovery from the recent attacks, but now I will close this article though by sharing a few additional things I have learned through my own process of recovery.

One of the these additional things is that people do not like to be forced. They do not like to be manipulated. They do not like to be threatened. They do not like to be pressured. They do not like to be punished for disobedience and defiance. I have learned this not through any intellectual pursuits, but by paying attention to my own feelings; by paying attention to the consequences of my actions, and by asking people directly how they feel.

I have also learned some things about resentment, including how it is created, how it can be avoided or reduced, and how it can lead to hatred and violence. I am currently updating my thoughts on this.

Another lesson I have learned is not go get involved in other people's drama's. I have learned not to try to be helpful when people are not ready for my help. And I have learned that when I am trying to be helpful, I am often merely trying to fill my own unmet emotional needs, such as to feel appreciated by being the hero who rescues someone.

This is related to one final thing which I have learned. This being that the process of nature and evolution works at a slow pace, a very, very slow pace. When I have tried to speed it up by trying to impose my ideas about how the world "should" be, I have usually created more problems than I have solved.

Steve Hein
November 3, 2001

Here are some questions to help you think about your beliefs. Some are designed deliberately to provoke you into thinking in ways you might not typically think.

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What are your beliefs about America?

Do you believe it is the best example of a society the world has ever known, or do you believe it is the country which poses the greatest danger to the survival of the species? Why or why not?

What are your beliefs about about Americans?

About George Bush?

About politicians in the USA (How well do you believe they are running their own lives? How well do you believe they are running the USA? How well do you believe their previoius ideas are working in the region they are closest to: Washington, DC?)

About the Taliban?

About bin Laden?

About "terrorists"? For example, whether they are born or created. And if they are created, how so?

About how women should be treated? And about whether the women are being over-protected in Islamic society or whether they are being exploited in American society -- for example, in the pornography industry.

About whether they should be in villages with their children or living in large cities working in offices while someone else watches their children?

About what freedom is?

About what justice is?

About how well punishment and rewards have worked to advance humanity?

About where resentment comes from?

About where hatred comes from?

About where violence comes from?

About how to prevent it in the future?

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bin Laden

Emotionally Intelligent Soldiers

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